On the very day of Harry's arrival at the farm-house, he, with the old farmer, was summoned to visit one who had met with a fatal accident and was about to die.
It proved to be Martin Skidway, who lay on a barn floor with his head in his mother's lap, gasping his life away, an ugly wound in his side.
He had accidentally shot himself and was rapidly sinking. A fugitive in hiding for weeks, his life had been an intolerable one. Now that he was dying, he made a full confession, admitting his own hand in the awful railroad crime, and implicating two others, Elliston and Nick Brower. Sam Swart had been one of them, but he was known to be dead.
"Without HIS urging I would never have stained my hands; in fact, it was Elliston who struck the blow that killed the express messenger."
Without this confession, there was evidence enough to convict the New Yorker; with it, both Brower and the principal were found guilty of murder in the first degree and sentenced to the gallows. Nick Brower was the only one of the four who expiated his crime on the gallows. Harper Elliston died in prison by his own hand.
He left a note admitting the express crime, and also confessing to the murder of Captain Osborne and the ruin of his daughter Sibyl. His was a fitting end to a career of unparalleled crime.
We now draw a veil over the scene.
Harry Bernard and Nell Darrel were, soon after the arrest and death of Elliston, happily married.
Dyke Darrel considers the events leading up to the capture and punishment of those engaged in the crime of the midnight express as among the most thrilling and wonderful of his detective experience. To Harry Bernard and Paul Ender he gives a large share of the credit, and with them shared the reward. Bernard has of late worked in conjunction with Dyke Darrel on other cases, and is fast winning a reputation second only to that of the great railroad detective himself.