Part 64

“It does hold them,” said Marion.

“Yes, Miss Warfield, usually,” said the man.

“Then why should it fail here?”

The man's big grimy face wrinkled into a sort of smile.

“Now, Miss Warfield,” he said, “if we knew why an accident was likely to happen at one place more than another we wouldn't have any wrecks.”

“Precisely,” replied Marion, “but isn't it peculiar that the track should spread at the synclinal of this grade with the train running at a reduced speed, when it holds on the synclinal of other grades with the train running at full speed?”

The man's big face continued to smile.

“All accidents are peculiar, Miss Warfield; that's what makes them accidents.”

“But,” said Marion, “is not the aspect of these peculiarities indicatory of either a natural event or one designed by a human intelligence?”

The man fingered his torch.

“Mighty strange things happen, Miss Warfield. I've seen a train go over into a canal and one coach lodge against a tree that was standing exactly in the right place to save it. And I've seen a passenger engine run by a signal and through a block and knock a single car out of a passing freight-train, at a crossing, and that car be the very one that the freight train's brakeman had just reached on his way to the caboose; just like somebody had timed it all, to the second, to kill him. And I've seen a whole wreck piled up, as high as a house, on top of a man, and the man not scratched.”

“I do not mean the coincidence of accident,” said Marion, “that is a mystery beyond us; what I mean is that there must be an organic difference in the indicatory signs of a thing as it happens in the course of nature, and as it happens by human arrangement.”

The trackman was a person accustomed to the reality and not the theory of things.

“I don't see how the accident would have been any different,” he said, “if somebody had put that tree in the right spot to catch the coach; or timed the minute with a stop-watch to kill that brakeman; or piled that wreck on the man so it wouldn't hurt him. The result would have been just the same.”

“The result would have been the same,” replied Marion, “but the arrangement of events would have been different.”

“Just what way different, Miss Warfield?” said the man.

“We cannot formulate an iron rule about that,” replied Marion, “but as a general thing catastrophes in nature seem to lack a motive, and their contributing events are not forced.”

The big trackman was a person of sound practical sense. He knew what Marion was after, but he was confused by the unfamiliar terms in which the idea was stated.

“It's mighty hard to figure out,” he said. “Of course, when you find an obstruction on the track or a crowbar under a rail, or some plain thing, you know.”

Then he added:

“You've got to figure out a wreck from what seems likely.”

“There you have it exactly,” said Marion. “You must begin your investigation from what your common experience indicates is likely to happen. Now, your experience indicates that the rails of a track sometimes spread under these heavy engines.”

“Yes, Miss Warfield.”

“And your experience indicates that this is more likely to happen at the first rise of the synclinal on a grade than anywhere on a straight track.”

“Yes, Miss Warfield.”

“Good!” said Marion, “so far. But does not your experience also indicate that such an accident usually happens when the train is running at a high rate of speed?”

“Yes, Miss Warfield,” said the man. “It's far more likely to happen then, because the engine strikes the rails at the first rise of the grade with more force. Naturally a thing hits harder when it's going... But it might happen with a slow train.”

Marion made a gesture as of one rejecting the man's final sentence.