“At first I assumed that a message intended for some other correspondent had been sent to me by error. Now, on reperusal, I am almost convinced that you wrote me under some misapprehension. Will you kindly explain how it arose?”
“At first I assumed that a message intended for some other correspondent had been sent to me by error. Now, on reperusal, I am almost convinced that you wrote me under some misapprehension. Will you kindly explain how it arose?”
Clancy, great as ever on such occasions, refrained from saying: “I told you so.”
“We’ll call up the agent Monday, just for the sake of thoroughness,” he said. “Meanwhile, be ready to come with me to East Orange to-morrow at 8A.M.”
“Why not to-night?” urged Carshaw, afire with a rage to be up and doing.
“What? To sleep there? Young man, you don’t know East Orange. Run away home to your ma!”
“Where have you been?” inquired Mrs. Carshaw when her son entered. Her air was subdued. She had suffered a good deal these later days.
“To Vermont.”
“Still pursuing that girl?”
“Yes, mother.”
“Have you found her?”
“No, mother.”
“Rex, have you driven me wholly from your heart?”
“No; that would be impossible. Winifred would not wish it, callous as you were to her.”
“Do not be too hard on me. I am sore wounded. It is a great deal for a woman to be cast into the outer darkness.”
“Nonsense, mother, you are emerging into light. If your friends are so ready to drop you because you are poor—with the exceeding poverty of twenty-five hundred a year—of what value were they as friends? When you know Winifred you will be glad. You will feel as Dante felt when he emerged from the Inferno.”
“So you are determined to marry her?”
“Unquestionably. And mark you, mother, when the clouds pass, and we are rich again, you will be proud of your daughter-in-law. She will bear all your skill in dressing. Gad! how the women of your set will envy her complexion.”
Mrs. Carshaw smiled wanly at that. She knew her “set,” as Rex termed the Four Hundred.
“Why is she called Bartlett?” she inquired after a pause, and Rex looked at her in surprise. “I have a reason,” she continued. “Is that her real name?”
“Now,” he cried, “I admit you are showing some of your wonted cleverness.”
“Ah! Then I am right. I have been thinking. Cessation from society duties is at least restful. Last night, lying awake and wondering where you were, my thoughts reverted to that girl. I remembered her face. All at once a long-forgotten chord of memory hummed its note. Twenty years ago, when you were a little boy, Rex, I met a Mrs. Marchbanks. She was a sweet singer. Does your Winifred sing?”
Carshaw drew his chair closer to his mother and placed an arm around her shoulder.
“Yes,” he said.
“Rex,” she murmured brokenly, hiding her face, “do you forgive me?”
“Mother, I ask you to forgive me if I said harsh things.”
There was silence for a while. Then she raised her eyes. They were wet, but smiling.
“This Mrs. Marchbanks,” she went on bravely, “had your Winifred’s face. She was wealthy and altogether charming. Her husband, too, was a gentleman. She was a ward of the elder Meiklejohn, the present Senator’s father. My recollection of events is vague, but there was some scandal in Burlington.”
“I know all, or nearly all, about it. That is why I was called to Vermont. Mother, in future, you will work with me, not against me?”
“I will—indeed I will,” she sobbed.
“Then you must not drop your car. I have money to pay for that. Keep in with Helen Tower, and find out what hold she has on Meiklejohn. You are good at that, you know. You understand your quarry. You will be worth twenty detectives. First, discover where Meiklejohn is. He has bolted, or shut himself up.”
“You must trust me fully, or I shall not see the pitfalls. Tell me everything.”
He obeyed. Before he had ended, Mrs. Carshaw was weeping again, but this time it was out of sympathy with Winifred. Next morning, although it was Sunday, her smart limousine took her to the Tower’s house. Mrs. Tower was at home.
“I have heard dreadful things about you, Sarah,” she purred. “What on earth is the matter? Why have you given up your place on Long Island?”
“A whim of Rex’s, my dear. He is still infatuated over that girl.”
“She must have played her cards well.”
“Yes, indeed. One does not look for such skill in the lower orders. And how she deceived me! I went to see her, and she promised better behavior. Now I find she has gone again, and Rex will not tell me where she is. Do you know?”
“I? The creature never enters my mind.”
“Of course not. She does not interest you, but I am the boy’s mother, and you cannot imagine, Helen, how this affair worries me.”
“My poor Sarah! It is too bad.”
“Such a misfortune could not have happened had his father lived. We women are of no use where a headstrong man is concerned. I am thinking of consulting Senator Meiklejohn. He is discreet and experienced.”
“But he is not in town.”
“What a calamity! Do tell me where I can find him.”
“I have reason to know that Rex would not brook any interference from him.”
“Oh, no, of course not. It would never do to permit his influence to appear. I was thinking that the Senator might act with the girl, this wonderful Winifred. He might frighten her, or bribe her, or something of the sort.”
Now, Helen Tower was not in Meiklejohn’s confidence. He was compelled to trust her in the matter of the Costa Rica concession, but he was far too wise to let her into any secret where Winifred was concerned. Anxious to stab with another’s hand, she thought that Mrs. Carshaw might be used to punish her wayward son.
“I’m not sure—” She paused doubtfully. “I do happen to know Mr. Meiklejohn’s whereabouts,but it is most important he should not be troubled.”
“Helen, you used to like Rex more than a little. With an effort, I can save him still.”
“But he may suspect you, have you watched, your movements tracked.”
Mrs. Carshaw laughed. “My dear, he is far too much taken up with his Winifred.”
“Has he found her, then?”
“Does he not see her daily?”
Here were cross purposes. Mrs. Tower was puzzled.
“If I tell you where the Senator is, you are sure Rex will not follow you?”
“Quite certain.”
“His address is the Marlborough-Blenheim, Atlantic City.”
“Helen, you’re a dear! I shall go there to-morrow, if necessary. But it will be best to write him first.”
“Don’t say I told you.”
“Above all things, Helen, I am discreet.”
“I fear he cannot do much. Your son is so wilful.”
“Don’t you understand? Rex is quite unmanageable. I depend wholly on the girl—and Senator Meiklejohn is just the man to deal with her.”
They kissed farewell—alas, those Judas kisses of women! Both were satisfied, each believingshe had hoodwinked the other. Mrs. Carshaw returned to her flat to await her son’s arrival. If the trail at East Orange proved difficult he promised to be home for dinner.
