CHAPTER X
ON THE RIDGE ROAD
At the Westfall farm as the electric vanguard of the storm flashedbrightly over the valley, the telephone had tinkled. In considerabledistress of mind Aunt Agatha answered it.
"I--I'm sure I don't know when he will be home," she said helplesslyafter a while. . . . "He went barely a minute ago and very foolishtoo, I said, with the storm coming. . . . At dinner he spoke some ofgoing to the camp--Miss Westfall's camp. . . . I--I really don't know.. . . I wish I did but I don't."
The lightning blazed at the window and left it black. Beyond in thelane, a car with glaring headlights was rolling rapidly toward thegateway. Aunt Agatha hung up with an aggrieved sniff.
Catching the reflection of the headlights she hurried to the window.
"Carl! Carl!" she called through the noise of wind and thunder.
The car came to a halt with a grinding shudder of brakes.
"Yes?" said Carl patiently. "What is it, Aunt Agatha?"
"Dick Sherrill phoned," said his aunt plaintively. "I thought you'dgone. He wanted you to come up and play bridge. Oh, Carl, I--I dowish you wouldn't motor about in a thunder shower. I once knew aman--such a nice, quiet fellow too--and very domestic in hishabits--but he would ramble about and the lightning tore his collar offand printed a picture of a tree on his spine. Think of that!"
Carl laughed. He was raincoated and hatless.
"An arboreal spine!" said he, rolling on. "Lord, Aunt Agatha, that wastough! Moral--don't be domestic!"
"Carl!" quavered his aunt tearfully.
Again, throbbing like a giant heart in the darkness, the car halted.Carl tossed his hair back from his forehead with a smothered groan, butsaid nothing. He was always kinder and less impatient to Aunt Agathain a careless way than Diane.
"Will you take Diane an extra raincoat and rubbers?" appealed AuntAgatha pathetically. "Like as not the pockets of the other are full ofbugs and things."
"Aunt Agatha," grumbled Carl kindly, "why fuss so? Diane's equippedwith nerve and grit and independence enough to look out for herself."
Aunt Agatha sniffed and closed the window.
"I shan't worry!" she said flatly. "I shan't do it. If Carl comeshome with a tree on his spine, it's his own concern. Why _I_ shouldhave to endure all this, however, I can't for the life of me see. I'veone consolation anyway. A good part of my life's over. Death will bea welcome relief after what _I've_ gone through!"
Shrugging as the window closed Carl drove on rapidly down the driveway.
It pleased him to ride madly with the wind and storm. The gale, ladenwith dust and grit, bit and stung and tore rudely at his coat and hair.The great lamps of the car flashed brilliantly ahead, revealing thewind-beaten grasses by the wayside. Somewhere back in his mind therewas a troublesome stir of conscience. It had bothered him for days.It had driven him irresistibly to-night at dinner to speak of visitinghis cousin's camp, though he bit his lip immediately afterward in aflash of indecision. The turbulent night had seemed of a sort to thinkthings over. Moonlit fields and roads were enervating. Storm whippinga man's blood into fire and energy--biting his brain into relentlessactivity!--there was a thing for you.
Whiskey did not help. Last night it had treacherously magnified thevoice of conscience into a gibing roar.
Money! Money! The ray of the lamps ahead, the fork of the lightning,the flickering gaslight there at the crossroads, they were all thecolor of gold and like gold--of a flame that burned. Yes, he must havemoney. No matter what the voice, he must have money.
At the crossroads he halted suddenly. To the south now lay hiscousin's camp, to the north the storm.
Perversely Carl wheeled about and drove to the north. A conscience wasa luxury for a rich man. Let the thing he had done, sired by the demonof the bottle and mothered by the hell-pit of his flaming passions,breed its own results.
It was a fitful nerve-straining task, waiting, and he had waited nowfor weeks. Waiting had bred the Voice in his conscience, waiting hadbored insidious holes in his armor of flippant philosophy through whichhad crept remorse and bitter self-contempt; once it had brought aflaming resolve brutally to lay it all before his cousin and taunt herwith a crouching ghost buried for years in a candlestick.
