The Motor Girls at Lookout Beach: or, In Quest of the Runaways

CHAPTER XIV – LOST ON THE ROAD

“Look out there, Walter. Do you want the Comet to run into the Whirlwind?”

“We are getting pretty close,” answered Walter, shutting off the power and coasting with the emergency brake partly on, for he found he was covering a hill too quickly. “I guess we can run alongside here. It’s a good enough road.”

Jack brought the Get There in line with the other runabout. “My, but that shower is coming up quickly. I’ll bet the girls are about scared to death,” he said. “Cora isn’t particularly afraid of thunder showers, but I know Belle is.”

“Then, they will have to put up somewhere before they get to Wayside,” remarked Ed. “That thunder is not far away.”

As he said this a blinding flash of lightning confirmed the statement.

“I wonder if that chauffeur Mr. Robinson hired, knows any place to put up at?” asked Jack, his voice showing some anxiety.

“Well, there doesn’t happen to be any place on this road,” replied Ed. “I came along here last week, and the only thing like a hotel I could find, was an old roadhouse over on a back lane.”

“My, but that’s sharp lightning!” exclaimed Walter. “Guess I had better get ahead, Jack. It’s safer now.”

For a mile or so the runabouts went along, “between the flashes,” as Ed put it. Then the rain came, pelting and with a tempestuous wind.

“Where’s the turn, Ed?” asked Jack. “We’d better hurry on and overtake the girls now. I don’t feel like risking it in this downpour. That fellow from the garage may not know more than he has to, and I promised Mr. Robinson I’d sort of look after the girls.”

“Listen!” exclaimed Walter. “I don’t hear the cars, do you?”

Both runabouts slowed up, and their occupants did not speak for some seconds.

“But where could they have gone to?” questioned Jack, as their strained ears failed to catch the familiar sound of a machine that had been running on ahead.

All the joy of the stolen ride instantly vanished. Jack Kimball, Ed Foster, and Walter Pennington were no longer the jolly, laughing youths, chasing the motor girls. They were three very much frightened young men, for the girls, and the car in which the other members of the Robinson family had been riding, could neither be seen nor heard!

Through the pouring rain the boys dashed on. The rays of light from the search-lamps revealed nothing but a stretch of mud that, every moment, became deeper and more treacherous!

Then came a fork in the road, and beside the turn, a lane offered a possible clue to the sudden departure of the girls from the main highway.

“We’ve got to get out and look for their tracks,” said Jack. “I suppose they put on all kinds of speed to get away from the rain.”

But although the other cars must have passed over that place somewhere, and not more than half an hour before, not a mark of the heavy wheels could be discerned in the deep, dark mud, though Jack took off one of the oil lamps and flashed it across the road.

“Golly!” exclaimed Ed, in earnest despair.

“Which way?” asked Walter, deferring now to the much-alarmed brother of Cora Kimball.

“I wish I knew,” replied he, with a sigh.

“Suppose we make straight for the Wayside?” suggested Ed. “They may have known of the roadhouse.”

“How far to Wayside?” asked Jack.

“Five miles from this turn. See, there it is on the signpost,” and he flashed his lamp on the board that marked the fork in the road.

“Then we had better put on speed and make that,” declared Jack, “and if we do not find them there, we will have to turn back, that’s all.”

“Didn’t Cora have any idea you were going to follow?” asked Walter, as he got back in his car and then shot ahead close to the already moving Get There.

“Not the least,” replied Jack. “That comes of our foolish way of doing school-boy tricks. It seems to me the joke is turned on us this time.”

“Hope it is,” declared Walter warmly. “I, for one, am now quite willing to go in the kindergarten, if that’s all we have to do to make amends.”

“I can’t see where we missed them,” almost shouted Jack, for the noise of the thunder and rain added to the distance of sound between the cars.

“Right at the spot where you told me to slow up,” answered Walter. “I heard them then, but not after that.”

Each driver now put on all possible speed. It was a perilous ride. The mud splashed up in the very faces of the young men, the lights that flashed on the road were misleading, because of the almost continuous flashes of lightning, and the danger of “skidding” increased with every mile of the race.

“Who were in the hired car?” called Walter.

“Mrs. Robinson and her guest from the West, and the driver. I wish now I had gone over and fixed it, so that they had the right man at the wheel,” yelled Jack. “I don’t know a thing about this fellow.”

“What’s his name?” asked Ed.

“Bindle or something like that,” was Jack’s answer.

Ed gave Walter a tug at the sleeve. “Don’t say anything to Jack,” he said, quietly, “but that’s the very fellow who drove the Wakleys when they went over into the ditch.”

