He did not move
continuously from place to place, even at his amazing speed, but
seemed to appear only for a moment and then to vanish into thin air.
True, he had at length remained visible along the entire route from
Prairie-du-Chien to Milwaukee, and he had covered in less than an
hour and a half this track of two hundred miles.
But since then, there had been no news whatever of the machine.
Arrived at the end of the route, driven onward by its own impetus,
unable to stop, had it indeed been engulfed within the waters of Lake
Michigan? Must we conclude that the machine and its driver had both
perished, that there was no longer any danger to be feared from
either? The great majority of the public refused to accept this
conclusion. They fully expected the machine to reappear.
Mr. Ward frankly admitted that the whole matter seemed to him most
extraordinary; and I shared his view. Assuredly if this infernal
chauffeur did not return, his apparition would have to be placed
among those superhuman mysteries which it is not given to man to
understand.
We had fully discussed this affair, the chief and I; and I thought
that our interview was at an end, when, after pacing the room for a
few moments, he said abruptly, "Yes, what happened there at Milwaukee
was very strange. But here is something no less so!"
With this he handed me a report which he had received from Boston, on
a subject of which the evening papers had just begun to apprise their
readers.
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