The Miracle Man Part 5

"Well, what then?" inquired Doc Madison easily.

"They'll yell 'fake!' and swear out warrants," said Helena, her dark eyes studying Doc Madison.

"Not according to statistics," replied Doc Madison, and his lips twitched quizzically at the corners. "According to statistics they'll buy another crutch and come back to buck the tiger again. Say, Helena, to-morrow, you go up to the public library and read up on shrines--they've been running since the ark--and they're running still.

You never heard any howl about them, did you? What's the answer to those cures?"

"That's different," said Helena. "That's religion, and they've got relics and things."

"It's faith," said Doc Madison, "and it doesn't matter what the basis of it is. Faith, Helena, _faith_--get that? And we're going to imbue them with a faith that'll set them crazy and send them into hysterics. And talk about relics! Haven't we got one? Look at the Patriarch! Can't you see the whole town yelling 'I told you so!' and swopping testimonials hard enough to crowd the print down so fine, if you tried to get it all into the papers, that you'd have to use a magnifying gla.s.s to read it, once we've pulled off the miracle? Don't you worry about the getaway. If there's any sign of anything like that, you and I, Helena, will be taking moonlight rides in the gondolas of Venice long before it breaks."

Helena choked--and began to laugh deliciously.

Doc Madison stared at her for a moment whimsically--then he, too, burst into a laugh.

"Oh, Lord!" he gurgled. "It's rich, isn't it?" And sweeping Helena off the couch and into his arms, he began to dance around and around the table. "Ring-around-a-rosy!" he cried. "We haven't done so bad in the misty past, but here's where we cross to the enchanted sh.o.r.e and play on jewelled harps with golden strings and--"

"Is that all?" gasped Helena, laughing and breathless, as at last she pulled herself away.

"No," panted Doc Madison. "There's a table I've reserved up at the Rivoli that's waiting for us now. We're about to part for days and days, lady mine, that's the tough luck of it, but we'll make a night of it to-night anyway--what?"

"You bet!" said Helena, doing a cake-walk towards the door. "Come on!"

--III--

NEEDLEY

"Needley?"

It wasn't wholly an interrogation--it seemed to Madison that there was even sympathy in the parlor-car conductor's voice, as the other took his seat check.

"Health," said Madison meekly. "Perfect rest and quiet--been overdoing it, you know."

"_Needley_!"--the train conductor of the Bar Harbor Express, collecting the transportation, threw the word at Madison as though it were a personal affront.

The tone seemed to demand an apology from Madison--and Madison apologized.

"Health," he said apologetically. "Perfect rest and quiet--been overdoing it, you know."

"We're five minutes late now," grunted the conductor uncompromisingly and, to Madison, quite irrelevantly, as he pa.s.sed on down the aisle.

Somehow, this inspired Madison to consult his timetable. He drew it from his pocket, ran his eye down the long list of stations--and stopped at "Needley." Needley had an asterisk after it. By consulting a block of small type at the bottom of the page, he found a corresponding asterisk with the words: "Flag station. Stops only on signal, or to discharge eastbound pa.s.sengers from Portland."

John Garfield Madison went into the smoking compartment of the car for a cigar--several cigars--until Needley was reached some two hours later, when the dusky attendant, as he pocketed Madison's dollar, set down his little rubber-topped footstool with a flourish on a desolate and forbidding-looking platform.

Madison was neither surprised nor dismayed--the parlor-car conductor, the train conductor and the timetable had in no way attempted to deceive him--he was only cold. He turned up his coat collar--and blew on his kid-gloved fingers.

As far as he could see everything was white with a thin layer of snow--he kicked some of it off his toes onto the unshovelled platform.

The landscape was disconsolately void of even a vestige of life, there was not a sign of habitation--just woods of bare trees, except the firs, whose green seemed out of place.

"I have arrived," said John Garfield Madison to himself, "at a cemetery."

There was a very small station, and through the window he caught sight of a hara.s.sed-faced, red-haired man. There was a thump, another one, a very vicious one--and Madison stirred uneasily--the train, with its five minutes' delinquency hanging over it, was already moving out, as his trunks, from the baggage car ahead, shot unceremoniously to the platform. Madison watched a man, the sole occupant of the platform apart from himself, save the trunks from rolling under the wheels of the train; then his eyes fastened on a rickety, two-seated wagon, drawn by a horse that at first glance appeared to earn all it got.

