CHAPTER XXIIITHE ABDUCTION OF INZA.
As if it were an echo of that whistle, a scream came from the lips of Inza Burrage. Having grown tired, she had seated herself in the sleigh which had brought out Danny and Bink.
Merriwell turned and beheld an astounding sight. A man he believed to be Amos Belton, the junior whom rumor said had fallen wildly in love with Inza, was driving rapidly down the road in the sleigh, holding Inza to his side in a clutch she could not cast off. He had thrown something over her head, and this smothered her further screams, and also rendered her helpless in his hands.
The spectators, who but a moment before had been wildly cheering the playing of the hockey-teams, stood as if frozen with astonishment. While they hesitated, out of their midst leaped Merriwell, running on his skates.
For the first time he observed the extreme lateness of the hour. The delays caused by falls and the protest of Silver’s play had wonderfully lengthened out the playing time. The sun had set and night was fast coming on.
Bink and Danny were aghast.
“Our team!” Danny squalled. “Did you ever?”
As they were not aware of Belton’s infatuation for Inza, they had nothing on which to build a theory.
Merriwell’s leap for the nearest vehicle set the whole crowd in motion. Starbright and Dashleigh sprang toward a horse. Dashleigh’s mind was in a whirl, as it went back to what he had seen in that house on Whitney Avenue while he was searching for the “party” given by Mrs. Whitlock. He could not help feeling that what he had beheld there was in some way connected with what was now happening. Yet he could not see the connection. The girl seen in that house was not Inza Burrage. He knew that, though she had looked so much like her.
“I don’t know what to think!” he stammered to Starbright.
“You can see what Belton is doing!”
“Yes, but——”
“Hello!” cried Starbright in dismay. “The harness is cut!”
Merriwell made the same discovery concerning the horse to which he had run. The harness had been slashed with a sharp knife, which had cut through the leather in several places, rendering it useless.
Merriwell darted to the next horse. The harness of that horse was also severed. He saw beyond this horse a sleigh which had recently been driven up, as was evidenced by the fact that the horse seemed blown. This animal was unblanketed, and all those brought to the lake earlier in the afternoon had been heavily blanketed to protect them from the wind and cold.
“The fellow came out in that sleigh!” he thought.
Seeing that the harness was intact, he sprang toward the vehicle, at the same time glancing down the road where the sleigh holding Inza and her abductor was vanishing.
Hodge and Browning had jumped toward carriages with the intention of taking the first they came to and joining in the chase, but the harnesses were so cut and slashed that they could not be used.
Merriwell leaped into the sleigh and turned the horse toward the road. Then he reached over, took the whip, and gave the animal a cut. It started down the road at a speedy gait.
Frank’s mind was in as much of a whirl as Dashleigh’s. He did not know what Dashleigh had seen on Whitney Avenue, but he had heard of the infatuation of Amos Belton for Inza. He had learned, too, that Belton had dropped behind in his studies and was likely to be forced out of Yale on that account. The report which had reached him accounted for Belton’s low grade on the theory that the junior’s mind was so taken up by thoughts of Inza that he could not study.
But Merriwell had never dreamed that Belton would do what he now seemed to be doing, and the only theory on which he could build for a possible solution was that the junior had suddenly become insane.
Filled by this fear, Merriwell gave the horse another cut, and sent it down the road at a racing gallop.
With the horse going at top speed, Merriwell gave a moment to the removal of his skates; then again took up the whip.
Back by the lake students were engaged in frantic efforts to tie and splice the cut harnesses, while most of the great crowd was streaming on foot down the road. In the midst of these ran Danny and Bink, whose shrill voices Merriwell could hear amid the din.
Then Starbright loomed out of the crowd, mounted bareback on a horse which he had cut loose from a buggy. But he was far in the rear of Frank, and his chances of aiding Inza seemed poor indeed.
The sleigh containing Inza and the miscreant who had seized her was flying along straight for New Haven, a good distance in advance of Merriwell.
Suddenly Frank noticed that his horse was losing speed and beginning to limp. He applied the whip, rendered heartless in his treatment of the animal by the fear that possessed him.
But the limping increased and the speed became slower. A half-dozen times the horse stumbled and almost fell. Then it stopped, doggedly refusing to make another effort. It was dead lame.
Frank realized now why this horse had been left and the other taken. Probably Inza’s abductor had not meant to take the other horse as he drove out, but his own horse falling lame, he had seized the one driven by Bink and Danny. Fortunately for his plans, Inza was seated in that sleigh, making the work easier for him.
Seeing that it was useless to depend further on this animal, Frank sprang out of the sleigh.
He would have continued the chase on foot, but glancing back, he saw Starbright coming on the horse cut loose from the buggy. Behind Starbright, at varying distances, streamed the students and the spectators.
