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Post, Melville Davisson, 1871?-1930

"The Sleuth of St. James's Square"


"Yes," I said, "I will save him!"
It was an impulse with no plan behind it. But the dabbing of the
withered mouth on my fingers was like actual physical contact
with a human heart.
For a moment she looked at me as one among the damned might look
at Michael. Then she went slowly away, down through the wooded
copse of the meadow. And I turned about to meet Marion. I knew
that she was now after the identity of the wrecker, and I faced
her to foul her lines.
"This is not the work of one with murder in his heart," she said
"A criminal agent set on a ruthless destruction of property and
life would have drawn these spikes on a trestle or an embankment,
at a point where the train would be running at high speed."
She paused for a moment, then she went on speaking to me as
though she merely uttered her mental comment to herself.
"These spikes are drawn at a point where the train slows down for
a crossing and precisely where the engine would go off onto the
hard road-bed of the highway into a level meadow. That means
some one planned this wreck to result in the least destruction of
life and property possible.


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