Lonesome Town Part 34

Remember, I've got the permits."

For five minutes or more Pape waited without any effort to free himself except from the puddle of drippings in which they had chanced to deposit him. Since all seemed quiet, he made sibilant venture.

"Jane ... _Jane_!"

The shadowy figure which at once appeared from out the darker recesses a.s.sured him that luck had not entirely deserted him-that the safe-deposit vault selected for him was the same in which he had honor-bound the girl to watch and wait his summons. On entrance of his pallbearers, she had retreated into the depths of the "tomb," quite as he had hoped she would. And now-in just a minute-he'd show them how alive was the dead man they had buried.

She knelt beside him; was bending over him.

"Oh, Peter-it is you, then? Are you hurt-wounded?" Her whisper was guarded as his own had been.

"Yes-wounded sore but only in my feelings-over being outwitted."

"It's just as well I didn't know you in the gloom. I'd have thought you dead and died myself. I was near-dead of nervousness already. Knowing you were armed, I feared when I heard the gun report that you had shot some one and been captured. I couldn't have stayed here doing nothing much longer, despite my promise. Don't know just what I'd have done, but--"

"But that's been decided for you," he supplied, in an ecstasy over the confession back of her words. "You are here to un-hog-tie me. The key-knot is pressing the small of my back, or I don't know the feel of one. See what you can do."

She leaned over him, her hands clasped over his helpless ones. "Only if you promise me," she bargained with a vague, tender smile which he just could see, "that you won't go back at them again. Otherwise you're much safer tied-hog or human."

"I'll promise anything if you'll just lower those lips one half an inch.

I think I can reach the rest of the way."

But she evidently decided to free him without the promise and trust to his discretion. Helping him turn over, she busied herself with his bonds. Long and strong as were her fingers, however, they made no impression upon this particular key-knot, tied to stay tied with some sailor-taught knack.

"Feel in my coat pocket," he suggested. "If they've left me a couple of matches--"

She did. And they had. A stroke across his boot top lit one. The odor of burning hemp did not offend their nostrils; rather, was more grateful than the most subtle incense from the freedom promised in its fumes.

After the fourth and last Lucifer had been burned to a char, the girl was able to fray and sunder the rest of the rope. The "key" turned, Pape made short work of the other knots, shook off his bonds and gained his feet. His first act of freedom was to seize and kiss the two taper-tipped, nail-broken, burnt-finger hands which had liberated him.

"Sweet pardner!... Precious pal!"

Pape always remembered his "grave" and the ensuing silence within its dank dark as the most cheerful place and the livest moment of his life.

Only the moment, however, did he allow himself.

"I've got to reward you by leaving you again, but not for long. Don't bother promising this time. Just wait until I bring the real tenant of this tomb."

Samuel Allen, while seated upon a bowlder of trap-rock that divided the opening, watching the start of the delayed excavation, felt himself seized without warning from behind. Before he had time to utter more than a gasp he was dragged back into the cave. Perhaps pain from his injured shoulder made him speechless. Possibly surprise at the a.s.sault of the "scorpion," just now unconscious and soundly trussed, had something to do with his inefficiency. He still seemed incapable of protest when the captive-turned-captor searched his coat pockets and extracted their contents.

Jane, the while, had taken advantage of her absolution from oath to follow guardedly; with automatic ready now appeared from darkness into the light of the entrance.

"If he so much as whines, shoot him-and shoot to kill this time!" Pape directed. "He deserves punishment and on two counts, I think. Just a minute. I want to make sure."

Stepping nearer the opening, he began to run through the letters and doc.u.ments taken from the jurist's coat.

"Jane Lauderdale! Can it really be you, my child?" At last Allen drew upon his font of sebaceousness. "I hope that you, too, are not in the power of this impossible--"

"She isn't. I'm in hers."

Pape had overheard; now wheeled around. A glance had satisfied him that the cryptogram at last was in hand. The brown engravings, the familiar look of which had held his eyes when he lay trussed in the open, had confirmed his first suspicion of them. Folded with the crinkly parchment was other detailed proof.

"You're under arrest, judge!" he snapped.

