Pauline knelt beside him. She was screaming for Owen--even for Hicks. Hicks was instantly beside her but not to aid or rescue, for Hicks was the man with the handkerchief mask. He half dragged, half carried Pauline to a thicket that concealed the runabout. He drew a roll of tire tape from under the seat and bound it cruelly around her lips. He took ropes and tied her hands and feet, placed her in the seat beside him and started the machine. If Harry, struggling to rise out of the dust of the road, could have seen Pauline now, bound and gagged beside Hicks in the runabout, he would have known her to be in greater peril than ever the balloon had brought her.
Pauline was not long unhidden. As the quick ear of Hicks caught the sound of wheels, he grasped her roughly by the arm and thrust her into the bottom of the machine. Without taking his hand from the lever or slackening speed, he pulled a blanket over her and tucked it in with one hand.
"Don"t move, either," he growled, "or you know."
A farmer on his wagon came around a bend. His cheery "good morning"
brought only a grunt from Hicks, but the sound of the kind voice thrilled Pauline. She struggled under the blanket and almost reached a sitting posture before Hicks crushed her back.
The runabout had flashed by, but the farmer had seen something that alarmed even his stolid mind.
When a half mile up the road he came upon a young man, dazed and wounded, staggering through the dust, he drew rein and leaped out.
A draught of whiskey from the farmer"s bottle braced Harry.
"You pa.s.sed them on the road?" he cried.
"A machine with a man in it and somethin" else--somethin" in the bottom of it that moved," said the farmer.
"A horse," said Harry, "quick--one of yours will do."
The farmer hesitated. Harry thrust money into his hand. "Quick," he shouted.
Together they unharnessed the team. Coatless and hatless, tattered, wounded and stained, Harry swung himself to the bare back of a stirrupless steed and galloped out on what he knew was the most dangerous of all the pathways of Pauline.
CHAPTER XII
THE OLD GRIGSBY HOUSE PAYS PENANCE
To young Ba.s.sett, of The American, the excitement of existence, since he became a reporter and joined the jehus of the truth wagon, had consisted mainly of "chasing pictures" in the afternoons and going to strings of banquets at night. He had no more enthusiasm for photographs than he had for banquets. Word painting and graining was his art. And so when a big story walked up and beckoned to him he was as happy as a boy in love.
It had been a dull day for news. The evening papers were barren of suggestions and the a.s.signments had run out before Ba.s.sett"s name was reached. That meant another afternoon of dismal lingering in the office, without even a photograph to chase.
Ba.s.sett flung himself disgustedly into a chair and straightened a newspaper with a vicious crackle as the last of the other reporters hurried out. He thought he caught a gleam of merry pity in the reporter"s eye. Never mind. Let "em laugh. Let "em wait. One of these days he"ll be the one getting the real stuff and putting it through, too, from tip to type, without a rewrite man or a copy reader touching it. Let "em wait!
"In a balloon? Where?"
The suddenly vibrant voice of the city editor talking over the telephone caused Ba.s.sett to lower his paper and hushed even the chatter of the office boys.
"Palisades--Panatella; yes. Who"s the girl? You don"t know?"
The paper dropped from Ba.s.sett"s hands.
"Much obliged. I"ll have a man over there, but you go right ahead."
The city editor clicked down the receiver and whirled in his chair.
"Oh--Ba.s.sett. Our Weehawken man says a young woman has been carried off by Panatella"s balloon. They"ve lost the balloon. Get a car and get over there quick. Go as far as you like, only find the girl and let me hear from you--quick."
Ba.s.sett jumped to a phone and ordered a high-powered machine to meet him at Ninety-sixth street. He ran down William street, with his straw hat under his arm, and dived into the subway. An express had him at Ninety-sixth street in a few minutes. His machine was there. They dashed for the ferry and were on the aviation field before the bewildered crowd that had witnessed the runaway flight of the balloon had dispersed.
Ba.s.sett jumped out and mingled with the people. They knew nothing except the general direction toward the west that the balloon had taken. Automobilists had pursued for a long way, but had seen the gas bag turn to the north and disappear in the hills. The automobilists had returned--most of them. Two who had been with the girl before she leaped into the basket had not returned.
