Miss Maitland Private Secretary Part 34

Where his hope of success lay was that one of these satellites, to whom the character and marking of his roadster would be visible at some distance, might be within sight when he was signaled and see him turn into the branch road. Its business would be to wait until another of the fleet came up, pa.s.s the word, and the two follow on his tracks. This halt would give the kidnapers time to complete the transaction, get the money, give up the child, and bind him. If they were interrupted the situation would be too perilous to permit of delay-he had thought of an attack on the child-and if they had finished and gone the rescuing cars could fly in pursuit.

He was far from satisfied with it; it was very different from the schemes he had had in his head before he measured his resourcefulness against theirs. He dropped into a chair, sunk in moody contemplation of its deficiencies. The men he had to rely on were not the right kind, loyal and willing enough, but without the boldness and initiative necessary to such an enterprise. He wanted a lieutenant, some one he could look to for quick, independent action if the affair took an unexpected turn. You couldn't tell how it might develop, and he, pledged to his ungrateful role, would be powerless to meet new demands, might not know they had arisen.

He was roused by a knock on the door. It surprised him for his presence in the city was unknown except to his own household and the Janney family. Then he thought of Suzanne coming down to him to pour out her fears, and his "Come in" was harsh and unwelcoming. In answer to it the door opened and Chapman Price entered.

Ferguson rose, looking at his visitor, startled and silent. His surprise was caused by the man's appearance, by a fierce disturbance in the handsome face, pale under its swarthy tan, by the eyes, agate-black and gleaming in a bovine glare. He had seen Chapman angry but never just like this, and from a state, keyed to antic.i.p.ate any new shock from any direction, said:

"What's happened now?"

Price had closed the door and backing up, leaned against it. His answer came, hoa.r.s.e and broken:

"I've been to those hounds, the Whitneys."

It illuminated the ignorance of his listener, who was readjusting his mind for a reply when the other burst into a storm of invective against the lawyers and the Janneys. It broke like a released torrent, sentences stumbling on one another, curses mingled with wild accusations, its cause revealed in a final cry of: "Stolen-my child-kidnaped-gone!"

Through Ferguson's head, full of weightier matters, flashed a vision of Chapman raging at the Whitneys and a wonder as to what effect his rage had had. Kicking a chair forward he spoke with a dry quietness:

"That's all right-you needn't bother to go over it. Pull yourself together and sit down."

But he might as well have counseled self-control to an angry lion. The man, still standing against the door, jerked out:

"I can get nothing from any of them. They know nothing. They've let all this time pa.s.s-following _me_, suspecting _me_. I don't know why I didn't kill them!"

"Probably because you've sense enough left not to complicate what's complicated enough already. What brought you here?"

He seemed unable to answer any direct question, staring with dilated eyes, his thoughts fastened on the subject of his pain:

"Spent a week-lost a week! Good G.o.d, d.i.c.k, they ought to be held responsible. Where is she? Not one of them knows-not an effort made.

She's gone, lost, been stolen, spirited away, while they've been sitting in their office, turning their d--d detectives loose on me."

"Look here, Chapman, I'm not saying you're not right, but the milk's spilled and it's no good trying to pick it up. If you'll sit down and listen to me-"

Price cut him off, leaving his post by the door to begin a distracted striding about the room:

"I couldn't stand it-when I'd got it through me I left. Then I tried to get hold of Suzanne-telephoned her, here somewhere in this place. She's half crazy, I think-I don't wonder, she's fonder of Bebita than anything in the world. She wouldn't see me, crying and moaning out that she couldn't, that she couldn't bear any more. And when I begged-I thought that she and I might arrange some combined effort, that whatever we had been we were partners _now_ in this-she told me to come to you, that you could tell me more, that you could help." He swerved round on Ferguson, the hard pa.s.sion of his glance softened to a despairing urgency, "For G.o.d's sake, do. I'm penniless, I know almost nothing except that I've got to act now, at once, before any more time is lost. Give me a hand, help me to find her."

Ferguson's voice had an element of endurance in its level tones:

"That's just what I want to do. And if you'll stop talking and let me explain, you'll see I'm on the way to do it. But it's not _my_ help that you want, it's the other way round-_I_ want _yours_."

It was almost dark and Ferguson turned on the lights. Under their thin, white radiance, the two men sat, drawn close to the open window, and Ferguson told his story. The other listened, the storm of his anger gone, his dark face growing keen and hard as he heard the plan unfolded.

An hour later they parted, Price to go to Council Oaks and lie low there until the following night when he would command the fleet of motors in the chase along the Cresson Turnpike.

CHAPTER XXVII-NIGHT ON THE CRESSON PIKE

The night fell stifling and airless, unfortunately favorable for the kidnapers, as the sky was covered with clouds and the country wrapped in a thick darkness.

At half-past eight the roadster, with Ferguson driving, glided into the little village of North Cresson and swung out into the Cresson Turnpike.

Ten minutes behind him was his touring car with Saunders, his chauffeur, at the wheel. Twenty minutes later a limousine was to strike into the pike from a road just beyond the village, and a runabout, emerging from an opposite direction, complete the chain. At the other end of the ten-mile limit Chapman Price in the black racer, was running up from the sh.o.r.e drive, with two satellites, one his own motor, one a hired Ford, strung out behind him.

Of a hot summer night at this hour the pike was alive with autos; returning holiday-makers, city dwellers taking a spin in the country to cool off, joy riders rioting by, belated business men speeding to the sea-side for the Sunday rest. They bore down on Ferguson like a procession of fleeing monsters with round, goblin eyes staring in affright. They came from behind, swinging across his path in a blur of dust, laughter and shrill cries rising from their crowded tonneaus.

