The Bartlett Mystery Part 19

"You should have been here," she snapped. "Everything may be lost. A man is down here after Winifred, and I've caught her talking to him in secret."

"A cop?" and Voles glanced around the otherwise deserted lobby.

"I don't know--most probably. Or he may be that same man who was walking with her on Wednesday night in Central Park. Anyway, this afternoon he tried to hand her a note in offering her a newspaper. The note fell, and I saw it. Afterward he managed to get it to her in some way, though I never for a moment let her out of my sight; and they met about seven o'clock behind the church."

"The little cat! She beat you to it, Rachel!"

"There is no time for talk, Ralph. That man will take her from us, and then woe to you, to William, to us all. Things come out; they do, they do--the deepest secrets! Man, man--oh, rouse yourself, sober yourself, and act! We must be far from this place before morning."

"No more trains from here--"

"You could hire a car for your own amus.e.m.e.nt. Rush her off in that.

s.n.a.t.c.h her away to Boston. We may catch a liner to-morrow."

"But we can't have her seeing us!"

"We can't help that. It is dark; she won't see your face. Let us be gone. We must have been watched, or how could that man have found us out? Ralph! Don't you understand? You must do something."

"Where's this spy you gab of? I'll--"

"This is not the Mexican border. You can't shoot here. The man is not the point, but the girl. She must be gotten away at once."

"Nothing easier. Off, now to the hotel, and be ready in half an hour.

I'll bring the car around."

Rachel Craik wanted no further discussion. She reached the Maples Inn in a flurry of little runs. Before the door she saw two glaring lights, the lamps of Carshaw's automobile. It was not far from eleven. Even as she approached the hotel, Carshaw got in and drove down the street. He drew up on a patch of gra.s.s by the roadside at the end of the lane behind the church. Soon after this he heard a clock strike eleven.

His eyes peered down the darkness of the lane to see Winifred coming, as she had promised. It was still drizzling slightly--the night was heavy, stagnant and silent. Winifred did not come, and Carshaw's brows puckered with care and foreboding. A quarter of an hour pa.s.sed, but no light tread gladdened his ear. Fairfield lay fast asleep.

Carshaw could no longer sit still. He paced restlessly about the wet gra.s.s to ease his anxious heart. And so another quarter of an hour wore slowly. Then the sound of a fast-moving car broke the silence. Down the road a pair of dragon-eyes blazed. The car came like the chariots of Sennacherib, in reckless flight. Soon it was upon him. He drew back out of the road toward his own racer.

Though rather surprised at this urgent flight he had no suspicion that Winifred might be the cause of it. As the car dashed past he clearly saw on the front seat two men, and in the tonneau he made out the forms of two women. The faces of any of the quartet were wholly merged in speed and the night, but some white object fluttered in the swirl of air and fell forlornly in the road, dropping swiftly in its final plunge, like a stricken bird. He darted forward and picked up a lady's handkerchief.

Then he knew! Winifred was being reft from him again. He leaped to his own car, started the engine, turned with reckless haste, and in a few seconds was hot in chase.

CHAPTER XII

THE PURSUIT

The two automobiles rushed along the Boston Post Road, heading for Bridgeport. The loud rivalry of their straining engines awoke many a wayside dweller, and brought down maledictions on the heads of all midnight joy-riders.

Carshaw knew the road well, and his car was slightly superior to the other in speed. His hastily evolved plan was to hold the kidnappers until they were in the main street of Bridgeport. There he could dash ahead, block further progress, risking a partial collision if necessary, and refer the instant quarrel to the police, bidding them verify his version of the dispute by telephoning New York.

He could only hope that Winifred would bear him out as against her "aunt," and he felt sure that Voles and his fellow-adventurer dare not risk close investigation by the law. At any rate, his main object at present was to overtake the car in front, which had gained a flying start, and thus spoil any maneuvering for escape, such as turning into a side road. In his enthusiasm he pressed on too rapidly.

He was seen, and his intent guessed. The leading car slowed a trifle in rounding a bend; as Carshaw careened into view a revolver-shot rang out, and a bullet drilled a neat hole in the wind-screen, making a noise like the sharp crack of a whip. Simultaneously came a scream!

That must be Winifred's cry of terror in his behalf. The sound nerved him anew. He saw red. A second shot, followed by a wilder shriek, spat lead somewhere in the bonnet. Carshaw set his teeth, gave the engine every ounce of power, and the two chariots of steel went raging, reckless of consequences, along the road.

There must be a special Providence that looks after chauffeurs, as well as after children and drunkards, for at some places the road, though wide enough, was so dismal with shadow that if any danger lurked within the darkness it would not have been seen in time to be avoided.

"Drunkenness" is, indeed, the word to describe the state of mind of the two drivers by this time--a heat to be on, a wrath against obstacles, a storm in the blood, and a light in the eyes. Voles would have whirled through a battalion of soldiers on the march, if he had met them, and would have hissed curses at them as he pitched over their bodies. He knew how to handle an automobile, having driven one over the rough tracks of the Rockies, so this well-kept road offered no difficulties.