“There will be a row if Rex meets Meiklejohn,” she communed. “Helen will be furious with me. What do I care? I have won back my son’s love. I have not many years to live. What else have I to work for if not for his happiness?”
So one woman in New York that night was fairly wellcontent. There may be, as the Chinese proverb has it, thirty-six different kinds of mothers-in-law, but there is only one mother.
Steingall, not Clancy, presented his bulk at Carshaw’s apartment next morning. He contrived to have a few minutes’ private talk with Mrs. Carshaw while her son was dressing. Early as it was, he lighted a second cigar as he stepped into the automobile, for Carshaw thought it an economy to retain a car.
“Surprised to see me?” he began. “Well, it’s this way. We may drop in for a rough-house to-day. Between them, Voles and ‘Mick the Wolf,’ own three sound legs and three strong arms. I can’t risk Clancy. He’s too precious. He kicked like a mule, of course, but I made it an order.”
“What of the local police?” said Carshaw.
“Nix on the cops,” laughed the chief. “You share the popular delusion that a policeman can arrest any one at sight. He can do nothing of the sort, unless he and his superior officers care to face a whacking demand for damages. And what charge can we bring against Voles and company? Winifred bolted of her own accord. We must tread lightly, Mr. Carshaw. Really,I shouldn’t be here at all. I came only to help, to put you on the right trail, to see that Winifred is not detained by force if she wishes to accompany you. Do you get me?”
“I believe there is good authority for the statement that the law is an ass,” grumbled the other.
“Not the law. Personal liberty has to be safeguarded by the law. Millions of men have died to uphold that principle. Remember, too, that I may have to explain in court why I did so-and-so. Strange as it may sound, I’ve been taught wisdom by legal adversity. Now, let’s talk of the business in hand. It’s an odd thing, but people who wish to do evil deeds often select secluded country places to live in. I don’t mind betting a box of cigars that ‘East Orange’ means a quiet, old-fashioned locality where there isn’t a crime once in a generation.”
“Some spot one would never suspect, eh?”
“Yes, in a sense. But if ever I set up as a crook—which is unlikely, as my pension is due in eighteen months—I’ll live in a Broadway flat.”
“I thought the city police kept a very close eye on evil-doers.”
“Yes, when we know them. But your real expert is not known; once held he’s done for. Of course he tries again, but he is a markedman—he has lost his confidence. Nevertheless, he will always try to be with the crowd. There is safety in numbers.”
“Do you mean that East Orange is a place favorable to our search?”
“Of course it is. The police, the letter-carriers, and the storekeepers, know everybody. They can tell us at once of several hundred people who certainly had nothing to do with the abduction of a young lady. There will remain a few dozens who might possibly be concerned in such an affair. Inquiry will soon whittle them down to three or four individuals. What a different job it would be if we had to search a New York precinct, which, I take it, is about as populous as East Orange.”
This was a new point of view to Carshaw, and it cheered him proportionately. He stepped on the gas, and a traffic policeman at Forty-second Street and Seventh Avenue cocked an eye at him.
“Steady,” laughed Steingall. “It would be a sad blow for mother if we were held for furious driving. These blessed machines jump from twelve to forty miles an hour before you can wink twice.”
Carshaw abated his ardor. Nevertheless, they were in East Orange forty minutes after crossing the ferry.
Unhappily, from that hour, the pace slackened.Gateway House had been rented from a New York agent for “Mr. and Mrs. Forest,” Westerners who wished to reside in New Jersey a year or so.
Its occupants had driven thither from New York. Rachel Craik, heavily veiled and quietly attired, did her shopping in the nearest suburb, and had choice of more than one line of rail. So East Orange knew them not, nor had it even seen them.
In nowise discouraged, the man from the Bureau set about his inquiry methodically. He interviewed policemen, railway officials, postmen, and cabmen. Although the day was Sunday, he tracked men to their homes and led them to talk. Empty houses, recently let houses, houses tenanted by people who were “not particular” as to their means of getting a living, divided his attention with persons who answered to the description of Voles, Fowle, Rachel, or even the broken-armed Mick the Wolf; while he plied every man with a minutely accurate picture of Winifred.
Hither and thither darted the motor till East Orange was scoured and noted, and among twenty habitations jotted in the detective’s notebook the name of Gateway House figured. It was slow work, this task of elimination, but they persisted, meeting rebuff after rebuff, especiallyin the one or two instances where a couple of sharp-looking strangers in a car were distinctly not welcome. They had luncheon at a local hotel, and, by idle chance, were not pleased by the way in which the meal was served.
So, when hungry again, and perhaps a trifle dispirited as the day waned to darkness with no result, they went to another inn to procure a meal. This time they were better looked after. Instead of a jaded German waiter they were served by the landlord’s daughter, a neat, befrilled young damsel, who cheered them by her smile; though, to be candid, she was anxious to get out for a walk with her young man.
“Have you traveled far?” she asked, by way of talk while laying the table.
“From New York,” said Steingall.
“At this hour—in a car?”
“Yes. Is that a remarkable thing here?”
“Not the car; but people in motors either whizz through of a morning going away down the coast, or whizz back again of an evening returning to New York.”
“Ah!” put in Carshaw, “here is a pretty head which holds brains. It goes in for ratiocinative reasoning. Now, I’ll be bound to say that this pretty head, which thinks, can help us.”
A good deal of this was lost on the girl, but she caught the compliment and smiled.
“It all depends on what you want to know,” she said.
“I really want to find a private prison of some sort,” he said. “The sort of place where a nice-looking young lady like you might be kept in against her will by nasty, ill-disposed people.”
“There is only one house of that kind in the town, and that is out of it, as an Irishman might say.”
“And where is it?”
“It’s called Gateway House—about a mile along the road from the depot.”
Steingall, inclined at first to doubt the expediency of gossip with the girl, now pricked up his ears.
“Who lives in Gateway House?” he asked.
“No one that I know of at the moment,” she answered. “It used to belong to a mad doctor. I don’t mean a doctor who was mad, but——”
“No matter about his sanity. Is he dead?”
“No, in prison. There was a trial two years ago.”
“Oh! I remember the affair. A patient was beaten to death. So the house is empty?”
