The Bartlett Mystery

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 rushing over every road in the place and making exhaustive inquiries about her. It was possible that he had passed 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 space 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 kinship, 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 rôle of prisoner. There remained Mick the Wolf. Under the circumstances, 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.

It was well-nigh impossible for this rough, callous rogue, brought in contact with such a girl for the first time in his life, to resist her influence. She did not know it, but gradually she was winning him to her side. He swore at her as the cause of his suffering, yet found himself regretting even the passive part he was taking in her imprisonment.

On the very Sunday evening that Voles and Fowle were concocting their vile and mysterious scheme, Mick the Wolf, their trusted associate, partner of Voles in many a desperate enterprise in other lands, was sitting in an armchair up-stairs listening to Winifred reading from a book she had found in her bedroom. It was some simple story of love and adventure, and certainly its author had never dreamed that his exciting situations would be perused under conditions as dramatic as any pictured in the novel.

“It’s a queer thing,” said the man after a pause, when Winifred stopped to light a lamp, “but nobody pipin’ us just now ’ud think we was what we are.”

She laughed at the involved sentence. “I don’t think you are half so bad as you think you are, Mr. Grey,” she said softly. “For my part, I am happy in the belief that my friends will not desert me.”

“Lookut here,” he said with gruff sympathy, “why don’t you pull with your people instead of ag’in’ ’em. I know what I’m talkin’ about. This yer Voles – but, steady! Mebbe I best shut up.”

Winifred’s heart bounded. If this man would speak he might tell her something of great value to her lover and Mr. Steingall when they came to reckon up accounts with her persecutors.

“Anything you tell me, Mr. Grey, shall not be repeated,” she said.

He glanced toward the door. She understood his thought. Rachel Craik was preparing their evening meal. She might enter the room at any moment, and it was not advisable that she should suspect them of amicable relations. Assuredly, up to that hour, Mick the Wolf’s manner admitted of no doubt on the point. He had been intractable as the animal which supplied his oddly appropriate nickname.

“It’s this way,” he went on in a lower tone. “Voles an’ Meiklejohn are brothers born. Meiklejohn, bein’ a Senator, an’ well in with some of the top-notchers, has a cotton concession in Costa Rica which means a pile of money. Voles is cute as a pet fox. He winded the turkey, an’ has forced his brother to make him manager, with a whackin’ salary and an interest. I’m in on the deal, too. Bless your little heart, you just stan’ pat, an’ you kin make a dress outer dollar bills.”

“But what have I to do with all this? Why cannot you settle your business without pursuing me?” was the mournful question, for Winifred never guessed how greatly the man’s information affected her.

“I can’t rightly say, but you’re either with us or ag’in’ us. If you’re on our side it’ll be a joy-ride. If you stick to that guy, Carshaw – ”

To their ears, as to the ears of those waiting in the car at the gate, came the sound of violent blows and the wrenching open of the door. In that large house – in a room situated, too, on the side removed from the road – they could not catch Carshaw’s exulting cry after a peep through the window:

“I have them! Voles and Fowle! There they are! Now you, who fought with Funston, fight for a year’s pay to be earned in a minute. Here! use this wrench. You understand it. Use it on the head of any one who resists you. These scoundrels must be taken red-handed.”

Voles at the first alarm sprang to his feet and whipped out a revolver. He knew that a vigorous assault was being made on the stout door. Running to the blind of the nearest window, he saw Carshaw pull out an iron bar by sheer strength and use it as a lever to pry open a sash. Tempted though he was to shoot, he dared not. There might be police outside. Murder would shatter his dreams of wealth and luxury. He must outwit his pursuers.

Rachel Craik came running from the kitchen, alarmed by the sudden hubbub.

“Fowle,” he said to his amazed confederate, “stand them off for a minute or two. You, Rachel, can help. You know where to find me when the coast is clear. They cannot touch you. Remember that. They’re breaking into this house without a warrant. Bluff hard, and they cannot even frame a charge against you if the girl is secured – and she will be if you give me time.”

