Quin Part 40

"I 'phoned Miss Isobel that she was all right and she'd telephone in the morning. All right! Good G.o.d, Rose, can't we do something?"

"If I could get Harold Phipps's address I'd send him a telegram that would scare the wits out of him."

Quin brushed the suggestion aside. "It's no use wasting time on him; we've got to reach her."

"But how can we? Let me think. Do you suppose I could send her a telegram to be delivered on the train? _Anything_ that would make her wait until somebody could get to her."

"I'll get to her," Quin cried. "I'll search every hotel in Chicago. You send the telegram and I'll start on the next train."

A hurried consultation of time-tables showed that a Pennsylvania train left in ten minutes, and was due in Chicago the next morning at seven-thirty.

"You can't make that," said Rose, but even as she spoke Quin was rus.h.i.+ng for the door.

"Have you got enough money?" she called after him.

His meteor flight was checked. Ramming his hands in his pockets, he pulled out a handful of silver.

"Wait!" cried Rose, speeding up to her room and returning with a small roll of bills. "It's what's left of Nell's check. Good-by--I'll send the telegram."

Ten minutes later, as the night express for Chicago pulled out of the station, the bystanders were amused by the sight of a bare-headed young man das.h.i.+ng madly through the gate and across the railroad tracks. The train had not yet got under way, but its speed was increasing and the runner's chances lessened every moment.

"He'll never catch it," said the gate-keeper. "He'd lost his wind before he got here."

"He ain't lost his nerve," said a negro porter, craning his neck in lively interest. "He's lettin' hisself go lak a Derby-winner on de home stretch!"

"Has he give up?" asked the gate-keeper, turning aside to stamp a ticket.

"Not him. He's bound to ketch dat train ef it busts a hamstring. He's done got holt de rear platform! He's pullin' hisself up! There! I tole you so! I knowed he was the kind of fellow that gits what he goes after."

Quin caught the train, but he paid for his run. A brakeman found him collapsed on the platform, in such a paroxysm of coughing that the train had covered many miles before he was sufficiently recovered to go inside and take a seat. But, even as he leaned back limp and exhausted, he was conscious of a dull satisfaction that he was traveling toward Eleanor. He refused to think of the absurdity of his wild quest, of her probable anger at his interference. He fought back his despair, his jealousy, his inordinate fear. The one thing necessary now was to get to her--to be on hand in case she needed him.

Through the interminable hours of the night almost every breath came with an effort, but he scarcely heeded the fact. With characteristic persistence he forced himself to follow her steps in imagination from the time she left home until she reached her destination. The eight-o'clock sleeper that she had taken was due in Chicago at five-thirty. She would probably not leave it before seven at the earliest, and by that time Rose's telegram ought to have reached her. He tried to picture its effect on her. Much would depend upon the time that intervened between its reception and her seeing Mr. Phipps. If he met her, as he probably would, he would sweep aside all her doubts. If, on the other hand, Eleanor had time to think the matter over, her innate common sense might make her wait at least until she heard what Rose had to tell her. On the bare chance of his not meeting her, what would she do? Take the next train home? Go to his apartment? Go to a hotel alone?

Plan after plan rushed through Quin's mind, only to be impatiently discarded. He sat tense and still, with his clenched hands rammed in his pockets and his eyes fixed on the black square of the window. Sometimes dim objects flew past, and now and then sharp, vivid lights stabbed the darkness. Once the smelting-pots of a huge iron foundry belched forth a circle of swirling flames, and for a moment wrenched his mind off his problems. Then the regular pounding of the wheels on the rails recalled him.

"She's gone to be married. Gone--to be married. Gone--to be married."

He realized that they had been saying it in monotonous rhythm ever since he started--that they would go on saying it through eternity.

Suddenly the train jarred to a standstill. Figures with lanterns emerged through a cloud of steam and stood under his window.

"Guess we got a hot-box," said a sleepy pa.s.senger across the aisle. "That means I'll miss my connection."

Quin got up and went out on the platform. He was filled with rage at the lazy deliberation with which the men set about their task. He longed to wrench the tools out of their hands and do the job himself.

"How much will this put us behind?" he demanded of the conductor.

"Oh, not more than twenty minutes. We'll make some of it up before morning."

Once more under way, Quin dropped into a troubled sleep. He dreamed that he was pursuing a Hun over miles of barbed-wire entanglements; but when he overtook him and forced him to the ground, the face under the steel helmet was the smiling, supercilious face of Harold Phipps. He woke up with a start and stretched his cold limbs. The black square of the window had turned to gray; arrows of rain shot diagonally across it. He realized for the first time that he had neither hat nor overcoat, but he did not care. In ten minutes more he would be in Chicago, in the same city with Eleanor.

Notwithstanding the fact that it was pouring rain when the train pulled into the station, Quin stood on the lowest step of the platform, ready to alight.

"Say, young fellow, you forgot your hat," said a man behind him.

"Didn't have any," answered Quin.

"I got an extra cap if you want it," offered the man obligingly.

Quin, already on the platform, caught it as the man tossed it out to him.

Das.h.i.+ng through the depot, he hurled himself into a taxi.

"Monon Station!" he shouted, "and drive like the devil."

Just what kind of chauffeur the devil is has never been demonstrated, but if that taxi-driver, urged on by Quin, was his counterpart, it is safe to infer that there are no traffic laws in Hades. In spite of the fact that the streets were like gla.s.s from the driving rain, and the wind-s.h.i.+eld a gray blur, in spite of the fact that a tire went flat on a rear wheel, that decrepit old taxi rose to the occasion and made the transit in record time.

Arrived at the station, Quin thrust a bill into the driver's hand and dashed down the steps to the lower level. In answer to his frenzied inquiry he was told that the Express had come in two hours before and that the pa.s.sengers had probably all left the sleeper by this time.

Nothing daunted, he rushed out to the tracks and accosted a porter who was sweeping out the rear coach.

"Yas, sir, this is it," answered the negro. "Young lady? Yas, sir; there was five or six of 'em on board last night. Pretty? Yas, sir, they was all pretty--all but one, and she wasn't so bad looking."

"Did one of them get a telegram in the night or this morning?"

The porter's face brightened. "Yas, sir. Boy come through soon as we got in. Had a wire for young lady in lower six."

"Do you know what time she left the car?"

"About half hour ago, I should say. Party she was expecting to meet her didn't turn up, and I had to git her a red-cap to carry her suit-case.

Thanky, sir."

Quin tore back to the station and dashed through the waiting-room, the dining-room, the baggage-room. He was on the point of going out to the taxi-stand and interrogating each driver in turn, when his eyes were caught by a smart suit-case that lay unattended on one of the seats. It bore the inscription "E.M.B.--Ky."

In his sudden relief he could have s.n.a.t.c.hed it up and embraced it. But where was Eleanor? For five interminable minutes he stood guard over her property, watching every exit and entrance, and pacing the floor in his impatience. Suddenly an idea occurred to him, and, cursing himself for his stupidity, he strode over to the telephone-booths.

Eleanor was in the corner one, the receiver at her ear, evidently waiting for her call. As Quin flung upon the door she turned and faced him in defiant surprise.

"What are you doing here?" she demanded indignantly. "Did grandmother send you?"

"No; she doesn't know I'm here."

Eleanor turned nervously to the telephone.

"h.e.l.lo! I can't understand you. Put--what? Oh! I forgot. Wait a minute----"

Letting the receiver swing, she fumbled in her purse; then, finding no small change, looked appealingly at Quin.

He produced the necessary coin and handed it to her.