“It is, unless some one has rented it recently. I was taken through the place months ago. Therooms are all right, and it has beautiful grounds, but the windows frightened me. They were closely barred with iron, and the doors were covered with locks and chains. There were some old beds there, too, with straps on them. Oh, I quite shivered!”
“After we have eaten will you let us drive you in that direction in my car?” said Carshaw.
She simpered and blushed slightly. “I’ve an appointment with a friend,” she admitted, wondering whether the swain would protest too strongly if she accepted the invitation.
“Bring him also,” said Carshaw. “I assume it’s a ‘he.’”
“Oh, that’ll be all right!” she cried.
So in the deepening gloom the automobile flared with fierce eyes along the quiet road to Gateway House, and in its seat of honor sat the hotel maid and her young man.
“That is the place,” she said, after the, to her, all too brief run.
“Is this the only entrance?” demanded the chief, as he stepped out to try the gate.
“Yes. The high wall runs right round the property. It’s quite a big place.”
“Locked!” he announced. “Probably empty, too.”
He tried squinting through the keyhole to catch a gleam of interior light.
“No use in doin’ that,” announced the young man. “The house stands way back, an’ is hidden by trees.”
“I mean having a look at it, wall or no wall,” insisted Carshaw.
“But the gate is spiked and the wall covered with broken glass,” said the girl.
“Such obstacles can be surmounted by ladders and folded tarpaulins, or even thick overcoats,” observed Steingall.
“I’m a plumber,” said the East Orange man. “If you care to run back to my place, I c’n give you a telescope ladder and a tarpaulin. But perhaps we may butt into trouble?”
“For shame, Jim! I thought you’d do a little thing like that to help a girl in distress.”
“First I’ve heard of any girl.”
“My name is Carshaw,” came the prompt assurance. “Here’s my card; read it by the lamp there. I’ll guarantee you against consequences, pay any damages, and reward you if our search yields results.”
“Jim—” commenced the girl reproachfully, but he stayed her with a squeeze.
“Cut it out, Polly,” he said. “You don’t wish me to start housebreaking, do you? But if there’s a lady to be helped, an’ Mr. Carshaw says it’s O.K., I’m on. A fellow who was with Funston in the Philippines won’t sidestep a little job of that sort.”
Polly, appeased and delighted with the adventure, giggled. “I’d think not, indeed.”
“It is lawbreaking, but I am inclined to back you up,” confided Steingall to Carshaw when the car was humming back to East Orange. “At the worst you can only be charged with trespass, as my evidence will be taken that you had no unlawful intent.”
“Won’t you come with me?”
“Better not. You see, I am only helping you. You have an excuse; I, as an official, have none—if a row springs up and doors have to be kicked open, for instance. Moreover, this is the State of New Jersey and outside my bailiwick.”
“Perhaps the joker behind us may be useful.”
“He will be, or his girl will know the reason why. He may have fought in every battle in the Spanish War, but she has more pep in her.”
The soldierly plumber was as good as his word. He produced the ladder and the tarpaulin, and a steel wrench as well.
“If you do a thing at all do it thoroughly. That’s what Funston taught us,” he grinned.
Carshaw thanked him, and in a few minutes they were again looking at the tall gate and the dark masses of the garden trees silhouettedagainst the sky. They had not encountered many wayfarers during their three journeys. The presence of a car at the entrance to such a pretentious place would not attract attention, and the scaling of the wall was only a matter of half a minute.
“No use in raising the dust by knocking. Go over,” counseled Steingall. “Try to open the gate. Then you can return the ladder and tarpaulin at once. Otherwise, leave them in position. If satisfied that the house is inhabited by those with whom you have no concern, come away unnoticed, if possible.”
Carshaw climbed the ladder, sat on the tarpaulin, and dropped the ladder on the inner side of the wall. They heard him shaking the gate. His head reappeared over the wall.
“Locked,” he said, “and the key gone. I’ll come back and report quickly.”
Jim, who had been nudged earnestly several times by his companion, cried quickly:
“Isn’t your friend goin’ along, too, mister?”
“No. I may as well tell you that I am a detective,” put in Steingall.
“Gee whizz! Why didn’t you cough it up earlier? Hol’ on, there! Lower that ladder. I’m with you.”
“Good old U. S. Army!” said Steingall, and Polly glowed with pride.
Jim climbed rapidly to Carshaw’s side, thelatter being astride the wall. Then they vanished.
For a long time the two in the car listened intently. A couple of cyclists passed, and a small boy, prowling about, took an interest in the car, but was sternly warned off by Steingall. At last they caught the faint but easily discerned sound of heavy blows and broken woodwork.
“Things are happening,” cried Steingall. “I wish I had gone with them.”
“Oh, I hope my Jim won’t get hurt,” said Polly, somewhat pale now.
They heard more furious blows and the crash of glass.
“Confound it!” growled Steingall. “Why didn’t I go?”
“If I stood on the back of the car against the gate, and you climbed onto my shoulders, you might manage to stand between the spikes and jump down,” cried Polly desperately.
“Great Scott, but you’re the right sort of girl. The wall is too high, but the gate is possible. I’ll try it,” he answered.
With difficulty, having only slight knowledge of heavy cars, he backed the machine against the gate. Then the girl caught the top with her hands, standing on the back cushions.
Steingall was no light weight for her soft shoulders, but she uttered no word until sheheard him drop heavily on the gravel drive within.
“Thank goodness!” she whispered. “There are three of them now. I only wish I was there, too!”
“
Idon’t like the proposition, an’ that’s a fact,” muttered Fowle, lifting a glass of whisky and glancing furtively at Voles, when the domineering eyes of the superior scoundrel were averted for a moment.
“Whether you like it or not, you’ve got to lump it,” was the ready answer.
“I don’t see that. I agreed to help you up to a certain point——”
Voles swung around at him furiously, as a mastiff might turn on a wretched mongrel.
“Say, listen! If I’m up to the neck in this business, you’re in it over your ears. You can’t duck now, you white-livered cur! The cops know you. They had you in their hands once, and warned you to leave this girl alone. If I stand in the dock you’ll stand there, too, and I’m not the man to say the word that’ll save you.”
“But she’s with her aunt. She’s under age. Her aunt is her legal guardian. I know a bit about the law, you see. This notion of yoursis a bird of another color. Sham weddings are no joke. It will mean ten years.”
“Who wants you to go in for a sham wedding, you swab?”
