Norton showed his card and badge.
"Oh, I see!" jeered the aviator. "A little newspaper stunt in which I am to be the goat. It can"t be done, Mr. Norton; it can"t be done."
"A hundred dollars!"
"Not for five hundred," and the aviator callously turned away toward the young woman with whom he had been conversing prior to Norton"s approach. The two walked a dozen yards away.
Norton had not served twelve years as a metropolitan newspaper man for nothing. He approached the mechanics who were puttering about the machine.
"How about twenty apiece?" he began.
"For what?" the men asked.
"For sending that paddle around a few times."
"Get into that seat, but don"t touch any of those levers," one of them warned. "Twenty is twenty, Jack, and the boss is a sorehead to-day anyhow. Give her a shove for the fun of it."
It was a dumfounded aviator who saw his hydroplane skim the water and a moment later sail into the air. These swift moving days a reporter of the first caliber is supposed to be able to run railroad engines, submarines, flying machines, conduct a war, able to shoot, walk, run, swim, fight, think, go without food like a python, and live without water like a camel. Norton had flown many times in the last four years. At the moment he called out to Florence to jump he dropped to the water with all the skill of an old-timer and took her aboard. And he could not use a line of this exploit for his paper!
Jones heard the bell. It was the agent from the Black Hundred. He smiled jauntily.
"Well, old fox, we"ve cornered you at last, haven"t we? I want that money, or Hargreave"s daughter takes another sea voyage, and this time she will not jump overboard. A million; and no more nonsense."
"Give me fifteen minutes to decide," begged Jones, hoping against hope.
"Fifteen seconds!"
"Then we can"t do business. What! Give you a million, knowing you all to be a pack of liars? Bring Miss Florence back and the money is yours. We are tired of fighting." As indeed Jones really was. The strain had been terrific for weeks.
"The money first. We don"t lie any better than you do. Fork over.
You"ll have to trust us. We have no use for the girl once we get the cash."
"And you"ll never touch a penny of it, you blackguard!" cried Norton from the doorway.
The agent turned to behold the reporter and the girl. He did not stop to ask questions, but bolted. He never got beyond the door, however.
"Always the small fry," sighed Jones. "And if I could have put my hands on the money I"d have given it to him! Ah, girl, it doesn"t do any good to talk to you, does it?"
"But they told me he was dying!"
Jones shrugged.
CHAPTER XVI
The maid stole into the house, wondering if she had been seen. She wanted to be loyal to this girl, but she was tired of the life; she wanted to be her own mistress, and the small fortune offered her would put her on the way to realize her ambition. What had she not seen and been of life since she joined the great detective force! Lady"s maid, cook, ship stewardess, flash woman, actress, clerk, and a dozen other employments. Her pay, until she secured some fat reward, was but twelve hundred a year; and here was five thousand in advance, with the promise of five thousand more the minute her work was done. And it was simple work, without any real harm toward Florence as far as she was concerned. The whole thing rested upon one difficulty; would Jones permit the girls to leave the house?
One day Florence found Susan sitting in a chair, her head in her hands.
"Why, Susan, what"s the matter?" cried Florence.
"I don"t know what is the matter, dear, but I haven"t felt well for two or three days. I"m dizzy all the time; I can"t read or sew or eat or sleep."
"Why didn"t you tell me?" said Florence, reproachfully. She rang for the detective-maid. "Ella, I don"t know anything about doctors hereabouts."
"I know a good one, Miss Florence. Shall I send for him?"
"Do; Susan is ill."
Jones was not prepared for treachery in his own household; so when he heard that a doctor had been called to attend Susan he was without the least suspicion that he had been betrayed. More than this, there had been no occasion to summon a doctor in the seven years Mr. Hargreave had lived there. So Jones went about his petty household affairs without more thought upon the matter. The maid had been recommended to him as one of the shrewdest young women in the detective business.
The doctor arrived. He was a real doctor; no doubt of that. He investigated Susan"s condition--brought about by a subtle though not dangerous poison--and instantly recommended the seash.o.r.e. Susan was not used to being confined to the house; she was essentially an out-of-doors little body. The seash.o.r.e would bring her about in no time. The doctor suggested Atlantic City because of its mildness throughout the year and its nearness to New York.
"I"m afraid she"ll have to go alone," said Jones gravely.
"I shan"t stir!" declared Susan. "I shan"t leave my girl even if I am sick." Susan caught Florence"s hand and pressed it.
"Would you like to go with her, Florence?" asked Jones, with a shy glance at the strange doctor. The shy glance was wasted. The doctor evinced no sign that it mattered one way or the other to him.
"It is nothing very serious now," he volunteered. "But it may turn out serious if it is not taken care of at once."
"What is the trouble?" inquired Jones, who was growing fond of Susan.
"Weak heart. Sunshine and good sea air will strengthen her up again.
No, no!" as Jones drew forth his wallet. "I"ll send in my bill the first of the month. Sunshine and sea air; that"s all that"s necessary.
And now, good day."
All very businesslike; not the least cause in the world for any one to suspect that a new trap was being set by the snarers. The maid returned to the sewing-room, while Florence coddled her companion and made much of her.
Jones was suspicious, but dig in his mind as he would he could find no earthly reason for this suspicion save that this attribute was now instinctive, that it was always near the top. If Susan was ill she must be given good care; there was no getting around this fact. Later, he telephoned several prominent physicians. The strange doctor was recommended as a good ordinary pract.i.tioner and in good standing; and so Jones dismissed his suspicions as having no hook to hang them on.
His hair would have tingled at the roots, however, had he known that this same physician was one of the two who had signed the doc.u.ment which had accredited Florence with insanity and had all but succeeded in making a supposition a fact. Nor was Jones aware of the fact that the telephone wire had been tapped recently. So when he finally concluded to permit Florence to accompany Susan to Atlantic City he telephoned to the detective agency to send up a trusty man, who was shadowed from the moment he entered the Hargreave home till he started for the railway station. He became lost in the shuffle and was not heard from till weeks later, in Havana. The Black Hundred found a good profit in the shanghaing business.
Susan began to pick up, as they say, the day after the arrival at Atlantic City, due, doubtless, to the cessation of the poison she had been taking unawares. The two young women began to enjoy life for the first time since they had left Miss Farlow"s. They were up with the sun every day and went to bed tired but happy. No one bothered them.
If some stray reporter encountered their signatures on the hotel register, he saw nothing to excite his reportorial senses. All this, of course, was due to Norton"s policy of keeping the affair out of the papers.
Following Jones" orders, they made friends with none. Those about the hotel--especially the young men--when they made any advances were politely snubbed. Every night Florence would write to her good butler to report what had taken place during the day, and he was left to judge for himself if there was anything to arouse his suspicions. He, of course, believed the two were covertly guarded by the detective he had sent after them.
When Braine called on Olga he found his doctor there.
"Well, what"s the news?" he asked.
"I had better run down and inquire how the young lady is progressing,"
said the doctor, who was really a first-rate surgeon and who had performed a number of skilled operations upon various members of the Black Hundred anent their encounters with the police. "I"ve got Miss Florence where you want her. It"s up to you now."