Carey, astonished, hardly knowing what to think, sprang out to investigate, and the driver threw in his clutch and was off down the crossroad at once. Carey took a step toward the darkened car, calling, “Miss Kendall!” And a man with a cap drawn down over his eyes stepped out of the shadow and threw open the car door.
“Just step inside. You’ll find the lady in the backseat,” he said in a gruff voice that yet sounded vaguely familiar. Carey could dimly see a white face leaning against the curtain. He came near anxiously and peered in, with one foot on the running board.
“Is that you, Grace?” he said gently, not knowing he was using that intimate name unbidden. She must have been hurt. And who was this man?
“Get in, get in, we’ve got to get her back,” said the man gruffly, giving Carey an unexpected shove that hurled him to the car floor beside the lady. Before he recovered his balance, the car door was slammed shut, and suddenly from all sides came peals of raucous laughter. Surrounding the car, swarming into it, came the laughers. In the midst of his bewilderment the car started.
“Well, I guess anyhow we put one over on you this time, Kay Copley!”
It was the clarion voice of Clytie Amabel Dodd that sounded high and mocking above the chug of the motor as the struggling, laughing company untangled themselves from one another and settled into their seats abruptly with the jerk of starting. Carey found himself drawn suddenly and forcibly to the backseat between two girls, one of them being the amiable Clytie.
In sudden rage he drew himself up again and faced the girl in the dim light.
“Let me out of here!” he demanded. “I’m on my way to help someone who’s in trouble, and I’m in a hurry to get back.”
He reached out to the door and unfastened it, attempting to climb over Clytie’s feet, which were an intentional barricade.
“Aw, set down, you big dummy, you,” yelled Clytie, giving him a shove back with a muscular young arm. “This ain’t no Sunday-school crowd, you bet yer life. An’ the girl that wrote that note is setting right ‘longside of you over there. My sister Grace! Grace Dodd. Make you acquainted. Now set down, and see if you can ac’ like a little man. We’re off for the best meal ever and a big night. Comb your hair and keep your shirt on, and get a hustle on that grouch. We’re going to have the time of our life, and you’re going along.”
Carey was quiet, stern and quiet. The coarse words of the girl tore their way through his newly awakened soul and made him sick. The thought that he had ever deliberately, of his own accord, gone anywhere in the company of this girl was repulsive. Shame passed over him and bathed him in a cleansing flood for a moment, and as he felt its waters at their height over his head, he seemed to see the face of Grace Kendall, fine and sweet and far away, lost to him forever. Then a flash of memory brought her look as she had thanked him for taking the solo that night and said she knew he would make a success of it, and his soul rose in rebellion. He would keep faith with her. In spite of all of them he would get back.
He lifted his head and called commandingly, “Stop this car! I’ve got to get back to the city. I’ve got an engagement.”
The answer was a loud jeer of laughter.
“Aw! Yeah! We know watcher engagement is, and you ain’t going to no Chrisshun ‘deavor t’night. Pretty little Gracie’ll have to keep on lookin’ fer you, but she won’t see you t’night.”
Carey was very angry. He thought he knew now how men felt that wanted to kill someone. Clytie was a girl, and he couldn’t strike her, but she had exceeded all a woman’s privileges. He gripped her arm roughly and pushed her back into the seat, threw himself between the two unidentified ones in the middle seat, and projected his body upon the man who was driving, seizing the wheel and attempting to turn the car around. The driver was taken unexpectedly, and the car almost ran into the fence, one wheel lurching down into the ditch. The girls set up a horrible screaming. The car was stopped just in time, and a terrific fight began in the front seat.
“Now, just for this, Carey Copley, we’ll get you dead drunk and take you back to your old Chrisshun ‘deavor. That’s what we were going to do, anyway, only we weren’t going to tell you beforehand— get you dead drunk and take you back to your little baby-faced, yella-haired Gracie-girl. Then I guess she’d have anything more to do with you? I guess anyhow not!”
