The Bartlett Mystery Part 36

"Confound it!" growled Steingall. "Why didn't I go?"

"If I stood on the back of the car against the gate, and you climbed onto my shoulders, you might manage to stand between the spikes and jump down," cried Polly desperately.

"Great Scott, but you're the right sort of girl. The wall is too high, but the gate is possible. I'll try it," he answered.

With difficulty, having only slight knowledge of heavy cars, he backed the machine against the gate. Then the girl caught the top with her hands, standing on the back cus.h.i.+ons.

Steingall was no light weight for her soft shoulders, but she uttered no word until she heard him drop heavily on the gravel drive within.

"Thank goodness!" she whispered. "There are three of them now. I only wish I was there, too!"

CHAPTER XXIII

"HE WHO FIGHTS AND RUNS AWAY--"

"I don't like the proposition, an' that's a fact," muttered Fowle, lifting a gla.s.s of whisky and glancing furtively at Voles, when the domineering eyes of the superior scoundrel were averted for a moment.

"Whether you like it or not, you've got to lump it," was the ready answer.

"I don't see that. I agreed to help you up to a certain point----"

Voles swung around at him furiously, as a mastiff might turn on a wretched mongrel.

"Say, listen! If I'm up to the neck in this business, you're in it over your ears. You can't duck now, you white-livered cur! The cops know you.

They had you in their hands once, and warned you to leave this girl alone. If I stand in the dock you'll stand there, too, and I'm not the man to say the word that'll save you."

"But she's with her aunt. She's under age. Her aunt is her legal guardian. I know a bit about the law, you see. This notion of yours is a bird of another color. Sham weddings are no joke. It will mean ten years."

"Who wants you to go in for a sham wedding, you swab?"

"You do, or I haven't got the hang of things."

Voles looked as though he would like to hammer his argument into Fowle with his fists. He forebore. There was too much at stake to allow a sudden access of bad temper to defeat his ends.

He was tired of vagabondage. It was true, as he told his brother long before, that he hungered for the flesh-pots of Egypt, for the life and ease and gayety of New York. An unexpected vista had opened up before him. When he came back to the East his intention was to squeeze funds out of Meiklejohn wherewith to plunge again into the outer wilderness.

Now events had conspired to give him some chance of earning a fortune quickly, had not the irony of fate raised the winsome face and figure of Winifred as a bogey from the grave to bar his path.

So he choked back his wrath, and shoved the decanter of spirits across the table to his morose companion. They were sitting in the hall of Gateway House, about the hour that Carshaw and the detective, tired by their weary hunt through East Orange, sought the inn.

"Now look here, Fowle," he said, "don't be a poor dub, and don't kick at my way of speaking. _Por Dios!_ man, I've lived too long in the sage country to sc.r.a.pe my tongue to a smooth spiel like my--my friend, the Senator. Let's look squarely at the facts. You admire the girl?"

"Who wouldn't? A pippin, every inch of her."

"You're broke?"

"Well--er--"

"You were fired from your last job. You're in wrong with the police. You adopted a disguise and told lies about Winifred to those who would employ her. What chance have you of getting back into your trade, even if you'd be satisfied with it after having lived like a plute for weeks?"

"That goes," said Fowle, waving his pipe.

"You'd like to hand one to that fellow Carshaw?"

"Wouldn't I!"

"Yet you kick like a steer when I offer you the girl, a soft, well-paid job, and the worst revenge you can take on Carshaw."

"Yes, all d.a.m.n fine. But the risk--the infernal risk!"

"That's where I don't agree with you. You go away with her and her father--"

"Father! You're not her father!"

"You should be the first to believe it. Her aunt will swear it to you or to any judge in the country. Once out of the United States, she will be only too glad to avail herself of the protection matrimony is supposed to offer. What are you afraid of?"

"You talked of puttin' up some guy to pretend to marry us."

"Forget it. We can't keep her insensible or dumb for days. But, in the company of her loving father and her devoted husband, what can she do?

Who will believe her? Depend on me to have the right sort of boys on the s.h.i.+p. They'll just grin at her. By the time she reaches Costa Rica she'll be howling for a missionary to come aboard in order to satisfy her scruples. You can suggest it yourself."

"I believe she'd die sooner."

"What matter? You only lose a pretty wife. There's lots more of the same sort when your wad is thick enough. Why, man, it means a three-months'

trip and a fortune for life, however things turn out. You're tossing against luck with an eagle on both sides of the quarter."

Fowle hesitated. The other suppressed a smile. He knew his man.

"Don't decide in a minute," he said seriously. "But, once settled, there must be no s.h.i.+rking. Make up your mind either to go straight ahead by my orders or clear out to-night. I'll give you a ten-spot to begin life again. After that don't come near me."

"I'll do it," said Fowle, and they shook hands on their compact.

It was not in Winifred's nature to remain long in a state of active resentment with any human being. A prisoner, watched diligently during the day, locked into her room at night, she met Rachel Craik's grim espionage and Mick the Wolf's evil temper with an equable cheerfulness that exasperated the one while mollifying the other.

She wondered greatly what they meant to do with her. It was impossible to believe that in the State of New Jersey, within a few miles of New York, they could keep her indefinitely in close confinement. She knew that her Rex would move heaven and earth to rescue her. She knew that the authorities, in the person of Mr. Steingall, would take up the hunt with unwearying diligence, and she reasoned, acutely enough, that a plot which embraced in its scope so many different individuals could not long defy the efforts made to elucidate it.

How thankful she was now that she had at last written and posted that long-deferred letter to the agent. Here, surely, was a clue to be followed--she had quite forgotten, in the first whirlwind of her distress, the second letter which reached her in the Twenty-seventh Street lodgings, but pinned her faith to the fact that her own note concerning the appointment "near East Orange" was in existence.

Perhaps her sweetheart was already rus.h.i.+ng over every road in the place and making exhaustive inquiries about her. It was possible that he had pa.s.sed Gateway House more than once. He might have seen amid the trees the tall chimneys of the very jail against whose iron bars her spirit was fluttering in fearful hope. Oh, why was she not endowed with that power she had read of, whose fortunate possessors could leap time and s.p.a.ce in their astral subconsciousness and make known their thoughts and wishes to those dear to them?

She even smiled at the conceit that a true wireless telegraphy did exist between Carshaw and herself. Daily, nightly, she thought of him and he of her. But their alphabet was lacking; they could utter only the thrilling language of love, which is not bound by such earthly things as signs and symbols.

Yet was she utterly confident, and her demeanor rendered Rachel Craik more and more suspicious. Since the girl had scornfully disowned her kins.h.i.+p, the elder woman had not made further protest on that score. She frankly behaved as a wardress in a prison, and Winifred as frankly accepted the role of prisoner. There remained Mick the Wolf. Under the circ.u.mstances, no doctor or professional nurse could be brought to attend his injured arm. The broken limb had of course been properly set after the accident, but it required skilled dressing daily, and this Winifred undertook. She had no real knowledge of the subject, but her willingness to help, joined to the instruction given by the man himself, achieved her object.