"How so? You're no officer and I-You can't--"

"Oh yes, I can. Some few of the impossibilities that are my pet pastime ought to be accredited to the deputy sheriff of Snowshoe County, Montana. Out with those dimpled wrists!"

With one length of the rope so recently misused on himself, Pape improvised handcuffs; with another hoppled the ankles of the jurist.

Unnerved by his helplessness, the little great man began to whimper.

"You tried to murder me out there. Now you-you-arrest me for what?"

"Ask the man behind the Montana Gusher oil fraud-your dishonorable self.

We're going to give you opportunity-a little time alone with the crook."

The accusation left Pape's lips with the a.s.surance of a theorem. The legal tricks played in Western courts against his earlier fight to protect his good name long ago had convinced him that some legal mind was master of the plot. The jurist's morning skill at court jugglery had brought its flash of suspicion. But not until he had discovered Allen as the Lauderdale enemy had there recurred to him Jane's exclamation, clipped by her father, that some one they knew might be the promoter of the oil fraud. Later had come the first sight of tell-tale stock certificates in the small culprit's pocket, their worth as clinching proof a.s.sured by his recent examination at the mouth of the cave.

For the moment Allen seemed staggered by the charge. He looked as though he should find himself exceeding poor company.

Pape turned to Jane. "Once more may I borrow your gun, dear? Some one of his plug-uglies seems to have appropriated mine own. Come."

"Don't leave me, child. Don't go with the wild-man," Allen urged the girl. "He'll only lead you into more trouble. He can't escape my men once I start them searching for him and the price he'll pay for trussing me up like this--"

"It's worth a goodly price to show you how a truss-up feels," Pape interrupted. "Of course I can't hope you'll stay caved much longer than I, once the gang misses you. But I won't have trouble re-pinching you, not while I hold these certificates of your guilt. To think, Jane, that my trail's-end should run into yours this way! It looks-don't get scared, now-but it does look a whole lot like Fate."

She regarded him, serious-eyed, yet with faintly smiling lips. "It looked a whole lot like that to me the day you told dad and me about your search for--"

The suggestion of a smile vanished as she turned directly toward the wretched-looking little big man. "Wasn't 'Montana Gusher' the name of that oil stock you stopped Aunt Helene's buying, Judge Allen? Ah, I thought so!"

With a glance of contempt for the obviously guilty "family friend," she followed Pape out of the cave. From the shadow of the wall they looked out over the flat.

"We can't continue Western style," he observed with manifest regret.

"See the mounties? They're here under instructions to report to his Honor the Judge and do his bidding. There's a limit, as I learned awhile back, to what one can tackle in Gotham single-handed-that is to say, with hope of success. We'll need an injunction to stop that stunt. Let's go get it!"

Almost were they across the open s.p.a.ce which they must cover to reach their horses when a shouted command to halt told that Allen's gang had sighted them. Instead of obeying, Pape s.n.a.t.c.hed Jane's hand and urged her into a run.

They gained a moment in the one lost to the enemy while Swinton Welch explained to the police lieutenant the necessity of capturing them. They reached their mounts, climbed their saddles and were on their way before the pursuit started from the far side of the flat. A second time that afternoon the consecrated precinct of Gotham's pleasure place staged a race-this one quite official, with former pursuers turned quarry.

CHAPTER XXV-HUNTERS HUNTED

Really surprising was the detailed topographical knowledge which the western trail-blazer had acquired during recent adventures. He picked their way through the tumbled terrain of the park heights as if from a map. That he knew the up-and-down maze better than the officers now after them was demonstrated when they gained the path that represents the ultimate democracy of horsemanship by a scramble down a rocky slope with none of the pack in sight.

His immediate objective he confided to Jane in case accident should separate them. A moment of straight riding would take them through the Womens Gate into West Seventy-second Street. There he would slip into the Hotel Majestic and a telephone booth to enlist legal reenforcements.

Both overlooked, however, an important factor in Central Park's equipment-the net-work of wires spread over its length and breadth for facility of the authorities in imminent cases more or less like that of the moment. Only when a man and woman riding ahead of them were stopped and questioned by the police guard at the gate did Pape suspect that an alarm had been telephoned ahead of them. His plan was abruptly altered.