The Perils of Pauline Part 28

Harry did not see it. He was battering at the door of the burning house.

Hicks could hardly be called a nervous or a timid man. He was certainly not a coward, like Owen; but neither did he have the shrewd, scheming mind which was the bulwark of the craven secretary's weakness. At the moment when they discovered the young lovers safe at the foot of the cliff after the escape from the balloon and rock ledge, the two arch conspirators were two very different men. Owen was shaking like a leaf in his terror of discovery, but thinking of a hundred schemes to save himself. Hicks was deadly cool, and thinking of just one thing--immediate and cold-blooded murder.

But now, although he thought he had killed Harry, although he knew he had Pauline gagged and bound in the bottom of the runabout, Hicks was afraid. He was afraid of the incompleteness of the thing. He was eager to have done with the girl as well as with the man. And now this latest plan of Owen's was but another chapter of procrastination.

The incident of the farmer's curiosity had unnerved him, too. He put back over his face one of the white handkerchiefs that he had taken off when he began the flight.

"There's no more 'pity-the-poor-girl' stuff in this," he said gruffly to Pauline. "If you don't keep quiet I'll kill you. I mean what I say."

He still had the instinctive crook sense to conceal his natural voice.

Hicks was afraid, but as mile after mile fell behind them and the westerning sun gave promise of the early shelter of dark, he began to gain confidence. He mumbled to himself reminiscently:

"The old Grigsby house, eh? n.o.body but--" he checked himself.

"n.o.body but somebody would thought've that."

The "old Grigsby house," in front of which the runabout came to a stop after many miles of travel, was set back from the road about three hundred yards. In front of it and on either side, the trees had been cut away, but a tangle of riotous shrubbery lined the path to the door. Behind the house the trees had been left untouched, and now in its tottering condition the venerable building literally rested on two of the great elms, like an old man on crutches.

The windows were few and shuttered. The black steel blinds were dead as the eyes of a skull. The steel was not rusted and only a little weather-stained.

There were no steps to the door. It opened on the ground level, with a cracked board serving as both porch and foot mat. The signs of attempted preservation were what gave the place its ominous air. There was a menace in the steel shutters of the old Grigsby house, and in the fact that the path to the door was kept clear.

Up this path Hicks carried Pauline. Before he lifted her in his arms he tested her bonds. He did not know that Pauline was too terrified to conceive the simplest plan of action. Compared with the fear that possessed her now the torturing suspense of the balloon flight seemed like peace and safety.

Hicks held her with one arm while with the other he unlocked the low door. Swinging heavy on strong hinges, it opened into a narrow hall, mildewed with the dampness of decay, the dust of disuse. He carried Pauline up the stairs, which groaned and bent under his steps and pushed open a door. There was a broken chair, a table, a cot, a washstand, with pitcher and bowl, and a small oil lamp set in a bracket on the wail.

Hicks laid Pauline on the cot, and lighted the lamp, using the same match for a cigarette. He seemed spurred by a desire to get away as if the tottering, grimy halls held memories too grim for even his hardened soul. After testing the shutters of the window, which were locked on the outside, he stepped back to the cot and cut Pauline's bonds, and removed the bandage from her lips. As she fell back in a half swoon he hurried through the door, closed and locked it and went down the stairs.

Half way down he stopped abruptly, stood for a moment listening, then hastened on, dropping his cigarette over the banister. He did not see where it fell. He did not care. His only aim was to get out--to get away. He had heard a sound as he came down the stairs that turned his fear to terror--it was the distant grumble of an automobile horn. He locked the door and sped down the bramble-walled path to the runabout. He had left it in the middle of the road, so that as he leaped in and started again it left no swerve of its wheel ruts toward the old Grigsby house. It was five miles to the nearest town, but Hicks made it in twenty minutes, and without hearing again the threatening automobile horn. The first thing he did was to telephone to Owen.

For half an hour Owen had been locked in the library of the Marvin house. The events of the early afternoon, the failure of his best-laid plans, the suspense of waiting the result of Hicks's final move, had made him a nervous wreck. He had lighted a dozen cigars and thrown them away. As many times he had picked up the telephone only to set it down again without calling a number. At last he had taken out the thin tube of light pills, had drawn the shades, switched on the electric lights, and sat down to wait for the half-peace that morphine brought to his conscience.

