The Sturdy Oak Part 34

It had still attached to its rim a bit of the ribbon by which it had been fastened to his sister's shopping bag, from which, if the truth must be told, he had surrept.i.tiously detached it.

Pretending to consult it, as though it were some sort of pocket oracle, Pudge flashed back, and presently had the satisfaction of seeing a bright fleck of light travel across the shutter. Immediately there was a responsive flicker from the window: one, two, three, he counted, and flashed back: one, two, three.

Pudge's whole being was suffused with delicious thrills. He wished now he had obeyed that oft-experienced presentiment and learned the Morse code; it was a thing no man destined for adventure should be without.

This wordless interchange went on for a few moments, and then a hand, a woman's hand--O fair, imprisoned ladies of all time!--appeared cautiously at the open shutter, waved and pointed.

It pointed toward the buckeye tree. Pudge threw a stone in that direction and sauntered after it, pitching and throwing. Once at the corner, after a suitable exhibition of casualness, he climbed until he found himself higher than the fence, facing the house.

While he was thus occupied, things had been happening there. The shutter had been thrown back and a woman was climbing down by the help of a window ledge below and a pair of knotted window curtains.

Another woman prepared to follow her, gesticulating forcibly to the other not to wait, but to run. Run she did, but it was not until Pudge, lying full length on the buckeye bough, reached her a hand that he discovered her to be his sister's friend, Genevieve Remington.

In the interval of her scrambling up by the aid of the bent bough and such help as he could give her, they had neglected to observe the other woman. Now, as Mrs. Remington's heels drummed on the outside of the fence, Pudge was aware of some commotion in the direction of the house, and saw Miss Eliot running toward him, crying: "Run, run!" while two men pursued her. She made a desperate jump toward the tree, caught the branch, hung for a moment, lost her hold, and brought Pudge ignominiously down in a heap beside her.

If Miss Eliot had not contradicted it, Pudge would have believed to his dying day that bullets hurtled through the air; it was so necessary to the dramatic character of the adventure that there should be bullets.

He recovered from the shock of his fall in time to hear Miss Eliot say: "Better not touch me, Mike; if there's so much as a bruise when my friends find me, you'll get sent up for it."

Her cool, even tones cut the man's stream of profanity like a knife.

He came threateningly close to her, but refrained from laying hands on either of them.

Meantime his companion drew himself up to the top of the fence for a look over, and dropped back with a gesture intended to be rea.s.suring.

Pudge rose gloriously to the occasion.

"The others have gone back to call the police," he announced. Mike spat out an oath at him, but it was easy to see that he was not at all sure that this might not be the case. The possibility that it might be, checked a movement to pursue the fleeing Genevieve. Miss Eliot caught their indecision with a flying shaft.

"Mrs. George Remington," she said, "will probably be in communication with her friends very shortly. And between his wife and his old and dear friend Mike it won't take George Remington long to choose."

This was so obvious that it left the men nothing to say. They fell in surlily on either side of her, and without any show of resistance she walked calmly back toward the house. Pudge lingered, uncertain of his cue.

"Beat it, you putty-face!" Mike snarled at him, showing a yellow fang.

"If you ain't off the premises in about two shakes, you'll get what's comin' to you. See?"

Pudge walked with as much dignity as he could muster in the direction of the public road. He could see nothing of Mrs. Remington in either direction; now and then a private motor whizzed by, but there was no other house near enough to suggest a possibility of calling for help.

He concealed himself in a group of black locusts and waited. In about half an hour he heard a car coming from the house with the mansard roof, and saw that it held three occupants, two men and a woman. The men he recognized, and he was certain that the woman, though she was well bundled up, was not E. Eliot.

The motor turned away from the town and disappeared in the opposite direction. Pudge surmised that Mike was making his getaway. He waited another half hour and began to be a.s.sailed by the pangs of hunger. The house gave no sign; even the smoke from the chimney stopped.

He was sure Miss Eliot was still there; imagination pictured her weltering in her own gore. Between fear and curiosity and the saving hope that there might be food of some sort in the house, Pudge left his hiding place and began a stealthy approach.

He came to the low stoop and crept up to the closed front door. Hovering between fear and courage, he knocked. But there was no response. With growing boldness he tried the door. It was locked.

The rear door also was bolted; but, creeping on, he found a high side window that the keepers of this prison in their hasty flight had forgotten to close. With the aid of an empty rain barrel, which he overturned and rolled into position, Pudge scrambled with much hard breathing through the window and dropped into the kitchen. Here he listened; his ears could discern no sound. On tiptoe he crept through the rooms of the first floor--but came upon neither furtive enemy nor imprisoned friend. Up the narrow stairway he crept--peeped into three bedrooms--and finally opening the door of what was evidently a storeroom, he found the object of his search.

