Don"t lose your nerve, woman."
"I"m new at this sort of thing, Quinlan," whispered the other nervously. "I don"t like it."
"You"re not supposed to like it, but you"ve got to see it through, just the same. Stand ready, and do what I told you. I"ll take care of the rest."
A young man, tall and graceful, came swinging down the shrub-lined walk, whistling a gay little air, far from suspecting the peril that awaited him at the gate below. His cheery farewell shout to friends on the club-house veranda had been answered by joyous voices. It was midnight.
"Better wait awhile, old man," some one had called after him. "It"s bound to rain cats and dogs before you get to the trolley."
"A little water won"t hurt me," he had shouted back. "So long, fellows."
When he pa.s.sed through the gate, under the single electric light that showed the way, and turned swiftly into the dark lane, threatening rolls of thunder already smote the air and faint flashes of lightning shot through the black, starless sky. A gust of wind blew a great swirl of dust from the roadway, filling his eyes and half blinding him. As he bent his half-turned body against the growing hurricane, a pair of strong arms seized him from behind; almost simultaneously a thick blanket from which arose the odour of chloroform was thrown over his head and drawn tight. Shrill, sibilant whispers came to his ears as he struggled vainly to free himself from those who held him.
Some one hissed: "Don"t hit him, you fool! Don"t spoil his face!"
He remembered kicking viciously, and that his foot struck against something hard and resisting. A suppressed screech of pain and rage rewarded the final conscious effort on his part. Very hazily he realised that he was being dragged swiftly over the ground, for miles it seemed to him, then came what appeared to be a fall from a great height, after which his senses left him.
The automobile leaped forward, swerved perilously at the sharp curve below the club gate and rushed off into the very teeth of the storm, guided by the firm, resolute hands of the woman at the wheel.
Once, when they had traversed a mile or more of the now drenched and slippery road, the woman who drove the car in its mad flight--unmistakably the master-mind in this enterprise--called back over her shoulder to the twain who held watch over the captive in the tonneau:
"Is he regaining consciousness? Don"t let him go too long."
"He"s all right, ma"am," said the taller of the two ruffians, bending her ear to the captive"s breast. "Fit as a fiddle."
"Say, we"ll get twenty years for this if we"re nabbed," growled the burly one called Brown. "Kidnapping is a serious business--"
"Hold your tongue!" cried the woman at the wheel.
"Well, I"m only telling you," grumbled Brown, nervously straightening her black sailor.
"It isn"t necessary to tell me," said the driver. Her voice, high and shrill in battle with the storm, was that of a person of breeding and refinement, in marked contrast to the rough, coa.r.s.e tones of her companions.
Mile after mile the big machine raced along the rain-swept highway, back from the Hudson and into the hills. Not once did the firm hand on the wheel relax, not once did the heart of the leader in this daring plot lose courage. Few are the men who would have undertaken this hazardous trip through the storm, few men with the courage or the recklessness.
At last, the car whirled into a narrow, almost unseen lane, and, going more cautiously over the treacherous ruts and stones, made its way through the forest for the matter of a mile or two, coming to a stop finally in front of a low, rambling house in which lights gleamed from two windows on the ground floor.
The two strong-armed hirelings dragged their still inert prisoner from the car, and, without a word, carried him up the walk to the house, following close upon the heels of their mistress.
A gaunt old woman opened the door to admit the party, then closed it behind them.
Two days pa.s.sed before Cuthbert Reynolds, one of the most popular and one of the wealthiest young men in New York, was missed from his usual haunts, and then the city rang with the news that he had disappeared as completely as if the earth had opened to swallow him in a hungry, capacious maw.
Heir to a vast estate, unusually clever for one so markedly handsome, beloved by half the marriageable young women in the smartest circles, he was a figure whose every movement was likely to be observed by those who affected his society and who profited by his position. When he failed to appear at his rooms in Madison Avenue,--he had no business occupation and therefore no office down town,--his valet, after waiting for twenty-four hours, called up several of his friends on the telephone to make inquiries. Later on, the police were brought into the case. Then the newspapers took up the mystery, and by nightfall of the third day the whole city was talking about the astounding case.
Those whilom friends who had shouted good-bye to him from the country club veranda were questioned with rigid firmness by the authorities.
They could throw no light upon the mystery. The unusual circ.u.mstance of his returning to town by trolley instead of by motor was easily explained. His automobile had been tampered with in the club garage and rendered unfit to use. The other men were not going into town that night, but offered him the use of their cars. He preferred the trolley, which made connections with the subway, and they permitted him to go as he elected.
Naturally the police undertook to question his friends of an opposite s.e.x. It was known that many of them were avowedly interested in him and that he had had numerous offers of marriage during the spring months of the year, all of which, so far as could be learned, he had declined to consider. As for possessing evil a.s.sociates among women, there was no one who could charge him with being aught but a man of the most spotless character. No one, man or woman, had ever spoken ill of him in that respect. The police, to whom nothing is sacred, strove for several days to discover some secret liaison which might have escaped the notice of his devoted friends (and the more devoted one"s friends are, the more they love to speculate on his misdemeanours), but without avail. His record was as clear as a blank page. There was not a red spot on it.
