The Stolen Singer Part 28

Chatelard's laugh beat back her words like a bludgeon.

"Liars, all liars!" he cried. "I might have known!"

But Chamberlain was impatient of all this. "And now, Monsieur Kidnapper, you can walk off with this gentleman here. And you can't go one minute too soon. The penitentiary's the place for you."

Chatelard turned on him with another laugh. "You need not feel obliged to hold on to me, Mister Land-Agent. I know when I'm beaten--which you Englishmen never do. Got another of those pears you offered me this morning?"

Before Chamberlain could make reply, or before the sheriff and his prisoner could get to the door, there was the chug of an automobile. A second later urgent and loud voices penetrated the room, first from the steps, then from the hall. One was the hearty voice of a man, the other was Lizzie's.

"Can't see her! Tell me I can't see her after I've run a hundred miles a day into the jungle on purpose to see her! The idea! Where is she?

In here?" And in stalked Mr. Straker, with cap, linen duster, and high gaitered boots. He was pulling off his goggles. "Well, what's this?

A family party? Where's Miss Redmond?"

"Mr. Straker--" cried Agatha.

"That's me! Oh, there you are! Why don't you open up and get some light? I can't see a thing."

"Wait a minute, Mr. Straker--" Agatha was saying, when suddenly the attention of everybody in the room was drawn outside.

When Chamberlain had told Chatelard that his horse was loose in the yard, it happened to be the truth; now, excited by fear of the strange machine that had just arrived, the horse, with flying bridle-rein, was snorting and prancing on his way to the vegetable garden. It was almost beyond masculine power to resist the impulse of pursuit. Aleck and Chamberlain sprang through the window, the sheriff went as far as the lawn after them, and in that instant Chatelard slipped like an eel through the open door and out to the gate to Straker's machine, still chugging. The sheriff saw him as he jumped in.

"Hey, there!" he shouted, and made a lively run for the gate. But before he reached it, Chatelard had jerked open the lever, loosened the brake, and was pa.s.sing the church at half speed.

"Hey, there, quick!" called the sheriff. "He's got away!"

But Mr. Hand had already thought what was best to be done.

"Come on, here's another machine. We'll chase him!" he cried, as he went for the white motorcar, standing farther back under the trees. It had to be cranked, which required some seconds, but presently they were off--Hand and the sheriff, in hot pursuit after Straker's car.

Chamberlain and Aleck, triumphantly leading the horse, came back in time to see the settling cloud of dust.

"Mr. Chamberlain--Mr. Van Camp!" cried Agatha. "They've gone! They've got away!"

"Who's got away?" demanded Chamberlain.

"All of them!" groaned Agatha, as she sank down on the piazza steps.

"Jimminy Christmas!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mr. Straker. "This beats any ten-twenty-thirty I ever saw. Regular d.i.c.k Deadwood game! And he's run off with my new racer!"

"What!" yelled Chamberlain. "Did that bloomin' sheriff let that bloomin' rascal get away?"

"He isn't anybody I'd care to keep!" chuckled Straker. "But you know that new racer's worth something."

"Did Chatelard go off in that machine?" again inquired Chamberlain slowly and distinctly of the two women.

"Precisely," said Melanie, while Agatha's bowed head nodded.

"By Jove, that sheriff's a duffer! Here, Van, give me the horse." And with the words Chamberlain grabbed Little Simon's best roadster, mounted him bareback, and turned his head up the road.

"I'll catch him yet!" he yelled back.

But he didn't. Three miles farther along he came upon the wreck. The racer was lying on its side in a ditch which recent rains had converted into a substantial volume of mire and mud. The white machine was drawn cosily up under a spreading hemlock farther on, but Mr. Hand and the sheriff were nowhere in sight.

As Chamberlain stopped to gaze on the overturned car, he heard the crashing of underbrush in the woods near by. The steps came nearer.

It was evident the chase was up; they were off the scent and obliged to return.

"Humph!" grunted Chamberlain, and for once the clear springs of his disposition were made turbid with satire. "We're all a pack of bloomin' a.s.ses--that's what we are. What in h.e.l.l's the matter with us!"

While he was tying the horse to a tree, Hand appeared, silent, with an unfathomable disgust written on his countenance. As usual, he who was the least to blame came in for the hottest of the censure; and yet, there was a sort of fellowship indicated by Chamberlain's extraordinary arraignment of them both. He was scarcely known ever to have been profane, but at this moment he searched for wicked words and interspersed his speech with them recklessly, if not with skill. It is the duty of the historian to expurgate.

"I don't know just how you happen to be in this game," p.r.o.nounced Chamberlain hotly, "but all I've got to say is you're an a.s.s--an infernal a.s.s."

Hand, rolling up his sleeves, remained silent.

"I suppose if you'd had a perfectly good million-dollar bank-note, you'd have let it blow away--piff! right out of your hands!" he fumed.

"Or the t.i.tle deed to Mount Olympus--or a ticket to a front seat in the New Jerusalem. That's all it amounts to. Catch an eel, only to let him slip through your fingers--eh, you!"

Mr. Hand made no answer. Instead, he waded into the ditch-stream and placed a shoulder under the racing-car. Chamberlain's instinct for doing his share of work caused him to roll up his trousers and wade in, shoulder to shoulder with Hand, even while he was lecturing on the feebleness of man's wits.

"Good horse running loose into barb-wire fences had to be caught, but it didn't need a squadron of men and a forty-acre lot to do it in.

Might have known he'd give us the slip if he could--biggest rascal in Europe!" And so on. Chamberlain, usually rather a silent man, blew himself empty for once, conscious all the time that he, himself, was quite as much to blame as Hand could possibly have been. And Hand knew that he knew, but kept his counsel. Hand ought to be prime minister by this time.

When the racing-car was righted, he went swiftly and skilfully to work investigating the damage and putting the machine in order, as far as possible. Chamberlain presently became impressed with his mechanical dexterity.

"By Jove, you can see into her, can't you!" Hand continued silent, and left it to his companion to put on the finishing verbal touches.

"Tow her home and fill her up and she'll be all right, eh?" said Chamberlain, but Hand kept on tinkering. The sudden neighing and plunging of Little Simon's poor tormented horse gave warning of the sheriff, crashing from the underbrush directly into the road.

He was voluble with excuses. The fugitive had escaped, leaving no traces of his flight. He might be in the woods, or he might have run to the railroad track and caught the freight that had just slowly pa.s.sed. He might be in the next township, or he might be--

"Oh, go to thunder!" said Chamberlain.

CHAPTER XXI

JIMMY REDIVIVUS

If the occupants of the old red house felt over-much inclined to draw a long breath and rest on their oars after their anxiety and recent excitement, Agatha's manager was able to supply a powerful antidote.

He was restlessness incarnate.

He was combining a belated summer holiday with what he considered to be good business, "seeing" not only his prima donna secluded at Ilion, but other important people all the way from Portland to Halifax. When he heard that the man who ran off with his racing-car was also responsible for the mysterious departure of Miss Redmond, his excitement was great.

"You mean to say that you were picked up and drugged in broad daylight in New York?" he demanded of Agatha.

"Practically that."

"And you escaped?"