Keeping to their narrow track between the borders of the fields they were like a turbulent, flashing torrent, dividing the darkness with a stream of streaked radiance, cutting the silence with a current of continuous sound.

Ferguson's glance ranged ahead, dazzled by the glare of advancing lamps that enlarged on his vision, grew to a blinding haze and swept by. He could see little, blackness and brightness alternating, the motors emerging as dim solidities, realized for a pa.s.sing moment, then gone.

Once a small car, cutting across his bows from a side road, made him slacken, but it slowed round showing the gnarled face of a farmer with a fat woman on the seat beside him and a bunch of children behind.

As he went on the press of vehicles thinned, the line of the road showed bare for longer stretches. The runabout overhauled him, kept by his side for a few yards, then drew ahead, its red tail lantern receding with an even, skimming smoothness; a spot, a spark, nothing. He calculated he had covered nearly half the distance when the black racer pa.s.sed in a soft, purring rush, his eye, through the yellow fog that preceded it, catching a glimpse of Price's face. Then came a long, straight level between fields where only two cars went by, both going cityward. He looked back and tried to see the road behind him, straining his vision for a following shape, but the darkness lay close and unbroken, no goblin eyes peering through it in anxious pursuit.

The road took a dive into woods, black as a cavern, the air breathless.

It wound in sharp curves, his lamps sending their swinging rays into thickets, then out again on a hilltop, and down, swooping with a long, smooth glide into a valley. Here the touring car pa.s.sed him and he met a limousine, traveling at a pace as sober as his own, in its lit interior two men talking; after that a farmer's wagon drawn up against the roadside gra.s.ses, the horse prancing in fractious fear. Then n.o.body-a wide strip of open country with the sky setting down like an arched lid over the low circular surface of the land.

It was very still and his listening ear caught the buzzing hum of a vehicle behind him. This time he did not turn but drew off further to the right, and a closed coupe swung by, with the jarring rattle of an old and loose-geared body. He was on the alert at once, its hooded shape suggesting secrecy, the surrounding loneliness apt for its design. Its tail light cast a bobbing, crimson blot on the bed and he saw its back, dust-grimed and rusty, and the numbered oblong of its license tag. That caused his expectancy to drop-the tag stood for respectability and honest wayfaring, then, with a quickened leap of his heart, he realized that its speed was slackening. It slowed down to his own gait, and at the limit of his lamp's illumination, moved before him, a square bulk, its back cut by a small window. He felt sure now, and with his hand on the wheel took a look over his shoulder. In the distance, cresting a rise, he saw two golden dots, too far for a speedy overtaking, and even if that were possible he had no reason to suppose they belonged to any of his followers.

A belt of woods spread across the way and the road entered it as if tunneling a vault. It wound, looped and twisted, tree trunks and leafy hollows starting out as the long bright tubes swept over them. As one of these, slewing wide in a sharper turn, crossed the bank of the forward car, Ferguson saw an arm extended and from the hand a white spark flash twice. Almost immediately the coupe turned to the left, and plunged into a by-way, black as a pocket, the woods' thick growth crowding on its edges.

The roadbed was good and the leading car accelerated its speed racing onward under the arching boughs. Ferguson, close on its heels, knew that the sounds of their going would be m.u.f.fled by the enshrouding woodland, absorbed in its woven density. No chance either of meeting any one; the way was one of those forest trails, sought by the rich on their afternoon drives, but at night deserted by all but the birds and the squirrels. Cursing at the failure of his schemes, powerless now to protest or to retaliate, he followed until he knew by a freshening of the air that they were near the Sound. The coupe's speed began to lessen and it came to a halt.

Ferguson drew up a few rods behind it. He could see the trees about him picked out in detail and behind them the engulfing darkness. The machine in front still seemed to shake and vibrate; he caught the sound of a step and then a voice, a man's, deep and low-keyed:

"This is the place. Get out."

He jumped to the ground, discerning a shape by the coupe's door. He advanced, peering through his lantern's intervening glare, and made out it was alone. Stung with a quick fear, he halted and said.

"Where's the child?"

"Here. Put the money on the rock to your right."

The man came forward, a raised hand pointing to where the top of a rock showed among the wayside gra.s.ses. From the lifted hand, the light struck a silvery gleam, touching the barrel of a revolver. Ferguson, without moving said:

"I must see her first."

He thought he detected a moment's hesitation, then the man stepped back to the car and called a gruff:

"All right-quick-look."

He swung the coupe door open and from an electric torch in his left hand sent a ray into the interior. The white shaft pierced the murk like a pointing finger. Its circular end, a spot of livid brightness, played on Bebita curled on the floor asleep. Ferguson saw her as if cut from an encompa.s.sing blackness, transparently clear like a picture suspended in a void. Then the ray was extinguished, and as he stood, blinking against the obscurity, heard the man's voice, "The money-on the rock there," and caught the gleam of the revolver barrel level with his eyes.

He walked to the rock and laid the money, in an envelope clasped with rubber bands, on its flat surface. The whole thing seemed to him like a cheap melodrama and he could have laughed as he righted himself and saw the round, shining end of the revolver covering him, and the silent figure behind it.

"Come on," he said, "get to the rest. You tie me-where?"

"The oak-behind you."

It was a large-sized tree back from the edge of the road, and he walked to it hearing the man trampling the underbrush in his wake. He had a sense of a dreamlike quality in the whole fantastic performance, as if he might wake up suddenly and find he'd been having a nightmare.