Mary Louise at Dorfield/Chapter 21
CHAPTER XXI
THE SURPRISING STRENGTH OF AUNTIE
At a signal from Josie, Markle and his companion were grabbed from behind. The handcuffs were on the companion in a twinkling but with tiger-like agility and strength Markle slipped from the grasp of the detectives. Without a moment’s delay he sprang to the motorcycle, seized Josie by the collar, pulled her from the saddle and hurled her into the bushes by the wayside. He was in the seat and had the machine started before his would-be captors could catch their breath.
“That’s what I get for trusting those stupid men,” muttered Josie as she picked up her bruised and scratched little body from the blackberry bushes where Markle had so ignominiously thrown her. “Thank God for Auntie!” she devoutly added.
And now began one of the most exciting contests ever beheld. Markle, of course ignorant of who the passenger was in the side car and determined to get rid of her at any cost, said:
“Now old woman, I don’t want to kill you, but I will unless you do exactly what I say. When we get a mile further on I am going to stop this infernal machine and you are going to get quietly out. Do you understand?”
The supposed old woman nodded. She began, however, to unbutton the large white cotton gloves confining her muscular hands and unknotted the bonnet ribbon tied under her chin. She moved her shoulders back and forth in the bombazine gown, making sure there was plenty of room to give them free play.
Bob Dulaney had been conceded by his regiment in the A. E. F. to be the best wrestler among them. He had strength and agility and science. He had never had to use his powers handicapped in a woman’s dress and kerchief with a stiff sunbonnet but, in spite of the confining clothes and the powerful build of Markle, he felt quite confident that he could master him. He was conscious of his muscles rippling under his feminine garb and as he drew off his gloves he gloried in the strength of his great hands. Should he wait until Markle stopped the car or would it be better to grapple with him immediately? Of course, an immediate grapple would mean the detectives in the temporarily disabled Ford would come to his assistance. The sporting blood in Bob’s veins rebelled at this thought. He did not want any assistance. He preferred to have the fight out single handed. He glanced at Markle. A handsome fellow with a well set head and fine square jaw. His close cropped iron-grey hair gave a touch of dignity to his appearance.
“Such a pity! Such a pity!” Bob thought. “Talent gone wrong, just as little Josie said!” but he patted the handcuffs which Josie had placed in the old lady’s reticule.
“Here’s where you get off!” said Markle, stopping his Indian. “Step lively, old woman! I’ve no time to lose.”
The old woman reached out and grasping Markle around the middle she lifted him from the saddle. For the first time in his eventful career of systematized crime, Felix Markle was taken completely by surprise. Knowing the ups and downs of his profession, he was ever ready for an attack, but this bunchy old woman who had so meekly submitted to being carried off had given him a shock. If she was not what she seemed, why had she let him get away from the plain clothes men who might have rendered assistance in the way of ready revolvers and handcuffs. All this flashed through his mind as he struggled in the bear hug of the mysterious female.
Markle was even stronger and more agile than Bob had thought him to be. In spite of the hold he had on him from the back he wriggled around and grappled with his foe. Back and forth they fought each one trying to get the death grip on the other. The bombazine skirt was more of a handicap than Bob had thought it would be. He had not realized before how necessary his legs were in a fight. Strange to say the voluminous skirts also got in Markle’s way and finally managed to trip him up. They rolled in the dirt. With a great wrench Bob managed to pull up the offending skirt and with all the strength and science he could command caught the infuriated Markle in the death-like vise known as the body scissors. In this grip, the opponent is held between the legs of one who has obtained this advantage and by the play of the thigh muscles the breath is slowly squeezed out.
As Markle’s head drooped Bob drew the handcuffs from his bedraggled reticule and snapped them on his wrists. With his kerchief, no longer snowy, he bound his ankles together.
“There, poor fellow, I fancy you would have been happier if I had not let up when I did but had squeezed all the breath out of you,” Bob panted.
The chug of the rejuvenated Ford was now heard and, after it, the rumble of the truck. The Ford was breaking the speed limits in its endeavor to come up with the Indian and its side car. Josie was wild with impatience. It was all she could do to keep from slapping the stupid detective who had let their quarry escape.
