Adventure waits! Hark to the silver bugle! Meet me at Tracy Banning’s on Corydon Road via Great Barrington at eight o’clock Thursday evening.X Y Z.
Adventure waits! Hark to the silver bugle! Meet me at Tracy Banning’s on Corydon Road via Great Barrington at eight o’clock Thursday evening.
X Y Z.
Farrington clung to the mantel for physical andmental support. His mind was chaos; the Stygian Pit yawned at his feet. Beyond doubt, his Arabella of the tea table had dispatched messages to all the persons on her list; and, in the Bishop’s case at least, she had given the telegram her own individual touch. No wonder they were paying no attention to him; the perspiration was trailing in visible rivulets down his mud-caked face and his appearance fully justified their suspicions.
“All my life,” the Bishop of Tuscarora was explaining good-humoredly, “I have hoped that adventure would call me some day. When I got that telegram I heard the bugles blowing and set off at once. Perhaps if I hadn’t known Senator Banning for many years, and hadn’t married him when I was a young minister, I shouldn’t have started for his house so gayly. Meeting Mrs. Banning on the train and seeing she was in great distress, I refrained from showing her my summons. How could I? But I’m in the same boat with the rest of you—I can’t for the life of me guess why I’m here.”
Farrington had been slowly backing toward a side door, with every intention of eliminating himself from the scene, when a heavy motor, which had entered the grounds with long, hideous honks, bumped into the entrance with a resounding bang, relieved by the pleasant tinkle of the smashed glass of its windshield.
Gadsby, supported by the agile Coningsby, leaped to the door; but before they could fortify it against attack it was flung open and a small, light figure landed in the middle of the room, and a young lady, a very slight, graceful young person in a modish automobile coat, stared at them a moment and then burst out laughing.
“Zaliska!” screamed Coningsby.
“Well,” she cried, “that’s what I call some entrance! Lordy! But I must be a sight!”
She calmly opened a violet leather vanity box, withdrew various trifles and made dexterous use of them, squinting at herself in a mirror the size of a silver dollar.
Farrington groaned and shuddered, but delayed his flight to watch the effect of this last arrival.
Banning turned on Coningsby and shouted:
“This is your work! You’ve brought this woman here! I hope you’re satisfied with it!”
“My work!” piped Coningsby very earnestly in his queer falsetto. “I never had a thing to do with it; but if Zaliska is good enough for you to dine with in New York it isn’t square for you to insult her here in your own house.”
“I’m not insulting her. When I dined with her it was at your invitation, you little fool!” foamed the Senator.
Zaliska danced to him on her toes, planted her tiny figure before him and folded her arms.
“Be calm, Tracy; I will protect you!” she lisped sweetly.
“Tracy! Tracy!” repeated Mrs. Banning.
Miss Collingwood laughed aloud. She and the Bishop seemed to be the only persons present who were enjoying themselves. Outside, the machine that had brought Zaliska had backed noisily off the steps and was now retreating.
“Oh, cheer up, everybody!” said Zaliska, helping herself to a chair. “My machine’s gone back to town; but I only brought a suitcase, so I can’t stay forever.By the way, you might bring it in, Harold,” she remarked to Coningsby with a yawn.
Mrs. Banning alone seemed willing to cope with her.
“If you are as French as you look, mademoiselle, I suppose——”
“French, ha! Not to say aha! I sound like a toothpaste all right, but I was born in good old Urbana, Ohio. Your face registers sorrow and distress, madam. Kindly smile, if you please!”
“No impertinence, young woman! It may interest you to know that the courts haven’t yet freed me of the ties that bind me to Tracy Banning, and until I get my decree he is still my husband. If that has entered into your frivolous head kindly tell me who invited you to this house.”
The girl pouted, opened her vanity box, and slowly drew out a crumpled bit of yellow paper, which she extended toward her inquisitor with the tips of her fingers.
“This message,” Mrs. Banning announced, “was sent from Berkville Tuesday night.” And then her face paled. “Incredible!” she breathed heavily.
Gadsby caught the telegram as it fluttered from her hand.
“Read it!” commanded Miss Collingwood.
“Mademoiselle Helene Zaliska,New Rochelle, N. Y.Everything arranged. Meet me at Senator Banning’s country home, Corydon, Massachusetts, Thursday evening at eight.Alembert Giddings,Bishop of Tuscarora.”