Trusting more to Rachel than to vacillating Fowle, he raced up-stairs, though his injured leg made rapid progress difficult. He ran into a room and grabbed a small bag which lay in readiness. Then he rushed toward the room in which Winifred and Mick the Wolf were listening with mixed feelings to the row which had sprung up beneath.

He tried the door. It was locked. Rachel had the key in her pocket. A trifle of that nature did not deter a man like Voles. With his shoulder he burst the lock, coming face to face with his partner in crime, who had grasped a poker in his serviceable hand.

“Atta-boy!” he yelled. “Down-stairs, and floor ’em as they come. You’ve one sound arm. Go for ’em – they can’t lay a finger on you.”

Now, it was one thing to sympathize with a helpless and gentle girl, but another to resist the call of the wild. The dominant note in Mick the Wolf was brutality, and the fighting instinct conquered even his pain. With an oath he made his way to the hall, and it needed all of Steingall’s great strength to overpower him, wounded though he was.

It took Carshaw and Jim a couple of minutes to force their way in. There was a lively fight, in which the detective lent a hand. When Mick the Wolf was down, groaning and cursing because his fractured arm was broken again; when Fowle was held to the floor, with Rachel Craik, struggling and screaming, pinned beneath him by the valiant Jim, Carshaw sped to the first floor.

Soon, after using hand-cuffs on the man and woman, and leaving Jim in charge of them and Mick the Wolf, Steingall joined him. But, search as they might, they could not find either Winifred or Voles. Almost beside himself with rage, Carshaw rushed back to the grim-visaged Rachel.

“Where is she?” he cried. “What have you done with her? By Heaven, I’ll kill you – ”

Her face lit up with a malignant joy. “A nice thing!” she screamed. “Respectable folk to be treated in this way! What have we done, I’d like to know? Breaking into our house and assaulting us!”

“No good talking to her,” said the chief. “She’s a deep one – tough as they make ’em. Let’s search the grounds.”

CHAPTER XXIV

IN FULL CRY

Polly, the maid from the inn, waiting breathlessly intent in the car outside the gate, listened for sounds which should guide her as to the progress of events within.

Steingall left her standing on the upholstered back of the car, with her hands clutching the top of the gate. She did not descend immediately. In that position she could best hear approaching footsteps, as she could follow the running of the detective nearly all the way to the house.

Great was her surprise, therefore, to find some one unlocking the gate without receiving any preliminary warning of his advent. She was just in time to spring back into the tonneau when one-half of the ponderous door swung open and a man appeared, carrying in his arms the seemingly lifeless body of a woman.

It will be remembered that the lamps of the car spread their beams in the opposite direction. In the gloom, not only of the night but of the high wall and the trees, Polly could not distinguish features.

She thought, however, the man was a stranger. Naturally, as the rescuers had just gone toward the point whence the newcomer came, she believed that he had been directed to carry the young lady to the waiting car. Her quick sympathy was aroused.

“The poor dear!” she cried. “Oh, don’t tell me those horrid people have hurt her.”

Voles who had choked Winifred into insensibility with a mixture of alcohol, chloroform, and ether – a scientific anesthetic used by all surgeons, rapid in achieving its purpose and quite harmless in its effects – was far more surprised than Polly. He never expected to be greeted in this way, but rather to be met by some helper of Carshaw’s posed there, and he was prepared to fight or trick his adversary as occasion demanded.

He had carried Winifred down a servants’ stairs and made his way out of the house by a back door. The exit was unguarded. In this, as in many other country mansions, the drive followed a circuitous sweep, but a path through the trees led directly toward the gate. Hence, his passage had neither been observed from the hall nor overheard by Polly.

It was in precisely such a situation as that which faced him now that Voles was really superb. He was an adroit man, with ready judgment and nerves of steel.

“Not much hurt,” he said quietly. “She has fainted from shock, I think.”

Though he spoke so glibly, his brain was on fire with question and answer. His eyes glowered at the car and its occupant, and swept the open road on either hand.