The shrill whistle of a train startled them.

“Any other danger likely to crop up?” asked Jack. “This will surely give the girls all the experience they want, I’m afraid!”

But a few more miles and they must reach the inn.

If only they would find the party there safe and sound!

None of the boys was what might be called nervous, but when it came to possible danger for the motor girls – Jack’s sister, his friends and his chum’s friends – somehow a fear seized each of the three young men; a fear to which they had thought themselves almost immune.

“There’s the lights from the Wayside,” announced Jack, a little later, and then they turned their cars into the broad, private roadway.

Jack was first to reach the hotel office, but Ed and Walter were almost at his heels.

“Has a party of automobile folks come in here since eight o’clock?” he asked of the man at the desk.

“Yes,” replied the clerk, turning over one page of the big book.

The boys’ hearts gave a sort of jerk – it must be their girls, of course.

“Have they registered?” went on Jack. “Were there three cars, and a number of girls?”

The man looked down the list of names.

“Here they are,” he said, indicating some fresh writing on the page.

Jack scanned it eagerly.

Then he looked at Ed and Walter.

“Not them!” he almost gasped. “We have got to turn back!”

“Make sure they have not come in, and are on some porch,” said Ed. “They may not have had a chance to get into the office.”

But all inquiries failed to give any clue to the lost party, and, without waiting for any refreshments, the almost exhausted young men cranked up their muddy cars, and started off again over the very road they had just succeeded in safely covering.

“We’ve got to have more spunk if we intend to find them,” said Ed, for Jack seemed too overcome to speak. “Why, they may be snug by some farm-house fire, actually enjoying the situation.”

“I hope so,” faltered Jack. “But next time I’ll go along– not after them,” and he threw in high gear, advanced the spark and then they fairly flew over the turnpike, back to the fork that must have hidden the secret of the turn in the road.

CHAPTER XV – BOYS TO THE RESCUE

Never had a ride seemed so treacherous. Sharp turns threatened to overturn the cars and the brakes, on slippery hills, were of little use. Fortunately the engines of both machines were in perfect running order and in spite of the bad conditions of the roads the Comet and the Get There pegged along, through mud and slush, sometimes sinking deep in the former, and ploughing madly through the latter.

“I thought I saw a light,” said Ed to Walter, after a period of hard driving.

“Where?” asked the pilot of the Comet.

“To the left – what place can that be?”

Jack’s attention was called to a distant but faint gleam, and, presently, the runabouts had left the main road, and were chugging through the heaviest track they had yet encountered. They turned in between what seemed to be tall gate-posts.

“Why – this is – a graveyard!” exclaimed Jack, as the headlight fell on a shaft across a tall monument.

“Well that’s – something, over there,” declared Ed. “And I – see it – move!” He slackened the speed of the car.

“Now for real ghosts!” Walter could not refrain from remarking, although the situation was far from reassuring.

“This is a cemetery, all right,” went on Jack. “What’s the use of us ploughing over – graves? Let’s get out. We took the wrong turn, I guess.”

“Let’s give a call,” suggested Walter, at the same moment squeezing two or three loud “honk-honks” on his horn.

“Hark!”

“Honk! Honk! Honk – honk – honk!”

“That’s Cora’s signal,” shouted Jack. “Hurry on ahead, Walter. They are some place in this cemetery.”

But it was not so easy to hurry over the gruesome driveway, for it was narrow and uncertain, and the heavy rains had washed out so many holes, that the boys felt an uncanny fear that a sudden turn might precipitate them into some strange grave.

“Where are you!” yelled Jack at the top of his voice. “Turn on your lights!” pleaded Walter, without waiting for a possible answer. “We can’t tell where you are!”

As quickly as it could have been possible to do so, the strong searchlight of a car (surely it was Cora’s) gleamed over the shafts of stone, and marble, that now seemed like so many pyramids, erected to confuse the way of the alarmed young men.

“We can’t cut over the headstones,” almost growled Ed. “What on earth do folks want those things sticking up for?”

The absurdity of the remark was lost on the others.

“If the girls are around they must have been blown in here,” declared Jack, making a sudden turn, and jamming the foot-brake to keep the machine on its wheels, while he released the clutch.

“Here! Here!” came the unmistakable voice of Cora.

“Which way?” Jack called back.

“Look out for the lake! Turn in from the vault!” came the voice again, and none too soon, for without the drivers having any idea of being near a body of water, both runabouts a moment later, were actually on the very brink of a dangerous-looking lake.

