CHAPTER XXVII--NIGHT ON THE CRESSON PIKE
The night fell stifling and airless, unfortunately favorable for thekidnapers, as the sky was covered with clouds and the country wrapped ina thick darkness.
At half-past eight the roadster, with Ferguson driving, glided into thelittle village of North Cresson and swung out into the Cresson Turnpike.Ten minutes behind him was his touring car with Saunders, his chauffeur,at the wheel. Twenty minutes later a limousine was to strike into thepike from a road just beyond the village, and a runabout, emerging froman opposite direction, complete the chain. At the other end of theten-mile limit Chapman Price in the black racer, was running up from theshore drive, with two satellites, one his own motor, one a hired Ford,strung out behind him.
Of a hot summer night at this hour the pike was alive with autos;returning holiday-makers, city dwellers taking a spin in the country tocool off, joy riders rioting by, belated business men speeding to thesea-side for the Sunday rest. They bore down on Ferguson like aprocession of fleeing monsters with round, goblin eyes staring inaffright. They came from behind, swinging across his path in a blur ofdust, laughter and shrill cries rising from their crowded tonneaus.Keeping to their narrow track between the borders of the fields theywere like a turbulent, flashing torrent, dividing the darkness with astream of streaked radiance, cutting the silence with a current ofcontinuous sound.
Ferguson's glance ranged ahead, dazzled by the glare of advancing lampsthat enlarged on his vision, grew to a blinding haze and swept by. Hecould see little, blackness and brightness alternating, the motorsemerging as dim solidities, realized for a passing moment, then gone.Once a small car, cutting across his bows from a side road, made himslacken, but it slowed round showing the gnarled face of a farmer with afat woman on the seat beside him and a bunch of children behind.
As he went on the press of vehicles thinned, the line of the road showedbare for longer stretches. The runabout overhauled him, kept by his sidefor a few yards, then drew ahead, its red tail lantern receding with aneven, skimming smoothness; a spot, a spark, nothing. He calculated hehad covered nearly half the distance when the black racer passed in asoft, purring rush, his eye, through the yellow fog that preceded it,catching a glimpse of Price's face. Then came a long, straight levelbetween fields where only two cars went by, both going cityward. Helooked back and tried to see the road behind him, straining his visionfor a following shape, but the darkness lay close and unbroken, nogoblin eyes peering through it in anxious pursuit.
The road took a dive into woods, black as a cavern, the air breathless.It wound in sharp curves, his lamps sending their swinging rays intothickets, then out again on a hilltop, and down, swooping with a long,smooth glide into a valley. Here the touring car passed him and he met alimousine, traveling at a pace as sober as his own, in its lit interiortwo men talking; after that a farmer's wagon drawn up against theroadside grasses, the horse prancing in fractious fear. Then nobody--awide strip of open country with the sky setting down like an arched lidover the low circular surface of the land.
It was very still and his listening ear caught the buzzing hum of avehicle behind him. This time he did not turn but drew off further tothe right, and a closed coupe swung by, with the jarring rattle of anold and loose-geared body. He was on the alert at once, its hooded shapesuggesting secrecy, the surrounding loneliness apt for its design. Itstail light cast a bobbing, crimson blot on the bed and he saw its back,dust-grimed and rusty, and the numbered oblong of its license tag. Thatcaused his expectancy to drop--the tag stood for respectability andhonest wayfaring, then, with a quickened leap of his heart, he realizedthat its speed was slackening. It slowed down to his own gait, and atthe limit of his lamp's illumination, moved before him, a square bulk,its back cut by a small window. He felt sure now, and with his hand onthe wheel took a look over his shoulder. In the distance, cresting arise, he saw two golden dots, too far for a speedy overtaking, and evenif that were possible he had no reason to suppose they belonged to anyof his followers.
A belt of woods spread across the way and the road entered it as iftunneling a vault. It wound, looped and twisted, tree trunks and leafyhollows starting out as the long bright tubes swept over them. As one ofthese, slewing wide in a sharper turn, crossed the bank of the forwardcar, Ferguson saw an arm extended and from the hand a white spark flashtwice. Almost immediately the coupe turned to the left, and plunged intoa by-way, black as a pocket, the woods' thick growth crowding on itsedges.
The roadbed was good and the leading car accelerated its speed racingonward under the arching boughs. Ferguson, close on its heels, knew thatthe sounds of their going would be muffled by the enshrouding woodland,absorbed in its woven density. No chance either of meeting any one; theway was one of those forest trails, sought by the rich on theirafternoon drives, but at night deserted by all but the birds and thesquirrels. Cursing at the failure of his schemes, powerless now toprotest or to retaliate, he followed until he knew by a freshening ofthe air that they were near the Sound. The coupe's speed began to lessenand it came to a halt.
Ferguson drew up a few rods behind it. He could see the trees about himpicked out in detail and behind them the engulfing darkness. The machinein front still seemed to shake and vibrate; he caught the sound of astep and then a voice, a man's, deep and low-keyed:
"This is the place. Get out."