“You do, or I haven’t got the hang of things.”
Voles looked as though he would like to hammer his argument into Fowle with his fists. He forebore. There was too much at stake to allow a sudden access of bad temper to defeat his ends.
He was tired of vagabondage. It was true, as he told his brother long before, that he hungered for the flesh-pots of Egypt, for the life and ease and gayety of New York. An unexpected vista had opened up before him. When he came back to the East his intention was to squeeze funds out of Meiklejohn wherewith to plunge again into the outer wilderness. Now events had conspired to give him some chance of earning a fortune quickly, had not the irony of fate raised the winsome face and figure of Winifred as a bogey from the grave to bar his path.
So he choked back his wrath, and shoved the decanter of spirits across the table to his morose companion. They were sitting in the hall of Gateway House, about the hour that Carshaw and the detective, tired by their weary hunt through East Orange, sought the inn.
“Now look here, Fowle,” he said, “don’t be a poor dub, and don’t kick at my way of speaking.Por Dios!man, I’ve lived too long in the sage country to scrape my tongue to a smooth spiel like my—my friend, the Senator. Let’s look squarely at the facts. You admire the girl?”
“Who wouldn’t? A pippin, every inch of her.”
“You’re broke?”
“Well—er—”
“You were fired from your last job. You’re in wrong with the police. You adopted a disguise and told lies about Winifred to those who would employ her. What chance have you of getting back into your trade, even if you’d be satisfied with it after having lived like a plute for weeks?”
“That goes,” said Fowle, waving his pipe.
“You’d like to hand one to that fellow Carshaw?”
“Wouldn’t I!”
“Yet you kick like a steer when I offer you the girl, a soft, well-paid job, and the worst revenge you can take on Carshaw.”
“Yes, all damn fine. But the risk—the infernal risk!”
“That’s where I don’t agree with you. You go away with her and her father—”
“Father! You’re not her father!”
“You should be the first to believe it. Her aunt will swear it to you or to any judge in the country. Once out of the United States, she will be only too glad to avail herself of the protection matrimony is supposed to offer. What are you afraid of?”
“You talked of puttin’ up some guy to pretend to marry us.”
“Forget it. We can’t keep her insensible or dumb for days. But, in the company of her loving father and her devoted husband, what can she do? Who will believe her? Depend on me to have the right sort of boys on the ship. They’ll just grin at her. By the time she reaches Costa Rica she’ll be howling for a missionary to come aboard in order to satisfy her scruples. You can suggest it yourself.”
“I believe she’d die sooner.”
“What matter? You only lose a pretty wife. There’s lots more of the same sort when your wad is thick enough. Why, man, it means a three-months’ trip and a fortune for life, however things turn out. You’re tossing against luck with an eagle on both sides of the quarter.”
Fowle hesitated. The other suppressed a smile. He knew his man.
“Don’t decide in a minute,” he said seriously. “But, once settled, there must be no shirking. Make up your mind either to go straight ahead by my orders or clear out to-night. I’ll giveyou a ten-spot to begin life again. After that don’t come near me.”
“I’ll do it,” said Fowle, and they shook hands on their compact.
It was not in Winifred’s nature to remain long in a state of active resentment with any human being. A prisoner, watched diligently during the day, locked into her room at night, she met Rachel Craik’s grim espionage and Mick the Wolf’s evil temper with an equable cheerfulness that exasperated the one while mollifying the other.
She wondered greatly what they meant to do with her. It was impossible to believe that in the State of New Jersey, within a few miles of New York, they could keep her indefinitely in close confinement. She knew that her Rex would move heaven and earth to rescue her. She knew that the authorities, in the person of Mr. Steingall, would take up the hunt with unwearying diligence, and she reasoned, acutely enough, that a plot which embraced in its scope so many different individuals could not long defy the efforts made to elucidate it.
How thankful she was now that she had at last written and posted that long-deferred letter to the agent. Here, surely, was a clue to be followed—she had quite forgotten, in the first whirlwind of her distress, the second letterwhich reached her in the Twenty-seventh Street lodgings, but pinned her faith to the fact that her own note concerning the appointment “near East Orange” was in existence.
Perhaps her sweetheart was already rushing over every road in the place and making exhaustive inquiries about her. It was possible that he had passed Gateway House more than once. He might have seen amid the trees the tall chimneys of the very jail against whose iron bars her spirit was fluttering in fearful hope. Oh, why was she not endowed with that power she had read of, whose fortunate possessors could leap time and space in their astral subconsciousness and make known their thoughts and wishes to those dear to them?
She even smiled at the conceit that a true wireless telegraphy did exist between Carshaw and herself. Daily, nightly, she thought of him and he of her. But their alphabet was lacking; they could utter only the thrilling language of love, which is not bound by such earthly things as signs and symbols.
Yet was she utterly confident, and her demeanor rendered Rachel Craik more and more suspicious. Since the girl had scornfully disowned her kinship, the elder woman had not made further protest on that score. She frankly behaved as a wardress in a prison, and Winifred as frankly accepted the rôle of prisoner.There remained Mick the Wolf. Under the circumstances, no doctor or professional nurse could be brought to attend his injured arm. The broken limb had of course been properly set after the accident, but it required skilled dressing daily, and this Winifred undertook. She had no real knowledge of the subject, but her willingness to help, joined to the instruction given by the man himself, achieved her object.
It was well-nigh impossible for this rough, callous rogue, brought in contact with such a girl for the first time in his life, to resist her influence. She did not know it, but gradually she was winning him to her side. He swore at her as the cause of his suffering, yet found himself regretting even the passive part he was taking in her imprisonment.
On the very Sunday evening that Voles and Fowle were concocting their vile and mysterious scheme, Mick the Wolf, their trusted associate, partner of Voles in many a desperate enterprise in other lands, was sitting in an armchair up-stairs listening to Winifred reading from a book she had found in her bedroom. It was some simple story of love and adventure, and certainly its author had never dreamed that his exciting situations would be perused under conditions as dramatic as any pictured in the novel.
“It’s a queer thing,” said the man after a pause, when Winifred stopped to light a lamp, “but nobody pipin’ us just now ’ud think we was what we are.”
She laughed at the involved sentence. “I don’t think you are half so bad as you think you are, Mr. Grey,” she said softly. “For my part, I am happy in the belief that my friends will not desert me.”