Then there were nights like to-night when the ghastly hell-pit wascovered, and when to tell her squarely what the future held, withouttaunt or apology, stirred him on to ardent resolution.
But alas! the last was but an intermittent witch-fire leading himthrough the marsh after the elusive ghosts of finer things, to flickerforlornly out at the end and abandon him in a pit of blackness andmockery.
Very well, then; he would tell Diane of the yellowed paper; he wouldtell her to-night. However he played the game there was gold at theend.
He laughed suddenly and shrugged and swept erratically into a lightermood of impudence and daring. There was rain beating furiously in hisface and his hair was wet. Well, the car pounding along beneath himhad known many such nights of storm and wild adventure. It had pleasedhim frequently to mock and gibe at death, with the wheel in his handand a song on his lips, and now wind and storm were tempting him toride with the devil.
So, dashing wildly through the whirl of dirt and wind, heavy with theodor of burnt oil, he bent to the wheel, every nerve alert and leaping.As the great car jumped to its limit of speed, he fell to singing anelaborate sketch of opera in an insolent, dare-devil voice of splendidtimbre, the exhaust, unmuffled, pounding forth an obligato.
The lightning flared. It glittered wickedly upon the unlighted lampsof a car rolling rapidly toward him. With a squirt of mud and ascatter of flying pebbles, Carl swung far to the side of the road andslammed on his brakes, skidding dangerously. The other car, headingwildly to the left, went crashing headlong into a ditch from which aman crawled, cursing viciously in a foreign tongue.
"You damned fool!" thundered Carl in a flash of temper. "Where areyour lights?"
The man did not reply.
Carl, whose normal instincts were friendly, sprang solicitously fromthe car.
"I beg your pardon," said he carelessly. "Are you hurt?"
"No," said the other curtly.
"French," decided Carl, marking the European intonation. "Badly shakenup, poor devil!--and not sure of his English. That accounts for hispeculiar silence. Monsieur," said he civilly in French. "I am notprepared to deliver a homily upon wild driving, but it's well to drivewith lights when roads are dark and storm abroad."
"I have driven so few times," said the other coldly in excellentEnglish, "and the storm and erratic manner of your approach weredisquieting."
"_Touche_!" admitted Carl indifferently. "You have me there. Yourchoice of a practice night, however," he added dryly, "was unique, tosay the least."
He crossed the road, frowned curiously down at the wrecked machine andstruck a match.
"_Voila_!" he exclaimed, staring aghast at the bent and splinteredmass, "_c'est magnifique, Monsieur_!'"
A sheet of flame shot suddenly from the match downward and wrapped thewreck in fire. Conscious now of the fumes of leaking gasoline, Carlleaped back.
"Monsieur," said he ruefully, and turned. The reflection of theburning oil revealed Monsieur some feet away, running rapidly. Angeredby the man's unaccountable indifference, Carl leaped after him. He wasmuch the better runner of the two and presently swung his prisonerabout in a brutal grip and marched him savagely back to the blazingcar. Again there was an indefinable peculiarity about the manner ofthe man's surrender.
"It is conventional, Monsieur," said Carl evenly, "to betray interestand concern in the wreck of one's property. _Voila_! I haveeffectively completed what you had begun. If I am not indifferent,surely one may with reason look for a glimmer of concern from you."
Shrugging, the man stared sullenly at the car, a hopeless torch nowsuffusing the lonely road with light. There was a certain suggestionof racial subtlety in the careful immobili
ty of his face, but his dark,inscrutable eyes were blazing dangerously.
Carl's careless air of interest altered indefinably. Inspecting hischafing prisoner now with narrowed, speculative eyes which glintedkeenly, he fell presently to whistling softly, laughed and withtantalizing abruptness fell silent again. Immobile and subtle now ashis silent companion, he stared curiously at the other's fastidiouslypointed beard, at the dark eyes and tightly compressed lips, andimpudently proffered his cigarettes. They were impatiently declined.