Clytie’s voice rang out loud and clear above the din, followed by the crash of glass as somebody smashed against the windshield. This was what Maxwell heard as he stole noiselessly upon the dark car, running down a slight grade with his engine shut off. He stopped his car not far away and dropped silently to the ground while Harry, like a smaller shadow, dropped from the back, stole around the other side of the car, and hid in the shadows next to the fence.
“What was that?” warned Clytie suddenly. “Grace, didn’t you hear something? Say, boys, we oughta be gettin’ on. Somebody’ll be onto our taking this car and come after us, then it’ll be good night for us. Don’t fool with that kid any longer. Give him a knockout and stow him down in the bottom of the car. We can bring him to when we get to a safe place. Hurry now. Let’s beat it!”
Harry, watching alertly, saw Maxwell spring suddenly on the other side, and stealing close with the velvet tread of a cat, he sprang to the running board on his side and jumping, flung his arms tightly around the neck of the front-seat man next him, hanging back with his fingers locked around the fellow’s throat and dragging his whole lusty young weight to the ground. There was nothing for his man to do but follow, struggling, spluttering, and trying to grasp something, till he sprawled at length upon the grass, unable, for the moment, in his bewilderment to determine just what had hold of him.
Maxwell on his side had gripped the driver and pulled him out, not altogether sure but it might be Carey, but knowing that the best he could do was to get someone before the car started again. The unexpectedness of the attack from the outside wrought confusion and panic in the car and gave Maxwell a moment’s advantage.
Carey was meanwhile fighting blindly like a wild man, his special antagonist being the man in the middle seat, and when he found himself suddenly relieved of the two in the front seat, he seemed to gain an almost superhuman power for the instant. Dragging and pushing, he succeeded in throwing his man out of the car upon the ground. Then before anyone knew what was happening, and amid the frightened screams of the three girls, Carey climbed over into the front seat, and not knowing that a friend was at hand, threw in the clutch and started the car, whirling it recklessly round in the road, almost upsetting it, and shot away up the road toward the city at a terrible rate of speed, leaving Maxwell with three men on his hands and no knowledge of Harry’s presence.
The man that Carey had thrown out of the car lay crumpled in a heap, unconscious. He had broken his ankle and would make no trouble for a while. Maxwell was not even conscious of his presence as he grappled with the driver and finally succeeded in getting him down with hands pinioned and his knee on the man’s chest. Maxwell was an expert wrestler and knew all the tricks, which was more than could be said of the boy who had been driving the car, but Maxwell was by no means in training, and he found himself badly winded and bruised. Lifting his head there in the darkness and wondering what he was to do with his man now he had him down, he discovered the silent form in the road but a step away. Startled, he looked about, and suddenly a gruff young voice came pluckily to him from across the ditch.
“All right, Max. I can hold this man awhile now. I’ve got the muzzle on the back of his neck.”
The form on the bank beside Harry suddenly ceased to struggle and lay grimly still. Maxwell, astonished, but quick to take Harry’s lead, called back, “All right, sir. You haven’t got an extra rope about you, have you, man?”
“Use yer necktie, Max,” called back the boy nonchalantly. “That’s what I’m doing. There’s good strong straps under the seat in the car to make it sure. Saw ‘em last week when you and I were fixing the car.”
And actually H
arry, with the cold butt of his old jackknife realistically placed at the base of his captive’s brain, was tying his man’s hands behind him with his best blue silk necktie that Cornelia had given him the day before. It seemed a terrible waste to him; but his handkerchief was in the other side pocket, and he didn’t dare risk taking that knife in the other hand to get at it.
