A death-like hush held the occupants of the car.

“De hangin’ bridge is sho’ gone,” repeated the panting porter, “an’ de engine, wi’ McNally in de cab’s crouchin’ on de bank, like a black cat on a well-cu’b.  De watah’s roahin’ in de deep gorge, and if she drap she gwine drag—­”

The doctor clapped his hand over the frightened darky’s mouth, and the detective butted him out to the smoking-room.

The conductor explained that the porter was crazy, and so averted a panic.

The detective came back and faced the doctor.  “Take off the irons,” said the surgeon, and the detective unlocked the handcuffs.

Now the doctor, in his suave, sympathetic way, began to question Bradish; and Bradish began to unravel the mystery, pausing now and again to rest, for the ordeal through which he had just passed had been a great mental and nervous strain.

He began by relating the Ashtabula accident that had left him wifeless and childless, and, as the story progressed, seemed to find infinite relief in relating the sad tale of his lonely life.  It was like a confession.  Moreover, he had kept the secret so long locked in his troubled breast that it was good to pour it out.

The doctor sat directly in front of the narrator, the detective beside him, while interested passengers hung over the backs of seats and blocked the narrow aisle.  Women, with faces still blanched, sat up in bed listening breathlessly to the strange story of John Bradish.

Shortly after returning to their old home, he related, he was awakened one night by the voice of his wife calling in agonized tones, “John!  John!” precisely as she had cried to him through the smoke and steam and twisted debris at Ashtabula.  He leaped from his bed, heard a mighty roar, saw a great light flash on his window, and the midnight express crashed by.

To be sure it was only a dream, he said to himself, intensified by the roar of the approaching train; and yet he could sleep no more that night.  Try as he would, he could not forget it; and soon he realized that a growing desire to travel was coming upon him.  In two or three days’ time this desire had become irresistible.  He boarded the midnight train and took a ride.  But this did not cure him.  In fact, the more he travelled the more he wanted to travel.  Soon after this he discovered that he had acquired another habit.  He wanted to stop the train.  Against these inclinations he had struggled, but to no purpose.  Once, when he felt that he must take a trip, he undressed and went to bed.  He fell asleep, and slept soundly until he heard the whistle of the midnight train.  Instantly he was out of bed, and by the time they had changed engines he was at the station ready to go.

The mania for stopping trains had been equally irresistible.  He would bite his lips, his fingers, but he would also stop the train.