“Let me have your horse!” Merriwell commanded, as Starbright came up, for Dick seemed about to ride by.
Starbright reined in with a jerk and slipped to the ground.
“You’re lighter than I am,” he said, “and can get more speed out of the beast. Take him and welcome. You must get Inza out of the clutches of that rascal. He must be crazy!”
Frank vaulted to the back of the big black and was away. The horse was fleeter than the other at his best, and Frank’s hopes began to rise. Yet so much time had been already lost that it began to look impossible for him to overtake the sleigh before it reached the tangle of city streets, if it could be done at all.
“Crazy as a loon!” was Frank’s thought as he tore along, a terrible dread at his heart. “It’s singular that he drives straight toward the city!”
The lights were beginning to glow in the streets when Frank, still a considerable distance behind, saw the sleigh turn down a side avenue and disappear behind some buildings.
He had ridden his horse at such high speed that he had greatly decreased the distance separating him from the sleigh. Riding hard for the avenue down which the sleigh and its occupant had vanished, Frank saw them again at the crossing of another street.
Then the houses shut them from sight, and when he again beheld the sleigh it was returning to the principal street. When he reached that street, however, it had again vanished.
“It is singular that Inza doesn’t cry out and attract attention.”
His heart was chilled by the answering thought:
“No doubt she is unconscious. The villain has choked or smothered her. She is not a girl to faint easily otherwise. He must be crazy. This zigzagging back and forth shows it.”
Frank seemed to be chasing a will-o’-the-wisp. At one moment he would see the sleigh, then the driver would send it down some side street, after which it would appear again, to repeat this maneuver.
Observing a policeman at a corner, Frank leaped from his horse, called the bluecoat’s attention to the sleigh; then, leaving the horse to be cared for by other hands, he dived into the nearest cab and instructed the driver to follow the sleigh, and on no account to let it get away from him.
“He’ll be a good one if he slips me!” was the driver’s assertion, which he began to make good by sending the cab forward at a swinging pace.
Frank, looking from the cab door, beheld the sleigh again. It had reentered a street running parallel with Chapel and was flying on.
“I never saw anything quite so queer,” was Frank’s conclusion. “If the man isn’t crazy, it looks as if he wants me to follow him.”
“There it goes!” called cabby. “Shall I just follow it, or try to catch it?”
“Try to catch it!”
“Ga-ed up!”
The whip cracked, and the hackney stretched out at a gallop.
It was a strange chase through the New Haven streets—a chase that began to draw attention. The sleigh was keeping to the less-frequented thorough-fares, apparently for the double reason of attracting less notice and of getting better, and therefore faster, sleighing. On Chapel Street the wear of travel and traffic had well-nigh dissipated the snow.
The darkness of fast-gathering night had deepened, but the streets were fairly well lighted, and the cabman found no great difficulty in keeping the sleigh in view, though he could not overtake it.
Frank’s alarm increased. There were no indications that Inza was calling to any one for help, and this strange silence could mean nothing to him but that she was unconscious and unable to call.
More and more he was convinced that Amos Belton had suddenly become a raving maniac. He had always been considered somewhat peculiar. He was dark and taciturn, making few friendships and seeking none.
The fact that he had some time before fallen wildly in love with Inza Burrage was a matter of common report. Belton had not taken pains to conceal his passion, and on more than one occasion he had annoyed the girl by thrusting himself into her company.
“Overtake the sleigh!” Frank called to the driver. “I will pay you well for it.”
The command was easy to give, but not easy to carry out. The driver had been doing his best.
Now and then people ran out of their stores or gathered in groups on the corners as pursued and pursuer tore by. Not another policeman had Frank seen, and no one made an attempt to stop the sleigh, which was now approaching the waterside and the wharves.
The ride across the city had been made in an incredibly short time, in spite of the zigzagging character of the route.
Frank kept the cab door open most of the time, ready to spring out if there was any advantage thus to be gained. The part of the city they were now in was not as well lighted nor as thickly populated as that they were leaving.
Again the sleigh took a side street and Frank obtained a look at the occupants. The man was sitting bolt upright, holding the reins, and the girl was apparently leaning against his shoulder. Her long silence had greatly increased Frank’s alarm and anxiety. Inza would not remain in so passive a state unless she were unconscious.
The cab flew round the corner, taking the side street with the wheels tipping. Again the sleigh shifted its course, going straight toward one of the wharves. The driver was evidently familiar with the streets and locality.
“He has some desperate plan in his crazy mind,” was Frank’s conclusion, “and he has studied the thing out in advance with all the cunning of insanity. But he will not be able to go much farther in this direction.”