She turned in time to see the door open and the face and figure of her fatherShe turned in time to see the door open and the face and figure of her fatherPage 274
She turned in time to see the door open and the face and figure of her father
Page 274
But Eleanor possessed no means of telling one package from another; they were all so similar to one another in everything save size, in which they differed only slightly, hardly materially.
None the less, having dared so much, she wasn’t of the stuff to give up the attempt without at least a little effort to find what she sought. And impulsively she selected the first package that fell under her hand, with nervous fingers unwrapped it and—found herself admiring an extremely handsome diamond brooch.
As if it had been a handful of pebbles, she cast it from her to blaze despised upon the mean plank flooring, and selected another package.
It contained rings—three gold rings set with solitaire diamonds. They shared the fate of the brooch.
The next packet held a watch. This, too, she dropped contemptuously, hurrying on.
She had no method, other than to take the uppermost packets from each pigeonhole, on the theory that the necklace had been one of the last articles entrusted to the safe. And that there was some sense in this method was demonstrated when she opened the ninth package—or possibly the twelfth: she was too busy and excited to keep any sort of count.
This last packet, however, revealed the Cadogan collar.
With a little, thankful sigh the girl secreted the thing in the bosom of her dress and prepared to rise.
Behind her a board creaked and the doorlatch clicked. Still sitting—heart in her mouth, breath at a standstill, blood chilling with fright—she turned in time to see the door open and the face and figure of her father as he stood looking down at her, his eyes blinking in the glare of light that painted a gleam along the polished barrel of the weapon in his hand.
In spite of the somewhat abrupt and cavalier fashion in which Staff had parted from Alison at the St. Simon, he was obliged to meet her again that afternoon at the offices of Jules Max, to discuss and select the cast forA Single Woman. The memory which each retained of their earlier meeting naturally rankled, and the amenities suffered proportionately. In justice to Staff it must be set down that he wasn’t the aggressor; his contract with Max stipulated that he should have the deciding word in the selection of the cast—aside from the leading rôle, of course—and when Alison chose, as she invariably did, to try to usurp that function, the author merely stood calmly and with imperturbable courtesy upon his rights. In consequence, it was Alison who made the conference so stormy a one that Max more than once threatened to tear his hair, and as a matter of fact did make futile grabs at the meagre fringe surrounding his bald spot. So the meeting inevitably ended in an armed truce,with no business accomplished: Staff offering to release Max from his contract to produce, the manager frantically begging him to do nothing of the sort, and Alison making vague but disquieting remarks about her inclination to “rest.” ...
Staff dined alone, with disgust of his trade for a sauce to his food. And, being a man—which is as much as to say, a creature without much real understanding of his own private emotional existence—he wagged his head in solemn amazement because he had once thought he could love a woman like that.
Now Eleanor Searle was a different sort of a girl altogether....
Not that he had any right to think of her in that light; only, Alison had chosen to seem jealous of the girl. Heaven alone (he called it honestly to witness) knew why....
Not thathecared whether Alison were jealous or not....
But he was surprised at his solicitude for Miss Searle—now that Alison had made him think of her. He was really more anxious about her than he had suspected. She had seemed to like him, the few times they’d met; and he had liked her very well indeed; it’s refreshing to meet a woman in whom beauty and sensibility are combined; the combination’s piquant,when you come to consider how uncommon it is....
He didn’t believe for an instant that she had meant to run away with the Cadogan collar; and he hoped fervently that she hadn’t been involved in any serious trouble by the qualified thing. Furthermore, he candidly wished he might be permitted to help extricate her, if she were really tangled up in any unpleasantness.
Such, at all events, was the general tone of his meditations throughout dinner and his homeward stroll down Fifth Avenue from Forty-fourth Street, a stroll in which he cast himself for the part of the misprized hero; and made himself look it to the life by sticking his hands in his pockets, carrying his cane at a despondent angle beneath one arm, resting his chin on his chest—or as nearly there as was practicable, if he cared to escape being strangled by his collar—and permitting a cigarette to dangle dejectedly from his lips....
He arrived in front of his lodgings at nine o’clock or something later. And as he started up the brownstone stoop he became aware of a disconsolate little figure hunched up on the topmost step; which was Mr. Iff.
The little man had his chin in his hands and his hat pulled down over his eyes. He rose as Staff came up the steps and gave him good evening in a spiritlesstone which he promptly remedied by the acid observation:
“It’s a pity you wouldn’t try to be home when I call. Here you’ve kept me waiting the best part of an hour.”
“Sorry,” said Staff gravely; “but why stand on ceremony at this late day? My bedroom windows are still open; I left ’em so, fancying you might prefer to come in that way.”
“It’s a pity,” commented Iff, following him upstairs, “you can’t do something for that oratorical weakness of yours. Ever try choking it down? Or would that make you ill?”
With which he seemed content to abandon persiflage, satisfied that his average for acerbity was still high. “Besides,” he said peaceably, “I’m all dressed up pretty now, and it doesn’t look right for a respectable member of society to be pulling off second-story man stunts.”
Staff led him into the study, turned on the lights, then looked his guest over.
So far as his person was involved, it was evident that Iff had employed Staff’s American money to advantage. He wore, with the look of one fresh from thorough grooming at a Turkish bath, a new suit of dark clothes. But when he had thrown aside his soft felt hat, his faceshowed drawn, pinched and haggard, the face of a man whose sufferings are of the spirit rather than of the body. Loss of sleep might have accounted in part for that expression, but not for all of it.
“What’s the matter?” demanded Staff, deeply concerned.
“You ask me that!” said Iff impatiently. He threw himself at length upon the divan. “Haven’t you been to the St. Simon? Don’t youknowwhat has happened? Well, so have I, and so do I.”
“Well ...?”
