Suddenly something appeared out of the smoke close beside us, something white and ghostlike. Then a voice spoke. "Follow me, girls," it said, and we knew that the ghost was a man with a towel tied over his face.
"All of you get in line behind your mother," said the voice thickly, "and each one hold onto the one in front of you. Don"t let go, or you"ll be lost and I can"t watch you."
We didn"t even smile at his thinking Nyoda was our mother. With the military precision we have learned from long practice of doing things together, we formed in a goose line behind Nyoda, each one gripping tightly the hand of the one ahead of her, and thus we began to move forward. After what seemed a hundred years, but could not have been more than five minutes, we felt a gust of fresh air blowing on us, and knew that we were standing beside an open window.
"This window looks out on the roof of the second story at the back of the building," said the voice, "and it"s an easy drop to the roof."
We had to take his word for it, for the smoke obscured everything so that we did not know whether we were going to drop three feet or thirty. The air coming in the window blew the smoke away from our faces for a moment and we got a breath, or otherwise I am afraid we would have strangled on the verge of being rescued. Without a moment"s hesitation the hands that belonged to the towel and the voice seized Nyoda and swung her out of the window as if she had been a feather, and in a moment her "All right" told that she had landed safely on the roof. One by one he took us in the same manner. We were still in a dangerous position, for there was fire under us, although the worst blaze was at the front of the building, and as far as we could see there were no ladders anywhere around waiting to take us down.
"Confound these one-horse country towns, anyway", we heard the voice mutter, "that can"t support a decent Fire Department.
"Here," he shouted to the gaping crowd below who were watching the few that were trying to fight the flames with garden hoses, "bring blankets, hurry!"
It was rather a thrilling moment when we stood on that burning building waiting for the blankets to come into which we were to jump. Now that I look back at it I think we must have been a funny sight, for while we stood there we threw on our jackets over our night-dresses and held the rest of our belongings in our hands. With all the rest of her impedimenta Nyoda had rescued her camera, Nakwisi her spy-gla.s.s and I my note-book, and they gave us an odd, jaunty tourist appearance which must have been amusing. Well, the people came running with blankets and held them for us to jump and we jumped, although we had to throw Margery down. She stood there trembling, afraid to jump and there was no time to argue the necessity of prompt action. We gathered up our possessions from the people to whom we had tossed them and hastened into a near-by house where we got ourselves dressed.
Our rescuer had jumped right after us, and by the time we had picked ourselves up and got our breath back enough to thank him he had vanished from the scene. He must have been the proprietor, we judged, for he knew the inside of the hotel so well. Possibly he went back to rescue some more of his patrons.
After we were dressed we returned to the scene of the fire, which had drawn people from all the country around, in the usual half-dressed state in which people go to midnight fires. Of course, there was no hope of saving the building, for the few thin streams of water that were playing on it went up in steam as soon as they touched the blaze.
The walls fell in with terrifying crashes and the roof caved in like a pasteboard box. It had been nothing but a dry sh.e.l.l of a building and burned like tinder.
"It"s an ill wind that blows n.o.body any good," said Sahwah, giggling nervously, "that piano is a hopeless ruin and the people around here won"t have to listen to it any more. And even if they do rebuild the hotel they can never get another piano like it, for there aren"t two such tin pans in existence."
After the rain had stopped that night a fog had settled down and the glare of the flames through the mist made a weird lurid scene that I shall never forget. All this time the wind had been from the east, which drove the flames toward an open square where they could set nothing else afire, but suddenly it veered to the west, and showers of burning brands began to fall on the roof of the garage where the Glow- worm was standing. The scanty water force was then turned to save this building and we had several anxious moments until the wind shifted again.
"How foolish I was not to have taken the car out immediately," said Nyoda. Other people were hurrying to the spot to rescue their cars and we also went over. The interior of the place had not been damaged by the small blazes which had been kindled on the roof, though I tremble to think what might have happened if the gasoline stored inside had exploded. Thankful that fortune had favored us so far in this night of accident, we took our way among the other cars in the place to where the Glow-worm had stood. Then we rubbed our eyes and looked at each other. For where the Glow-worm had been when we left the place the night before there was an empty s.p.a.ce. A hasty search through the place, which was not very large, revealed that the car was gone.