“Gosh!” exclaimed Walter. “We nearly got ours that time. I’m going to get out and walk.”

“Great idea,” agreed Ed, and at the same time Jack also left his car.

More shouting and more answers soon put the searchers on the right track, and, although they were obliged to run over graves, and otherwise forget the sacredness of their surroundings, the trio soon brought up back of the vault, where the lamps of the Whirlwind and of the Flyaway told the first part of the strange story.

“Oh, boys!” gasped Belle and Bess in one breath.

“Jack!” exclaimed Cora.

“Thank fortune!” came the fervent words from Mrs. Robinson.

Jack had Cora in his arms before he could say a word, Walter and Ed divided themselves among the frightened group as best they could. Belle really fell into some one’s arms, and Bess had difficulty in clinging to her trembling, little mother.

“Another moment in this dreadful place, and I should have died!” wailed Mrs. Robinson.

“And to think that it was all my fault, that you came out just to let me – see the – ocean,” cried the visitor, Miss Steel of Chicago. “I shouldn’t have consented – ”

“Nonsense!” interrupted Bess. “You had nothing to do with the accident. It was all the fault of that – disgraceful – man. He is no more a chauffeur – than – ”

“I knew he would do something dreadful!” put in Belle, who was sobbing hysterically, while Walter tried to comfort her.

For some moments the scene was one of confusion, punctuated with such remarks as would spring from the frightened lips unbidden by brain or effort. Then the storm seemed to suddenly clear away, and with the passing of the rain went the black blankets that had hidden the lights from the sky.

It seemed almost uncanny that the stars and moon should flash so suddenly over the heads of the party in the cemetery, and reveal to them the marble shafts, and granite headstones glaring in ghostly whiteness.

“Let’s get out of here,” spoke Jack, giving his terrified sister a reassuring hug. “Cora, you are drenched through!” he exclaimed.

“Well, I tried to be on the lookout,” she stammered, “and so I could not keep under shelter.”

“What on earth happened?” asked Ed, following Jack’s example, and assisting Mrs. Robinson and Miss Steel over the rough mounds into the pathway.

“Suppose we delay investigations,” suggested Walter. “The ladies have certainly had a most unpleasant experience.”

“Unpleasant!” repeated Bess. “It was simply dreadful!”

“How long have you been here?” asked Jack.

“A life time!” ejaculated Belle.

“And we were just approaching the re-incarnate state,” added Cora, with a desperate attempt at frivolity.

“Did you see any ghosts?” asked Ed, almost lifting the little Miss Steel over a rough spot.

“Did we!” mocked Belle.

“Oh, I mean the kind that – shine,” explained Ed. “Not the mental species.”

“Belle had a regular series of apparitions,” declared Bess, now running from the terror state into one of extreme hilarity, the natural reaction from her awful experience.

“But we have to wait for that – chauffeur,” wailed Mrs. Robinson.

“Why should we wait for him?” asked Jack.

“He has gone for something, – Cora knows,” concluded the woman helplessly.

“Why, when I found my starting system was out of commission he said it was best for him to go and get new batteries. So he hurried off in his car, to go to the shop we passed out on the turnpike. It was then we discovered we were in the graveyard. He had turned in here by the merest accident. It was so dreadfully dark.”

“He mistook this road for the one to Wayside,” interrupted Belle.

“And ran off and left you in a cemetery,” said Ed with a sneer.

“But we couldn’t go on without the Whirlwind,” argued Cora. “Had it been one of the smaller cars that failed we might have managed.”

“And he didn’t try to fix your batteries?” inquired Walter.

“Why, he said he – couldn’t,” answered Cora in a tone of voice that betrayed her own suspicions.

“We really cannot go on without him,” declared Mrs. Robinson, feeling that it was due to her matronly reputation to stand firm for the chauffeur.

“We really must go on without him,” declared Jack. “Are we to catch our deaths of cold here, waiting for the return of a man, who should never have gone away? I have an idea that the fellow was simply scared, and so left his post – ”

“Oh, indeed!” interrupted Belle, “he did everything he could to fix the Whirlwind, but Cora declared it would not spark, and so he said he had to go for batteries. You see we could not possibly go on without the big car.”

“Well, we will start off. If we should meet him on the road we might – speak to him,” said Jack with a sort of growl, “but personally I don’t think the fellow worth that much consideration.”

“There will be plenty of room in all the good cars now,” added Ed, “and we can come out to-morrow and get the Whirlwind.”

“But I cannot go, and leave my car behind,” objected Cora. “I have never left it – on the road yet!”