Iff raised himself on his elbow to stare at Staff as if questioning his sanity.
“You know she’s gone—that she’s inhishands—and you have the face to stand there and say ‘Wel-l?’ to me!” he snapped.
“But—good Lord, man!—what is Miss Searle to you that you should get so excited about her disappearance, even assuming what we’re not sure of—that she decamped with Ismay?”
“She’s only everything to me,” said Iff quietly: “she’s my daughter.”
Staff slumped suddenly into a chair.
“You’re serious about that?” he gasped.
“It’s not a matter I care to joke about,” said the little man gloomily.
“But why didn’t you tell a fellow ...!”
“Why should I—until now? You mustn’t forget that you sat in this room not twenty-four hours ago and listened to me retail what I admit sounded like the damnedest farrago of lies that was ever invented since the world began; and because you were a good fellow and a gentleman, you stood for it—gave me the benefit of the doubt. And at that I hadn’t told you half. Why? Why, because I felt I had put sufficient strain upon your credulity for one session at least.”
“Yes—I know,” Staff agreed, bewildered; “but—but Miss Searle—your daughter—!”
“That’s a hard one for you to swallow——what? I don’t blame you. But it’s true. And that’s why I’m all worked up—half crazed by my knowledge that that infamous blackguard has managed to deceive her and make her believe he is me—myself—her father.”
“But what makes you think that?”
“Oh, I’ve his word for it. Read!”
Iff whipped an envelope from his pocket and flipped it over to Staff. “He knew, of course, where I get my letters when in town, and took a chance of that catching me there and poisoning the sunlight for me.”
Staff turned the envelope over in his hands, remarking the name, address, postmark and special deliverystamp. “Mailed at Hartford, Connecticut, at nine this morning,” he commented.
“Read it,” insisted Iff irritably.
Staff withdrew the enclosure: a single sheet of note-paper with a few words scrawled on one side.
“‘I’ve got her,’” he read aloud. “‘She thinks I’m you. Is this sufficient warning to you to keep out of this game? If not—you know what to expect.’”
He looked from the note back to Iff. “What does he mean by that?”
“How can I tell? It’s a threat, and that’s enough for me; he’s capable of anything fiendish enough to amuse him.” He shook his clenched fists impotently above his head. “Oh, if ever again I get within arm’s length of the hound ...!”
“Look here,” said Staff; “I’m a good deal in the dark about this business. You’ve got to calm yourself and help me out. Now you say Miss Searle’s your daughter; yet you were on the ship together and didn’t recognise one another—at least, so far as I could see.”
“You don’t see everything,” said Iff; “but at that, you’re right—she didn’t recognise me. She hasn’t for years—seven years, to be exact. It was seven years ago that she ran away from me and changed her name. And it was allhisdoing! I’ve told you thatIsmay has, in his jocular way, made a practice of casting suspicion on me. Well, the thing got so bad that he made her believe I was the criminal in the family. So, being the right sort of a girl, she couldn’t live with me any longer and she just naturally shook me—went to Paris to study singing and fit herself to earn a living. I followed her, pleaded with her, but she couldn’t be made to understand; so I had to give it up. And that was when I registered my oath to follow this cur to the four corners of the earth, if need be, and wait my chance to trip him up, expose him and clear myself. And now he’s finding the going a bit rough, thanks to my public-spirited endeavours, and he takes this means of tying my hands!”
“I should think,” said Staff, “you’d have shot him long before this.”
“Precisely,” agreed Iff mockingly. “That’s just where the bone-headedness comes in that so endears you to your friends. If I killed him, where would be my chance to prove I hadn’t been guilty of the crimes he’s laid at my door? He’s realised that, all along.... I passed him on deck one night, coming over; it was midnight and we were alone; the temptation to lay hands on him and drop him overboard was almost irresistible—and he knew it and laughed in my face!... And that’s the true reason why I didn’t accusehim when I was charged with the theft of the necklace—because I couldn’t prove anything and a trumped-up accusation that fell through would only make my case the worse in Nelly’s sight.... But I’ll get him yet!”
“Have you thought of going to Hartford?”
“I’m no such fool. If that letter was posted in Hartford this morning, it means that Ismay’s in Philadelphia.”
“But isn’t he wise enough to know you’d think just that?”
Iff sat up with a flush of excitement. “By George!” he cried—“there’s something in that!”
“It’s a chance,” said Staff thoughtfully.
The little man jumped up and began to pace the floor. To and fro, from the hall-door to the windows, he strode. At perhaps the seventh turn at the windows he paused, looking out, then moved quickly back to Staff’s side.
“Taxicab stopping outside,” he said in a low voice: “woman getting out—Miss Landis, I think. If you don’t mind, I’ll dodge into your bedroom.”
“By all means,” assented his host, rising.
Iff swung out of sight into the back room as Staff went to and opened the hall-door.
Alison had just gained the head of the stairs. She came to the study door, moving with her indolent grace, acknowledging his greeting with an insolent, cool nod.
“Not too late, I trust?” she said enigmatically.
“For what?” asked Staff, puzzled.
“For this appointment,” she said, extending a folded bit of paper.
“Appointment?” he repeated with the rising inflection, taking the paper.
“It was delivered at my hotel half an hour ago,” she told him. “I presumed you ...”
“No,” said Staff. “Half a minute....”
He shut the door and unfolded the note. The paper and the chirography, he noticed, were identical with those of the note received by Iff from Hartford. With this settled to his satisfaction, he read the contents aloud, raising his voice a trifle for the benefit of the listener in the back room.
“‘If Miss Landis wishes to arrange for the return of the Cadogan collar, will she be kind enough to call at Mr. Staff’s rooms in Thirtieth Street at a quarter to ten tonight.“‘N. B.—Any attempt to bring the police or private detectives or other outsiders into the negotiations will be instantly known to the writer and—there won’t be any party.’”
