Polly, the maid from the inn, waiting breathlessly intent in the car outside the gate, listened for sounds which should guide her as to the progress of events within.

Steingall left her standing on the upholstered back of the car, with her hands clutching the top of the gate. She did not descend immediately. In that position she could best hear approaching footsteps, as she could follow the running of the detective nearly all the way to the house.

Great was her surprise, therefore, to find some one unlocking the gate without receiving any preliminary warning of his advent. She was just in time to spring back into the tonneau when one-half of the ponderous door swung open and a man appeared, carrying in his arms the seemingly lifeless body of a woman.

It will be remembered that the lamps of the car spread their beams in the opposite direction. In the gloom, not only of the night but of the high wall and the trees, Polly could not distinguish features.

She thought, however, the man was a stranger. Naturally, as the rescuers had just gone toward the point whence the newcomer came, she believed that he had been directed to carry the young lady to the waiting car. Her quick sympathy was aroused.

“The poor dear!” she cried. “Oh, don’t tell me those horrid people have hurt her.”

Voles who had choked Winifred into insensibility with a mixture of alcohol, chloroform, and ether – a scientific anesthetic used by all surgeons, rapid in achieving its purpose and quite harmless in its effects – was far more surprised than Polly. He never expected to be greeted in this way, but rather to be met by some helper of Carshaw’s posed there, and he was prepared to fight or trick his adversary as occasion demanded.

He had carried Winifred down a servants’ stairs and made his way out of the house by a back door. The exit was unguarded. In this, as in many other country mansions, the drive followed a circuitous sweep, but a path through the trees led directly toward the gate. Hence, his passage had neither been observed from the hall nor overheard by Polly.

It was in precisely such a situation as that which faced him now that Voles was really superb. He was an adroit man, with ready judgment and nerves of steel.

“Not much hurt,” he said quietly. “She has fainted from shock, I think.”

Though he spoke so glibly, his brain was on fire with question and answer. His eyes glowered at the car and its occupant, and swept the open road on either hand.

To Polly’s nostrils was wafted a strange odor, carrying reminiscences of so-called “painless” dentistry. Winifred, reviving in the open air when that hateful sponge was removed from mouth and nose, struggled spasmodically in the arms of her captor. Polly knew that women in a faint lie deathlike. That never-to-be-forgotten scent, too, caused a wave of alarm, of suspicion, to creep through her with each heart-beat.

“Where are the others?” she said, leaning over, and striving to see Voles’s face.

“Just behind,” he answered. “Let me place Miss Bartlett in the car.”

That sounded reasonable.

“Lift her in here, poor thing,” said Polly, making way for the almost inanimate form.

“No; on the front seat.”

“But why? This is the best place – oh, help, help!”

For Voles, having placed Winifred beside the steering-pillar, seized Polly and flung her headlong onto the grass beneath the wall. In the same instant he started the car with a quick turn of the wrist, for the engine had been stopped to avoid noise, and there was no time to experiment with self-starters. He jumped in, released the brakes, applied the first speed, and was away in the direction to New York. Polly, angry and frightened, ran after him, screaming at the top of her voice.

Voles was in such a desperate hurry that he did not pay heed to his steering, and nearly ran over a motor-cyclist coming in hot haste to East Orange. The rider, a young man, pulled up and used language. He heard Polly, panting and shrieking, running toward him.

“Good gracious, Miss Barnard, what’s the matter?” he cried, for Polly was pretty enough to hold many an eye.

“Is that you, Mr. Petch? Thank goodness! There’s been murder done in Gateway House. That villain is carrying off the young lady he has killed. He has escaped from the police. They’re in there now. Oh, catch him!”

Mr. Petch, who had dismounted, began to hop back New York-ward, while the engine emulated a machine-gun.

“It’s a big car – goes fast – I’ll do my best – ” Polly heard him say, and he, too, was gone. She met Carshaw and the chief half-way up the drive. To them, in gasps, she told her story.

“Cool hand, Voles!” said Steingall.

“The whole thing was bungled!” cried Carshaw in a white heat. “If Clancy had been here this couldn’t have happened.”

Steingall took the implied taunt coolly.

“It would have been better had I followed my original plan and not helped you,” he said. “You or our East Orange friend might have been killed, it is true, but Voles could not have carried the girl off so easily.”

Carshaw promptly regretted his bitter comment. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but you cannot realize what all this means to me, Steingall.”

“I think I can. Cheer up; your car is easily recognizable. We have a cyclist known to this young lady in close pursuit. Even if he fails to catch up with Voles, he will at least give us some definite direction for a search. At present there is nothing for us to do but lodge these people in the local prison, telephone the ferries and main towns, and go back to New York. The police here will let us know what happens to the cyclist; he may even call at the Bureau. I can act best in New York.”