“Mademoiselle Helene Zaliska,New Rochelle, N. Y.
Everything arranged. Meet me at Senator Banning’s country home, Corydon, Massachusetts, Thursday evening at eight.
Alembert Giddings,Bishop of Tuscarora.”
The Bishop snatched the telegram from Gadsbyand verified the detective’s reading with unfeigned astonishment. The reading of this message evoked another outburst of merriment from Miss Collingwood.
“Zaliska,” fluted young Coningsby, “how dare you!”
“Oh, I never take a dare,” said Zaliska. “I guessed it was one of your jokes; and I always thought it would be real sporty to be married by a bishop.”
“Yes,” said Miss Collingwood frigidly, “I suppose you’ve tried everything else!”
The Bishop met Mrs. Banning’s demand that he explain himself with all the gravity his good-natured countenance could assume.
“It’s too deep for me. I give it up!” he said. He crossed to Zaliska and took her hand.
“My dear young woman, I apologize as sincerely as though I were the guilty man. I never heard of you before in my life; and I wasn’t anywhere near Berkville day before yesterday. The receipt of my own telegram in New Hampshire at approximately the same hour proves that irrefutably.”
“Oh, that’ll be all right, Bishop,” said Zaliska. “I’m just as pleased as though you really sent it.”
Miss Collingwood had lighted her pipe—a performance that drew from Zaliska an astonished:
“Well, did you ever! Gwendolin, what have we here?”
“What I’d like to know,” cried Mrs. Banning, yielding suddenly to tears, “is what you’ve done with Arabella!”
The mention of Arabella precipitated a wild fusillade of questions and replies. She had been kidnapped, Mrs. Banning charged in tragic tones, and Tracy Banning should be brought to book for it.
“You knew the courts would give her to me and it was you who lured her away and hid her. This contemptible little Coningsby was your ideal of a husband for Arabella, to further your own schemes with his father. I knew it all the time! And you planned to meet him here, with this creature, in your own house! And he’s admitted that you’ve been dining with her. It’s too much! It’s more than I should be asked to suffer, after all—after all—I’ve—borne!”
“Look here, Mrs. Lady; creature is a name I won’t stand for!” flamed Zaliska.
“If you’ll all stop making a rotten fuss——” wheezed Coningsby.
“If we can all be reasonable beings for a few minutes——” began the Bishop.
Before they could finish their sentences Gadsby leaped to the doorway, through which Farrington was stealthily creeping, and dragged him back.
“It seems to me,” said the detective, depositing Farrington, cowed and frightened, in the center of the group, which closed tightly about him, “that it’s about time this bird was giving an account of himself. Everybody in the room was called here by a fake telegram, and I’m positive this is the scoundrel who sent ’em.”
“He undoubtedly enticed us here for the purpose of robbery,” said Senator Banning; “and the sooner we land him in jail the better.”
“If you’ll let me explain——” began Farrington, whose bedraggled appearance was little calculated to inspire confidence.
“We’ve already had too many explanations!” declared Mrs. Banning. “In all my visits to jails andpenitentiaries I’ve rarely seen a man with a worse face than the prisoner’s. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if he turned out to be a murderer.”
“Rubbish!” sniffed Miss Collingwood. “He looks like somebody’s chauffeur who’s been joy-rolling in the mud.”
The truth would never be believed. Farrington resolved to lie boldly.
“I was on my way to Lenox and missed the road. I entered these grounds merely to make inquiries and get some gasoline. This man you call Gadsby assaulted me and dragged me in here; and, as I have nothing to do with any of you or your troubles, I protest against being detained longer.”
Gadsby’s derisive laugh expressed the general incredulity.
“You didn’t say anything to me about gasoline! You were prowling round the house, and when I nabbed you you tried to bolt. I guess we’ll just hold on to you until we find out who sent all those fake telegrams.”
“We’ll hold on to him until we find out who’s kidnapped Arabella!” declared Mrs. Banning.
“That’s a happy suggestion, Fanny,” affirmed the Senator, for the first time relaxing his severity toward his wife.
“What’s this outlaw’s name?” demanded Miss Collingwood in lugubrious tones.
