XVTHE NIGHT OF TERROR
Inutter bewilderment we looked at one another. Evidently Mito had entered, had been surprised by some one, and in a fight had been overpowered and killed.
Quickly I tried to reason it out. Plainly, even if the Jap had been the murderer of Marshall Maddox for the plans, he could not have been the thief of the telautomaton model in New York. Yet he must have known something about it all. Had we begun to get too close to Mito for some one’s comfort?
Where was the annihilator which was to revolutionize warfare and industry? In whose hands were the secrets of the “patent of death”? Who was the master criminal back of it all?
Mito’s lips were sealed, at least.
It needed only a cursory examination of the body to determine how he had met his death. His face was drawn, as though he had seen the blow descending and was powerless to avoid it. On hisskull was a deep gash, made by some heavy implement. The weapon, too, was lying there—Burke discovered it—a broken leaf of an automobile spring, used by some one to force tires over rims. There was no art, no science, no finesse about the murder. It was just plain, brutal force.
If a bomb had been dropped among us, however, we could not have been more stunned than by the murder of Mito.
Burke and Riley were plainly at a loss, but I did not mind that. It was the look on Kennedy’s face that worried me. He did not say much, but it was plain that he was thinking much.
“Just a brutal murder,” he remarked at length, after he had surveyed the garage and finally come back to Mito himself again. “There doesn’t seem to be a clue. If it were odd, like the murder of Marshall Maddox, then there’d be more to work on. But it isn’t. No, it’s the harder just because of its simplicity. And it puts us just that much further back, because one whom we thought might lead us to the person higher up has been removed in the most primitive and, after all, most startling fashion.”
“I’ll wager that fellow Sanchez could tell something about this if we could only get at him right,” put in Burke, to whom Kennedy had delegated the removal of Mito’s body.
Kennedy said nothing, but it surely had begun to look as though he might be acting for Paquita in some capacity. Was she, in turn, acting for a desperate band of crooks? I felt that if we could break down Sanchez we might reach her.
Burke barked his orders to Riley and the rest. “You fellows have been marking time too long. Get out and find that man Sanchez.”
His men knew better than to question or defend. Action was the only thing that satisfied Burke. They took the orders on the jump and hurriedly organized themselves into a searching party, though what it was that was tangible that they had on Sanchez, supposing that they got him, it was hard to see. As thoroughly as they could the men under Burke and Riley covered the hotel, the Casino, the grounds, and finally turned their attention to the town.
Kennedy and I took up the search together, beginning at the hotel. Hunting through the corridors and other rooms brought no trace of the man we sought. He was not registered at the Harbor House, and though the clerk and some of the attendants knew him, they professed to be able to tell nothing. Nor was there any trace of Paquita.
Meanwhile Burke and Riley had spread a general alarm through the town, although I am sure thatmany of those whom they enlisted as searchers had not the slightest idea who Sanchez was or even what he looked like. The search was rapidly resolving itself into an aimless wandering about in the hope of running across this elusive individual. There seemed to be no particular way of tracing the man. The farther they got away from the hotel, however, the more convinced did it seem to make Kennedy to stick about the Lodge and Casino, if for no other reason than to keep an eye on any possible moves of the Maddoxes and Walcotts.
We were standing not far from the garage, back of the hotel, when from a second-story window, around the corner, issued a series of screams for help in a woman’s voice. We dashed into the hotel, following the shouts of alarm inside and up-stairs.
“It’s Winifred Walcott’s room,” answered one of the boys as we breathlessly questioned him.
As we approached the room on the second floor we came upon the maid, one or two guests, and several servants.
“Miss Winifred—she’s gone, carried off!” blurted out the maid, catching sight of Kennedy.
She gestured wildly about. The outer sitting-room of the suite was in great disorder. The window, low and leading out on the roof ofthe hotel porch, was wide open. Some chairs were overturned and the portières between the living-room and the bedroom were torn from their fastenings, and gone.
“Tell me what happened?” demanded Kennedy.
The maid was almost too excited to talk coherently.