"Monsieur is pleased," said Carl easily, "to reveal many markedpeculiarities of manner, owing to the unbalancing fact, I take it, thathis mind is relentlessly pursuing one channel. Monsieur," went onCarl, lazily lighting his own cigarette and staring into hiscompanion's face with a look of level-eyed interest, "Monsieur has beenpraying ardently for--opportunities, is it not so? 'I will humor thismad fool who motors about in the rain like an operatic comet!' saysMonsieur inwardly, 'for I am, of course, a stranger to him. Then,without arousing undue interest, I may presently escape into the stormwhence I came--er--driving atrociously.'"
The man stared.
"Monsieur," purred Carl audaciously, "is doubtless more interestedin--let us say--camp fires for instance, than such a vulgar blaze asyonder car."
"One is powerless," returned the other haughtily, "to answer riddles."
Carl bowed with curiously graceful insolence.
"As if one could even hope to break such splendid nerve as that!" hemurmured appreciatively. "It is an impassiveness that comes only withtraining. Monsieur," he added imperturbably, "I have had thepleasure--of seeing you before."
"It is possible!" shrugged the other politely.
"Under strikingly different conditions!" pursued Carl reminiscently.There was a disappointing lack of interest in the other's face.
"Even that is possible," assented the foreigner stiffly, "Environmentis a shifting circumstance of many colors. The honor of youracquaintance, however, I fear is not mine."
Carl's eyes, dark and cold as agate, compelled attention.
"My name," said he deliberately, "is Granberry, Carl WestfallGranberry."
The brief interval of silence was electric.
"It is a pity," said the other formally, "that the name is unfamiliar.Monsieur Granberi, the storm increases. My ill-fated car, I take it,requires no further attention." He stopped short, staring withpeculiar intentness at the road beyond. In the faint sputtering glowof the embers by the wayside his face looked white and strained.
A slight smile dangerously edged the American's lips. With a carelessfeint of glancing over his shoulder, he tightened every muscle andleaped ahead. The violent impact of his body bore his victim, cursing,to the ground.
"Ah!" said Carl wresting a revolver from the other's hand, "I thoughtso! My friend, when you try a trick like that again, guard your handsbefore you fall to staring. A fool might have turned--and been shot inthe back for his pains, eh? Monsieur," he murmured softly, pinioningthe other with his weight and smiling insolently, "we've a long rideahead of us. Privacy, I think, is essential to the perfect adjustmentof our future relations. There are one or two inexplicable features--"
The eyes of the other met his with a level glance of desperatehostility.
With an undisciplined flash of temper, Carl brutally clubbed hisassailant into insensibility with the revolver butt and dragged himheavily to the tonneau of his car, throbbing unheeded in the darkness.Having assured himself of his guest's continued docility by thesinister adjustment of a handkerchief, an indifferent rag or so fromthe repair kit and a dirty rope, he covered the motionless figurecarelessly with a robe and sprang to the wheel, whistling softly. Witha throb, the great car leaped, humming, to the road.
At midnight the lights of Harlem lay ahead. The ride from the hills,three hours of storm and squirting gravel, had been made with thepersistent whir and drone of a speeding engine. But once had it restedblack and silent in a lonely road of dripping trees, while the driverhurried into a roadside tavern and telephoned.
Now, with a purring sigh as a bridge loomed ahead, the car slackenedand stopped. Carl slowly lighted a cigarette. At the end of thebridge a straggler struck a match and flung it lightly in the river,the disc of his cigar a fire-point in the shadows.
The car rolled on again and halted.
A stocky young man behind the fire-point emerged from the darkness andclimbed briskly into the tonneau.
"Hello, Hunch," said Carl.
"'Lo!" said Hunch and stared intently at the robe.
"Take a look at him," invited Carl carelessly. "It's not often youhave an opportunity of riding with one of his brand. He's in the_Almanach de Gotha_."
"T'ell yuh say!" said Hunch largely, though the term had conveyed noimpression whatever to his democratic mind.
Cautiously raising the robe Hunch Dorrigan stared with interest at theprisoner he was inconspicuously to assist into the empty town house ofthe Westfalls.