“Do you mean now to arrest those in the house?”

“Yes, sure. That is, I’ll get the New Jersey police to hold them.”

“On what charge?”

“Conspiracy. At last we have clear evidence against them. Miss Polly here has actually seen Voles carrying off Miss Bartlett, who had previously been rendered insensible. If I am not mistaken in my man, Fowle will turn State’s evidence when he chews on the proposition for a few hours in a cell.”

“Pah – the wretch! I don’t want these reptiles to be crushed; what I want is to recover Miss Bartlett. Would it not be best to leave them their liberty and watch them?”

“I’ve always found a seven days’ remand very helpful,” mused the detective.

“In ordinary crime, yes. But here we have Rachel Craik, who would suffer martyrdom rather than speak; Fowle, a mere tool, who knows nothing except what little he is told; and a thick-headed brute named Mick the Wolf, who does what his master bids him. Don’t you see that in prison they are useless. At liberty they may help by trying to communicate with Voles.”

“I’m half inclined to agree with you. Now to frighten them. Keep your face and tongue under control; I’ll try a dodge that seldom fails.”

They re-entered the house. Jim was doing sentry-go in the hall. The prisoners were sitting mute, save that Mick the Wolf uttered an occasional growl of pain; his wounded arm was hurting him sorely.

“We’re not going to worry any more about you,” said Steingall contemptuously as he unlocked the hand-cuffs with which he had been compelled to secure Rachel and Fowle.

“Yes, you will,” was the woman’s defiant cry. “Your outrageous conduct – ”

“Oh, pull that stuff on some one likely to be impressed by it. It comes a trifle late in the day when Miss Winifred Marchbanks is in the hands of her friends and Voles on his way to prison. I don’t even want you, Rachel Bartlett, unless the State attorney decides that you ought to be prosecuted.”

The woman’s eyes gleamed like those of a spiteful cat. The detective’s cool use of Winifred’s right name, and of the name by which Rachel Craik herself ought to be known, was positively demoralizing. Fowle, too, was greatly alarmed. The police-officer said nothing about not wanting him. With Voles’s superior will withdrawn, he began to quake again. But Rachel was a dour New Englander, of different metal to a man from the East Side.

“If you’re speaking of my niece,” she said, “you have been misled by the hussy, and by that man of hers there. Mr. Voles is her father. I have every proof of my words. You can bring none of yours.”

Steingall, eying Fowle, laughed. “You will be able to tell us all about it in the witness-box, Rachel Bartlett,” he said.

“How dare you call me by that name?”

“Because it’s your right one. Craik was your mother’s name. If friend Voles had only kept his hands clean, or even treated you honorably, you might now be Mrs. Ralph Meiklejohn, eh?”

He was playing with her with the affable gambols of a cat toying with a doomed mouse. Each instant Fowle was becoming more perturbed. He did not like the way in which the detective ignored him. Was he to be swallowed at a gulp when his turn came?

Even Rachel Craik was silenced by this last shot. She wrung her hands; this stern, implacable woman seemed to be on the point of bursting into tears. All the plotting and devices of years had failed her suddenly. An edifice of deception, which had lasted half a generation, had crumbled into nothingness. This man had callously exposed her secret and her shame. At that moment her heart was bitter against Voles.

The detective, skilled in the phases of criminal thought, knew exactly what was passing through the minds of both Rachel and Fowle. Revenge in the one case, safety in the other, was operating quickly, and a crisis was at hand.

But just then the angry voice of the East Orange plumber reached him: “Just imagine Petch turnin’ up; him, of all men in the world! An’ of course you talked nicey-nicey, an’ he’s such an obligin’ feller that he beats it after the car! Petch, indeed!”

There was a snort of jealous fury. Polly’s voice was raised in protest.

“Jim, don’t be stupid. How could I tell who it was?”

“I’ll back you against any girl in East Orange to find another string to your bow wherever you may happen to be,” was the enraged retort.

The detective hastened to stop this lovers’ quarrel, which had broken out after a whispered colloquy. He was too late. Miss Polly was on her dignity.

“Well, Mr. Petch is a real man, anyhow,” came her stinging answer. “He’s after them now, and he won’t let them slip through his fingers like you did.”

The sheer injustice of this statement rendered Jim incoherent. Petch was an old rival. When next they met, gore would flow in East Orange. But the detective’s angry whisper restored the senses of both.