“Lookut here,” he said with gruff sympathy, “why don’t you pull with your people instead of ag’in’ ’em. I know what I’m talkin’ about. This yer Voles—but, steady! Mebbe I best shut up.”
Winifred’s heart bounded. If this man would speak he might tell her something of great value to her lover and Mr. Steingall when they came to reckon up accounts with her persecutors.
“Anything you tell me, Mr. Grey, shall not be repeated,” she said.
He glanced toward the door. She understood his thought. Rachel Craik was preparing their evening meal. She might enter the room at any moment, and it was not advisable that she should suspect them of amicable relations. Assuredly, up to that hour, Mick the Wolf’s manner admitted of no doubt on the point. He had been intractable as the animal which supplied his oddly appropriate nickname.
“It’s this way,” he went on in a lower tone.“Voles an’ Meiklejohn are brothers born. Meiklejohn, bein’ a Senator, an’ well in with some of the top-notchers, has a cotton concession in Costa Rica which means a pile of money. Voles is cute as a pet fox. He winded the turkey, an’ has forced his brother to make him manager, with a whackin’ salary and an interest. I’m in on the deal, too. Bless your little heart, you just stan’ pat, an’ you kin make a dress outer dollar bills.”
“But what have I to do with all this? Why cannot you settle your business without pursuing me?” was the mournful question, for Winifred never guessed how greatly the man’s information affected her.
“I can’t rightly say, but you’re either with us or ag’in’ us. If you’re on our side it’ll be a joy-ride. If you stick to that guy, Carshaw—”
To their ears, as to the ears of those waiting in the car at the gate, came the sound of violent blows and the wrenching open of the door. In that large house—in a room situated, too, on the side removed from the road—they could not catch Carshaw’s exulting cry after a peep through the window:
“I have them! Voles and Fowle! There they are! Now you, who fought with Funston, fight for a year’s pay to be earned in a minute. Here! use this wrench. You understand it.Use it on the head of any one who resists you. These scoundrels must be taken red-handed.”
Voles at the first alarm sprang to his feet and whipped out a revolver. He knew that a vigorous assault was being made on the stout door. Running to the blind of the nearest window, he saw Carshaw pull out an iron bar by sheer strength and use it as a lever to pry open a sash. Tempted though he was to shoot, he dared not. There might be police outside. Murder would shatter his dreams of wealth and luxury. He must outwit his pursuers.
Rachel Craik came running from the kitchen, alarmed by the sudden hubbub.
“Fowle,” he said to his amazed confederate, “stand them off for a minute or two. You, Rachel, can help. You know where to find me when the coast is clear. They cannot touch you. Remember that. They’re breaking into this house without a warrant. Bluff hard, and they cannot even frame a charge against you if the girl is secured—and she will be if you give me time.”
Trusting more to Rachel than to vacillating Fowle, he raced up-stairs, though his injured leg made rapid progress difficult. He ran into a room and grabbed a small bag which lay in readiness. Then he rushed toward the room in which Winifred and Mick the Wolf were listeningwith mixed feelings to the row which had sprung up beneath.
He tried the door. It was locked. Rachel had the key in her pocket. A trifle of that nature did not deter a man like Voles. With his shoulder he burst the lock, coming face to face with his partner in crime, who had grasped a poker in his serviceable hand.
“Atta-boy!” he yelled. “Down-stairs, and floor ’em as they come. You’ve one sound arm. Go for ’em—they can’t lay a finger on you.”
Now, it was one thing to sympathize with a helpless and gentle girl, but another to resist the call of the wild. The dominant note in Mick the Wolf was brutality, and the fighting instinct conquered even his pain. With an oath he made his way to the hall, and it needed all of Steingall’s great strength to overpower him, wounded though he was.
It took Carshaw and Jim a couple of minutes to force their way in. There was a lively fight, in which the detective lent a hand. When Mick the Wolf was down, groaning and cursing because his fractured arm was broken again; when Fowle was held to the floor, with Rachel Craik, struggling and screaming, pinned beneath him by the valiant Jim, Carshaw sped to the first floor.
Soon, after using hand-cuffs on the man and woman, and leaving Jim in charge of them andMick the Wolf, Steingall joined him. But, search as they might, they could not find either Winifred or Voles. Almost beside himself with rage, Carshaw rushed back to the grim-visaged Rachel.
“Where is she?” he cried. “What have you done with her? By Heaven, I’ll kill you—”
Her face lit up with a malignant joy. “A nice thing!” she screamed. “Respectable folk to be treated in this way! What have we done, I’d like to know? Breaking into our house and assaulting us!”
“No good talking to her,” said the chief. “She’s a deep one—tough as they make ’em. Let’s search the grounds.”
Polly, the maid from the inn, waiting breathlessly intent in the car outside the gate, listened for sounds which should guide her as to the progress of events within.
Steingall left her standing on the upholstered back of the car, with her hands clutching the top of the gate. She did not descend immediately. In that position she could best hear approaching footsteps, as she could follow the running of the detective nearly all the way to the house.
Great was her surprise, therefore, to find some one unlocking the gate without receiving any preliminary warning of his advent. She was just in time to spring back into the tonneau when one-half of the ponderous door swung open and a man appeared, carrying in his arms the seemingly lifeless body of a woman.
It will be remembered that the lamps of the car spread their beams in the opposite direction. In the gloom, not only of the night but of the high wall and the trees, Polly could not distinguish features.
She thought, however, the man was a stranger. Naturally, as the rescuers had just gone toward the point whence the newcomer came, she believed that he had been directed to carry the young lady to the waiting car. Her quick sympathy was aroused.
“The poor dear!” she cried. “Oh, don’t tell me those horrid people have hurt her.”
Voles who had choked Winifred into insensibility with a mixture of alcohol, chloroform, and ether—a scientific anesthetic used by all surgeons, rapid in achieving its purpose and quite harmless in its effects—was far more surprised than Polly. He never expected to be greeted in this way, but rather to be met by some helper of Carshaw’s posed there, and he was prepared to fight or trick his adversary as occasion demanded.
He had carried Winifred down a servants’ stairs and made his way out of the house by a back door. The exit was unguarded. In this, as in many other country mansions, the drive followed a circuitous sweep, but a path through the trees led directly toward the gate. Hence, his passage had neither been observed from the hall nor overheard by Polly.
