He dropped his half-burned cigarette and his voice was husky as he turned on Philip. “Where—where do you think they took me?” he demanded.
“God knows!” exclaimed Philip, tremulously. “Where?”
“To two freshly made graves just outside the village,” groaned the doctor. “I learned their story after a little. The girl, finding herself useless there, had begun to teach the little children. I'm—I'm—going to skip quickly over this.” His voice broke to a whisper. “She was an angel. The poor half-naked women told me that through my interpreter. The children cried for her when she died. The men had brought flowering trees from miles away to shade her grave—and the other. They had met, as I had planned—the man and the girl, but it didn't turn out—my way. It was a beautiful love, I believe, as pure and sweet as any in the whole world. They say that they made the whole village happy, and that each Sunday the girl and the man would sing to them beautiful songs which they could not understand, but which made even the sick smile with happiness. It was a low, villainous place for a village, half encircled by a swampy river, and the terrible heat of the summer sun brought with it a strange sickness. It was a deadly, fatal sickness, and many died, and always there were the man and the girl, working and singing and striving to do good through all the hours of day and night. What need is there of saying more?” the doctor cried, his voice choking him. “What need to say more—except that the man went first, and that the girl died a week later, and that they were buried side by side under the mangum trees? What need—unless it is to say that I am their murderer?”
“There have been many mistakes made in the name of science,” said Philip, clearing his throat. “This was one. Your theory was wrong.”
“Yes, it was wrong,” said the doctor, more gently. “I saved myself by killing them. My theory died with them, and as fast as I could travel I hurried to that other place in Central America.”
A soft glow entered into his eyes now, and he came around the stove and took one of Philip's hands between his own, and looked steadily down into his face, while there came a curious twitching about the muscles of his throat.
“Nothing had happened,” he said, barely above a whisper. “I found her, and I thank God for that I loved her, and my theory was doubly shattered, a thousand times cursed. She is my wife, and I am the happiest of men—except for these haunting memories. Before I married her I told her all, and together we have tried to make restitution for my crime, for I shall always deem it such. I found that the man who died was supporting a mother, and that the girl's parents lived on a little mortgaged farm in Michigan. We sent the mother ten thousand dollars, and the parents the same. We have built a little church in the village where they died. The third couple,” finished the doctor, dropping Philip's hand, “came up here. When I got back from the south I found that several of my checks had been returned. I wrote letter after letter, but could find no trace of these last of my experimenters. I sent an agent into the North and he returned without news of them. They had never appeared at Fort Smith. And now—I have come up to hunt for them myself. Perhaps, in your future wanderings, you may be of some assistance to me. That is why I have told you this—with the hope that you will help me, if you can.”
With a flash of his old, quick coolness the doctor turned to one of Pierre Thoreau's bunks.
“Now,” he said, with a strained laugh, “I'll follow your suggestion and go to bed. Goodnight.”