“Can’t you two shut up?” he hissed. “Your miserable quarrel has warned our prisoners. They were on the very point of confessing everything when you blurted out that the chief rascal had escaped. I’m ashamed of you, especially after you had behaved so well.”

His rebuke was merited; they were abashed into silence – too late. When he returned to the pair in the corner of the room he saw Rachel Craik’s sour smile and Fowle’s downcast look of calculation.

“A lost opportunity!” he muttered, but faced the situation quite pleasantly.

“You may as well remain here,” he said. “I may want you, and you should realize without giving further trouble that you cannot hide from the police. Come, Mr. Carshaw, we have work before us in East Orange. Miss Winifred should be all right by this time.”

Rachel Craik actually laughed. She wondered why she had lost faith in Voles for an instant.

“I’ll send a doctor,” went on Steingall composedly. “Your friend there needs one, I guess.”

“I’d sooner have a six-shooter,” roared Mick the Wolf.

“Doctors are even more deadly sometimes.”

So the detective took his defeat cheerfully, and that is the worst thing a man can do – in his opponent’s interests. He was rather silent as he trudged with Carshaw and the others back to the train, however.

He was asking himself what new gibe Clancy would spring on him when the story of the night’s fiasco came out.

CHAPTER XXV
FLANK ATTACKS

Somewhat tired, having ridden that day to Poughkeepsie and back, Petch, nevertheless, put up a great race after the fleeing motor-car.

His muscles were rejuvenated by Polly Barnard’s exciting news and no less by admiration for the girl herself. Little thinking that Jim, the plumber, was performing deeds of derring-do in the hall of Gateway House, he congratulated himself on the lucky chance which enabled him to oblige the fair Polly. He dashed into the road to Hoboken, and found, to his joy, that the dust raised by the passage of the car gave an unfailing clue to its route. Now, a well-regulated motor-cycle can run rings round any other form of automobile, no matter how many horses may be pent in the cylinders, if on an ordinary road and subjected to the exigencies of traffic.

Voles, break-neck driver though he was, dared not disregard the traffic regulations and risk a smash-up. He got the best out of the engine, but was compelled to go steadily through clusters of houses and around tree-shaded corners. To his great amazement, as he was tearing through the last habitations before crossing the New Jersey flats, he was hailed loudly from behind:

“Hi, you – pull up!”

He glanced over his shoulder. A motor-cyclist, white with dust, was riding after him with tremendous energy.

“Hola!” cried Voles, snatching another look. “What’s the matter?”

Petch should have temporized, done one of a hundred things he thought of too late; but he was so breathless after the terrific sprint in which he overtook Voles that he blurted out:

“I know you – you can’t escape – there’s the girl herself – I see her!”

“Hell!”

Voles urged on the car by foot and finger. After him pelted Petch, with set teeth and straining eyes. The magnificent car, superb in its energies, swept through the night like the fiery dragon of song and fable, but with a speed never attained by dragon yet, else there would be room on earth for nothing save dragons. And the motor-cycle leaped and bounded close behind, stuttering its resolve to conquer the monster in front.

The pair created a great commotion as they whirred past scattered houses and emerged into the keen, cold air of the marshland. A few cars met en route actually slowed up, and heads were thrust out to peer in wonder. Women in them were scared, and enjoined drivers to be careful, while men explained laughingly that a couple of joy-riders were being chased by a motor “cop.”

It was neck or nothing now for Voles, and when these alternatives offered, he never hesitated as to which should be chosen. He knew he was in desperate case.

The pace; the extraordinary appearance of a hatless man and a girl with her hair streaming wild – for Winifred’s abundant tresses had soon shed all restraint of pins and twists before the tearing wind of their transit – would create a tumult in Hoboken. Something must be done. He must stop the car and shoot that pestiferous cyclist, who had sprung out of the ground as though one of Medusa’s teeth had lain buried there throughout the ages, and become a panoplied warrior at a woman’s cry.

He looked ahead. There was no car in sight. He peered over his shoulder. There was no cyclist! Petch had not counted on this frenzied race, and his petrol-tank was empty. He had pulled up disconsolately half a mile away, and was now borrowing a gallon of gas from an Orange-bound car, explaining excitedly that he was “after” a murderer!

Voles laughed. The fiend’s luck, which seldom fails the fiend’s votaries, had come to his aid in a highly critical moment. There remained Winifred. She, too, must be dealt with. Now, all who have experienced the effect of an anesthetic will understand that after the merely stupefying power of the gas has waned there follows a long period of semi-hysteria, when actual existence is dreamlike, and impressions of events are evanescent. Winifred, therefore, hardly appreciated what was taking place until the car stopped abruptly, and the stupor of cold passed almost simultaneously with the stupor of anesthesia.