Gradually it dawned upon every one that there was something really tragic in his disappearance. Those who at first scoffed at the idea of foul play, choosing to believe that he was merely keeping himself in seclusion in order that he might escape for the while from the notably fatiguing attentions of certain persistent admirers, came at last to regard the situation in the nature of a calamity. Eligible young men took alarm, and were seldom seen in the streets except in pairs or trios, each fearing the same mysterious and as yet unexplained fate of the incomparable Reynolds. Few went about unattended after nightfall.
Most of them were rigidly guarded by devoted admirers of an opposite s.e.x. It was no uncommon thing to see a young man in the company of three or four resolute protectors.
In the meantime, Reynolds" relations had the reservoir dredged, the Hudson raked, the Harlem scooped, and all of the sinister byways of the metropolis searched as with a fine-tooth comb. A vast reward was offered for the return of the young man, dead, or alive or maimed. The posters said that $100,000 would be paid to any one giving information which might lead to the apprehension of those who had made way with him. The Young Women"s Society for the Prevention of Manslaughter drafted resolutions excoriating the police department, and advocating wholesale rewriting of the law.
The loveliest of Cuthbert"s admirers was Linda Blake, and the most unheralded. No one regarded her as a favourite rival, for no one took the slightest notice of her. The daughter of a merchant princess, she was somewhat beyond the pale, according to custom, and while she was an extremely pretty young woman she was still shy and lamentably modest.
As third corresponding secretary of the Spinsters" League she was put upon dreadfully by four fifths of the members and seldom had a moment of her own in which to declare herself to be anything more than a drudge in the movement to establish equality among G.o.d"s images. She had little time for social achievements and but little opportunity to escape from the Spinsters" League by the means looked upon as most efficacious. She loved Cuthbert Reynolds, but she was denied the privilege of declaring her love to him because she seldom got near enough to be seen by the popular bachelor, much less to speak to him except to pa.s.s the time of day or to hear him reply that his programme was full or that his mother was feeling better.
She had but three automobiles, whereas her haughty rivals possessed a dozen or more.
And yet it was Linda Blake who took the right and proper way to solve the mystery attending the disappearance of Cuthbert Reynolds, the pet of all the ladies.
Let us now return to Reynolds, whom we left on the threshold of that mysterious house in the hills back of Tarrytown. When he regained his senses--he knew not how long he had been unconscious--found himself in a small, illy furnished bed-chamber. The bed on which he was lying stood over against a window in which there were strong iron bars. For a long time he lay there wondering where he could be and how he came to be in this unfamiliar place. There was a racking pain in his head, a weakness in his limbs that alarmed him. Once, in his callow days, he had been intoxicated. He recalled feeling pretty much the same as he felt now, the day after that ribald supper party at Maxim"s. Moreover, he had a vague recollection of iron bars but no such bed as this.
As he lay there racking his brain for a solution to the mystery, a key rasped in the door across the room. He turned his head. A gas jet above the wretched little washstand lighted the room but poorly. The door opened slowly. A tall, ungainly woman entered the room--a creature with a sallow, weather-beaten face and a perpetual leer.
"Where am I?" demanded he.
The woman stared at him for a moment and then turned away. The door closed swiftly behind her, and the key grated in the lock. He floundered from the bed and staggered to the door, grasping the k.n.o.b in his eager, shaking hand.
"Open up, confound you!" he cried out. The only response was the fast diminishing tread of heavy footsteps on a stairway outside. He tried the window bars. The night was black outside; a cool drizzle blew against his face as he peered into the Stygian darkness. Baffled in his attempt to wrench the bars away, he shouted at the top of his voice, hoping that some pa.s.ser-by--some good Samaritan--would hear his cry and come to his relief. Some one laughed out there in the night; a low, coa.r.s.e laugh that chilled him to the bone.
He looked at his watch. The hour was three. With his watch in his hand, he came to realise that robbery had not been the motive of those who held him here. His purse and its contents were in his pocket; his scarf pin and his gold cigarette ease were not missing. Lighting a cigarette, he sat down upon the edge of the bed to ruminate.
Suddenly his ear caught the sound of soft footsteps outside the door.
They ceased abruptly. He had the uncanny feeling that some one was peeping through the keyhole. He smiled at the thought of how embarra.s.sing it might have been.
"Get away from there!" he shouted loudly. There came the unmistakable sound of some one catching breath sharply and the creaking of a loose board in the floor. "A woman," he reflected with a smile.
"If this is a joke, I don"t appreciate it," he said to himself, looking at himself in the mirror. After adjusting his disarranged necktie and brushing his hair, he sat down in the low rocker to await developments.
He had not long to wait. A resolute tread sounded on the stairway, and a moment afterward the door was thrown open to admit the tall athletic figure of a very handsome young woman. Reynolds leaped to his feet in amazement.
"Miss Crouch!" he cried, clutching the back of the chair. A slow flush of anger mounted to his brow. "Are you responsible for this beastly trick?"
She smiled. "I expected to hear you call it an outrage," she said quietly.
"Well, outrage, if it pleases you. What does it mean?"
She crossed the room and stood directly in front of him, still smiling.
He did not flinch, but the light in her eyes was most disquieting.
"It means, my dear Cuthbert, that you are in my power at last. You"ll not leave this house alive, unless you go forth as my husband."
He stared at her in utter amazement. "Your husband? My G.o.d, woman, have you no pride?"
"Bushels of it," she said.
"But I have refused to marry you at least a half-dozen times. That ought to be ample proof that I don"t love you. To be perfectly brutal about it, I despise you."