It happened that the boy that Harry had attacked in the dark was a visitor to the city, very young and very green indeed, and the others had promised to show him a good time and teach him what life in the city meant. He was horribly frightened and already shaking like a leaf with a vision of jail and the confusion of his honorable family back in the country. The cold steel on the back of his neck subdued him instantly and fully. He had no idea that his captor was but a slip of a boy. The darkness had come down completely there in the shadow of a grove of maples, and a cricket rasping out a sudden note in the ditch below made him jump in terror. Harry, with immense scorn for the “big dummy” who allowed himself to be tied so easily, drew the knots fast and hard, wondering meanwhile whether Cornie could iron out the necktie again. Then, feeling a little easier about moving, he changed hands and got possession of his Sunday handkerchief and proceeded to tie the young fellow’s ankles together. After which he slid casually down the bank, hustled over to the car, got the straps, and brought them to Maxwell, who was having his hands full trying to tie the driver’s wrists with his big white handkerchief.
Gravely they made the fellow secure, searched him for any possible weapons, and put him into the backseat of the car.
Next they picked up the quiet fellow on the ground, made his hands fast, and put him into the backseat of the car.
“It’s no use trying to bring him,” advised Harry gruffly. “No water; and besides, we can’t waste the time. He’s just knocked out, I guess, anyhow, like they do in football.”
But when they went for Harry’s man, they found no trace of him. Somehow he had managed to roll down the bank into the ditch and hid himself, or perhaps he had worked off his fetters and run away.
“Aw, gee!” said Harry, reluctantly turning toward the car. “I s’pose we gotta let him go, but that was my best new necktie.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Maxwell almost relieved. “There’s more neckties where that came from, and I think we better get this man back to a doctor.”
Back they drove like lightning to the city, with Harry keeping watch over the prisoners, one sullen and one silent, and took them straight to the police station with a promise to return with more details in a short time. Then they drove rapidly to the church, Maxwell anxious to be sure that Carey was all right and bent on relieving Cornelia’s mind.
They entered the church just as the choir stood up for the anthem, and Cornelia’s white, anxious face looked out at the end of the top row of sopranos. Maxwell’s eyes sought hers a second then searched rapidly through the lines of tenor and bass, but Cary had not come yet. Where was Carey?
Chapter 29
It was very still in the church as the opening chords of the anthem were struck. The anthems were always appreciated by the congregation. Since Grace Kendall had been organist and choir master there was always something new and pleasing, and no one knew beforehand just who might be going to sing a solo that day. Sometimes Grace Kendall herself sang, although but rarely. People loved to hear her sing. Her voice was sweet and well cultivated, and she seemed to have the power of getting her words across to one’s soul that few others possessed.
Cornelia, as her lips formed the words of the opening chorus, wondered idly, almost apathetically, whether Grace would take the tenor solo this time. She could, of course, but Cornelia dreaded it like a blow that was coming swiftly to her. It seemed the knell of her brother’s self-respect. He had failed her right at the start, and of course no one would ever ask him to sing again; and equally of course he would be ashamed and never want to go to that church again. Her heart was so heavy that she had no sense of the triumph and beauty of the chorus as it burst forth in the fresh young voices about her, voices that were not heavy like her own with a sense of agony and defeat.
“I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord.”
It was, of course, a big thing for an amateur volunteer choir to attempt, but in its way it was well done. Grace Kendall seemed to have a natural feeling for expression, and she had developed a wonderful talent for bringing out some voices and suppressing others. Moreover, she trained for weeks on a composition before she was willing to produce it. This particular one had been in waiting some time until a tenor soloist fit for the part should be available. Carey had seemed to fit right in. Grace had told Cornelia this the night before, which made the humiliation all the harder now. Cornelia’s voice stopped entirely on “the beginning,” and never got to “the ending” at all. Something seemed to shut right up in her throat and make sound impossible. She wished she could sink down through the floor and hide away out of sight somewhere. Of course, the audience did not know that her brother was to have sung in this particular anthem, but all the choir knew it, and they must be wondering. Surely they had noticed his absence. She was thankful that her seat kept her a trifle apart from the rest and that she was practically a stranger, so that no one would be likely to ask where he was. If she could only get through this anthem somehow, making her lips move till the end, and sit down! The church seemed stifling. The breath of the roses around the pulpit came sickeningly sweet.