But Voles had his larger plan now. With coolness and daring he might achieve it. All depended on the discretion of those left behind in Gateway House. It was impossible to keep Winifred always in durance, or to prevent her everlastingly from obtaining help. That fool of a cyclist, for instance, had he contented himself with riding quietly behind until he reached the ferry, would have wrecked the exploit beyond repair.

There remained one last move, but it was a perfect one in most ways. Would Fowle keep his mouth shut? Voles cursed Fowle in his thought. Were it not for Fowle there would have been no difficulty. Carshaw would never have met Winifred, and the girl would have been as wax in the hands of Rachel Craik. He caught hold of Winifred’s arm.

“If you scream I’ll choke you!” he said fiercely.

Shaken by the chloroform mixture, benumbed as the outcome of an unprotected drive, the girl was physically as well as mentally unable to resist. He coiled her hair into a knot, gagged her dexterously with a silk handkerchief – Voles knew all about gags – and tied her hands behind her back with a shoe-lace. Then he adjusted the hood and side-screens.

He did these things hurriedly, but without fumbling. He was losing precious minutes, for the telephone-wire might yet throttle him; but the periods of waiting at the ferry and while crossing the Hudson must be circumvented in some way or other. His last act before starting the car was to show Winifred the revolver he never lacked.

“See this!” he growled into her ear. “I’m not going to be held by any cop. At the least sign of a move by you to attract attention I’ll put the first bullet through the cop, the second through you, and the third through myself, if I can’t make my get-away. Better believe that. I mean it.”

He asked for no token of understanding on her part. He was stating only the plain facts. In a word, Voles was born to be a great man, and an unhappy fate had made him a scoundrel. But fortune still befriended him. Rain fell as he drove through Hoboken. The ferry was almost deserted, and the car was wedged in between two huge mail-vans on board the boat.

Hardened rascal though he was, Voles breathed a sigh of relief as he drove unchallenged past a uniformed policeman on arriving at Christopher Street. He guessed his escape was only a matter of minutes. In reality, he was gone some ten seconds when the policeman was called to the phone. As for Petch, that valorous knight-errant crossed on the next boat, and the Hoboken police were already on the qui vive.

Every road into and out of New York was soon watched by sharp eyes on the lookout for a car bearing a license numbered in the tens of thousands, and tenanted by a hatless man and a girl in indoor costume. Quickly the circles lessened in concentric rings through the agencies of telephone-boxes and roundsmen.

At half past nine a patrolman found a car answering the description standing outside an up-town saloon on the East Side. Examining the register number he saw at once that blacking had been smeared over the first and last figures. Then he knew. But there was no trace of the driver. Voles and Winifred had vanished into thin air.

Mrs. Carshaw, breakfasting with a haggard and weary son, revealed that Senator Meiklejohn was at Atlantic City. He kissed her for the news.

“Meiklejohn must wait, mother,” he said. “Winifred is somewhere in New York. I cannot tear myself away to Atlantic City to-day. When I have found her, I shall deal with Meiklejohn.”

Then came Steingall, and he and Mrs. Carshaw exchanged a glance which the younger man missed.

Mrs. Carshaw, sitting a while in deep thought after the others had gone, rang up a railway company. Atlantic City is four hours distant from New York. By hurrying over certain inquiries she wished to make, she might catch a train at midday.

She drove to her lawyers. At her request a smart clerk was lent to her for a couple of hours. They consulted various records. The clerk made many notes on foolscap sheets in a large, round hand, and Mrs. Carshaw, seated in the train, read them many times through her gold-mounted lorgnette.

It was five o’clock when a taxi brought her to the Marlborough-Blenheim Hotel, and Senator Meiklejohn was the most astonished man on the Jersey coast at the moment when she entered unannounced, for Mrs. Carshaw had simply said to the elevator-boy: “Take me to Senator Meiklejohn’s sitting-room.”

Undeniably he was startled; but playing desperately for high stakes had steadied him somewhat. Perhaps the example of his stronger brother had some value, too, for he rose with sufficient affability.

“What a pleasant rencontré, Mrs. Carshaw,” he said. “I had no notion you were within a hundred miles of the Board Walk.”

“That is not surprising,” she answered, sinking into a comfortable chair. “I have just arrived. Order me some sandwiches and a cup of tea. I’m famished.”

He obeyed.

“I take it you have come to see me?” he said, quietly enough, though aware of a queer fluttering about the region of his heart.

“Yes. I am so worried about Rex.”

“Dear me! The girl?”

“It is always a woman. How you men must loathe us in your sane moments, if you ever have any.”