As he leaned back in his chair, awaiting the effect of the drug, the mummy in its case stood in front of him. He closed his eyes in a pleasant stupor. He opened them in terror. For a moment his hands were outstretched in front of him, with claw-like fingers clutching at thin air; then he covered his eyes with them to shut from view the mummy, which stood over him, its upraised hand pointing to him the finger of accusation; its woman's eyes blazing with anger; its cold lips speaking a message that chilled his blood.

The telephone bell jangled again and again before Owen found courage to open his eyes. When he did so he clutched at the instrument, eager for the sound of a human voice.

"h.e.l.lo! . . . Yes, this is Owen . . ." He glanced apprehensively over his shoulder at the mummy. Its hand was lowered and it stood motionless as before. He turned excitedly back to the telephone.

"It's YOU! Hicks? . . . What news? . . . . She's at Grigsby's?

What do you mean? Somebody after you? . . . Not him? . . . I give you my word there hadn't been anything on that road for two months. . . . What have you done? What! Nothing? You should have called the police from Jersey. . . . All gone to pieces? . . .

Stay over there, I'll join you tonight. Yes, go back to the house and watch. . . . What? . . . All right."

Pauline, left alone, began to regain her courage. After a few moments she was able to stand up and move slowly about her prison room. She tried the door and the window shutters mechanically. She searched the room for something that might be used to batter down the door. There was nothing. She sat on the cot and tried to think.

She sprang up again, trembling. The dry, choking smell of smoke had reached her. Hicks's lighted cigarette had fallen among the wisps of old wall paper in the hall.

She ran to the door. Baffled, piteous, alone, she turned--and looked on death.

For through the cracks in the floor flashed now the golden daggers of flame in sheaths of stifling smoke. She cowered, choking, by the outer wall of the room.

The flame daggers grew into scimitars. The inner wall caught fire.

There was no outlet for the suffocating smoke.

She sprang to the middle of the room and seized the broken chair. With all her might she crashed it against the door. It fell in pieces at her feet.

She picked up a leg of the chair and, running to the window, pounded upon the shutters. She screamed, and beat upon the shutters. It was the rattle and crash upon the shutters that made Harry rein in his horse before the old Grigsby house.

He saw smoke burst from the lower windows, and, battering on the locked door, he heard her screams.

"Harry! Harry!"

It was to him she called again in her peril, as she had called before --in the wreck of the yacht, in the den of Baskinelli, and even this day from the rim of the runaway balloon. Always, inspired by that call, he had found their way to safety.

He thrust the full weight of his mighty body against the door which held like solid rock.

"Harry! Harry!" came the cries again.

"I'm coming, Polly; I'm here!"

He dashed to where a heavy tree limb had fallen, carried it to the door, raised it and charged with it as a battering ram. He might as well have slapped the door with his flat palm.

He looked at the windows whence the smoke poured--smoke mingled with flame. Half crazed by the cries from above, he raised the limb to try to break the shutters. He stopped and let it fall. The toot of an automobile horn and the excited voice of young Ba.s.sett stopped him.

"What's doing?" gasped the reporter. "Is anybody in there?"

Harry pointed to the shuttered window of the upper room. The cries came again, and with the sound, of the woman's voice Ba.s.sett turned sick. He made a dizzy charge at the door, but Harry caught him back.

"All three together," he said.

They flung their strength at the portal--but still it held.

Ba.s.sett turned away, sobbing. He looked up to see Harry spring into the big car which he forced through the brambles.

"What are you doing? You're crazy!" yelled the chauffeur, running toward the machine.

"Get her--if I can't--after the smas.h.!.+" was Harry's answer. The car lunged on at full speed.

The impact rocked the burning house. Frame and door crashed down together before the battering car. It plowed for half its length into the smoke and fire, stopped an instant, quivered and backed out again, splendid ruin.

On Harry's forehead a deep cut streamed.

Ba.s.sett sprang to catch him, but he climbed out unhelped. Together they leaped the shattered wall. Through searing smoke they climbed the quaking stairs and burst into the shuttered room.

The lamp still flickered dimly in its bracket.

"Pauline," called Harry, chokingly, "Pauline, answer me."

There was no answer.

On hands and knees he groped over the hot floor. He found her by the window, where she had fallen. And flames choked them as they fled.