It was almost time for the solo. Another page, another line! At least she would not look around. If anybody noticed her, they would think she knew all about what was going to happen next. They would perhaps think that Carey had been called away—as, indeed, he had. She caught at the words “called away.” That was what she would have to say when they asked her after service, called away suddenly. Oh! And such a calling! Would Grace ever speak to him again? Would they be able to keep it from her that that detestable Clytie had been at the bottom of it all? It wouldn’t be so bad if Grace had never met her. Oh, why had Cornelia been so crazy as to invite them together? Now! Now! Another note!
Into the silence of the climax of the chorus there came a clear, sweet tenor voice, just behind Cornelia, so close it startled her and almost made her lose her self-control, so sweet and resonant and full of feeling that at first she hardly recognized that she had ever heard it before.
“Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Hosts!”
Carey!
Her trembling senses took it in with thrill after thrill of wonder and delight. It was really Carey, her brother, singing like that! Carey, standing on the top step of the little stairway winding up from the choir room, close beside the organ. Carey with his hair rumpled wildly, his coat sleeve half ripped out, a tear in the knee of his trousers, a white face with long black streaks across it, a cut on his chin, and his eyes blue-black with the intensity of the moment, but a smile like a cherub’s on his lips. He was singing as he had never sung before, as no one knew he could sing, as he had not thought he could sing himself—singing as one who had come “out of great tribulation,” as the choir had just sung a moment before, a triumphant, tender, marvelous strain.
“Gee!” breathed Harry back by the door, in awe, under his breath, and the soul of Maxwell was lifted and thrilled by the song. Little Louise in her seat all alone gripped her small hands in ecstasy and smiled till the tears came. And the father, who had found his friend too ill for his wife to leave him and had stolen into church late by the side door and sat down under the gallery, bowed his head and prayed, his heart filled with one longing: that the boy’s mother could have heard him.
Into Cornelia’s heart there flooded a tide of strength and joy surpassing anything she had ever known in pride of herself. Her brother, her brother was singing like that! He had overcome all obstacles, whatever they might have been, and got there in time! He was there! He had not failed! He was singing like a great singer.
Out at the curbstone beside the church sat hu
ddled in a “borrowed” car with a broken windshield—borrowed without the knowledge of the owner—three girls, frightened, furious, and overwhelmed with wonder. All during that stormy drive to the city they had screamed and reasoned and pommeled their captor in vain. He had paid no more heed to their furor than if they had been three pests sitting behind him. When one of them tried to climb into the front seat beside him, he swept her back with one blind motion and a threat to throw them all out into the road if they didn’t stop. They had never seen him like this. They subsided, and he had sat silent, immovable, driving like a madman until with a jerk he suddenly brought up at the church and sprang out, vanishing into the darkness. And now this voice, this wonderful voice, piercing out into the night like the searching of God.
“Holy, holy, holy!” They listened awesomely. This was not the young man they knew, with whom they had rollicked and feasted and reveled. This was a new man. And this—this that he was voicing made them afraid. “Holy, holy!” It was a word that they hated. It seemed to search into their ways from the beginning. It made them aware of their coarseness and their vulgarity. It brought to their minds things that made their cheeks burn and made them think of their mothers and retribution. It reminded them of the borrowed car and the fact that they were alone in it and that even now someone might be out in search of it.
“Holy, holy!” sang the voice. “Lord God of Hosts!” And, as if a searchlight from heaven had been turned upon their silly, weak young faces, they trembled, and one by one clambered out into the shadow silently and slunk away on their little clinking high heels, hurriedly, almost stumbling. They were running away from that voice and from that word, “Holy, holy, holy!” They were gone, and the borrowed car stood there alone. Stood there when the people filed out from the church, still talking about the wonderful new tenor that “Miss Grace” had found; stood there when the janitor locked the door and turned out the lights and went home. Stood there all night, silently, with a hovering watchman in the shadows waiting for someone to come; stood there till morning, when it was reported and taken back to its owner with a handkerchief and a cigarette and a package of chewing gum on its floor to help along the evidence against the two young prisoners who had been brought to the station the night before.