“‘If Miss Landis wishes to arrange for the return of the Cadogan collar, will she be kind enough to call at Mr. Staff’s rooms in Thirtieth Street at a quarter to ten tonight.
“‘N. B.—Any attempt to bring the police or private detectives or other outsiders into the negotiations will be instantly known to the writer and—there won’t be any party.’”
“Unsigned,” said Staff reflectively.
“Well?” demanded Alison, seating herself.
“Curious,” remarked Staff, still thinking.
“Well?” she iterated less patiently. “Is it a practical joke?”
“No,” he said, smiling; “to me it looks like business.”
“You mean that the thief intends to come here—to bargain with me?”
“I should fancy so, from what he says.... And,” Staff added, crossing to his desk, “forewarned is forearmed.”
He bent over and pulled out the drawer containing his revolver. At the same moment he heard Alison catch her breath sharply, and a man’s voice replied to his platitude.
“Not always,” it said crisply. “Be good enough to leave that gun lay—just hold up your hands, where I can see them, and come away from that desk.”
Staff laughed shortly and swung smartly round, exposing empty hands. In the brief instant in which his back had been turned a man had let himself into the study from the hall. He stood now with his back to the door, covering Staff with an automatic pistol.
“Come away,” he said in a peremptory tone, emphasisinghis meaning with a flourish of the weapon. “Over here—by Miss Landis, if you please.”
Quietly Staff obeyed. He had knocked about the world long enough to recognise the tone of a man talking business with a gun. He placed himself beside Alison’s chair and waited, wondering.
Indeed, he was very much perplexed and disturbed. For the first time since Iff had won his confidence against his better judgment, his faith in the little man was being shaken. This high-handed intruder was so close a counterpart of Mr. Iff that one had to look twice to distinguish the difference, and then found the points of variance negligible—so much so that the fellow might well be Iff in different clothing and another manner. And Iff could easily have slipped out of the bedroom byitshall door. Only, to shift his clothes so quickly he would have to be a lightning-change artist of exceptional ability.
On the whole, Staff decided, this couldn’t be Iff. And yet ... and yet ...
“You may put up that pistol,” he said coolly. “I’m not going to jump you, so it’s unnecessary. Besides, it’s bad form with a lady present. And finally, if you should happen to let it off the racket would bring the police down on you more quickly than you’d like, I fancy.”
The man grinned and shoved the weapon into a pocket from which its grip projected handily.
“Something in what you say,” he assented. “Besides, I’m quick, surprisingly quick with my hands.”
“Part of your professional equipment, no doubt,” commented Staff indifferently.
“Admit it,” said the other easily. He turned his attention to Alison. “Well, Miss Landis ...?”
“Well, Mr. Iff?” she returned in the same tone.
“No,” he corrected; “not Iff—Ismay.”
“So you’ve changed identities again!”
“Surely you don’t mind?” he said, grinning over the evasion.
“But you denied being Ismay aboard the Autocratic.”
“My dear lady, you couldn’t reasonably expect me to plead guilty to a crime which I had not yet committed.”
“Oh, get down to business!” Staff interrupted impatiently. “You’re wasting time—yours as well as ours.”
“Peevish person, your young friend,” Ismay commented confidentially to Alison. “Still, there’s something in what he says. Shall we—ah—begin to negotiate?”
“I think you may as well,” she agreed coldly.
“Very well, then. The case is simple enough. I’mhere to offer to secure the return of the Cadogan collar for an appropriate reward.”
“Ten thousand dollars has been offered,” she began.
“Not half enough, my dear lady,” he interposed. “You insult the necklace by naming such a meagre sum—to say nothing of undervaluingmyintelligence.”
“So that’s it!” she said reflectively.
“That is it, precisely. I am in communication with the person who stole your necklace; she’s willing to return it for a reward of reasonable size.”
“She? You mean Miss Searle?”
The man made a deprecating gesture. “Please don’t ask me to name the lady....”
“I knew it!” Alison cried triumphantly.
“You puppy!” Staff exclaimed. “Haven’t you the common manhood to shoulder the responsibility for your crimes yourself?”
“Tush,” said the man gently—“tush! Not a pretty way to talk at all—calling names! I’m surprised. Besides, I ought to know better than you, acting as I do as agent for the lady in question.”
“That’s a flat lie,” said Staff. “If you repeat it—I warn you—I’ll jump you as sure ’s my name’s Staff, pistol or no pistol!”
“Aren’t you rather excited in your defence of this woman?” Alison turned on him with a curling lip.
“I’ve a right to my emotions,” he retorted—“to betray them as I see fit.”
“And I,” Ismay put it, “to my freedom of speech—”
“Not in my rooms,” Staff interrupted hotly. “I’ve warned you. Drop this nonsense about Miss Searle if you want to stop here another minute without a fight. Drop it! Say what you want to say to Miss Landis——and get out!”
He was thoroughly enraged, and his manner of expressing himself seemed to convince the thief. With a slight shrug of his shoulders he again addressed himself directly to Alison.
“In the matter of the reward,” he said, “we’re of the opinion that you’ve offered too little by half. Twenty thousand at the least—”
“You forget I have the duty to pay.”
“My dear lady, if you had not been anxious to evade payment of the duty you would be enjoying the ownership of your necklace today.”
As he spoke the telephone-bell rang. Staff turned away to his desk, Ismay’s voice pursuing him with the caution.
“Don’t forget about that open drawer—keep your hands away from it.”
“Oh, be quiet,” returned Staff contemptuously.Standing with his back to them, he took up the instrument and lifted off the receiver.
“Hello?” he said irritably.