Clever criminals never disclosed their identity. Farrington had no intention of telling his name. He glowered at them as he involuntarily lifted his hand to his mud-spattered face. Senator Banning jumped back, stepping heavily on Coningsby’s feet. Coningsby’s howl of pain caused Zaliska to laugh with delight.
“If you hold me here you’ll pay dearly for it,” said Farrington fiercely.
“Dear, dear; the little boy’s going to cry!” mocked the dancer. “I think he’d be nice if he had his face washed. By-the-way, who’s giving this party anyhow? I’m perfectly famished and just a little teeny-teeny bite of food would go far toward saving your little Zaliska’s life.”
“That’s another queer thing about all this!” exclaimed the Senator. “Some one has opened up the house and stocked it with provisions. The caretaker got a telegram purporting to be from me telling him I’d be down with a house party. However, the servants are not here. The scoundrel who arranged all this overlooked that.”
This for some occult reason drew attention back to Farrington, and Gadsby shook him severely, presumably in the hope of jarring loose some information. Farrington resented being shaken. He stood glumly watching them and awaiting his fate.
“It looks as though you’d all have to spend the night here,” remarked the Senator. “There are no trains out of Corydon until ten o’clock tomorrow. By morning we ought to be able to fix the responsibility for this dastardly outrage. In the meantime this criminal shall be locked up!”
“Shudders, and clank, clank, as the prisoner goes to his doom,” mocked Zaliska.
“The sooner he’s out of my sight the better,” Mrs. Banning agreed heartily. “If he’s hidden my poor dear Arabella away somewhere he’ll pay the severest penalty of the law for it. I warn him of that.”
“In some states they hang kidnappers,” Miss Collingwoodrecalled, as though the thought of hanging gave her pleasure.
“We’ll put the prisoner in one of the servants’ rooms on the third floor,” said the Senator; “and in the morning we’ll drive him to Pittsfield and turn him over to the authorities. Bring him along, Gadsby.”
Gadsby dragged Farrington upstairs and to the back of the house, with rather more force than was necessary. Banning led the way, bearing a poker he had snatched up from the fireplace. Pushing him roughly into the butler’s room, Gadsby told Farrington to hold up his hands.
“We’ll just have a look at your pockets, young man. No foolishness now!”
This was the last straw. Farrington fought. For the first time in his life he struck a fellow man, and enjoyed the sensation. He was angry, and the instant Gadsby thrust a hand into his coat pocket he landed on the detective’s nose with all the power he could put into the blow.
Banning dropped the poker and ran out, slamming the door after him. Two more sharp punches in the detective’s face caused him to jump for a corner and draw his gun. As he swung round, Farrington grabbed the poker and dealt the officer’s wrist a sharp thwack that knocked the pistol to the floor with a bang. In a second the gun was in Farrington’s hand and he backed to the door and jerked it open.
“Come in here, Senator!” he said as Banning’s white face appeared. “Don’t yell or attempt to make a row. I want you to put the key of that door on the inside. If you don’t I’m going to shoot your friend here. I don’t know who or what he is, but if you don’t obey orders I’m going to kill him. And if you’renot pretty lively with that key I’m going to shoot you too. Shooting is one of the best things I do—careful there, Mr. Gadsby! If you try to rush me you’re a dead man!”
To demonstrate his prowess he played on both of them with the automatic. Gadsby stood blinking, apparently uncertain what to do. The key in Banning’s hand beat a lively rat-tat in the lock as the frightened statesman shifted it to the inside. Farrington was enjoying himself; it was a sweeter pleasure than he had ever before tasted to find that he could point pistols and intimidate senators and detectives.
“That will do; thanks! Now Mr. Gadsby, or whatever your name is, I must trouble you to remove yourself. In other words, get out of here—quick! There’s a bed in this room and I’m going to make myself comfortable until morning. If you or any of you make any effort to annoy me during the night I’ll shoot you, without the slightest compunction. And when you go downstairs you may save your faces by telling your friends that you’ve locked me up and searched me, and given me the third degree—and anything you please; but don’t you dare come back! Just a moment more, please! You’d better give yourself first aid for nosebleed before you go down, Mr. Gadsby; but not here. The sight of blood is displeasing to me. That is all now. Good night, gentlemen!”