E. Eliot sat in an old splint-bottomed chair--gagged, arms tied behind her and to the chair's back, and her ankles tied to the chair's legs. In a moment Pudge had the knotted towel out of her mouth, and had cut her bonds. But quick though Pudge was, to her he seemed intolerably slow; just then E. Eliot was thinking of only one thing.

This was the final afternoon of the campaign and she was away out here, far from all the great things that might be going on.

She gave a single stretch of her cramped muscles as she rose. "I know you--you're Betty Sheridan's brother--thanks," she said briskly. "What time is it?"

Pudge drew out his most esteemed possession, a watch which kept perfect time--except when it refused to keep any time at all.

"Three o'clock," he announced.

"Then our last demonstration is under way, and when I tell my story--"

E. Eliot interrupted herself. "Come on--let's catch the trolley!"

With Pudge panting after her, she hurried downstairs, unbolted the door, and, running lightly on the b.a.l.l.s of her feet, sped in the direction of the street car line.

CHAPTER XIV. BY LEROY SCOTT

In the meantime, concern and suspense and irruptive wrath had their chief abode in the inner room of Remington and Evans. George had received a request, through Penny Evans, from the chief of police to remain in his office, where he could be reached instantly if information concerning Genevieve were received, and where his help could instantly be secured were it required; and Penny had enlarged that request to the magnitude of a command and had stood by to see that it was obeyed, and himself to give a.s.sistance.

George had recognized the sense of the order, but he rebelled at the enforced inactivity. Where was Genevieve?--why wasn't he out doing something for her? He strode about the office, fuming, sick with the suspense and inaction of his role.

But Genevieve was not his unbroken concern. He was still afire with the high resentment which a few hours earlier had made him go striding into the office of the _Sentinel_. Fragments of his statement to the editor leaped into his mind; and as he strode up and down he repeated phrases silently, but with fierce emphasis of the soul.

Now and again he paused at his window and looked down into Main Street.

Below him was a crowd that was growing in size and disorder: the last afternoon of any campaign in Whitewater was exciting enough; much more so were the final hours of this campaign that marked the first entrance of women into politics in Whitewater on a scale and with an organized energy that might affect the outcome of the morrow's voting.

Across the way, Mrs. Herrington, the fighting blood of five generations of patriots roused in her, had reinstated the Voiceless Speech within the plate-gla.s.s window broken by the stones of that morning and was herself operating it; and, armed with banners, groups of women from the Woman's Club, the Munic.i.p.al League and the Suffrage Society were marching up and down the street sidewalks. It was their final demonstration, their last chance to a.s.sert the demands of good citizens.h.i.+p--and it had attracted hundreds of curious men, vote-owners, belonging to what, in such periods of political struggle, are referred to on platforms as "our better element."

Also drifting into Main Street were groups of voters of less prepossessing aspect--Noonan's men, George recognized them to be. These jeered and jostled the marching women and hooted the remarks of the Voiceless Speech--but the women, disregarding insults and attacks, went on with their silent campaigning. The feeling was high--and George could see, as Noonan's men kept drifting into Main Street, that feeling was growing higher.

Looking down, George felt an angered exultation. Well, his statement in the _Sentinel_, due upon the street almost any moment, would answer all these and give them something to think about!--a statement which would make an even greater stir than the declaration which he had issued those many weeks ago, when, fresh from his honeymoon, he had begun his campaign for the district attorneys.h.i.+p.--[Ill.u.s.tration: Across the way, Mrs. Herrington, the fighting blood of five generations of patriots roused in her, had reinstated the Voiceless Speech.] These people below certainly had a jolt coming to them!

George's impatient and glowering meditations--the hour was then near four--were broken in upon by several interruptions, which came on him in quick succession, as though detonated by brief-interval time-fuses. The first was the entrance of that straw-haired misspeller of his letters who had succeeded Betty Sheridan as guardian of the outer office.

"Mr. Doolittle is here," she announced. "He says he wants to see you."

"You tell Mr. Doolittle _I_ don't want to see _him_!" commanded the irritated George.

But Mr. Benjamin Doolittle was already seeing his candidate. As political boss of his party, he had little regard for such a formality as being announced to any person on whom he might call--so he had walked through the open door.

"Well, what d'you want, Doolittle?" George demanded aggressively.

Mr. Doolittle's face wore that look of bland solicitude, that un.o.btrusive partners.h.i.+p in the misfortune of others, which had made him such an admirable and prosperous officiant at the last rites of residents of Whitewater.

"I just wanted to ask you, George--" he was beginning in his soft, lily-of-the-valley voice, when the telephone on George's desk started ringing. George turned and reached for it, to find that Penny had already picked up the instrument.

"I'll answer it, George.... h.e.l.lo... Mr. Remington is here, but is busy; I'll speak for him--I'm Mr. Evans.... What--it's you! Where are you?...

Stay where you are; I'll come right over for you in my car."

"Who was that?" demanded George.

"Genevieve," Penny said rapidly, seizing his hat, "and I'm going----"