He was glad that his face was not visible to his guests; he could restrain a start of surprise, but was afraid his expression would have betrayed him when he recognised the voice at the other end of the line as Iff’s.
“Don’t repeat my name,” it said quickly in a tone low but clear. “That is Iff. Ismay still there?”
“Yes,” said Staff instantly: “it’s I, Harry. How are you?”
“Get rid of him as quick ’s you can,” Iff continued, “and join me here at the Park Avenue. I dodged down the fire-escape and caught his motor-car; his chauffeur thinks I’m him. I’ll wait in the street—Thirty-third Street side, with the car. Now talk.”
“All right,” said Staff heartily; “glad to. I’ll be there.”
“Chauffeur knows where Nelly is, I think; but he’s too big for me to handle alone, in case my foot slips and he gets suspicious. That’s why I need you. Bring your gun.”
“Right,” Staff agreed promptly. “The club in half an hour. Yes, I’ll come. Good-bye.”
He turned back toward Ismay and Alison, his doubtsresolved, all his vague misgivings as to this case of double identity settled finally and forever.
“Alison,” he said, breaking in roughly upon something Ismay was saying to the girl, “you’ve a cab waiting outside, haven’t you?”
Alison stared in surprise. “Yes,” she said in a tone of wonder.
Staff paused beside the divan, one hand resting upon the topmost of a little heap of silken cushions. “Mind if I borrow it?” he asked, ignoring the man.
“No, but—”
“It’s business—important,” said Staff. “I’ll have to leave you here at once. Only”—he watched Ismay closely out of the corners of his eyes—“if I were you I wouldn’t waste any more time on this fellow. He’s bluffing—can’t carry out anything he promises.”
Ismay turned toward him, expostulant.
“What d’ you mean by that?” he demanded.
“Miss Searle has escaped,” said Staff deliberately.
“No!” cried Ismay, startled and thrown off his guard by the fear it might be so. “Impossible!”
“Think so?” As he spoke Staff dextrously snatched up the uppermost pillow and with a twist of his hand sent it whirling into the thief’s face.
It took him utterly unawares. His arms flew uptoo late to ward it off, and he staggered back a pace.
“Lots of impossible things keep happening all the time,” chuckled Staff as he closed in.
There was hardly a struggle. Staff’s left arm clipped the man about the waist at the same time that his right hand deftly abstracted the pistol from its convenient pocket. Then, dropping the weapon into his own pocket, he transferred his hold to Ismay’s collar and spun him round with a snap that fairly jarred his teeth.
“There, confound you!” he said, exploring his pockets for other lethal weapons and finding nothing but three loaded clips ready to be inserted in the hollow butt of the pistol already confiscated. “Now what ’m I going to do with you, you blame’ little pest?”
The question was more to himself than to Ismay, but the latter, recovering with astonishing quickness, answered Staff by suddenly squirming out of his coat and leaving it in his assailant’s hands as he ducked to the door and flung himself out.
Staff broke into a laugh as the patter of the little man’s feet was heard on the stairs.
“Resourceful beggar,” he commented, going to the window and rolling up the coat as he went. He reached it just in time to see the thief dodge out.
The coat, opening as it descended, fell like a blanket round Ismay’s head. He stumbled, tripped and fell headlong down the steps, sprawling and cursing.
“Thought you might need it,” Staff apologised as the man picked himself up and darted away.
He turned to confront an infuriated edition of Alison.
“Why did you do that?” she demanded with a stamp of her foot. “What right had you to interfere? I was beating him down; in another minute we’d have come to terms—”
“Oh, don’t be silly, my dear,” said Staff, taking his revolver from the desk-drawer and placing it in the hip-pocket of tradition. “To begin with, I don’t mind telling you I don’t give much of a whoop whether you ever get that necklace back or not.” He grabbed his hat and started for the door. “What I’m interested in is the rescue of Miss Searle, if you must know; and that’s going to happen before long, or I miss my guess.” He paused at the open door. “If we get her, we get the necklace, of course—and the Lord knows you’ll be welcome to that. Would you mind turning out the lights before you go?”
“Staff!”
Her tone was so peremptory that he hesitated an unwelcome moment longer.
“Well?” he asked civilly, wondering what on earth she had found to fly into such a beastly rage about.
“You know what this means?”
“You tell me,” he smiled.
“It means the break; I won’t playA Single Woman!” she snapped.
“That’s the best guess you’ve made yet,” he laughed. “You win. Good night and—good-bye.”
Commandeering Alison’s taxicab with the promise of an extra tip, Staff jumped in and shut the door. As they swung into Fourth Avenue, he caught a glimpse of Ismay’s slight figure standing on the corner, his pose expressive of indecision and uncertainty; and Staff smiled to himself, surmising that it was there that the thief had left his motor-car to be confiscated by Iff.
Three blocks north on Fourth Avenue, and they swung west into Thirty-third Street: a short course quickly covered, but yet not swiftly enough to outpace Staff’s impatience. He had the door open, his foot on the step, before the taxicab had begun to slow down preparatory to stopping beside the car waiting in the shadow of the big hotel.
Iff was in the tonneau, gesticulating impatiently; the chauffeur had already cranked up and was sliding into his seat. As the taxicab rolled alongside, Staff jumped, thrust double the amount registered by themeter into the driver’s hand, and sprang into the body of Ismay’s car. Iff snapped the door shut; as though set in motion by that sharp sound, the machine began to move smoothly and smartly, gathering momentum with every revolution of its wheels. They were crossing Madison almost before Staff had settled into his seat. A moment later they were snoring up Fifth Avenue.
Staff looked at his watch. “Ten,” he told Iff.
“We’ll make time once we get clear of this island,” said the little man anxiously; “we’ve got to.”
“Why?”
“To beat Ismay—”
Staff checked him with a hand on his arm and a warning glance at the back of the chauffeur’s head.