He turned the key, heard them conferring in low tones for a few minutes, and then they retreated down the hall. Zaliska had begun to thump the piano. Her voice rose stridently to the popular air: Any Time’s A Good Time When Hearts are Light and Merry.
Farrington sat on the bed and consoled himself with a cigarette. As a fiction writer he had given muchstudy to human motives; but just why the delectable Arabella had mixed him up in this fashion with the company below was beyond him. Perversity was all he could see in it. He recalled now that she herself had chosen all the names for her list, with the exception of Banning and Gadsby; and, now that he thought of it, she had more or less directly suggested them.
To be sure he had suggested the Senator; but only in a whimsical spirit, as he might have named any other person whose name was familiar in contemporaneous history. Arabella had accepted it, he remembered, with alacrity. He had read in the newspapers about the Bannings’ marital difficulties, and he recalled that Coningsby, a millionaire in one of the Western mining states, had been implicated with Banning in a big irrigation scandal.
It was no wonder that Mrs. Banning had been outraged by her husband’s efforts to marry Arabella to the wheezing son of the magnate. In adding to the dramatis personæ Zaliska, whose name had glittered on Broadway in the biggest sign that thoroughfare had ever seen, Arabella had contributed another element to the situation which caused Farrington to grin broadly.
He looked at his watch. It was only nine-thirty, though it seemed that eternity had rolled by since his first encounter with Gadsby. He had taken a pistol away from a detective of reputation and pointed it at a United States Senator; and he was no longer the Farrington of yesterday, but a very different being, willing that literature should go hang so long as he followed this life of jaunty adventure.
After a brief rest he opened the door cautiously, crept down the back stairs to the second floor, and, venturing as close to the main stairway as he dared, heard livelytalk in the hall below. Gadsby, it seemed, was for leaving the house to bring help and the proposal was not meeting with favor.
“I refuse to be left here without police protection,” Mrs. Banning was saying with determination. “We may all be murdered by that ruffian.”
“He’s undoubtedly a dangerous crook,” said the officer; “but he’s safe for the night. And in the morning we will take him to jail and find means of identifying him.”
“Then for the love of Mike,” chirruped Zaliska from the piano, “let’s have something to eat!”
Farrington chuckled. Gadsby and Banning had not told the truth about their efforts to lock him up. They were both cowards, he reflected; and they had no immediate intention, at least, of returning to molest him. In a room where Banning’s suitcase was spread open he acquired an electric lamp, which he thrust into his pocket. Sounds of merry activity from the kitchen indicated that Zaliska had begun her raid on the jam pots, assisted evidently by all the company.
One thought was uppermost in his mind—he must leave the house as quickly as possible and begin the search for Arabella. He wanted to look into her eyes again; he wanted to hear her laughter as he told of the result of her plotting. There was more to the plan she had outlined at the tea house than had appeared, and he meant to fathom the mystery; but he wanted to see her for her own sake. His pulses tingled as he thought of her—the incomparable girl with the golden-brown eyes and the heart of laughter!
He cautiously raised a window in one of the sleeping rooms and began flashing his lamp to determine his position. He was at the rear of the house and the rainpurred softly on the flat roof of a one-story extension of the kitchen, fifteen feet below. The sooner he risked breaking his neck and began the pursuit of Arabella the better; so he threw out his rubber coat and let himself out on the sill.
He dropped and gained the roof in safety. Below, on one side, were the lights of the dining room, and through the open windows he saw his late companions gathered about the table. The popping of a cork evoked cheers, which he attributed to Zaliska and Coningsby. He noted the Bishop and Miss Collingwood in earnest conversation at one end of the room, and caught a glimpse of Banning staggering in from the pantry bearing a stack of plates, while his wife distributed napkins. They were rallying nobly to the demands upon their unwilling hospitality.
He crawled to the farther side of the roof, swung over and let go, and the moment he touched the earth was off with all speed for the road. It was good to be free again, and he ran as he had not run since his school-days, stumbling and falling over unseen obstacles in his haste. In a sunken garden he tumbled over a stone bench with a force that knocked the wind out of him; but he rubbed his bruised legs and resumed his flight.
Suddenly he heard some one running over the gravel path that paralleled the driveway. He stopped to listen, caught the glimmer of a light—the merest faint spark, as of some one flashing an electric lamp—and then heard sounds of rapid retreat toward the road.