Frantically we rushed after the proprietor, who was standing in the doorway watching the grand spectacle next door. He knew nothing about the matter. The car had been there when he closed up that night, but as soon as the fire broke out people had been coming for their cars and the place had been open. He was much excited over it and declared that such a thing had never happened before as long as he had been in business, but then, he added, neither had the hotel ever burned down before.
To say that we were dismayed was putting it mildly. To have your own car stolen is bad enough, but when it is a car belonging to someone else who has kindly loaned it to you to take a pleasure trip in, it is ten times worse. Nyoda had promised to bring the car back in safety and she was almost beside herself at the thought of its being stolen. None of us ever felt like facing Mr. Evans again. We reproached ourselves a thousand times that we had not gone for the Glow-worm immediately upon getting out of the burning building, without waiting to dress or stand around and watch the walls fall. We searched vainly through the line of motors moving up and down the street for the familiar black body and yellow lamps of the Glow-worm.
Discouraged and heartsick over this new calamity, we retired to the park-like square on the other side of the hotel to talk things over and lay out our course of action. Through the trees in the square we could see something moving along the road, and, by a sudden glare from the fire we made out the Glow-worm, proceeding slowly and silently in the opposite direction, and the man at the wheel was the Frog! We all darted after him, shouting "Stop thief!" at the top of our voices. The Frog turned around in the seat, saw us streaming across the square, and evidently decided that the chase was too hot, for he jammed on the brakes and jumped from the car, leaving the motor still running. He ran into a clump of shrubbery and disappeared from sight.
We were too glad to get the car back to hunt for the thief and bring him to justice. In our relief from the dismay of the moment before we were ready to hug the old Glow-worm.
"Girls," said Nyoda, "what do you say to starting out for South Bend this very minute? I don"t believe any of us could sleep any more to- night even if we had a place to do it, which is extremely doubtful.
It"s positive folly to leave this car standing around here any longer.
That garage man is too much interested in the fire to take care of his business. We have no belongings to go back after, for everything we left in the hotel is lost."
We were thankful then that we had carried so little hand luggage, for beyond a few toilet articles which could easily be replaced at the next town we had lost nothing. The trunk with our extra clothes was carried on the car. We agreed to Nyoda"s proposal eagerly. Sleep for the rest of the night was out of the question and we might as well be driving as not. It would be a good way to get an appet.i.te for breakfast, we all agreed.
"Jump in, girls," said Nyoda, taking her place behind the wheel. "You sit up here with me, Margery."
Then we had the second shock of the evening. Margery was nowhere to be seen! We were all sure that she had been there just a moment ago, clinging to Sahwah"s arm and squealing, although we could not remember whether she had been with us when we ran across the park after the Glow-worm or not.
"She has gotten separated from us in the crowd," said Nyoda. "You girls run and find her while I stay here and watch the car."
We hunted everywhere, high and low, asking everybody we met, but there was no trace of her. Finally, we ran into the garage man and thought it only fair to tell him that we had found the car. He was much overjoyed at the fact and listened sympathetically when we told him we had lost Margery.
"Did she have on a tan suit like yours?" he asked.
"Yes," we answered eagerly, "have you seen her?"
"I saw a girl in a tan suit driving away just a minute ago with a man in a red roadster," he answered.
"What did the man look like?" we asked.
"I can"t tell you much about his looks," replied the garage man. "He wore great big green goggles that covered up half of his face. Looked just like a frog."
We looked at each other in dismay. The Frog had run off with Margery!
We ran in haste to tell the news to Nyoda.
"It"s queer," she said. "He must be one of her relations after all, though I surely thought he had begun to follow us from Toledo. But it might have been only a coincidence that he was behind us then, for after all he never said anything to us."
"But why did he take our car first, if it was Margery he was after all the while?" I asked.