“Oh, that’s all rightnow,” Iff told him placidly. “I thought we might ’s well understand one another first as last; so, while we were waiting for you, I slipped him fifty, gave him to understand that my affectionate cousin had about come to the end of his rope and—won his heart and confidence. It’s a way I have with people; they do seem to fall for me,” he asserted with insufferable self-complacence.
He continued to impart his purchased information to Staff by snatches all the way from Thirty-fourth Street to the Harlem River.
“He’s a decent sort,” he said, indicating the operator with a nod; “apparently, that is; name, Spelvin. Employed by a garage upon the West Side, in the Seventies. Says Ismay rang ’em up about half-past two last night, chartered this car and driver, to be kept waiting for him whenever he called for it.... Coarse work that, for Cousin Arbuthnot—very, very crude....
“Still, he’d just got home and hadn’t had time to make very polished arrangements.... Seems he told this chap he was to see nothing but the road, hear nothing but the motor, say nothing whatever to nobody. Gave him a fifty, too. That habit seems to run in the family....
“He called for the car around five o’clock, with Nelly. Spelvin says she seemed worn out, hardly conscious of what was going on. They lit out for—where we’re bound: place on the Connecticut shore called Pennymint Point. On the way Ismay told him to stop at a roadhouse, got out and brought Nelly a drink. Spelvin says he wouldn’t be surprised if it was doped; she slept all the rest of the way and hardly woke up even when they helped her aboard the boat.”
“Boat!”
“Motor-boat. I infer that Cousin Arbuthnot has established headquarters on a little two-by-four islandin the Sound—Wreck Island. Used to be run as a one-horse summer resort—hotel and all that. Went under several years ago, if mem’ry serveth me aright. Anyhow, they loaded Nelly aboard this motor-boat and took her across....
“Spelvin was told to wait. He did. In about an hour—boat back; native running it hands Spelvin a note, tells him to run up to Hartford and post it and be back at sevenP.M.Spelvin back at seven; Ismay comes across by boat, is driven to town....
“That’s all, to date. Spelvin had begun to suspect there was something crooked going on, which made him easy meat for my insidious advances. Says he was wondering if he hadn’t better tell his troubles to a cop. All of which goes to show that Cousin Artie’s fast going to seed. Very crude operating—man of his reputation, too. Makes me almost ashamed of the relationship.”
“How are we going to get to Wreck Island from Pennymint Point?”
“Same boat,” said Iff confidently. “Spelvin heard Ismay tell his engineer to wait for him—would be back between midnight and three.”
“He can’t beat us there, can he, by any chance?”
“He can if he humps himself. This is a pretty good car, and Spelvin says there isn’t going to be any caron the road tonight that’ll pass us; but I can’t forget that dear old New York, New Haven & Hartford. They run some fast trains by night, and while of course none of them stops at Pennymint Centre—station for the Point—still, a man with plenty of money to fling around can get a whole lot of courtesy out of a railroad.”
“Then the question is: can he catch a train which passes through Pennymint Centre before we can reasonably expect to get there?”
“That’s the intelligent query. I don’t know. Do you?”
“No—”
“Spelvin doesn’t, and we haven’t got any time to waste trying to find out. Probabilities are, there is. The only thing to do is to run for it and trust to luck. Spelvin says it took him an hour and thirty-five minutes to run in, this evening; and he’s going to better that if nothing happens. Did you remember to bring a gun?”
“Two.” Staff produced the pistol he had taken from Ismay, with the extra clips, and gave them to the little man with an account of how he had become possessed of them—a narrative which Iff seemed to enjoy immensely.
“Oh, we can’t lose,” he chuckled; “not when CousinArtie plays his hand as poorly as he has this deal. I’ve got a perfectly sound hunch that we’ll win.”
Staff hardly shared his confidence; still, as far as he could judge, the odds were even. Ismay might beat them to Pennymint Centre by train, and might not. If he did, however, it could not be by more than a slight margin; to balance which fact, Staff had to remind himself that two minutes’ margin was all that would be required to get the boat away from land, beyond their reach.
“Look here,” he put it to Iff: “suppose he does beat us to that boat?”
“Then we’ll have to find another.”
“There’ll be another handy, all ready for us, I presume?”
“Spare me your sarcasm,” pleaded Iff; “it is, if you don’t mind my mentioning the fact, not your forte. Silence, on the other hand, suits your style cunningly. So shut up and lemme think.”
He relapsed into profound meditations, while the car hummed onwards through the moon-drenched spaces of the night.
Presently he roused and, without warning, clambered over the back of the seat into the place beside the chauffeur. For a time the two conferred, heads together, their words indistinguishable in the sweepof air. Then, in the same spry fashion, the little man returned.
“Spelvin’s a treasure,” he announced, settling into his place.
“Why?”
“Knows the country—knows a man in Barmouth who runs a shipyard, owns and hires out motorboats, and all that sort of thing.”
“Where’s Barmouth?”
“Four miles this side of Pennymint Point. Now we’ve got to decide whether to hold on and run our chances of picking up Ismay’s boat, or turn off to Barmouth and run our chances of finding chauffeur’s friend with boat disengaged. What do you think?”
“Barmouth,” Staff decided after some deliberation but not without misgivings.
“That’s what I told Spelvin,” observed Iff. “It’s a gamble either way.”
The city was now well behind them, the car pounding steadily on through Westchester. For a long time neither spoke. The time for talk, indeed, was past—and in the future; for the present they must tune themselves up to action—such action as the furious onrush of the powerful car in some measure typified, easing the impatience in their hearts.
For a time the road held them near railroad tracks.A train hurtled past them, running eastwards: a roaring streak of orange light crashing through the world of cool night blues and purple-blacks.
