"They must have known they would be followed. The hardest place to follow them would be across country."
"With a lantern?" I objected. "We can"t do it."
Kennedy glanced at his watch. "It will be three hours before there is light enough to see anything by," he considered. "They have had at least a couple of hours. Five hours is too good a start. Burke--take one of the cars. Go ahead along the road. We mustn"t neglect that. I"ll take the other. I want to get back to that house and call O" Connor.
Walter, you stay here with the rest."
We separated and I felt that, although I was doing nothing, I had my hands full watching these three.
Lockwood was restless and could not help beating around in the under-brush, in the hope of turning up something. Now and then he would mutter to himself some threat if anything happened to Inez. I let him occupy himself, for our own, as much as his, peace of mind. Alfonso had joined his mother in the car and they sat there conversing in low tones in Spanish, while I watched them furtively.
Of a sudden, I became aware that I missed the sound of Lockwood beating about the under-brush. I called, but there was no answer. Then we all called. There came back nothing but a mocking echo. I could not follow him. If I did, I would lose the de Moches.
Had he been laying low, waiting his opportunity to get away? Or was he playing a lone hand? Much as I suspected about him, during the past few hours I had come to admire him.
I sent the de Moche driver out to look for him, but he seemed afraid to venture far, and, of course, returned and said that he could not find him. Even in his getaway, Lockwood had been characteristic. He had been strong enough to bide his time, clever enough to throw every one off guard. It put a new aspect on the case for me. Had Whitney intended the capture of Inez for Lockwood? Had our coming so unexpectedly into the case thrown the plans awry and was it the purpose to leave them marooned at Rockledge while we were shunted off in the city? That, too, was plausible. I wished Kennedy would return before anything else happened.
It was not long by the clock before Kennedy did return. But it seemed ages to me.
He was not alone. With him was a man in a uniform, and a powerful dog, for all the world like a huge wolf.
"Down, Searchlight," he ordered, as the dog began to show an uncanny interest in me. "Let me introduce my new dog detective," he chuckled.
"She has a wonderful record as a police dog. I got O"Connor out of bed and he telephoned out to the nearest suburban station. That saved a good deal of time in getting her up here."
I mustered up courage to tell Kennedy of the defection of Lockwood. He did not seem to mind it especially.
"He won"t get far, with the dog after him, if we want to take the time," he said. "She"s a German sheep dog, a Schaeferhund."
Searchlight seemed to have many of the characteristics of the wild, prehistoric animal, among them the full, upright ears of the wild dog, which are such a great help to it. She was a fine, alert, upstanding dog, hardy, fierce, and literally untiring, of a tawny light brown like a lioness, about the same size and somewhat of the type of the smooth-coated collie, broad of chest and with a full brush of tail.
Untamed as she seemed, she was perfectly under Kennedy"s control and rendered him absolute and unreasoning obedience.
They took her over to the abandoned car. There they let her get a good whiff of the bottom of the car about the driver"s feet, and a moment later she started off.
Alfonso and his mother insisted on going with us and that made our progress across country slow.
On we went over the rough country, through a field, then skirting a clump of woods until at last we came to a lane.
We stopped in the shadow of a thicket. There was an empty summer home.
Was there some intruder there? Was it really empty?
Now and then we could hear Searchlight scouting about in the under-brush, crouching and hiding, watching and guarding. We paused and waited in the heavily-laden night air, wondering. The soughing of the night wind in the evergreens was mournful. Did it betoken a further tragedy?
There was a slight noise from the other side of the house. Craig reached out and drew us back into the shadow of the thicket, deeper.
"Some one is prowling about, I think. Leave it to the dog."
Searchlight, who had been near us, was sniffing eagerly. From our hiding-place we could just see her. She had heard the sounds, too, even before we had, and for an instant stood with every muscle tense.
Then, like an arrow, she darted into the underbrush. An instant later, the sharp crack of a revolver rang out. Searchlight kept right on, never stopping a second, except, perhaps, in surprise.
"Crack!" almost in her face came a second spit of fire in the darkness, and a bullet crashed through the leaves and buried itself in a tree with a ping. The intruder"s marksmanship was poor, but the dog paid no attention to it.
"One of the few animals that show no fear of gun-fire," muttered Kennedy, in undisguised admiration.
"G-r-r-r," we heard from the police dog.
"She has made a leap at the hand that holds the gun," cried Kennedy, now rising and moving rapidly in the same direction. "She has been taught that a man once badly bitten in the hand is nearly out of the fight."
We followed also. As we approached we were just in time to see Searchlight running in and out between the legs of a man who had heard us approach and was hastily making tracks away. As he tripped, the officer who brought her blew shrilly on a police whistle just in time to stop a fierce lunge at his back.
Reluctantly, Searchlight let go. One could see that with all her canine instinct she wanted to "get" that man. Her jaws were open, as, with longing eyes, she stood over the prostrate form in the gra.s.s. The whistle was a signal, and she had been taught to obey unquestioningly.
"Don"t move until we get to you, or you are a dead man," shouted Kennedy, pulling an automatic as he ran. "Are you hurt?"
There was no answer, but, as we approached, the man moved, ever so little, through curiosity to see his pursuers.
Searchlight shot forward. Again the whistle sounded and she dropped back. We bent over to seize him, as Kennedy secured the dog.
"She"s a devil," ground out the p.r.o.ne figure on the gra.s.s.
"Lockwood!" exclaimed Kennedy.
XXV
THE GOLD OF THE G.o.dS
"What are you doing here?" demanded Craig, astonished.
"I couldn"t wait for you to get back. I thought I"d do a little detective work on my own account. I kept getting further and further away, knew you"d find me, anyhow. But I didn"t think you"d have a brute like that," he added, binding up his hand ruefully. "Is there any trace of Inez?"
"Not yet. Why did you pick out this house?" asked Kennedy, still suspicious.
"I saw a light here, I thought," answered Lockwood frankly. "But as I approached, it went out. Maybe I imagined it."
"Let us see."
Kennedy spoke a few words to the man with the dog. He slipped the leash, with a word that we did not catch, and the dog bounded off, around the house, as she was accustomed to do when out on duty with an officer in the city suburbs, circling about the backs of houses as the man on the beat walked the street. She made noise enough about it, too, tumbling over a tin pail that had been standing on the back porch steps.
"Bang!"
Some one was in the house and was armed. In the darkness he had not been able to tell whether an attack was being made or not, but had taken no chances. At any rate, now we knew that he was desperate.
I thought of all the methods Kennedy had adopted to get into houses in which the inmates were desperate. But always they had been about the city where he could call upon the seemingly exhaustless store of apparatus in his laboratory. Here we were faced by the proposition with nothing to rely on but our native wit and a couple of guns.
Besides, I did not know whether to count on Lockwood as an ally or not.
My estimation of him had been rising and falling like the barometer in a summer shower. I had been convinced that he was against us. But his manner and plausibility now equally convinced me that I had been mistaken. I felt that it would take some supreme action on his part to settle the question. That crisis was coming now.