For five minutes the cars raged ahead, pa.s.sed through a sleeping village street and down a hill into open country beyond.

No sound was made by their occupants, whose minds and purposes remained dark one to the other. Voles might have fancied himself chased by the flight of witches who harried Tam o' Shanter, while Carshaw might have been hunting a cargo of ghosts; only the running hum of the cars droned its music along the highway, with a staccato accompaniment of revolver-shots and Winifred's appeals to heaven for aid. Meantime, the rear car still gained on the one in front. And, on a sudden, Carshaw was aware of a shouting, though he could not make out the words. It was Mick the Wolf, who had clambered into the tonneau and was bellowing:

"Pull up, you--Pull up, or I'll get you sure!"

Nor was the threat a waste of words, for he had hardly shouted when again a bullet flicked past Carshaw's head.

Just then a bend of the road and a patch of woodland hid the two cars from each other; but they had hardly come out upon a reach of straight road again when another shot was fired. Carshaw, however, was now crouched low over the steering wheel, and using the hood of the car as a breast-work; though, since he was obliged to look out, his head was still more or less exposed.

He bated no whit of speed on this account, but raced on; still, that firing in the dark had an effect upon his nerves, making him feel rather queer and small, for every now and again at intervals of a few seconds, it was sure to come, the desperado taking slow, cool aim with the perseverance of a man plying his day's work, of a man repeating to himself the motto:

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again."

Those shots, moreover, were coming from a hand whose aim seldom failed--a dead shot, baffled only by the unconquerable vibration. And yet Carshaw was untouched. He could not even think. He was conscious only of the thrum of the car, the spurts of flame, the whistle of lead, the hysterical frenzy of Winifred's plaints.

The darkness alone saved him, but the more he caught up with the fugitive the less was this advantage likely to stand him in good stead.

And when he should actually catch them up--what then? This question presented itself now to his heated mind. He had no plan of action. None was possible. Even in Bridgeport what could he do? There were two against one--he would simply be shot as he pa.s.sed the other car.

It was only the heat of the hunt that had created in him the feeling that he must overtake them, though he died for it; but when he was within thirty yards of the front car, and two shots had come dangerously near in swift succession, a flash of reason warned him, and he determined to slacken speed a little. He was not given time to do this.

There was an outcry on the car in front from three throats in it.

A mob of oxen, being driven to some market, blocked the road just beyond a bend. The men in charge had heard the thunder of the oncoming racers, with its ominous...o...b..igato of screams and shooting. They had striven desperately to whack the animals to the hedge on either side, and were bawling loud warnings to those thrice accursed gunmen whom they imagined chased by police. Their efforts, their yells, were useless. Sixty miles an hour demands at least sixty yards for safety. When Voles put hand and foot to the brakes he had hardly a clear s.p.a.ce of ten. An obstreperous bullock was the immediate cause of disaster. Facing the dragon eyes, it charged valiantly!

Mick the Wolf, running short of cartridges, was about to ask Voles to slow down until he "got" the reckless pursuer, when he found himself describing a parabola backward through the air. He landed in the roadway, breaking his left arm.

Voles had an extraordinary lurid oath squeezed out of his vast bulk as he was forced onto the steering-wheel, the pillar snapping like a carrot. Winifred and Rachel Craik were flung against the padded back of the driving seat, but saved from real injury because of their crouching to avoid Mick the Wolf.

Voles was as quick as a wildcat in an emergency like this. He was on his feet in a second, with a leg over the door, meaning to shoot Carshaw ere the latter could do anything to protect himself. But luck, dead against honesty thus far, suddenly veered against crime. Carshaw's car smashed into the rear of the heavy ma.s.s composed of crushed bullock and automobile no longer mobile, and dislocated its own engine and feed pipes. The jerk threw Voles heavily, and nearly, not quite, sprained his ankle. So, during a precious second or two, he lay almost stunned on the left side of the road.

Carshaw, given a hint of disaster by the slightest fraction of time, and already braced low in the body of his car, was able to jump un.o.bserved from the wreck. As though his brain were illumined by a flash of lightning, he remembered that the signal handkerchief had fluttered from the off side of the flying car, so he ran to the right, and grabbed a breathless bundle of soft femininity out of the ruin.

"Winifred," he gasped.

"Oh, are you safe?" came the strangled sob. So that was her first thought, his safety! It is a thrilling moment in a man's life when he learns that his well-being provides an all-sufficing content for some dear woman. Come weal, come woe, Carshaw knew then that he was clasping his future wife in his arms. He ran with her through a mob of frightened cattle, and discovered a gate leading into a field.

"Can you stand if I lift you over?" he said, leaning against the bars.

"Of course! I can run, too," and, in maidenly effort to free herself, she hugged him closer. They crossed the gate and together breasted a slight rise through scattered sheaves of corn-shucks. Meanwhile, Voles and the cattlemen were engaged in a cursing match until Rachel Craik, recovering her wind, screamed an eldrich command:

"Stop, you fool! They're getting away. He has taken her down the road!"

Voles limped off in pursuit, and Mick the Wolf took up the fierce argument with the drivers. At that instant the wreck blazed into flame.