The chauffeur swore audibly and let out another notch of speed.
Staff sat spellbound by the amazing romance of it all.... A bare eight days since that afternoon when a whim, born of a love now lifeless, had stirred him out of his solitary, work-a-day life in London, had lifted him out of the ordered security of the centre of the world’s civilisation and sent him whirling dizzily across three thousand miles and more to become a partner in this wild, weird ride to the rescue of a damsel in distress and durance vile! Incredible!...
Eight days: and the sun of Alison, that once he had thought to be the light of all the world, had set; while in the evening sky the star of Eleanor was rising and blazing ever more brightly....
Now when a man begins to think about himself and his heart in such poetic imagery, the need for human intercourse grows imperative on his understanding; he must talk or—suffer severely.
Staff turned upon his defenseless companion.
“Iff,” said he, “when a man’s the sort of a man who can fall out of love and in again—with another woman, of course—inside a week—what do you call him?”
“Human,” announced Iff after mature consideration of the problem.
This was unsatisfactory; Staff yearned to be called fickle.
“Human? How’s that?” he insisted.
“I mean that the human man hasn’t got much to say about falling in or out of love. The women take care of all that for him. Look at your Miss Landis—yours as was.... You don’t mind my buttin’ in?”
“Go on,” said Staff grimly.
“Anybody with half an eye, always excepting you, could see she’d made up her mind to hook that Arkroyd pinhead on account of his money. She was just waiting for a fair chance to give you the office—preferably, of course, after she’d nailed that play of yours.”
“Well,” said Staff, “she’s lost that, too.”
“Serves you both right.”
There was a pause wherein Staff sought to fathom the meaning of this last utterance of Mr. Iff’s.
“I take it,” resumed the latter with a sidelong look—“pardon a father’s feelings of delicacy—I take it, you’re meaning Nelly?”
“How did you guess that?” demanded Staff, startled.
“Right, eh?”
“Yes—no—I don’t know—”
“Well, if you don’t know the answer any better ’nthat, take a word of advice from an old bird: you get her to tell you. She’s known it ever since she laid eyes on you.”
“You mean she—I—” Staff stammered eagerly.
“I mean nobody knows anything about a woman’s heart but herself; but she knows it backwards and all the time.”
“Then you don’t think I’ve got any show?”
“Oh, Lord!” complained Iff. “Honest, you gimme a pain. Go on and do your own thinking.”
Staff subsided, imagining a vain thing: that the mantle of dignity in which he wrapped himself successfully cloaked his sense of injury. Iff smiled a meaningless smile up at the inscrutable skies. And the moonlit miles slipped beneath the wheels like a torrent of moulten silver.
At length—it seemed as if many hours must have swung crashing into eternity since they had left New York—Staff was conscious of a perceptible diminution of speed; he was able to get his breath with less effort, had no longer to snatch it by main strength from the greedy clutches of the whirlwind. The reeling chiaroscuro of the countryside seemed suddenly to become calm, settling into an intelligible, more or less orderly arrangement of shining hills and shadowed hollows, spreading pastures and sombre woodlands. Thechauffeur flung a few inarticulate words over his shoulder—readily interpreted as announcing the nearness of their destination; and of a sudden the car swung from the main highway into a narrow by-road that ran off to the right. A little later they darted through a cut beneath railroad tracks, and a village sprang out of the night and rattled past them, serenely slumbrous. From this centre a thin trickle of dwellings straggled along their way. Across fields to the left, Staff caught glimpses of a spreading sheet of water, still and silvery-grey....
On a long slant, the road drew nearer and more near to the shores of this arm of the Sound. Presently a group of small buildings near the head of a long landing-stage swam into view. Before them the car drew up with a sigh. The chauffeur jumped down and ran across the road to a house in whose lower story a lighted window was visible. While he hammered at the door, Staff and Iff alighted. A man in his shirt-sleeves came to the door of the cottage and stood there, pipe in mouth, hands in pockets, languidly interjecting dispassionate responses into the chauffeur’s animated exposition of their case. As Staff and Iff came up, Spelvin turned to them, excitedly waving his gauntlets.
“He’s got a boat, all right, and a good one he says, but he won’t move a foot for less ’n twenty dollars.”
“Give you twenty-five if you get away from the dock within five minutes,” Iff told the boatbuilder directly.
The man started as if stung. “Jemima!” he breathed, incredulous. Then caution prompted him to extend a calloused and work-warped hand. “Cross my palm,” he said.
“You give it to him, Staff,” said Iff magnificently. “I’m short of cash.”
Obediently, Staff disbursed the required sum. The native thumbed it, pocketed it, lifted his coat from a nail behind the door and started across the road in a single movement.
“You come ’long, Spelvin,” he said in passing, “’nd help with the boat. If you gents’ll get out on the dock I’ll have her alongside in three minutes, ’r my name ain’t Bascom.”
Pursued by the chauffeur, he disappeared into the huddle of boat-houses and beached and careened boats. A moment later, Iff and Staff, picking their way through the tangle, heard the scrape of a flat-bottomed boat on the beach and, subsequently, splashing oars.
By the time they had reached the end of the dock, the boatbuilder and his companion were scrambling aboard a twenty-five-foot boat at anchor in the midst of a small fleet of sail and gasoline craft. The rumble of a motor followed almost instantly, was silenced momentarilywhile the skiff was being made fast to the mooring, broke out again as the larger boat selected a serpentine path through the circumjacent vessels and slipped up to the dock.
Before it had lost way, Iff and Staff were aboard. Instantly, Bascom snapped the switch shut and the motor started again on the spark.
“Straight out,” he instructed Spelvin at the wheel, “till you round that white moorin’-dolphin. Then I’ll take her.” ...