Resolving to learn which member of the party was leaving, he changed his course and, by keeping the lights of the house at his back, quickly gained the stone fence at the roadside.
When he had climbed halfway over he heard some one stirring outside the wall between him and the gate; then a motor started with a whir and an electric headlight was flashed on blindingly. As the machine pushed its way through the tangle of wet weeds into the open road he clambered over, snapped his lamp at the driver, and cried out in astonishment as the light struck Arabella full in the face.
She ducked her head quickly, swung her car into the middle of the road, and stopped.
“Who is that?” she demanded sharply.
“Wait just a minute! I want to speak to you; I have ten thousand things to say to you!” he shouted above the steady vibrations of the racing motor.
She leaned out, flashed her lamp on him, and laughed tauntingly. She was buttoned up tightly in a leather coat, but wore no hat; and her hair had tumbled loose and hung wet about her face. Her eyes danced with merriment.
“Oh, it’s too soon!” she said, putting up her hand to shield her eyes from his lamp. “Not a word to say tonight; but tomorrow—at four o’clock—we shall meet and talk it over. You have done beautifully—superbly!” she continued. “I was looking through the window when they dragged you off upstairs. And I heard every word everybody said! Isn’t it perfectly glorious?—particularly Zaliska! What an awful mistake it would have been if we’d left her out! Back, sir! I’m on my way!”
Before he could speak, her car shot forward. He ran to his machine and flung himself into it; but Arabella was driving like a king’s messenger. Her car, a low-hung gray roadster, moved with incredible speed. The rear light rose until it became a dim redstar on the crest of a steep hill, and a second later it blinked him good-by as it dipped down on the farther side.
He gained the hilltop and let the machine run its maddest. When he reached the bottom he was sure he was gaining on the flying car, but suddenly the guiding light vanished. He checked his speed to study the trail more carefully, found that he had lost it, turned back to a crossroad where Arabella had plunged more deeply into the hills, and was off again.
The road was a strange one and hideously soggy. The tail light of Arabella’s car brightened and faded with the varying fortunes of the two machines; but he made no appreciable gain. She was leading him into an utterly strange neighborhood, and after half a dozen turns he was lost.
Then his car landed suddenly on a sound piece of road and he stepped on the accelerator. The rain had ceased and patches of stars began to blink through the broken clouds, but as his hopes rose the light he was following disappeared; and a moment later he was clamping on the brakes.
The road had landed him at the edge of a watery waste, a fact of which he became aware only after he had tumbled out of his machine and walked off a dock. Some one yelled to him from a house at the water’s edge and threatened to shoot if he didn’t make himself scarce. And it was not Arabella’s voice!
He slipped and fell on the wet planks, and his incidental remarks pertaining to this catastrophe were translated into a hostile declaration by the owner of the voice. A gun went off with a roar and Farrington sprinted for his machine.
“If you’ve finished your target practice,” he calledfrom the car with an effort at irony, “maybe you’ll tell what this place is!”
The reply staggered him:
“This pond’s on Mr. Banning’s place. It’s private grounds and ye can’t get through here. What ye doin’ down here anyhow?”
Farrington knew what he was doing. He was looking for Arabella, who had apparently vanished into thin air; but the tone of the man did not encourage confidences. He was defeated and chagrined, to say nothing of being chilled to the bone.
“You orto turned off a mile back there; this is a private road,” the man volunteered grudgingly, “and the gate ain’t going to be opened no more tonight.”
Farrington got his machine round with difficulty and started slowly back. His reflections were not pleasant ones. Arabella had been having sport with him. She had led him in a semicircle to a remote corner of her father’s estate, merely, it seemed, that he might walk into a pond or be shot by the guardian of the marine front of the property.
He had not thought Arabella capable of such malevolence; it was not like the brown-eyed girl who had fed him tea and sandwiches two days before to lure him into such a trap. In his bewildered and depressed state of mind he again doubted Arabella.
He reached home at one o’clock and took counsel of his pipe until three, brooding over his adventure.
Hope returned with the morning. In the bright sunlight he was ashamed of himself for doubting Arabella; and yet he groped in the dark for an explanation of her conduct. His reasoning powers failed to find an explanation of that last trick of hers in leading him over the worst roads in Christendom, merely to drop himinto a lake in her father’s back yard. She might have got rid of him easier than that!