“It is what I get for trusting them,” she kept on saying to herself. “I could have snapped the handcuffs on myself without using any force. And now, poor Bob Dulaney may be killed or almost worse than killed, Markle escaping and no scoop after all to speak of.”
The fight that had seemed to Bob Dulaney to last hours had in reality only taken a few minutes, only long enough for the gasoline to be put in the tank and the car to be backed out of the miry road, turned around and started.
They found Bob sitting on the roadside by his captive burglar. He was still in the bombazine gown but his wig and bonnet were gone. He had found the pockets of his trousers under his skirts and had produced therefrom cigarettes and matches and was contentedly smoking.
“Hurrah for Auntie!” cried Josie when she took in the situation as the car slowed down. Tears of joy were in her eyes but a little lump of sympathy in her throat. They lifted Markle into the truck. Life was slowly coming back to him. He opened his eyes for a moment and then closed them wearily. He murmured something but only Josie caught the meaning of his whisper:
“Pet, poor little Pet!”
It was an easy matter to round up the gang of thieves when once the master mind was not allowed to direct them. Markle was confined in jail, there to await his trial. The holder of checks Nos. 82-6573 and 82-6574 when he applied at the New York baggage room was followed and trapped and with him many others.
The books of Simpkins & Markle were inspected and, through them, the furnished apartments were located and the stolen goods restored to their owners. Poor Simpkins had learned a lesson not to shut his eyes and get rich too quick. He was let off—having convinced the jury that he was not dishonest—but merely stupid.
But to return to the wedding breakfast and the fortunes of Mary Louise: Everything went off as it should have and the theft of the presents was not discovered until the bride and groom were off on their honeymoon and then Chief Lonsdale had the trunks brought from Somerville and, so carefully had the things been packed by the experts, that not even one piece of cut glass had been broken. The trunkful of things purloined from the Wrights had also been held at the station and was returned intact. Of course Elizabeth was blamed by her family when the whole thing came out for having introduced them to such people but Elizabeth only smiled, being very happy way down deep in her heart that Billy McGraw was saved from the wiles of the beautiful Hortense.
The beautiful Hortense simply faded out of sight. By some occult means she must have known of the pursuit of her husband and the vigilance of the police in regard to herself. It may have been through a confederate employed by the caterers who perhaps saw Josie and Bob speeding away on the motorcycle. At any rate, she did not return to her apartment, but as soon as the ceremony was over, she excused herself to Mary Louise, regretting exceedingly not being able to be present during the breakfast and sit at the bride’s table, but her poor Felix was so miserable she must go to him. She tripped down the terrace and as has been said, simply faded out of sight. The detectives who had been set by the astute chief to guard the apartment and to arrest her when she made her appearance had a long and unfruitful vigil. It seemed strange that a beautiful woman dressed so strikingly in pale grey over iridescent silk could in a town no bigger than Dorfield escape the notice of everyone and disappear.
Bob Dulaney got, as he expressed it, “the scoop of his life.” He was able to get his story in one of the big New York papers before the A. P. got on to it, thereby reaping a reward in reputation as well as money. The whole country rang with the daring scheme practiced by the gang of thieves and Chief Lonsdale and his force received compliments from every city. Josie asked not to be put in the papers as the one who had really done the work.
“It isn’t newspaper notoriety I want,” she explained. “My father never wanted that kind of credit. He just wanted to have the consciousness that he had delivered the goods and to be sure he had the respect of the profession. If it gets out I was active in this, I might lose my chance to nab others by being the insignificant little person I appear. It’s better for me to go on keeping the Higgledy-Piggledy Shop with Elizabeth. I can learn all kinds of things that I’d miss if I were known to be a real detective. I am here if you need me,” she said to Chief Lonsdale, and he smiled at her.
“How like your father you are, child!”
Markle had one consolation while he was in prison awaiting his trial: he had the notebook which had belonged to Detective O’Gorman which he had not yet been able to decipher. The long hours of solitary prison life gave him the opportunity to put his whole mind on it and at last he felt sure he had mastered the cipher. With painstaking care he translated the first page. Then he sat and looked at it with an expression on his handsome face that beggared description. After all he had been fighting Fate and trying to escape his own sin. And this is what he had translated:
“I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears
I hide from Him, and under running laughter,
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbed pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat—and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet—
‘All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.’”
THE END.