“In the room—Miss Winifred was pacing up and down—nervous—I don’t know what it was about, sir,” she managed to blurt out. “I was in the next room, preparing some tea over an electric heater.”
“Yes, yes,” urged Kennedy, impatiently. “But what happened?”
“The window, sir, from the porch roof—opened—a man must have entered.”
“Did you see a man?”
“No, sir, but I heard a scream from Miss Winifred, as though something had been held over her mouth. No, I didn’t see any one. By the time I got in here I saw no one.”
Kennedy had stepped over by the door and was examining the torn hangings, hastily trying to reconstruct what had happened.
“Apparently the intruder, whoever it was, seized her from behind,” he concluded, hastily, “wrapped the portières over her head, and jerkedher backward. The rush of the abductor must have torn them from their fastenings. Besides, they were a good muffler for her cries. The kidnapper must have carried her off, with them wrapped about her head, to prevent her screams from being heard again.”
He leaped out on the roof and I quickly followed. “It would be quite possible,” he pointed out, approaching the far end, “at this point for any one to have gained entrance from the lower porch and to lift a girl like Winifred down from the roof to the ground.”
The slope of the land at this point was such that the second-floor level was not many feet above the ground level of the hillside.
I looked at Kennedy, at a loss to know what to do. Almost under our eyes, while every one was looking for something else, Winifred had been spirited off. Why—and by whom?
Craig turned to the night clerk, who had been among the first to arrive and had followed us out on the porch roof.
“Has any one any bloodhounds about here?” he asked, quickly.
“Yes, sir—in the cottage back of the hotel there is a dog-fancier. He has a couple.”
“You know him?”
“Well.”
“Then you can borrow them?”
“Surely,” returned the clerk.
“Get them,” ordered Kennedy, waving away a group who had come up on the ground just below us. “And hurry, before the scent gets cold.”
The clerk nodded and disappeared on the run.
Down below the crowd kept collecting.
“Keep them back,” ordered Kennedy, “until the bloodhounds get here. See—there are marks in the grass that show that some one has been here—and—look—on this bush a torn corner of the portière.”
A moment later two men from the hotel stables appeared, with the dogs tugging on leash.
Quickly Kennedy gave them the scent before the trail of the footprints and the dragging portière had been destroyed by the curious.
They were off, tugging at the leash, Kennedy with one and I with the other. Burke and Riley had come up by this time, post-haste from their search for Sanchez, and joined us.
Away across the lawn, through the shrubbery, the trail led us, over a fence until farther along through a break in the hedge we came upon the road. Together we four hastened out over the highway.
“There’s one thing in our favor,” panted Kennedy. “No car was used—at least not yet. And if one or even two are carrying her, we can go a great deal faster than they can.”
My dog, which seemed to be the more active of the two, was outrunning the other, and, not through any desire on my part, but through his sheer tugging at the leash, he kept me a few paces ahead of the rest.
The road which had been taken by the kidnappers bent around the head of the harbor, branching off at a little country store, closed since early in the evening. No help was to be expected there, and we followed the road which ran down through a neck of land that led to the harbor opposite Westport.
So accustomed had I become to the steady tug of the dog on his leash, that, as we passed a little brook, where it seemed the abductor had paused, I was surprised to feel his pull on my hand suddenly relax.
Before I knew it the dog had stopped. He uttered a peculiar wheeze—half sneeze, half gasp. Before I realized what it could be about he rolled over, as though he had been shot. It was not that he had lost the scent. Again and again, as he lay for the few seconds, gasping, he tried to pick up the trail.
As I watched him in utter astonishment I noticed a peculiar, subtle odor, with just the faintest suggestion of peach pits.
Kennedy, with more presence of mind than I had shown, drew up sharply on the leash of his dog, some feet behind me.
“Here, Burke,” he cried. “Hold him—well away. Don’t let him break loose.”
As Craig advanced toward me he stopped and picked up something that his foot had kicked in the dust. He advanced, holding away from him what looked like a small glass vial, while with his other hand he fumbled a small pocket flashlight.