The day’s events began early. As he stood in the doorway of his garage, waiting for the chauffeur to extract his runabout from its shell of mud, he saw Gadsby and two strange men flit by in a big limousine. As soon as his car was ready he jumped in and set off, with no purpose but to keep in motion. He, the Farrington of cloistral habits, had tasted adventure; and it was possible that by ranging the county he might catch a glimpse of the bewildering Arabella, who had so disturbed the even order of his life.
He drove to Corydon, glanced into all the shops, and stopped at the post office on an imaginary errand. He bought a book of stamps and as he turned away from the window ran into the nautical Miss Collingwood.
“Beg pardon!” he mumbled, and was hurrying on when she took a step toward him.
“You needn’t lie to me, young man; you were in that row at Banning’s last night, and I want to know what you know about Arabella!”
This lady, who sailed a schooner for recreation, was less formidable by daylight. It occurred to him that she might impart information if handled cautiously. They had the office to themselves and she drew him into a corner of the room and assumed an air of mystery.
“That fool detective is at the telegraph office wiring all the police in creation to look out for Arabella. You’d better not let him see you. Gadsby is a brave man by daylight!”
“If Arabella didn’t spend last night at her father’s house I know nothing about her,” said Farrington eagerly. “I have reason to assume that she did.”
She eyed him with frank distrust.
“Don’t try to bluff me! You’re mixed up in this row some way; and if you’re not careful you’ll spend the rest of your life in a large, uncomfortable penitentiary. If that man at the telegraph office wasn’t such a fool——”
“You’re not in earnest when you say Miss Banning wasn’t at home last night!” he exclaimed.
“Decidedly I am! Do you suppose we’d all be chasing over the country this morning looking for my niece and offering rewards if we knew where she is? I live on a schooner to keep away from trouble, and this is what that girl has got me into! What’s your name anyhow?”
He quickly decided against telling his name. At that moment Gadsby’s burly frame became visible across Main Street, and Farrington shot out a side door and sprinted up an alley at his best speed. He struck the railroad track at a point beyond the station where it curved through the hills, and followed it for a mile before stopping to breathe.
As he approached a highway he heard a motor and flung himself down in the grass at the side of the track. The driver of the car checked its speed and one of his companions stood up and surveyed the long stretch of track. The blue glint of gun barrels caught Farrington’s eye.
There were three men in the machine and he guiltily surmised that they were deputy sheriffs or constables looking for him. He stuck his nose into the ground and did not lift his head again until the sounds of the motor faded away in the distance. Probably no roads were safe, and even in following the railroad he might walk into an ambush.
He abandoned the ties for flight over a wooded hill.It was hard going and the underbrush slapped him savagely in the face. A higher hill tempted him and a still higher one, and he came presently to the top of a young mountain. He sat for a time on a fallen tree and considered matters. In his perturbed state of mind it seemed to him that the faint clouds of dust he saw rising in the roads below were all evidences of pursuit. He picked out familiar landmarks and judged that his flight over the hills had brought him within four miles of his home.
Thoughts of home, and a tub, and clean clothes, pleased him, and he resolutely began the descent. The only way he could free himself from suspicion was by finding Arabella. And how could he find Arabella when he was likely at any moment to be run down by a country constable with a shotgun? And as for meeting Arabella at four o’clock, he realized now that he had stupidly allowed the girl to slip away from him without designating a meeting place.
So far as he knew, he was the only person who had seen Arabella since her escape from Miss Collingwood’s schooner. It might be well for him to volunteer to the Bannings such information as he had; but the more he thought of this the less it appealed to him. It would be difficult to give a plausible account of his meeting with Arabella at the tea house; and, moreover, he shrank from a betrayal of the light-hearted follower of the silver trumpet. As a gentleman he could give no version of the affair that would not place all the blame on himself; and this involved serious risks.
He approached his house from the rear, keeping as far as possible from the road, lingered at the barn, dodged from it to the garage, and crept furtively into his study by a side door as the clock struck two.
He had seen none of his employees on the farm and the house was ominously still. He rang the bell and in a moment the scared face of Beeching was thrust in.