To Polly’s nostrils was wafted a strange odor, carrying reminiscences of so-called “painless” dentistry. Winifred, reviving in the open air when that hateful sponge was removed from mouth and nose, struggled spasmodically in the arms of her captor. Polly knew that women in a faint lie deathlike. That never-to-be-forgotten scent, too, caused a wave of alarm, of suspicion, to creep through her with each heart-beat.

“Where are the others?” she said, leaning over, and striving to see Voles’s face.

“Just behind,” he answered. “Let me place Miss Bartlett in the car.”

That sounded reasonable.

“Lift her in here, poor thing,” said Polly, making way for the almost inanimate form.

“No; on the front seat.”

“But why? This is the best place – oh, help, help!”

For Voles, having placed Winifred beside the steering-pillar, seized Polly and flung her headlong onto the grass beneath the wall. In the same instant he started the car with a quick turn of the wrist, for the engine had been stopped to avoid noise, and there was no time to experiment with self-starters. He jumped in, released the brakes, applied the first speed, and was away in the direction to New York. Polly, angry and frightened, ran after him, screaming at the top of her voice.

Voles was in such a desperate hurry that he did not pay heed to his steering, and nearly ran over a motor-cyclist coming in hot haste to East Orange. The rider, a young man, pulled up and used language. He heard Polly, panting and shrieking, running toward him.

“Good gracious, Miss Barnard, what’s the matter?” he cried, for Polly was pretty enough to hold many an eye.

“Is that you, Mr. Petch? Thank goodness! There’s been murder done in Gateway House. That villain is carrying off the young lady he has killed. He has escaped from the police. They’re in there now. Oh, catch him!”

Mr. Petch, who had dismounted, began to hop back New York-ward, while the engine emulated a machine-gun.

“It’s a big car – goes fast – I’ll do my best – ” Polly heard him say, and he, too, was gone. She met Carshaw and the chief half-way up the drive. To them, in gasps, she told her story.

“Cool hand, Voles!” said Steingall.

“The whole thing was bungled!” cried Carshaw in a white heat. “If Clancy had been here this couldn’t have happened.”

Steingall took the implied taunt coolly.

“It would have been better had I followed my original plan and not helped you,” he said. “You or our East Orange friend might have been killed, it is true, but Voles could not have carried the girl off so easily.”

Carshaw promptly regretted his bitter comment. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but you cannot realize what all this means to me, Steingall.”

“I think I can. Cheer up; your car is easily recognizable. We have a cyclist known to this young lady in close pursuit. Even if he fails to catch up with Voles, he will at least give us some definite direction for a search. At present there is nothing for us to do but lodge these people in the local prison, telephone the ferries and main towns, and go back to New York. The police here will let us know what happens to the cyclist; he may even call at the Bureau. I can act best in New York.”

“Do you mean now to arrest those in the house?”

“Yes, sure. That is, I’ll get the New Jersey police to hold them.”

“On what charge?”

“Conspiracy. At last we have clear evidence against them. Miss Polly here has actually seen Voles carrying off Miss Bartlett, who had previously been rendered insensible. If I am not mistaken in my man, Fowle will turn State’s evidence when he chews on the proposition for a few hours in a cell.”

“Pah – the wretch! I don’t want these reptiles to be crushed; what I want is to recover Miss Bartlett. Would it not be best to leave them their liberty and watch them?”

“I’ve always found a seven days’ remand very helpful,” mused the detective.

“In ordinary crime, yes. But here we have Rachel Craik, who would suffer martyrdom rather than speak; Fowle, a mere tool, who knows nothing except what little he is told; and a thick-headed brute named Mick the Wolf, who does what his master bids him. Don’t you see that in prison they are useless. At liberty they may help by trying to communicate with Voles.”

“I’m half inclined to agree with you. Now to frighten them. Keep your face and tongue under control; I’ll try a dodge that seldom fails.”

They re-entered the house. Jim was doing sentry-go in the hall. The prisoners were sitting mute, save that Mick the Wolf uttered an occasional growl of pain; his wounded arm was hurting him sorely.

“We’re not going to worry any more about you,” said Steingall contemptuously as he unlocked the hand-cuffs with which he had been compelled to secure Rachel and Fowle.