Ba.s.sett got back in the car beside the driver, and they glided off on the westward road.
Every one in the farm houses along the route had seen the balloon. But the houses were further and further apart as Ba.s.sett"s course was drawn northward and, often he missed the trail.
The trail was blazed by the wheel ruts of a giant touring car and a small runabout that frequently left the highways and plowed across the fields. He lost them in the middle of a field that was marshy where the automobiles left the road and rock-dry at the middle and further side. After a half-hour"s maneuvering he ordered the driver to go back to the road.
"Maybe they done the same thing--turned round an" come back,"
suggested the chauffeur. "h.e.l.lo, what kind of a rig is that?" he added as a wagon appeared around a bend in the road.
The peculiar thing about the "rig" was that while it was a tongued wagon with whiffletrees for two horses, there was only one horse. The driver, a bearded farmer, was urging the patient animal on, although it was impossible for it to do more than plod in its awkward harness.
"What"s the matter?" called Ba.s.sett, cheerily, as the machine drew alongside and stopped.
"I dunno," replied the farmer, shaking his grizzled bead. "Ef I was a young feller like you I"d go right off an" find out."
"I"ll go right away; what"s up?"
"I dunno. I ain"t knowed anythin" like it in this part o" the country in fifty year. First, down yonder on the old river road I meets a autymobile, with a man drivin" it and somethin" alive an" movin" lyin"
in a blanket by his feet. I ain"t got more"n a half mile back from there when I finds a fine young feller, with his good clothes--what he"s got left--tore to pieces, no shoes, or hat on him, an" his head bleedin" bad from cuts. "Where are they? Did you see a autymobile?"
he yells at me. I tells him what I had saw, an" he takes my off hoss there an" goes gallopin" up the road."
"What road?" cried Ba.s.sett.
"Ye circle this here field an" climb the hill, then take the first turn."
"Which way?"
"West, if you don"t want ter jump in the river."
"What, we"re back at the river," gasped Ba.s.sett.
"That"s about my luck. The balloon"s gone over the river; it"s in New York, and some Harlem reporter is leading it down to his office on a leash to have it photographed, and I"m--I"m hoodooed, that"s all."
"I dunno," said the farmer, "but ef ye ast me, I"d say that feller in the autymoble was makin" for the woods beyond Quirksborough. It"s lonely up through there, an" he had somethin" in that there machine that he wanted to keep lonely, I"m guessin"."
Ba.s.sett motioned to the driver to go on. "We might as well see what it is; the balloon"s gone home for supper," he said bitterly.
In five minutes they reached the turn where the farmer had last seen Harry Marvin disappear. They took the turn into an ill-kept, dust-heavy road that had cast its blight of brown upon the reeds bordering it. The woods became more and more dense and the road more narrow. In some places the dust was crusted, as it had dried after the last rain, and the men in the automobile could see that the wheels of another machine and the hoofs of a galloping horse had plunged through this crust but a short time before.
Around a bend in the road, going at full speed, Ba.s.sett sighted Harry Marvin for the first time. He stood up beside the driver and hailed him, but Harry did not even turn around. The beat of his horse"s hoofs drowned the sound. The deep lines of the runabout"s wheels in the dust held his gaze and his senses to one thing alone--the rescue of Pauline. He urged the poor beast to its last tug of strength. Weak and dizzy from his wound, he knew that he could go but a little way afoot. The road"s high, close-set wall of trees was broken for the first time by a little clearing. Harry"s pa.s.sing glance showed him that there was a house in the clearing. He was exhausted and a thirst, but his eyes swept back to the wheel tracks on the road.
The runabout had gone on. Harry, without drawing rein, was about to follow. But suddenly, weirdly, the rickety walls of the deserted house gave forth a sound, a rattle and a crash, and from a shuttered window beside the low-silled door bellied a sheet of smoke.
Harry reined the foaming horse and sprang off. Freed of his weight, the animal staggered on a few paces and fell, panting, in the dust.