“I flatter myself that I am sane, yet how could I say that I loathe your sex, Mrs. Carshaw?”

“I wonder if your flattery will bear analysis. But there! No serious talk until I am refreshed. Do ring for some biscuits; sandwiches are apt to be slow in the cutting.”

Thus by pretext she kept him from direct converse until a tea-tray, with a film of paté de fois coyly hidden in thin bread and butter, formed, as it were, a rampart between them.

“How did you happen on my address?” he asked smilingly.

It was the first shell of real warfare, and she answered in kind: “That was quite easy. The people at the detective bureau know it.”

The words hit him like a bullet.

“The Bureau!” he cried.

“Yes. The officials there are interested in the affairs of Winifred Marchbanks.”

He went ashen-gray, but essayed, nevertheless, to turn emotion into mere amazement. He was far too clever a man to pretend a blank negation. The situation was too strenuous for any species of ostrich device.

“I seem to remember that name,” he said slowly, moistening his lips with his tongue.

“Of course you do. You have never forgotten it. Let us have a friendly chat about her, Senator. My son is going to marry her. That is why I am here.”

She munched her sandwiches and sipped her tea. This experienced woman of the world, now boldly declared on the side of romance, was far too astute to force the man to desperation unless it was necessary. He must be given breathing-time, permitted to collect his wits. She was sure of her ground. Her case was not legally strong. Meiklejohn would discover that defect, and, indeed, it was not her object to act legally. If others could plot and scheme, she would have a finger in the pie – that was all. And behind her was the clear brain of Steingall, who had camped for days near the Senator in Atlantic City, and had advised the mother how to act for her son.

There was a long silence. She ate steadily.

“Perhaps you will be good enough to state explicitly why you are here, Mrs. Carshaw,” said Meiklejohn at last.

She caught the ring of defiance in his tone. She smiled. There was to be verbal sword-play, and she was armed cap-à-pie.

“Just another cup of tea,” she pleaded, and he wriggled uneasily in his chair. The delay was torturing him. She unrolled her big sheets of notes. He looked over at them with well-simulated indifference.

“I have an engagement – ” he began, looking at his watch.

“You must put it off,” she said, with sudden heat. “The most important engagement of your life is here, now, in this room, William Meiklejohn. I mentioned the detective bureau when I entered. Which do you prefer to encounter – me or an emissary of the police?”

He paled again. Evidently this society lady had claws, and would use them if annoyed.

“I do not think that I have said anything to warrant such language to me,” he murmured, striving to smile deprecatingly. He succeeded but poorly.

“You sent me to drive out into the world the girl whom my son loved,” was the retort. “You made a grave mistake in that. I recognized her, after a little while. I knew her mother. Now, am I to go into details?”

“I – really – I – ”

“Very well. Eighteen years ago your brother, Ralph Vane Meiklejohn, murdered a man named Marchbanks, who had discovered that you and your brother were defrauding his wife of funds held by your bank as her trustees. I have here the records of the crime. I do not say that your brother, who has since been a convict and is now assisting you under the name of Ralph Voles, could be charged with that crime. Maybe ‘murderer’ is too strong a word for him where Marchbanks was concerned; but I do say that any clever lawyer could send you and him to the penitentiary for robbing a dead woman and her daughter, the girl whom you and he have kidnapped within the last week.”

Here was a broadside with a vengeance. Meiklejohn could not have endured a keener agony were he facing a judge and jury. It was one thing to have borne this terrible secret gnawing at his vitals during long years, but it was another to find it pitilessly laid bare by a woman belonging to that very society for which he had dared so much in order to retain his footing.

He bent his head between his hands. For a few seconds thoughts of another crime danced in his surcharged brain. But Mrs. Carshaw’s well-bred syllables brought him back to sanity with chill deliberateness.

“Shall I go on?” she said. “Shall I tell you of Rachel Bartlett; of the scandal to be raised about your ears, not only by this falsified trust, but by the outrageous attack on Ronald Tower?”

He raised his pallid face. He was a proud man, and resented her merciless taunts.

“Of course,” he muttered, “I deny everything you have said. But, if it were true, you must have some ulterior motive in approaching me. What is it?”

“I am glad you see that. I am here to offer terms.”

“Name them.”

“You must place this girl, Winifred Marchbanks, under my care – where she will remain until my son marries her – and make restitution of her mother’s property.”

“No doubt you have a definite sum in your mind?”

“Most certainly. My lawyers tell me you ought to refund the interest as well, but Winifred may content herself with the principal. You must hand her half a million dollars!”

He sprang to his feet, livid. “Woman,” he yelled, “you are crazy!”