It was in precisely such a situation as that which faced him now that Voles was really superb. He was an adroit man, with ready judgment and nerves of steel.
“Not much hurt,” he said quietly. “She has fainted from shock, I think.”
Though he spoke so glibly, his brain was on fire with question and answer. His eyes glowered at the car and its occupant, and swept the open road on either hand.
To Polly’s nostrils was wafted a strange odor, carrying reminiscences of so-called “painless” dentistry. Winifred, reviving in the open air when that hateful sponge was removed from mouth and nose, struggled spasmodically in the arms of her captor. Polly knew that women in a faint lie deathlike. That never-to-be-forgotten scent, too, caused a wave of alarm, of suspicion, to creep through her with each heart-beat.
“Where are the others?” she said, leaning over, and striving to see Voles’s face.
“Just behind,” he answered. “Let me place Miss Bartlett in the car.”
That sounded reasonable.
“Lift her in here, poor thing,” said Polly, making way for the almost inanimate form.
“No; on the front seat.”
“But why? This is the best place—oh, help,help!”
For Voles, having placed Winifred beside the steering-pillar, seized Polly and flung her headlong onto the grass beneath the wall. In the same instant he started the car with a quickturn of the wrist, for the engine had been stopped to avoid noise, and there was no time to experiment with self-starters. He jumped in, released the brakes, applied the first speed, and was away in the direction to New York. Polly, angry and frightened, ran after him, screaming at the top of her voice.
Voles was in such a desperate hurry that he did not pay heed to his steering, and nearly ran over a motor-cyclist coming in hot haste to East Orange. The rider, a young man, pulled up and used language. He heard Polly, panting and shrieking, running toward him.
“Good gracious, Miss Barnard, what’s the matter?” he cried, for Polly was pretty enough to hold many an eye.
“Is that you, Mr. Petch? Thank goodness! There’s been murder done in Gateway House. That villain is carrying off the young lady he has killed. He has escaped from the police. They’re in there now. Oh, catch him!”
Mr. Petch, who had dismounted, began to hop back New York-ward, while the engine emulated a machine-gun.
“It’s a big car—goes fast—I’ll do my best—” Polly heard him say, and he, too, was gone. She met Carshaw and the chief half-way up the drive. To them, in gasps, she told her story.
“Cool hand, Voles!” said Steingall.
“The whole thing was bungled!” cried Carshaw in a white heat. “If Clancy had been here this couldn’t have happened.”
Steingall took the implied taunt coolly.
“It would have been better had I followed my original plan and not helped you,” he said. “You or our East Orange friend might have been killed, it is true, but Voles could not have carried the girl off so easily.”
Carshaw promptly regretted his bitter comment. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but you cannot realize what all this means to me, Steingall.”
“I think I can. Cheer up; your car is easily recognizable. We have a cyclist known to this young lady in close pursuit. Even if he fails to catch up with Voles, he will at least give us some definite direction for a search. At present there is nothing for us to do but lodge these people in the local prison, telephone the ferries and main towns, and go back to New York. The police here will let us know what happens to the cyclist; he may even call at the Bureau. I can act best in New York.”
“Do you mean now to arrest those in the house?”
“Yes, sure. That is, I’ll get the New Jersey police to hold them.”
“On what charge?”
“Conspiracy. At last we have clear evidence against them. Miss Polly here has actually seen Voles carrying off Miss Bartlett, who had previously been rendered insensible. If I am not mistaken in my man, Fowle will turn State’s evidence when he chews on the proposition for a few hours in a cell.”
“Pah—the wretch! I don’t want these reptiles to be crushed; what I want is to recover Miss Bartlett. Would it not be best to leave them their liberty and watch them?”
“I’ve always found a seven days’ remand very helpful,” mused the detective.
“In ordinary crime, yes. But here we have Rachel Craik, who would suffer martyrdom rather than speak; Fowle, a mere tool, who knows nothing except what little he is told; and a thick-headed brute named Mick the Wolf, who does what his master bids him. Don’t you see that in prison they are useless. At liberty they may help by trying to communicate with Voles.”
“I’m half inclined to agree with you. Now to frighten them. Keep your face and tongue under control; I’ll try a dodge that seldom fails.”
They re-entered the house. Jim was doing sentry-go in the hall. The prisoners were sitting mute, save that Mick the Wolf uttered anoccasional growl of pain; his wounded arm was hurting him sorely.
“We’re not going to worry any more about you,” said Steingall contemptuously as he unlocked the hand-cuffs with which he had been compelled to secure Rachel and Fowle.
“Yes, you will,” was the woman’s defiant cry. “Your outrageous conduct—”
“Oh, pull that stuff on some one likely to be impressed by it. It comes a trifle late in the day when Miss Winifred Marchbanks is in the hands of her friends and Voles on his way to prison. I don’t even want you, Rachel Bartlett, unless the State attorney decides that you ought to be prosecuted.”
The woman’s eyes gleamed like those of a spiteful cat. The detective’s cool use of Winifred’s right name, and of the name by which Rachel Craik herself ought to be known, was positively demoralizing. Fowle, too, was greatly alarmed. The police-officer said nothing about not wanting him. With Voles’s superior will withdrawn, he began to quake again. But Rachel was a dour New Englander, of different metal to a man from the East Side.
“If you’re speaking of my niece,” she said, “you have been misled by the hussy, and by that man of hers there. Mr. Voles is her father.I have every proof of my words. You can bring none of yours.”
Steingall, eying Fowle, laughed. “You will be able to tell us all about it in the witness-box, Rachel Bartlett,” he said.
“How dare you call me by that name?”
“Because it’s your right one. Craik was your mother’s name. If friend Voles had only kept his hands clean, or even treated you honorably, you might now be Mrs. Ralph Meiklejohn, eh?”
He was playing with her with the affable gambols of a cat toying with a doomed mouse. Each instant Fowle was becoming more perturbed. He did not like the way in which the detective ignored him. Was he to be swallowed at a gulp when his turn came?
Even Rachel Craik was silenced by this last shot. She wrung her hands; this stern, implacable woman seemed to be on the point of bursting into tears. All the plotting and devices of years had failed her suddenly. An edifice of deception, which had lasted half a generation, had crumbled into nothingness. This man had callously exposed her secret and her shame. At that moment her heart was bitter against Voles.