"So we couldn"t follow him," said Sahwah, with startling clear- sightedness.
Nyoda, who doesn"t believe in premonitions, had one then. "I don"t believe he"s a relative of hers at all," she said, flatly. "I have a feeling in my bones that he isn"t. I also have a feeling that something has happened to Margery which it is our business to investigate."
In less time than it takes to tell about it we had inquired the direction taken by the driver of the red roadster and had started in pursuit. The fog was closing in on us thicker than ever and the Glow- worm"s eyes shone dimly through the white curtain. We could not go ahead at full speed because we had to proceed slowly and carefully. The fact that the road was exceptionally good along here was the only thing that kept us from accident, I suppose. If we had struck some of the holes that we did a distance back--
We were divided between joy over the fact that the Frog couldn"t go any faster than we were going in that fog and so couldn"t use his powerful car to his advantage, and the fear that he would slip off into some side road without our noticing it and so escape us. The fog naturally m.u.f.fled all sounds, but we recognized at last the steady throbbing of a motor ahead of us on the road and knew that we were on the trail of the fugitives. We didn"t know whether the Frog knew we were after him or not, but it seemed to us that the throbs began to grow fainter after a time as if the car were getting farther away. Finally, they stopped altogether and we began to realize that after all we had not much chance to catch up with that powerful car.
"They"re leaving us behind," said Sahwah, in a disappointed tone
The next instant we crashed full into a car that was standing still in the road and which loomed out of the fog with the suddenness of an apparition. Nyoda had jammed on the emergency brake a half minute before we struck or there would have been a worse smash. As it was the Glow-worm was shaken from end to end and I can imagine what the stalled car felt like.
We experienced all the thrills of the heroines in the moving picture plays when we ran into that car and expected to see the grotesque face of the Frog in the light of our lamps, with the terrified Margery near- by. The next minute showed us our mistake. The man who was standing beside his car in the road, when we had torpedoed it from the rear was not the Frog. It was a man we had never seen before. He was all alone.
The automobile was not the red roadster, but a limousine.
We all sprang out to see what damage had been done the Glow-worm. We were relieved to find it not so terrible after all. Nyoda had given the steering-wheel a sharp twist the instant she saw she was going to strike something, and the car glanced to one side, so that it was the right front wheel and fender that actually struck. The limousine was in worse shape. Our wheel had jammed into its rear wheel and torn it off, while the side of the Glow-worm had sc.r.a.ped across the hack of the bigger car, splintering the wood in places. Every window in the limousine had been broken by the shock.
The driver of the battered car stood and looked gloomily at the havoc we had wrought.
"Can"t you look where you"re going?" he burst out angrily.
"You didn"t have your tail lamp lit," replied Nyoda calmly, "and we couldn"t see you in the fog. I tried to turn out but it was too late."
"It"s true," said the man, pacifically. "It"s my fault, or rather the fault of the car. I couldn"t make the lights burn. That"s why I was standing here. I was afraid to go ahead in the fog."
Then I suppose he was afraid that we could bring suit against him for the damage done to the Glow-worm because he was standing in the road without any lights, for he left the limousine and came and looked carefully at what had happened to us. He was much relieved when he saw it was no worse. The front wheel wobbled tipsily and the fender was torn off, but these it appeared were not mortal wounds. His eye went back from our car to his.
"It"s a good thing no one was riding in the back," he said thoughtfully, looking at the shattered windows. At that very moment a wail rose from somewhere, coming apparently from the inside of the limousine. Startled, he leaped over and pulled the door open. He turned a pocket flash into the car and we could all see that there was somebody lying on the floor half under the seat. It was a girl in a tan suit. When the light was flashed into her face she looked up and saw us. Then she sat up. It was Margery.
"Margery!" exclaimed Nyoda. "What are you doing here?"
Margery got out of the tipping car and ran to Nyoda and hung on her arm. She was trembling so she could hardly stand. She looked from one to the other of us with big frightened eyes. The owner of the limousine regarded her in wide-eyed astonishment.
"How did you get into that car?" asked Nyoda, gently.