The Last Woman

When the car, driven by Thompson, drew near to the derrick which had been to Morton the suggestion of an unholy impulse, he slowed the big Packard and leaned ahead, far over the wheel, for his keen eyes had already discerned something beside the road which had not been there when he had passed earlier in the evening. He stopped the car, and that fact awoke Duncan to a recollection of his surroundings.

"What is it, Thompson?" he asked. "Why have you stopped?"

Thompson was peering anxiously toward the jumbled mass of broken stone ahead of him, and there was an instant of silence before he replied. Then-"There has been a wreck here, sir," he told his employer.

Instantly, Duncan thought of Patricia. He forgot Morton. He was out of the car even before Thompson could slide from under the steering-wheel, and started ahead at a run, toward the remnants of the wreck which he could now see quite plainly.

The roadster, in making its last leap, had literally climbed the rocky place, and then, turning end for end twice, had finally alighted upon a heap of stone, from which it could be seen from the roadway. It was now a mass of iron, a twisted chaos of castings and machinery, recognizable only as something that had once been an automobile; but the experienced eyes of Thompson, trained to the quick and perfect recognition of all cars that he had ever seen, identified the mass of wreckage as soon as he got near enough to see it clearly. One comprehensive glance sufficed for him. He straightened up after that quick search for identification marks, which was his first instinct, and said, quietly: "It is Mr. Morton's roadster, sir."

"My God!" cried Duncan, with a catch in his breath. The truth of the matter seemed to rush upon him on the instant, although he afterward refused to recognize it as truth. But, as Thompson made the statement, Duncan saw again the despairing face of Richard Morton which had still had in it a hidden determination to do something that Duncan had not even tried to guess at the time. "Was this what he intended to do?" Duncan asked himself, silently.

"Yes, sir; it is Mr. Morton's roadster," Thompson repeated, with entire conviction. "He must have been hitting up a great gait, when he struck, too. I never saw such a wreck; never, sir. He must be somewhere about, sir."

"True. Look for him, Thompson; look everywhere."

He started forward himself, leaping over the stones, and plunging into every place where the body of a man might have fallen, after being hurled from the wrecked car. They searched distances beyond where it was possible that the body of a man might have been thrown, but they did not find Morton.