“Let’s look it over,” suggested Jack, who knew very well that it would be next to impossible to induce Cora to go on without her machine.

Feeling secure now, the entire party set to the task of looking over the Whirlwind, even the ladies taking part by holding the lights, and otherwise assisting the young men, who went to work to put the ignition system back into commission.

It did not take the boys long to discover what was the trouble, and in a short time there was enough spark to start the Whirlwind. The car was cranked up, Jack was at the wheel, while Ed had put the Get There in a position to go ahead, and assumed control of the runabout.

It was not, however, so simple a matter to get the cars out of the cemetery, so the boys directed the girls and ladies to walk to the road, while the youths managed, by much twisting and turning, to run the machines to an open space. This finally accomplished, Mrs. Robinson got in the Whirlwind, while Miss Steel took her place with Ed in the Get There.

What a beautifully clear night had emerged from the folds of that storm!

And what a delightful thing it was to ride in safety after the dreadful experience of being “shipwrecked” in a graveyard!

“I wish we had invited you to come,” said Belle to Walter and Jack, as the Flyaway glided on near the other cars.

“I wish we had come without being invited,” amended Jack.

“Next time we will not try to keep secrets,” declared Bess.

“Next time we will not let you have any to keep,” insisted Jack, “especially if there is a road ride in the combination.”

“What time is it?” asked Cora. “I haven’t dared look at my watch.”

“The magical hour,” replied Ed. “It was a pity to leave the graveyard just then. It is exactly midnight.”

“And there is a light by the road over there,” went on Cora. “What ever could have induced that man to leave the road and drive down into the cemetery? He must have known.”

“He’s – well, wait until I get back to Chelton,” threatened Jack. “I guess we will have some fun with that fellow’s license.”

“Had we better stop at that house, and get some refreshment for you?” asked Walter. “Or would you rather go right on to the Wayside, where you can remove your wet clothing?”

This last suggestion was considered the more practical, and very soon the Whirlwind, the Comet, the Flyaway and the Get There were gliding as smoothly over the wet and muddy roads, as if the machines had never put their occupants into the panic of fear and terror that had furnished the motor girls such a very thrilling experience.

“There are the Wayside lights!” announced Jack.

“Thank goodness!” said Mrs. Robinson, fervently. “I, for one, have had enough of night auto rides!”

CHAPTER XVI – THE SHADOW IN THE HEDGE

One hour later the motor party had put up safely at the Wayside, a comfortable, home-like place.

Of course the girls were disappointed that they could not enjoy any of the inn attractions that night, for a hop was in progress, but Mrs. Robinson insisted, and the young men reluctantly agreed with her, that it was not only wisest, but actually imperative that each one of the girls go directly to her room, take a warm bath and then a hot drink, and “get right into bed.”

Cora and Jack, however, had a short talk over their tea cups, Cora insisting upon knowing just what was the matter with the ignition system of her car, for she declared, since it was so simple a matter for the young men to fix, it surely could not have been difficult for her to have understood and set it right. As the trouble was really nothing more than the short circuiting of a wire, along with weak batteries, it was easy enough for Jack to explain it to her and how to remedy it.

On her part Cora had to tell her brother of the accident to the Whirlwind, and the sudden precipitation into the “City of the Dead,” then the “escape” of the chauffeur, and the fright of all the party when “just girls and women” found themselves helpless and deserted in that lonely place.

Jack could not find words to express his indignation for the behavior of the man who was hired to take the party to the Wayside Inn. The ride from Chelton was one that might have been made safely under almost any road conditions, and from the Wayside to Lookout Beach the two ladies were to go by rail on the following morning.

“But suppose,” ventured Cora, when, after a turn about the big porch, she was about to say good night to her brother, “that man goes back to that graveyard, and spends the night searching for us? We should have left a note, and a light at the door of the big vault.”

“It would do that fellow all sorts of good to spend a night in a graveyard,” returned Jack, “and, for my part, I would like to have the chance to slide a vault door shut on him, and give him an hour or so of silent meditation.”

“You haven’t told me about the detectives,” said Cora, who was standing at the door, reluctant to leave her brother. “What did they actually say, Jack?”

“The detectives!” he repeated vaguely. Then he recalled all about his positive engagement with the two officers – his engagement made to take Cora’s place in the interview. And he had broken his word with Cora!

“Can’t you tell me something they said?” she urged. “I know it is awfully late, and you can give me the details to-morrow, but I am so anxious to hear – just a word or two.”

“Why, I didn’t see them,” he blurted out, finally.

“Didn’t they come?”

“Not while I was – home.”