He jumped to the ground, discerning a shape by the coupe's door. Headvanced, peering through his lantern's intervening glare, and made outit was alone. Stung with a quick fear, he halted and said.
"Where's the child?"
"Here. Put the money on the rock to your right."
The man came forward, a raised hand pointing to where the top of a rockshowed among the wayside grasses. From the lifted hand, the light strucka silvery gleam, touching the barrel of a revolver. Ferguson, withoutmoving said:
"I must see her first."
He thought he detected a moment's hesitation, then the man stepped backto the car and called a gruff:
"All right--quick--look."
He swung the coupe door open and from an electric torch in his left handsent a ray into the interior. The white shaft pierced the murk like apointing finger. Its circular end, a spot of livid brightness, played onBebita curled on the floor asleep. Ferguson saw her as if cut from anencompassing blackness, transparently clear like a picture suspended ina void. Then the ray was extinguished, and as he stood, blinking againstthe obscurity, heard the man's voice, "The money--on the rock there,"and caught the gleam of the revolver barrel level with his eyes.
He walked to the rock and laid the money, in an envelope clasped withrubber bands, on its flat surface. The whole thing seemed to him like acheap melodrama and he could have laughed as he righted himself and sawthe round, shining end of the revolver covering him, and the silentfigure behind it.
"Come on," he said, "get to the rest. You tie me--where?"
"The oak--behind you."
It was a large-sized tree back from the edge of the road, and he walkedto it hearing the man trampling the underbrush in his wake. He had asense of a dreamlike quality in the whole fantastic performance, as ifhe might wake up suddenly and find he'd been having a nightmare.
But there was nothing dreamlike in the force with which the rope wasthrown about him and tightened round the tree. As he felt it strainedacross his chest, lashed round his legs, girding him to the trunk closeat its bark, he recognized expertness and strength in the hands thatbound him. The thing was done with extraordinary speed and deftness, andended by a lump of waste, that smelled of gasoline, being thrust intohis mouth.
The heavy tread moved again through the underbrush, the man passed tothe rock, and, his back to Ferguson, crouched on the light's edgescounting the money. Ferguson saw him in silhouette, a large, humped bodywith bent head. This done, he went to the door of the coupe and liftedout the child. He had some difficulty in getting hold of her, mutteredan oath, then drew her out, carried her to the roadside and set her downon the
grass. There was a moment when he crossed the full gush ofillumination and Ferguson had a clear glimpse of him, a chauffeur's capon his head, the lower part of his face covered by a thick beard.Returning to his car, he jumped in. Its lurching start broke into asudden flight, it rushed; Ferguson could hear the bounding of stones,the creaking and wrenching of its body as it hurtled down the road.
_Ferguson saw him in silhouette, a large, humped bodywith bent head_]
Silence settled, the deep, dreaming quiet of the woods. The young mantried to struggle, to writhe and work himself loose, but his bonds heldfast, and he found himself choked for air, stifling and snorting overhis gag. He gave it up and looked at the child. By straining his eyes hecould just see her, a small, relaxed body, one hand outflung, herprofile, held in a trance-like sleep, marble white against the grass. Ahideous fear assailed him:--she might be dead. Some drug had evidentlybeen administered to keep her quiet--an overdose! He wrenched andpressed at the cords, almost strangled and had to stop, the sweatpouring into his eyes, his heart pounding on the rope that cut into hischest. He called on his will, felt himself steadied, his smotheredbreath came easier, the only sound on the silence.
Then another broke upon it, far away, from the direction of the Sound--athin, clear report. He stiffened, all his faculties strained to listen,heard it again, several in a spattering run, dropping distinct, likelittle globules piercing the stillness. "Shooting!" he thought with awild surge of excitement, "out toward the water--Oh, Lord, have they gothim?"
He listened again, but heard nothing. And then from the ground rose amoaning breath, a sleepy cry--Bebita was awake. He wrenched his headtill he could see her plainly, her face turned upward, the eyes stillclosed, the forehead puckered with a look of pain. He tried to emit someword, heard it only as a guttural mutter, and watching, saw her stir,the out-stretched arm sway upward, her eyes open, dazed and heavy, andheard her drowsy whimper of, "Mummy," and then, "Oh, Annie, where areyou?" Slowly, her head moving as her glance swept the unfamiliarprospect, she sat up.
He remembered the next few minutes as something incredibly horrible, thechild's consciousness clearing to an overwhelming fear. She lookedabout, saw him, scrambled to her feet and began to scream, shrill,terrified cries, crouching away from him like a scared animal. She madea rush for the motor, climbing in, cowering down, calling on the namesthat meant safety: "Mummy! Oh, Mummy! Gramp, Daddy--Come! _Come_ to me!"
An answer came, the hollow bray of a motor horn, the shout of a man'svoice, then the twin spears of light, the whirring buzz of a machineshooting out of the road's dark tunnel--Chapman Price in the black car.He leapt out and ran to her, caught her up, strained her to him, heldher head back to look into her face, kissed her, babbled words of lovethat broke on his lips and he hid his face on her neck. She twined roundhim, arms and legs clutching and clinging, sobbing out, "Popsy, Popsy!"over and over.