Not long afterward he gave up pottering round the engine and went forward, relieving Spelvin. “You go back and keep your eye on that engyne,” he ordered; “she’s workin’ like a sewin’-machine, but she wants watchin’. I’ll tell you when to give her the spark. Meanwhile you might ’s well dig them lights out of the port locker and set ’em out.”
“No,” Iff put in. “We want no lights.”
“Gov’mint regulations,” said Bascom stubbornly. “Must carry lights.”
“Five dollars?” Iff argued persuasively.
“Agin the law,” growled Bascom. “But—I dunno—they ain’t anybody likely to be out this time o’ night. Cross my palm.”
And Staff again disbursed.
The white mooring-buoy swam past and the littlevessel heeled as Bascom swung her sharply to the southwards.
“Now,” he told Spelvin, “advance that spark all you’ve a mind to.”
There was a click from the engine-pit and the steady rumble of the exhaust ran suddenly into a prolonged whining drone. The boat jumped as if jerked forward by some gigantic, invisible hand. Beneath the bows the water parted with a crisp sound like tearing paper. Long ripples widened away from the sides, like ribs of a huge fan. A glassy hillock of water sprang up mysteriously astern, pursuing them like an avenging Nemesis, yet never quite catching up.
The sense of irresistible speed was tremendous, as stimulating as electricity; this in spite of the fact that the boat was at best making about half the speed at which the motor-car had plunged along the country roads: an effect in part due to the spacious illusion of moonlit distances upon the water.
Staff held his cap with one hand, drinking in the keen salt air with a feeling of strange exultation. Iff crept forward and tarried for a time talking to the boatbuilder.
The boat shaved a nun-buoy outside Barmouth Point so closely that Staff could almost have touched it by stretching out his arm. Then she straightenedout like a greyhound on a long course across the placid silver reaches to a goal as yet invisible.
Iff returned to the younger man’s side.
“Twenty miles an hour, Bascom claims,” he shouted. “At that rate we ought to be there in about fifteen minutes now.”
Staff nodded, wondering what they would find on Wreck Island, bitterly repenting the oversight which had resulted in Ismay’s escape from his grasp. If only he had not been so sure of his conquest of the little criminal ...! Now his mind crawled with apprehensions bred of his knowledge of the man’s amazing fund of resource. He who outwitted Ismay would have earned the right to plume himself upon his cunning....
When he looked up from his abstraction, the loom of the mainland was seemingly very distant. The motor-boat was nearing the centre of a deep indentation in the littoral. And suddenly it was as though they did not move at all, as if all this noise and labour went for nothing, as if the boat were chained to the centre of a spreading disk of silver, world-wide, illimitable, and made no progress for all its thrashing and its fury.
Only the unending sweep of wind across his face denied that effect....
Iff touched his arm.
“There....” he said, pointing.
Over the bows a dark mass seemed to have separated itself from the shadowed mainland, with which it had till then been merged. A strip of silver lay between the two, and while they watched it widened, swiftly winning breadth and bulk as the motor-boat swung to the north of the long, sandy spit at the western end of Wreck Island.
“See anything of another boat?” Iff asked. “You look—your eyes are younger than mine.”
Staff stood up, steadying himself with feet wide apart, and stared beneath his hand.
“No,” he said; “I see no boat.”
“We’ve beaten him, then!” Iff declared joyfully.
But they hadn’t, nor were they long in finding it out. For presently the little island lay black, a ragged shadow against the blue-grey sky, upon the starboard beam; and Bascom passed the word aft to shut off the motor. As its voice ceased, the boat shot in toward the land, and the long thin moonlit line of the landing-stage detached itself from the general obscurity and ran out to meet them. And so closely had Bascom calculated that the “shoot” of the boat brought them to a standstill at the end of the structure without a jar. Bascom jumped out with the headwarp, Staff and Iff at his heels.
From the other side of the dock a shadow uplifted itself, swiftly and silently as a wraith, and stood swaying as it saluted them with profound courtesy.
“Gennelmen,” it said thickly, “I bidsh you welcome t’ Wrecksh Island.”
With this it slumped incontinently back into a motor-boat which lay moored in the shadow of the dock; and a wild, ecstatic snore rang out upon the calm night air.
“Thet’s Eph Clover,” said Bascom; “him ’nd his wife’s caretakers here. He’s drunker ’n a b’iled owl,” added the boatbuilder lest they misconstrue.
“Cousin Artie seems unfortunate in his choice of minions, what?” commented Iff. “Come along, Staff.... Take care of that souse, will you, Spelvin? See that he doesn’t try to mix in.”
They began to run along the narrow, yielding and swaying bridge of planks.
“He hasn’t beaten us out yet,” Iff threw over his shoulder. “You keep back now—like a good child—please. I’ve got a hunch this is my hour.”
The hotel loomed before them, gables grey with moonshine, its long walls dark save where, toward the middle of the main structure, chinks of light filtered through a shuttered window, and where at one end an open door let out a shaft of lamplight upon the shadows....
For a period of perhaps twenty seconds the man and the girl remained moveless, eyeing one another; she on the floor, pale, stunned and pitiful, for the instant bereft of every sense save that of terror; he in the doorway, alert, fully the master of his concentrated faculties, swayed by two emotions only—a malignant temper bred of the night’s succession of reverses capped by the drunkenness of his caretaker, and an equally malignant sense of triumph that he had returned in time to crush the girl’s attempt to escape.
He threw the door wide open and took a step into the room, putting away his pistol.
“So—” he began in a cutting voice.
But his movement had acted as the shock needed to rouse the girl out of her stupor of despair. With a cry she gathered herself together and jumped to her feet. He put forth a hand as if to catch her, and sheleaped back. Her skirts swept the lamp on the floor and overturned it with a splintering crash. Instinctively she sprang away—in the nick of time.