“Then they must have been delayed – the trolleys from Squaton are so unreliable,” said Cora. “I suppose they got to the house after you had started out? But I am not sorry you didn’t wait for them,” she added with a sigh, “else we might still be in the graveyard.”

“Oh, yes,” Jack put in quickly. “It was a mighty good thing we found you, but the mean part of it was that we lost you. I had no idea of letting you get out of my sight, after we started.”

He laughed strangely. But it was the thought of the detectives with the two odd women from the strawberry patch that occasioned the mirth.

“You must not laugh at us, Jack. It really was not a bit funny.”

Jack put his arm about his sister. For one brief moment they stood there in the clear moonlight.

“Well, I must retire,” said Cora, “although I feel more like sitting the night out. Good-night, Jack dear. We must be up with – ”

She stopped. “What was that?” asked the young man, as a slight figure seemed to glide over the path at the very edge of the steps they stood facing.

“It – looked like a boy, – no, a girl,” replied Cora, instinctively clutching her brother’s arm.

“There it goes,” Jack indicated, as the figure almost disappeared in the thick hedge. “I thought at first the boys might be up to some prank, but that ‘ghost’ walks too firmly to be a spirit.”

“Queer for a girl to be out at this hour,” reflected Cora. “I wonder who it can be, and what does she want, prowling about after midnight?”

“Want me to investigate?”

“What; run after it?”

“Or – whistle,” he said jestingly.

Cora walked down the stone steps. She hesitated and listened. There was not a sound amid the leaves, through which the figure had just disappeared.

“I declare!” she said, “I feel creepy. I guess I had better go to bed. I have had enough of ghosts for one night.”

Jack went with her up the stairs and left her at the door of the room she was to occupy. But he did not go farther down the hall, to the big room in the alcove, where he and his chums were to sleep, although he noticed that blades of light were escaping under the door which meant, of course, that Ed and Walter were waiting up for him.

“I’ll just take another look for that specter,” he told himself, going down the stairs noiselessly. “I rather think he, she, or it, had something to say either to me or Cora.”

It was a curious thought, and Jack could not account for it, but he actually did make directly for the hedge where the streaks of moonlight fell, like silvery showers on the dark green foliage. A narrow path was outlined by a low hedge. He walked down this dark aisle, peering into the banks of green at either side.

“Who’s that?” he asked, as he distinctly heard a rustle, and at the same time saw the branches move.

No answer.

“Is there any one there?” he demanded, this time more emphatically.

Still no answer came.

Following the direction whence the movement and rustle came, Jack slipped under the hedge. As he did so a figure glided out, darted across the path, and ran toward the roadway.

As quickly as he could disengage himself from the tangled brush, Jack, too, ran down the path after the fast-disappearing shadow.

Again the figure made for the hedge.

Jack hesitated. If he followed in, the unknown one could slip out on the other side, and get away without the possibility of being overtaken.

Jack waited.

There was not a sound, or a movement.

Evidently the substance of the shadow was waiting for him to cross the hedge.

At this juncture he wished he had called the boys to aid him in the search. But it was too late to regret that omission now.

It seemed fully five minutes before either he, outside the hedge, or the figure within the green, moved. It was a silent challenge. Jack was determined now not to take the initiative.

“I can stand here until morning,” he told himself. “But I will not get out of range of that person by any false move.”

A full minute passed.

“Guess it has gone to sleep,” he thought, at the same moment trying to suppress a distinct yawn.

Then he thought he saw something move. He stepped cautiously up to the trembling leaves. Like a shiver that swept through the silent darkness, the branches barely swayed.

“It’s creeping along,” he surmised. “Now, I have to move along with it.”

With his steps quite as noiseless as those within the hedge, Jack did move toward the roadway. There the hedge would end, and something had to happen.

“Queer race,” he was thinking, when all of a sudden, without any warning, the shadow sprang out of the branches, darted across the path not five feet from where Jack stood spellbound, and dashed on back to the hotel.

“Good-bye,” called Jack lightly, realizing now that the apparition was nothing more or less than a girl. “Think you might have let me take you, though.”

He knew now that further watching would be useless, as the broad piazzas of the hotel, with endless basement steps, afforded such seclusion that he would find it impossible to penetrate, so he, too, turned back, and crossed the other side of the hedge, as he had done in coming down. Something in the bushes caught his eye, even in the shadows. It was a bundle of some sort. He stooped and touched it. Then he rolled it over. It was very light, and a small package.

“Guess it won’t bite,” he thought. “I may as well take it along,” and with this he very cautiously picked up the package, and walked back to the hotel.