The detective, skilled in the phases of criminal thought, knew exactly what was passing through the minds of both Rachel and Fowle.Revenge in the one case, safety in the other, was operating quickly, and a crisis was at hand.
But just then the angry voice of the East Orange plumber reached him: “Just imagine Petch turnin’ up; him, of all men in the world! An’ of course you talked nicey-nicey, an’ he’s such an obligin’ feller that he beats it after the car! Petch, indeed!”
There was a snort of jealous fury. Polly’s voice was raised in protest.
“Jim, don’t be stupid. How could I tell who it was?”
“I’ll back you against any girl in East Orange to find another string to your bow wherever you may happen to be,” was the enraged retort.
The detective hastened to stop this lovers’ quarrel, which had broken out after a whispered colloquy. He was too late. Miss Polly was on her dignity.
“Well, Mr. Petch is a real man, anyhow,” came her stinging answer. “He’s after them now, and he won’t let them slip through his fingers like you did.”
The sheer injustice of this statement rendered Jim incoherent. Petch was an old rival. When next they met, gore would flow in East Orange. But the detective’s angry whisper restored the senses of both.
“Can’t you two shut up?” he hissed. “Your miserable quarrel has warned our prisoners. They were on the very point of confessing everything when you blurted out that the chief rascal had escaped. I’m ashamed of you, especially after you had behaved so well.”
His rebuke was merited; they were abashed into silence—too late. When he returned to the pair in the corner of the room he saw Rachel Craik’s sour smile and Fowle’s downcast look of calculation.
“A lost opportunity!” he muttered, but faced the situation quite pleasantly.
“You may as well remain here,” he said. “I may want you, and you should realize without giving further trouble that you cannot hide from the police. Come, Mr. Carshaw, we have work before us in East Orange. Miss Winifred should be all right by this time.”
Rachel Craik actually laughed. She wondered why she had lost faith in Voles for an instant.
“I’ll send a doctor,” went on Steingall composedly. “Your friend there needs one, I guess.”
“I’d sooner have a six-shooter,” roared Mick the Wolf.
“Doctors are even more deadly sometimes.”
So the detective took his defeat cheerfully, and that is the worst thing a man can do—inhis opponent’s interests. He was rather silent as he trudged with Carshaw and the others back to the train, however.
He was asking himself what new gibe Clancy would spring on him when the story of the night’s fiasco came out.
Somewhat tired, having ridden that day to Poughkeepsie and back, Petch, nevertheless, put up a great race after the fleeing motor-car.
His muscles were rejuvenated by Polly Barnard’s exciting news and no less by admiration for the girl herself. Little thinking that Jim, the plumber, was performing deeds of derring-do in the hall of Gateway House, he congratulated himself on the lucky chance which enabled him to oblige the fair Polly. He dashed into the road to Hoboken, and found, to his joy, that the dust raised by the passage of the car gave an unfailing clue to its route. Now, a well-regulated motor-cycle can run rings round any other form of automobile, no matter how many horses may be pent in the cylinders, if on an ordinary road and subjected to the exigencies of traffic.
Voles, break-neck driver though he was, dared not disregard the traffic regulations and risk a smash-up. He got the best out of the engine, but was compelled to go steadily through clusters of houses and around tree-shaded corners.To his great amazement, as he was tearing through the last habitations before crossing the New Jersey flats, he was hailed loudly from behind:
“Hi, you—pull up!”
He glanced over his shoulder. A motor-cyclist, white with dust, was riding after him with tremendous energy.
“Hola!” cried Voles, snatching another look. “What’s the matter?”
Petch should have temporized, done one of a hundred things he thought of too late; but he was so breathless after the terrific sprint in which he overtook Voles that he blurted out:
“I know you—you can’t escape—there’s the girl herself—I see her!”
“Hell!”
Voles urged on the car by foot and finger. After him pelted Petch, with set teeth and straining eyes. The magnificent car, superb in its energies, swept through the night like the fiery dragon of song and fable, but with a speed never attained by dragon yet, else there would be room on earth for nothing save dragons. And the motor-cycle leaped and bounded close behind, stuttering its resolve to conquer the monster in front.
The pair created a great commotion as they whirred past scattered houses and emergedinto the keen, cold air of the marshland. A few cars met en route actually slowed up, and heads were thrust out to peer in wonder. Women in them were scared, and enjoined drivers to be careful, while men explained laughingly that a couple of joy-riders were being chased by a motor “cop.”
It was neck or nothing now for Voles, and when these alternatives offered, he never hesitated as to which should be chosen. He knew he was in desperate case.
The pace; the extraordinary appearance of a hatless man and a girl with her hair streaming wild—for Winifred’s abundant tresses had soon shed all restraint of pins and twists before the tearing wind of their transit—would create a tumult in Hoboken. Something must be done. He must stop the car and shoot that pestiferous cyclist, who had sprung out of the ground as though one of Medusa’s teeth had lain buried there throughout the ages, and become a panoplied warrior at a woman’s cry.
He looked ahead. There was no car in sight. He peered over his shoulder. There was no cyclist! Petch had not counted on this frenzied race, and his petrol-tank was empty. He had pulled up disconsolately half a mile away, and was now borrowing a gallon of gas from an Orange-bound car, explaining excitedly that he was “after” a murderer!
Voles laughed. The fiend’s luck, which seldom fails the fiend’s votaries, had come to his aid in a highly critical moment. There remained Winifred. She, too, must be dealt with. Now, all who have experienced the effect of an anesthetic will understand that after the merely stupefying power of the gas has waned there follows a long period of semi-hysteria, when actual existence is dreamlike, and impressions of events are evanescent. Winifred, therefore, hardly appreciated what was taking place until the car stopped abruptly, and the stupor of cold passed almost simultaneously with the stupor of anesthesia.
But Voles had his larger plan now. With coolness and daring he might achieve it. All depended on the discretion of those left behind in Gateway House. It was impossible to keep Winifred always in durance, or to prevent her everlastingly from obtaining help. That fool of a cyclist, for instance, had he contented himself with riding quietly behind until he reached the ferry, would have wrecked the exploit beyond repair.
There remained one last move, but it was a perfect one in most ways. Would Fowle keep his mouth shut? Voles cursed Fowle in his thought. Were it not for Fowle there would have been no difficulty. Carshaw would never have met Winifred, and the girl would havebeen as wax in the hands of Rachel Craik. He caught hold of Winifred’s arm.