“Beg pardon; are you home, sir?” asked the servant with a frightened gulp.
“Of course I’m home!” said Farrington with all the dignity his scratched face and torn clothes would permit.
“I missed you, sir,” said the man gravely. “I thought maybe you was off looking for Arabella.”
The book Farrington had been nervously fingering fell with a bang.
“What—what the devil do you know about Arabella?”
“She’s lost, sir. The kennel master and the chauffeur is off looking for her. It’s a most singular case.”
“Yes,” Farrington assented; “most remarkable. Have there been any—er—have any people been looking here for—for her?”
“Well, sir, the sheriff stopped a while ago to ask whether we’d seen such a girl; and there was a constable on horseback, and citizens in machines. Her father has offered a reward of ten thousand dollars. And there’s a man missing, they say, sir, a dangerous character they caught on the Banning place last night. There’s a thousand on him; it’s a kidnapping matter, sir.”
Farrington’s throat troubled him and he swallowed hard.
“It’s a shameful case,” he remarked weakly. “I hope they’ll kill the rascal when they catch him.”
“I hope so, sir,” said Beeching. “You seem quite worn out, sir. Shall I serve something?”
“You may bring the Scotch—quick—and don’tbother about the water. And, Beeching, if anyone calls I’m out!”
By the time he had changed his clothes and eaten a belated luncheon it was three o’clock. From time to time mad honking on the highway announced the continuance of the search for Arabella. He had screwed his courage to the point of telephoning Senator Banning that Arabella had been seen near her father’s place on the previous night. His spirits sank when the Corydon exchange announced that the Banning phone was out of order. The chauffeur, seeing Farrington’s roadster on Main Street, telephoned from Corydon to know what disposition should be made of it, and Farrington ordered him to bring it home.
He regained his self-respect as he smoked a cigar. He had met the issues of the night and day bravely; and if further adventures lay before him he felt confident that he would acquit himself well. And, in spite of the tricks she had played on him, Arabella danced brightly in his thoughts. He must find Arabella!
He thrust the revolver he had captured from Gadsby into his pocket and drove resolutely toward the Bannings’.
A dozen machines blocked the entrance, indicating a considerable gathering, and he steeled himself for an interview that could hardly fail to prove a stormy one. The door stood open and a company of twenty people were crowded about a table. So great was their absorption that Farrington joined the outer circle without attracting attention.
“Mister Sheriff,” Senator Banning was saying, “we shall make no progress in this affair until the man who escaped from custody here last night has been apprehended.You must impress a hundred—a thousand deputies into service if necessary, and begin a systematic search of every house, every hillside in Western Massachusetts. I suggest that you throw a line from here——”
They were craning their necks to follow his finger across the map spread out on the table, when Miss Collingwood’s voice was heard:
“I tell you again I saw that man in the post office this morning, and the clerk told me he is Laurance Farrington, the fool who writes such preposterous novels.”
“Madam,” said the sheriff irritably, “you’ve said that before; but it’s impossible! I know Mr. Farrington and he wouldn’t harm a flea. And the folks at his house told me an hour ago that he was away looking for the lost girl.”
“Only a bluff!” squeaked Coningsby. “He looked to me like a bad man.”
“Oh, I didn’t think he looked so rotten,” said Zaliska; “but if he’s Farrington I must say his books bore me to death!”
“Please remember this isn’t a literary club!” shouted Senator Banning. “What do we care about his books if he’s a kidnapper! What we’re trying to do is to plan a thorough search of Berkshire County—of the whole United States, if necessary.”
“So far as I’m concerned——” began Farrington in a loud voice; but as twenty other voices were raised at the same moment no one paid the slightest attention to him. Their indifference enraged him and he pushed his way roughly to the table and confronted Banning. “While you’ve wasted your time looking for me I’vebeen—— Stand back! Don’t come a step nearer until I’ve finished or I’ll kill you!”
It was Gadsby who had caused the interruption, but the whole room was now in an uproar. With every one talking at once Coningsby’s high voice alone rose above the tempest. He wished he was armed; he would do terrible things!
“Let the man tell his story,” pleaded Mrs. Banning between sobs.
“I’ve spent the night and day looking for Arabella!” Farrington cried. “I have no other interest—no other aim in life but to find Arabella. All I can tell you is that I saw her at the Sorona Tea House Tuesday afternoon, and that last night she was on these grounds; in fact, she saw you all gathered here and heard everything that was said in this room.”