She caught a look of surprise and fright in the eyes of the man as they glared past her in the ghastly glow of the flickering wick, and took advantage of this momentary distraction to leap past him. As she did so there was a slight explosion. A sheet of flaming kerosene spread over the floor and licked the chairboarding.
Ismay jumped back, mouthing curses; the girl had already slipped out of the room. Turning, he saw her flying through the hall toward the main door. In a fit of futile, childish spite, unreasonable and unreasoning, he whipped out his pistol and sent a bullet after her.
She heard it whine near her head and crash through the glass panes of the door. And she heard herself cry out in a strange voice. The next instant she had flung open the door and thrown herself out, across the veranda and down the steps. Then turning blindly to the left, instinct guiding her to seek temporary safety by hiding in the wilderness of the dunes, she blundered into somebody’s arms.
She was caught and held fast despite her struggles to free herself: to which, believing herself to be in thehands of Mrs. Clover or her husband, she gave all her strength.
At the same time the first-floor windows of the hotel were illumined by an infernal glare. All round her there was lurid light, setting everything in sharp relief. The face of the man who held her was suddenly revealed; and it was her father’s.... She had left him inside the building and now ... She was assailed with a terrifying fear that she had gone mad. In a frenzy she wrenched herself free; but only to be caught in other arms.
A voice she knew said soothingly: “There, Miss Searle—you’re all right now....”
Staff’s voice and, when she twisted to look, Staff’s face, friendly and reassuring!
“Don’t be afraid,” he was saying; “we’ll take care of you now—your father and I.”
“My father!” she gasped. “My father is in there!”
“No,” said Iff at her side. “Believe me, he isn’t. That, dear, is your fondly affectionate Uncle Arbuthnot—and between the several of us I don’t mind telling you that he’s stood in my shoes for the last time.”
“But I don’t,” she stammered—“I don’t understand—”
“You will in a minute,” Staff told her gently. Atthe same time he lifted his voice. “Look out, Iff—look out!”
He strove to put himself between the girl and danger, making a shield of his body. But with a supple movement she eluded him.
She saw in the doorway of the burning house the man she had thought to be her father. The other man, he whose daughter she really was, had started to run toward the veranda steps. The man in the doorway flung up his hand and, clear and vicious above the crackling of the flames, she heard the short song of a Colt automatic—six shots, so close upon one another that they were as one prolonged.
There was a spatter of bullets in the sandy ground about them; and then, with scarcely an appreciable interval, a second flutter of an automatic. This time the reports came from the pistol in Iff’s hand. He was standing in full glare at the bottom of the veranda steps, aiming with great composure and precision.
The figure in the doorway reeled as if struck by an axe, swung half-way round and tottered back into the house. The little man below the veranda steps delayed only long enough to pluck out the empty clip from the butt of his pistol and slip another, loaded, into its place. Then with cat-like agility he sprang up the steps and dived into the furnace-like interior of thehotel. A third stuttering series of reports saluted this action, and then there was a short pause ended by a single shot.
“Come,” said Staff. He took her arm gently. “Come away....”
Shuddering, she suffered him to lead her a little distance into the dunes. Here he released her.
“If you won’t mind being left alone a few minutes,” he said, “I’ll go back and see what’s happened. You’ll be perfectly safe here, I fancy.”
“Please,” she said breathlessly—“do go. Yes, please.”
She urged him with frantic gestures....
He hurried back to the front of the hotel. By now it was burning like a bonfire; already, short as had been the time since the overturning of the lamp, the entire ground floor with the exception of one wing was a roaring welter of flames, while the fire had leaped up the main staircase and set its signals in the windows of the upper story.
Iff was standing at some distance from the main entrance, having pushed his way through the tangle of undergrowth to escape the scorching heat that emanated from the building. He caught sight of Staff approaching and waved a hand to him.
“Greetings!” he cried cheerfully, raising his voiceto make it heard above the voice of the conflagration.
“Where’s Nelly?”
Staff explained. “But what about Ismay?” he demanded.
Iff grinned and hung his head as if embarrassed, rubbing a handkerchief over the smoke-stained fingers of his right hand.
“I got him,” he said simply.
“You left him in there?”
The little man nodded without reply and turned alertly to engage Mrs. Clover, who was bearing down upon them in the first stages of hysterics. But at sight of Iff she pulled up and calmed herself a trifle.
“Oh, sir,” she cried, “I’m so glad you’re safe, sir! I was asleep in the kitchen when the fire broke out—and then I thought I heard pistol shots—and I didn’t know but somethin’ had happened to you—”
“No,” said Iff coolly; “you can see I’m all right.”
“And Eph, sir? Where’s my husband?” she shrieked.
“Oh,” said Iff, at length identifying the woman. “You’ll find him down at the dock—dead drunk in the motor-boat,” he told her. “If I were you I’d go to him right away.”
“But whatever will we do for a place to sleep tonight?”
“Help yourself,” Iff replied with a generous wave ofhis hand “You’ve all Pennymint to ask shelter of, if you can manage to make your husband run the boat across.”
“But you—what’ll you do?”
“I’ve another boat handy,” Iff explained. “We’ll go in that.”
“And will you rebuild, sir?”
“No,” he said gravely, “I don’t think so. I fancy this is the last time I’ll ever set foot on Wreck Island. Now clear out,” he added with a sharp change of manner, “and see if you can’t sober that drunken fool up.”
Abashed, the woman cringed and turned away. Presently she broke into a clumsy run and vanished in the direction of the landing-stage.
“You’ve accepted the identity of Ismay,” commented Staff disapprovingly, as they moved off together to rejoin Eleanor.
“For the last time,” said the little man. “Until I get aboard Bascom’s boat again, only. It’s the easiest way.”
“How do you mean?”