“Yes, you will,” was the woman’s defiant cry. “Your outrageous conduct – ”

“Oh, pull that stuff on some one likely to be impressed by it. It comes a trifle late in the day when Miss Winifred Marchbanks is in the hands of her friends and Voles on his way to prison. I don’t even want you, Rachel Bartlett, unless the State attorney decides that you ought to be prosecuted.”

The woman’s eyes gleamed like those of a spiteful cat. The detective’s cool use of Winifred’s right name, and of the name by which Rachel Craik herself ought to be known, was positively demoralizing. Fowle, too, was greatly alarmed. The police-officer said nothing about not wanting him. With Voles’s superior will withdrawn, he began to quake again. But Rachel was a dour New Englander, of different metal to a man from the East Side.

“If you’re speaking of my niece,” she said, “you have been misled by the hussy, and by that man of hers there. Mr. Voles is her father. I have every proof of my words. You can bring none of yours.”

Steingall, eying Fowle, laughed. “You will be able to tell us all about it in the witness-box, Rachel Bartlett,” he said.

“How dare you call me by that name?”

“Because it’s your right one. Craik was your mother’s name. If friend Voles had only kept his hands clean, or even treated you honorably, you might now be Mrs. Ralph Meiklejohn, eh?”

He was playing with her with the affable gambols of a cat toying with a doomed mouse. Each instant Fowle was becoming more perturbed. He did not like the way in which the detective ignored him. Was he to be swallowed at a gulp when his turn came?

Even Rachel Craik was silenced by this last shot. She wrung her hands; this stern, implacable woman seemed to be on the point of bursting into tears. All the plotting and devices of years had failed her suddenly. An edifice of deception, which had lasted half a generation, had crumbled into nothingness. This man had callously exposed her secret and her shame. At that moment her heart was bitter against Voles.

The detective, skilled in the phases of criminal thought, knew exactly what was passing through the minds of both Rachel and Fowle. Revenge in the one case, safety in the other, was operating quickly, and a crisis was at hand.

But just then the angry voice of the East Orange plumber reached him: “Just imagine Petch turnin’ up; him, of all men in the world! An’ of course you talked nicey-nicey, an’ he’s such an obligin’ feller that he beats it after the car! Petch, indeed!”

There was a snort of jealous fury. Polly’s voice was raised in protest.

“Jim, don’t be stupid. How could I tell who it was?”

“I’ll back you against any girl in East Orange to find another string to your bow wherever you may happen to be,” was the enraged retort.

The detective hastened to stop this lovers’ quarrel, which had broken out after a whispered colloquy. He was too late. Miss Polly was on her dignity.

“Well, Mr. Petch is a real man, anyhow,” came her stinging answer. “He’s after them now, and he won’t let them slip through his fingers like you did.”

The sheer injustice of this statement rendered Jim incoherent. Petch was an old rival. When next they met, gore would flow in East Orange. But the detective’s angry whisper restored the senses of both.

“Can’t you two shut up?” he hissed. “Your miserable quarrel has warned our prisoners. They were on the very point of confessing everything when you blurted out that the chief rascal had escaped. I’m ashamed of you, especially after you had behaved so well.”

His rebuke was merited; they were abashed into silence – too late. When he returned to the pair in the corner of the room he saw Rachel Craik’s sour smile and Fowle’s downcast look of calculation.

“A lost opportunity!” he muttered, but faced the situation quite pleasantly.

“You may as well remain here,” he said. “I may want you, and you should realize without giving further trouble that you cannot hide from the police. Come, Mr. Carshaw, we have work before us in East Orange. Miss Winifred should be all right by this time.”

Rachel Craik actually laughed. She wondered why she had lost faith in Voles for an instant.

“I’ll send a doctor,” went on Steingall composedly. “Your friend there needs one, I guess.”

“I’d sooner have a six-shooter,” roared Mick the Wolf.

“Doctors are even more deadly sometimes.”