“Young man, you know too little or too much,” said Banning. “Gadsby, do your duty!”
The detective took a step forward, looked into the barrel of his own automatic, and paused, waving his hand to the sheriff and his deputies to guard the doors and windows.
“How do you know she was at the tea house?” asked Mrs. Banning. “It seems to me that’s the first question.”
“I met her there,” Farrington blurted. “I met her there by appointment!”
“Then you admit, you villain,” began Banning, choking with rage, “that you lured my daughter, an innocent child, to a lonely tea house; that you saw her last night; and that now—now!—you know nothing of her whereabouts! This, sir, is——”
“Oh, it’s really not so bad!” came in cheery tones from above. “It was I who lured Mr. Farrington to thetea house, and I did it because I knew he was a gentleman.”
Farrington had seen her first—the much-sought Arabella—stealing down the stairway to the landing, where she paused and leaned over the railing, much at ease, to look at them.
Her name was spoken in gasps, in whispers, and was thundered aloud only by Miss Collingwood.
“This was my idea,” said Arabella quietly as they all turned toward her. “I’ve been hiding in the old cottage by the pond, right here on father’s place—with John and Mary, who’ve known me since I was a baby. This is my house party—a scheme to get you all together. I thought that maybe, if papa and mama really thought I was lost, and if papa and Mr. Coningsby and Mademoiselle Zaliska all met under the same roof, they might understand one another better—and me.
“I telegraphed for Mr. Gadsby,” she laughed, “just to be sure the rest of you were kept in order! And I sent for Bishop Giddings because he’s an old friend, and I thought he might help to straighten things out.”
She choked and the tears brightened her eyes as she stood gazing down at them.
“You needn’t worry about me, Arabella,” said Coningsby; “for Zaliska and I were married by the Bishop at Corydon this morning.”
This seemed to interest no one in particular, though Miss Collingwood sniffed contemptuously.
Mrs. Banning had started toward Arabella, and at the same moment Senator Banning reached the stairway. Arabella tripped down three steps, then paused on tip-toe, with her hands outstretched, half-inviting, half-repelling them. She was dressed as at the tea house, but her youthfulness was lost for the momentin a grave wistfulness that touched Farrington deeply.
“You can’t have me,” she cried to her father and mother, “unless we’re all going to be happy together again!”
Half an hour later Senator Banning and his wife, and Arabella, wreathed in smiles, emerged from the library and found the sheriff and his deputies gone; but the members of the original house party still lingered.
“Before I leave,” said Gadsby, “I’d like to know just how Mr. Farrington got into the game. He refuses to tell how he came to see you at the tea house. I think we ought to know that.”
“Oh,” said Arabella, clapping her hands, “that’s another part of the story. If Mr. Farrington doesn’t mind——”
“Now that you’re found I don’t care what you tell,” Farrington declared.
“You may regret that,” said Arabella, coloring deeply. “I sat by Mr. Baker, ofThe Quill, at a dinner a little while ago, and we were talking about your books. And he said—he said your greatest weakness as a novelist was due to your never having—well”—she paused and drew closer under the protecting arm of her father—“you had never yourself been, as the saying is—in love—and he thought—— Well, this is shameful—but he and I—just as a joke—thought we d try to attract your attention by printing that plot advertisement. He said you were working too hard and seemed worried, and might bite; and then I thought it would be good fun to throw you into the lion’s den here to stir things up, as you did. And I had my car on the road last night ready to skip if things got too warm. Of course I couldn’t let you catch me; it would havespoiled all the fun! And it was I who shot off that gun last night to scare you—when old John was scolding you away from the place. But it was nasty of me, and not fair; and now, when everything else is all fixed and I’m so happy, I’m ashamed to look you in the face, knowing what a lot of trouble I’ve given you. And you’ll always hate me——”
“I shall always love you,” said Farrington, stepping forward boldly and taking her hands. “You’ve made me live for once in my life—you’ve made me almost human,” he laughed. “And you’ve made me a braver man than I know how to be! You pulled down the silver trumpet out of heaven and gave it to me, and made me rich beyond words; and without you I should be sure to lose it again!”