The Perils of Pauline Part 24

He bustled about giving orders to the workmen who were preparing to cut the ropes, then flitting back to the crowd to answer the questions of impromptu admirers.

Pauline had left the car and was standing between Owen and Harry near the rapidly filling bag.

"I wish I could talk to him, too--he's so cute and hippety-hoppy,"

she said.

Owen stepped to Panatella's side.

"Would you permit the young lady to see the balloon basket?" he asked.

"With pleasure," said the airman after a glance at Pauline. He led the way to the basket, and helped Pauline up so that she could look at the equipment, the anchor with its long coil of rope, the sand bags and water bottles.

She was plainly fascinated as Panatella explained the manner of his flight and his drop through the air. As she saw them attach the basket to the tugging bag she was thrilled.

At this moment there was a flurry of excitement on the outskirts of the crowd. A horseman on a beautiful bay mount, that was evidently unmanageable, came plunging and swerving down the field.

The crowd broke and scattered in front of the menacing hoofs that flew in the air as the vicious animal reared.

The horseman, clad in a somewhat threadbare riding suit, was a small man with beady black eyes that turned from side to side as he swayed in his saddle. He seemed to be afraid of his mount and to be looking for help. But it was remarkable that apparently so poor a rider held his seat and actually managed to bring the beast to a nervous stand some fifty yards from the balloon.

The little man looked around over the heads of the crowd. He caught sight of Owen beside Pauline near the balloon basket. The lifting of his riding cap might or might not have been a salute and signal.

"Oh, I wish I hadn't promised Harry not to go up. I know Signor Panatella would take me," sighed Pauline.

Harry had turned away to watch the actions of the strange horseman.

"You might scare him a little," Owen suggested.

Those words were the greatest risk he had taken in all his deeply laid plots.

Pauline caught at the suggestion eagerly. She sprang lightly from the little platform into the balloon car.

A murmur of mingled astonishment, applause and alarm rose from the crowd. Two of the workmen were cutting the last ropes that held the basket to earth. Ten others were holding it with their hands awaiting the airman.

Panatella purposely delayed the moment of mounting the basket. The tugging of the huge balloon against the strength of a dozen men gave impress to his feat, and he liked the state of suspense.

But the sound from the surprised throng called his attention now to a scene that made him forget affectation and effect. He started to run toward the basket, shouting peremptory orders:

"Out of the car; out of the car instantly, madame! You are risking your life."

His excitement infected the crowd. Surging, it seemed to sweep with it the rider on the restive horse. For, as a hand was suddenly lifted in the midst of the crowd the horse apparently overcame the legs braced to spring, it shot forward directly at the balloon basket.

The hand that had been raised was the hand of Raymond Owen.

All was happening so swiftly that neither Harry nor Panatella reached the basket before the maddened animal.

The crowd had given way in panic before it. Cries of fright were mingled with cries of pain as the beast charged straight upon the men holding the basket, felling and crushing them with shoulder and hoof.

For an instant a few desperate hands held to the wrenching car.

Panatella had all but reached the platform; Harry was within arm's length of it, when, with a writhing twist the bag jerked the basket sideways and upward, knocking to the ground the last two men who had held it and whirling forth into the deathly emptiness of s.p.a.ce a cowering, stunned girl, whose white face peered and white hands pleaded over the basket rim--peered down upon the upturned faces of thousands who would have risked their lives to aid, but who stood helpless in their pity, hushed in fear.

For a moment Harry had stood dazed. It was as if the tw.a.n.ging taut of the ropes, as the bag tore almost from his grasp the most precious being in the world, had snapped the fibers of action in him.

The daze pa.s.sed quickly, but in the moment of its pa.s.sing. The balloon, risen now five hundred feet in the air, had swept its way westward over a mile of ground.

Harry turned to look for his motor car. Standing as he was at the spot from which the balloon had ascended, he now faced a human barricade.

With a shout of warning he charged at what seemed to be a vulnerable point in the files of wedged shoulders. The wall resisted. The throng was lost to all but the dimming view of the balloon. Harry swung right and left with his broad shoulders. He tore his way through.

The car was standing where he had left it on the outskirts of the field. As he approached it he saw Owen emerge from the crowd and hurry toward a runabout that had just been driven upon the field.

"What's the matter?" yelled a man in the machine, and Harry recognized the voice of Hicks.

"Miss Marvin--carried away in the balloon!" cried Owen in a tone of excitement that was not all feigned. He joined Hicks beside the runabout.

Harry sprang to the seat of his touring car. It seemed to leap forward. He shot past the two conspirators and heard Owen's voice calling after him:

"Wait! Where are you going? I'll go with you."

"You're too late," shouted Harry bitterly, over his shoulder. An envelope of dust sealed itself around the spinning wheels of the big machine as he took the road after the balloon.

Steadfast but hopeless he fixed his eyes upon the unconquerable thing in its una.s.sailable element--a thing that seemed to be fleeing from him as if inspired by a human will. Death rode beside him at his breakneck speed, but he did not know it. He knew only that he must follow that black beacon in the sky--that he must be there when its flight was over--when the end came.

He did not know that Owen and Hicks, in the runabout, were also following--that they, too, watched with an interest as deep as his, with a hope as poignant as his hopelessness, the dizzy voyage of Pauline.

CHAPTER XI

FROM CLOUD TO CLIFF

"Wonder what he thinks he can do," growled Hicks as they sat in the runabout and watched Harry pa.s.s them.

"Trying to break his own neck--for nothing," replied Owen. "If he keeps up that speed we'll get both birds with one sand bag."

"I hope so. He didn't speak, did he? You can see by the way he acts he don't want us around--even now."

"It doesn't matter what he wants--it's what he does."

"You don't think he can save her?"

"He might--and I don't want her saved this time, Hicks, you understand. I can't afford it this time. I've said too much."

"Well?"

"Where did you get this runabout?"