“If you scream I’ll choke you!” he said fiercely.
Shaken by the chloroform mixture, benumbed as the outcome of an unprotected drive, the girl was physically as well as mentally unable to resist. He coiled her hair into a knot, gagged her dexterously with a silk handkerchief—Voles knew all about gags—and tied her hands behind her back with a shoe-lace. Then he adjusted the hood and side-screens.
He did these things hurriedly, but without fumbling. He was losing precious minutes, for the telephone-wire might yet throttle him; but the periods of waiting at the ferry and while crossing the Hudson must be circumvented in some way or other. His last act before starting the car was to show Winifred the revolver he never lacked.
“See this!” he growled into her ear. “I’m not going to be held by any cop. At the least sign of a move by you to attract attention I’ll put the first bullet through the cop, the second through you, and the third through myself, if I can’t make my get-away. Better believe that. I mean it.”
He asked for no token of understanding on her part. He was stating only the plain facts. In a word, Voles was born to be a great man,and an unhappy fate had made him a scoundrel. But fortune still befriended him. Rain fell as he drove through Hoboken. The ferry was almost deserted, and the car was wedged in between two huge mail-vans on board the boat.
Hardened rascal though he was, Voles breathed a sigh of relief as he drove unchallenged past a uniformed policeman on arriving at Christopher Street. He guessed his escape was only a matter of minutes. In reality, he was gone some ten seconds when the policeman was called to the phone. As for Petch, that valorous knight-errant crossed on the next boat, and the Hoboken police were already on thequi vive.
Every road into and out of New York was soon watched by sharp eyes on the lookout for a car bearing a license numbered in the tens of thousands, and tenanted by a hatless man and a girl in indoor costume. Quickly the circles lessened in concentric rings through the agencies of telephone-boxes and roundsmen.
At half past nine a patrolman found a car answering the description standing outside an up-town saloon on the East Side. Examining the register number he saw at once that blacking had been smeared over the first and last figures. Then he knew. But there was no trace of the driver. Voles and Winifred had vanished into thin air.
Mrs. Carshaw, breakfasting with a haggard and weary son, revealed that Senator Meiklejohn was at Atlantic City. He kissed her for the news.
“Meiklejohn must wait, mother,” he said. “Winifred is somewhere in New York. I cannot tear myself away to Atlantic City to-day. When I have found her, I shall deal with Meiklejohn.”
Then came Steingall, and he and Mrs. Carshaw exchanged a glance which the younger man missed.
Mrs. Carshaw, sitting a while in deep thought after the others had gone, rang up a railway company. Atlantic City is four hours distant from New York. By hurrying over certain inquiries she wished to make, she might catch a train at midday.
She drove to her lawyers. At her request a smart clerk was lent to her for a couple of hours. They consulted various records. The clerk made many notes on foolscap sheets in a large, round hand, and Mrs. Carshaw, seated in the train, read them many times through her gold-mounted lorgnette.
It was five o’clock when a taxi brought her to the Marlborough-Blenheim Hotel, and Senator Meiklejohn was the most astonished man on the Jersey coast at the moment when she entered unannounced, for Mrs. Carshaw had simplysaid to the elevator-boy: “Take me to Senator Meiklejohn’s sitting-room.”
Undeniably he was startled; but playing desperately for high stakes had steadied him somewhat. Perhaps the example of his stronger brother had some value, too, for he rose with sufficient affability.
“What a pleasantrencontré, Mrs. Carshaw,” he said. “I had no notion you were within a hundred miles of the Board Walk.”
“That is not surprising,” she answered, sinking into a comfortable chair. “I have just arrived. Order me some sandwiches and a cup of tea. I’m famished.”
He obeyed.
“I take it you have come to see me?” he said, quietly enough, though aware of a queer fluttering about the region of his heart.
“Yes. I am so worried about Rex.”
“Dear me! The girl?”
“It is always a woman. How you men must loathe us in your sane moments, if you ever have any.”
“I flatter myself that I am sane, yet how could I say that I loatheyoursex, Mrs. Carshaw?”
“I wonder if your flattery will bear analysis. But there! No serious talk until I am refreshed. Do ring for some biscuits; sandwiches are apt to be slow in the cutting.”
Thus by pretext she kept him from direct converse until a tea-tray, with a film ofpaté de foiscoyly hidden in thin bread and butter, formed, as it were, a rampart between them.
“How did you happen on my address?” he asked smilingly.
It was the first shell of real warfare, and she answered in kind: “That was quite easy. The people at the detective bureau know it.”
The words hit him like a bullet.
“The Bureau!” he cried.
“Yes. The officials there are interested in the affairs of Winifred Marchbanks.”
He went ashen-gray, but essayed, nevertheless, to turn emotion into mere amazement. He was far too clever a man to pretend a blank negation. The situation was too strenuous for any species of ostrich device.
“I seem to remember that name,” he said slowly, moistening his lips with his tongue.
“Of course you do. You have never forgotten it. Let us have a friendly chat about her, Senator. My son is going to marry her. That is why I am here.”
She munched her sandwiches and sipped her tea. This experienced woman of the world, now boldly declared on the side of romance, was far too astute to force the man to desperation unless it was necessary. He must be givenbreathing-time, permitted to collect his wits. She was sure of her ground. Her case was not legally strong. Meiklejohn would discover that defect, and, indeed, it was not her object to act legally. If others could plot and scheme, she would have a finger in the pie—that was all. And behind her was the clear brain of Steingall, who had camped for days near the Senator in Atlantic City, and had advised the mother how to act for her son.
There was a long silence. She ate steadily.
“Perhaps you will be good enough to state explicitly why you are here, Mrs. Carshaw,” said Meiklejohn at last.
She caught the ring of defiance in his tone. She smiled. There was to be verbal sword-play, and she was armedcap-à-pie.
“Just another cup of tea,” she pleaded, and he wriggled uneasily in his chair. The delay was torturing him. She unrolled her big sheets of notes. He looked over at them with well-simulated indifference.
“I have an engagement—” he began, looking at his watch.
“You must put it off,” she said, with sudden heat. “The most important engagement of your life is here, now, in this room, William Meiklejohn. I mentioned the detective bureau when I entered. Which do you prefer to encounter—me or an emissary of the police?”