So the detective took his defeat cheerfully, and that is the worst thing a man can do – in his opponent’s interests. He was rather silent as he trudged with Carshaw and the others back to the train, however.

He was asking himself what new gibe Clancy would spring on him when the story of the night’s fiasco came out.

CHAPTER XXV

FLANK ATTACKS

Somewhat tired, having ridden that day to Poughkeepsie and back, Petch, nevertheless, put up a great race after the fleeing motor-car.

His muscles were rejuvenated by Polly Barnard’s exciting news and no less by admiration for the girl herself. Little thinking that Jim, the plumber, was performing deeds of derring-do in the hall of Gateway House, he congratulated himself on the lucky chance which enabled him to oblige the fair Polly. He dashed into the road to Hoboken, and found, to his joy, that the dust raised by the passage of the car gave an unfailing clue to its route. Now, a well-regulated motor-cycle can run rings round any other form of automobile, no matter how many horses may be pent in the cylinders, if on an ordinary road and subjected to the exigencies of traffic.

Voles, break-neck driver though he was, dared not disregard the traffic regulations and risk a smash-up. He got the best out of the engine, but was compelled to go steadily through clusters of houses and around tree-shaded corners. To his great amazement, as he was tearing through the last habitations before crossing the New Jersey flats, he was hailed loudly from behind:

“Hi, you – pull up!”

He glanced over his shoulder. A motor-cyclist, white with dust, was riding after him with tremendous energy.

“Hola!” cried Voles, snatching another look. “What’s the matter?”

Petch should have temporized, done one of a hundred things he thought of too late; but he was so breathless after the terrific sprint in which he overtook Voles that he blurted out:

“I know you – you can’t escape – there’s the girl herself – I see her!”

“Hell!”

Voles urged on the car by foot and finger. After him pelted Petch, with set teeth and straining eyes. The magnificent car, superb in its energies, swept through the night like the fiery dragon of song and fable, but with a speed never attained by dragon yet, else there would be room on earth for nothing save dragons. And the motor-cycle leaped and bounded close behind, stuttering its resolve to conquer the monster in front.

The pair created a great commotion as they whirred past scattered houses and emerged into the keen, cold air of the marshland. A few cars met en route actually slowed up, and heads were thrust out to peer in wonder. Women in them were scared, and enjoined drivers to be careful, while men explained laughingly that a couple of joy-riders were being chased by a motor “cop.”

It was neck or nothing now for Voles, and when these alternatives offered, he never hesitated as to which should be chosen. He knew he was in desperate case.

The pace; the extraordinary appearance of a hatless man and a girl with her hair streaming wild – for Winifred’s abundant tresses had soon shed all restraint of pins and twists before the tearing wind of their transit – would create a tumult in Hoboken. Something must be done. He must stop the car and shoot that pestiferous cyclist, who had sprung out of the ground as though one of Medusa’s teeth had lain buried there throughout the ages, and become a panoplied warrior at a woman’s cry.

He looked ahead. There was no car in sight. He peered over his shoulder. There was no cyclist! Petch had not counted on this frenzied race, and his petrol-tank was empty. He had pulled up disconsolately half a mile away, and was now borrowing a gallon of gas from an Orange-bound car, explaining excitedly that he was “after” a murderer!

Voles laughed. The fiend’s luck, which seldom fails the fiend’s votaries, had come to his aid in a highly critical moment. There remained Winifred. She, too, must be dealt with. Now, all who have experienced the effect of an anesthetic will understand that after the merely stupefying power of the gas has waned there follows a long period of semi-hysteria, when actual existence is dreamlike, and impressions of events are evanescent. Winifred, therefore, hardly appreciated what was taking place until the car stopped abruptly, and the stupor of cold passed almost simultaneously with the stupor of anesthesia.

But Voles had his larger plan now. With coolness and daring he might achieve it. All depended on the discretion of those left behind in Gateway House. It was impossible to keep Winifred always in durance, or to prevent her everlastingly from obtaining help. That fool of a cyclist, for instance, had he contented himself with riding quietly behind until he reached the ferry, would have wrecked the exploit beyond repair.