“Whoever he was,” he exclaimed, excitedly, “the fellow is clever. Read the label.”
I did and drew back, with a hasty glance at my hound, which already lay dead at my feet.
The vial was labeled, “PRUSSIC ACID—POISON.”
“Winifred!” I exclaimed, voicing the first fear that flashed through my mind.
“I think she is all right,” reassured Craig. “If the abductor had wanted to kill her he would have had plenty of chances before this. No, I can imagine him stopping a second to wet a handkerchief in the brook and bind it over his nose as he opened the bottle and smeared thedeadly fluid over the soles of his shoes, casting the empty bottle back of him. Certainly a clever ruse.”
Together we had retreated from the danger zone toward Burke and Riley, who were agape with astonishment as they learned of the unheard-of discovery we had made.
We looked at one another in blank astonishment and fear. Would the abductor get away, after all?
“A vexatious delay,” interrupted Kennedy, calmly. “But I doubt if they counted on our having another dog. The stuff must have worn off their shoes rapidly as they hurried on. Here, Burke, let me have the hound, now. It may take me some time, but I am sure that I can overcome this obstacle.”
While we waited, Craig cut a wide circle off the road, with the dog whining at having lost the scent. For some minutes down the road he let him run pretty free, trying to pick up the scent again at some point well past that at which we had found the deadliest of acids, where a dirt road debouched from the macadam.
“Come on!” he shouted at last, as a deep bay from the dog announced that he was off again and now running silent, since he had found the trail.
We made splendid progress now, and, by hastycalculation of the time, which must have been brief before the alarm was given, we concluded that we were without a doubt rapidly gaining on the abductor.
It was growing darker and darker as we went out of the lights of the main road into a deeper recess of the woods. Our little pocket flashlights were too puny for such work.
Just then along the dirt road back of us came tearing a car. As it pulled up the driver flashed his spot-light ahead and it cut through the blackness like a bull’s-eye.
“I heard you had gone this way,” shouted a voice from the darkness. “Here, let me drive behind and light you ahead.”
In the shaft of light we could see a single figure of a man, staggering along with some heavy burden in his arms, and behind, several hundred yards away, Kennedy swiftly following with the hound.
As the light played on them, the figure seemed to realize that escape was now hopeless, unless he dropped his burden.
He paused just an instant, as though calculating something desperate. Just then I raised my gun and fired. I had no hope of hitting him in the fitful light and at the distance. But at least the shot had its effect.
He dropped Winifred and bolted.
At that moment the car came abreast of me. I turned quickly. The man in the car with the spot-light was Sanchez!
We had all come up with Kennedy now, the car stopping on the road with its lights playing full on the group.
Slowly now Winifred, who had fainted, revived. As she opened her eyes she seemed in a daze. Beyond what we already knew of her exciting adventure, she could tell nothing. Sanchez offered to drive her back to the hotel.
It was the first time he had spoken, and I wondered what Burke, fire-eater that he was, would do.
For a moment he hesitated, then strode up to the sallow-faced man deliberately.
“This thing has gone too far,” he ground out. “Has all this been staged so that you could play the hero?”
Sanchez flared. For a moment I thought that there would be a fight. But he seemed to consider.
With a shrug, he replied, quietly, “I am at your service, if I can be of assistance to the young lady.”
The man was baffling. There was nothing for Burke to do but to hide his exasperation and take advantage of the offer.
To me, the sudden appearance of Sanchez was most mystifying. Had he in reality been on his way to overtake his own agent, when he had, fortunately for himself, overtaken us? Or were we all wrong and was Sanchez innocent? No one said a word as we made our quick return to the hotel.
Winifred was, by this time, herself and able to return to her room, which was now guarded from below. Neither she nor any of the rest of us could offer an explanation of the sudden attack or its purpose.
It had been a night of terror and we were about ready to drop from sheer exhaustion. Besides, it was too late now to do anything more. Kennedy and I decided to retire, leaving the Secret Service operatives to watch for any further suspicious move on the part of any one, especially those who, to all appearances, at least, seemed to be safely asleep at the Lodge.