The train left the platform--and left quite as uninviting a perspective on the other side of the track as had previously greeted Madison's restricted view. But now the man who had salvaged his baggage came down the platform toward him. Madison inspected the approaching figure with interest. The man ambled along without haste, his jaws wagging industriously upon his tobacco, his iron-gray chin whiskers, from the wagging, flapping like a burgee in a breeze. He wore a round fur cap, quite bare of fur at the edges where the pelt showed s.h.i.+ny, and a red woollen tippet was tied round his neck and knotted at the back with the ends dangling down over his coat. The coat itself, a long one of some fuzzy material, with huge side pockets into which the man's hands were plunged, reached to the cavernous tops of jackboots where the nether ends of his trousers were stowed away.

The man halted before Madison, and, reaching a mittened hand under his chin, reflectively lifted his whiskers to an acute angle, while his blue eyes over the rims of steel-bowed spectacles wandered from Madison to Madison's dress-suit case and back to Madison again.

"Be you goin' to git off here?" he inquired.

Madison smiled at him engagingly.

"Well," he said, "I wouldn't care to have it known, but if you can keep a secret--"

"Hee-hee!" t.i.ttered the other. "Now that's right smart, that be. Waren't expectin' n.o.body to meet you, was you? I ain't heerd of none of the folks lookin' for visitors."

"No," said Madison. "But there's a hotel in the town, isn't there?"

"Two of 'em," said the other. "The Waalderf an' the Congress, but the Waalderf ain't done a sight of business since we got pro'bition in the State an' has kinder got run down. I reckon the Congress'll suit you best if you ain't against payin' a mite more, which I reckon you ain't for I see you come down in the parler car."

"And what," asked Madison, "does the Congress charge?"

"Well," said the other, "ordinary, it's a dollar a day or five dollars a week, but this bein' off season an' n.o.body there, 'twouldn't surprise me if Walt'ud kind of shade the price for you--Waalderf's three an' a half a week. Them your duds up the platform? I'll drive you over for forty cents. What was it you said your name was?"

"Forty cents is a most disinterested offer, and I accept it heartily,"

said Madison affably. "And my name's Madison--John Garfield Madison, from New York."

"Mine's Higgins," volunteered the other. "Hiram Higgins, an' I'm postmaster an' town constable of Needley. An' now, Mr. Madison, I reckon we'll just get these effects of your'n onto the wagon an' move along--folks'll be gettin' kinder rambunctious for their mail."

Hiram Higgins backed the democrat around, roped the baggage onto the tail-board, picked up the hungry-looking mail-bag from where the mail clerk had slung it from the car to the platform, threw it down in front of the dashboard, and got in after it. Madison clambered into the back seat, and they b.u.mped off along the road.

"Had a mite of snow night before last," observed Mr. Higgins, pointing it out with his whip, as he settled himself comfortably. "Kinder reckoned we'd got rid of it for good till next fall till this come along, but you can't never tell. What was it you said brought you down here, Mr. Madison?"

Madison smiled.

"Rest and quiet--complete change," he said. "Nervous breakdown, according to the doctors--that's what they always call it, you know, when they can't find any other name for it. I've been overdoing it, I suppose."

"Be that so!" returned Mr. Higgins sympathetically. "I want to know!

Well, now, that's too bad! Lookin' for quiet, be you? Well, I reckon mabbe folks don't scurry around here quite so lively as they do in some of the bigger towns like Noo York, but there's a tolerable lot goin' on most every week, church festivals, an' spellin' bees, an' such. Folks here is right hospitable, but you ain't in no way obliged to join in if you don't feel up to it. I'll explain matters to 'em, an'--" Hiram Higgins stopped, excitedly gathered reins and whip into one hand, and with the other smote his knee a resounding whack. "Well, I swan!" he exclaimed. "An' I never thought of it until this minute! I reckon you've come to just the right place, and just as soon as you get settled you go right out an' see the Patriarch--you won't need no more doctor, an'

folks up your way won't know when you go back."

"The Patriarch?" inquired Madison, with a puzzled air. "Who is he?"

"Why," said Mr. Higgins, "he's--he's the Patriarch. Been curin' us folks around here longer'n any one can remember--just does it by faith, too."

Madison shook his head slowly.