Word of the return of the murderer had run ahead, and
a crowd had gathered. Although it was past two o'clock the lights still
burned in stores and saloons, and crowds stood at every corner. With the
aid of a policeman, Ed Hall, with one eye fixed cautiously on the front
seat where Clara sat, started to lead Joe Wainsworth away. "Come on now, we
won't hurt you," he said reassuringly, and had got his man free of the car
when he broke away. Springing back into the rear seat the crazed man turned
to look at the crowd. A sob broke from his lips. For a moment he stood
trembling with fright, and then turning, he for the first time saw Hugh,
the man in whose footsteps he had once crept in the darkness in Turner's
Pike, the man who had invented the machine by which the earnings of a
lifetime had been swept away. "It wasn't me. You did it. You killed Jim
Gibson," he screamed, and springing forward sank his fingers and teeth into
Hugh's neck.
CHAPTER XXIII
One day in the month of October, four years after the time of his first
motor ride with Clara and Tom, Hugh went on a business trip to the city
of Pittsburgh. He left Bidwell in the morning and got to the steel city
at noon. At three o'clock his business was finished and he was ready to
return.
Although he had not yet realized it, Hugh's career as a successful inventor
had received a sharp check. The trick of driving directly at the point, of
becoming utterly absorbed in the thing before him, had been lost.
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