The House of Intrigue/Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I NEVER could remember much about that ride of mine with Wendy Washburn through the rain, I don't know just where we were when he hailed a passing taxicab, and I don't know just where that taxicab took us.
But I do remember that the damp upholstery of the taxi was very smelly, and that the door-windows rattled, and that the wheel chains kept slapping against the fenders with a sort of tick-tock rhythm that made my eyelids droop. I also seem to remember Wendy Washburn passed the driver a twenty-dollar bill, if I'm not mistaken, which the man in the wet waterproof coolly and casually accepted.
I think we must have had the city pretty much to ourselves during the midnight drive through one deserted street after another, for, by the way we skidded about corners and pounded over car-tracks, I knew we were traveling a little faster than the law allows. But my bag of sensation had been shaken out. I no longer reacted to what was taking place around me. I don't think an eighteen-inch gun could have startled me. Yet I remember my Hero-Man looking back over his shoulder and then calling out for our driver to go faster. And I rather drowsily asked him why we were careening around the city that way, like a cat having a fit in a flat-kitchen.
"Because we're being followed!" was Wendy Washburn's reply; but even that statement didn't altogether waken my interest,
"But who's following us?" I sleepily inquired, as I tried to edge down into a more comfortable corner of the damp upholstery.
"I don't know, for sure," said the man beside me, "but I do know for sure that it will be better for them not to get up with us!"
"What'll they do to us?" I weakly inquired, as we skidded against the curb-stone with a jolt and went racing on again.
"Don't talk—you're too tired!" said the man at my side. I think he said it crossly. But I didn't even worry about it. For the next minute he was speaking much louder, and much more crossly to the driver in the front seat.
"They're gaining on us!" he called out, and I could feel the cab respond to the driver's dab at the throttle-lever. I could feel his old rattle-trap leap forward and go rocking and lurching along the wet pavement. Then we took a turn, with two wheels up on the sidewalk, and doubled for what must have been Central Park. A policeman in a shiny waterproof shouted at us as we swept down across the Plaza, I know; but we never stopped.
"Keep it up," I could hear Wendy Washburn call out as we turned westward again.
"I can't keep it up!" the driver called back. "My gas is running low!"
"Then slow down enough at Symond's to let us drop off," my Hero-Man called back, after a moment's thought, "but don't stop!"
He was staring back, apparently to make sure the lights of the car behind us hadn't yet turned the corner, when we shuddered down to almost a standstill. We were, I think, somewhere in the west Fifties, between Sixth and Seventh Avenue. The man beside me was on his feet, with the door open, before I woke up to what he intended doing.
"Quick," he called, as he caught me by the arm.
I stumbled out after him. In his right hand, I noticed he still carried the black club-bag. With his left hand he swung me across the wet sidewalk and pushed me in through a door.
I stood blinking about what must have been a public garage, with rows of cars, and black iron pillars, and oil-stains on the floor. Then I discovered that I was alone. It worried me a little to find that Wendy Washburn was no longer at my side. But the next moment I saw him and another man run to one of the cars standing there. Two huge doors, at the same time, swung open at the far end of the garage, which must have reached through to the next street.
I remember my Hero-Man helping me up into this car, which was a roadster with very high-backed seats. The next moment he was there beside me, with the club-bag between his knees, and we were slithering over the oily floor and across the wet sidewalk with a purposeful thump of tires that plainly announced we were still out to play ducks and drakes with the speed laws.
I found the well-padded seat of this second car much more to my liking, I seemed to fit into it as though I had been made for it, or it made for me.
I don't know how long I'd sat there, trying to hold my head up, when I heard Wendy Washburn say: "I think we've given them the slip!"
I don't think I was really much interested. I was too tired to care. I must, indeed, have fallen asleep during a good part of that journey, though I nursed a hazy recollection of leaving the city behind us, of mounting hills and going down them again, of crossing bridges and rocking over car-rails.
I woke up with a start as we went speeding through a sleepy-looking little town. I woke up to the repeated crack of a revolver, for, as I found out later, we'd nearly run down a rube constable who tried to stop us by shooting at our tires. I remember wakening and staring at the man beside me, bent so intently over the wheel. For a moment I thought it was Bud Griswold. Then my Hero-Man himself called out for me to sit low, in case one of that village policeman's pot-shots should accidentally come my way.
I realized, as I sat there blinking up at him, that I'd at least been under fire, that I'd heard bullets whistle by my ears and that thereafter I could look upon myself as a veteran.
The whole situation, in fact, struck me as being so absurd that I suddenly began to laugh.
The man at my side was plainly disturbed at that laugh. As we were well out in the open country again, he slowed down the car and gave me a quick side-glance over his shoulder.
"So you're one too!" I said, as I sat staring through the rain-drops crawling like worms down the wind-shield.
"One what?" he demanded.
"The same as I am," I replied, suddenly dreading to use the ugly word which had risen to my lips.
"I'm worse!" he avowed, as he speeded up again.
"You're at least a good driver," I admitted. For we had traveled far and fast that night. If the next turn of the road had showed us the blue waters of Lake Ontario I don't think I'd have blinked an eye.
"You have to be a good driver, in this business," my Hero-Man finally retorted.
But even that open acknowledgment of his evil ways didn't disturb me. If your thirteenth bluepoint never tastes good, as some wise cynic has observed, it's equally true that your thirteenth nervous shock in one night isn't going to come like a thunder-clap.
But we still speeded along that unknown road. And I began to be languidly interested in our equally unknown destination.
"But where do we happen to be going?" I mildly inquired. I could see the stars shining through a rift in the clouds. It was no longer raining.
Wendy Washburn turned his head and looked at me.
"Watch your road," I reminded him. The old half-quizzical smile was once more on his face as he righted the car and missed a telegraph pole by a few inches.
"Where would you like to go?" he asked.
I leaned back in the well-upholstered seat.
"I'd just like to keep on going—forever," I told him.
"Why?"
"Because I'm tired."
"Very tired?" he asked.
"Terribly," I admitted.
He was silent for a few minutes, I could feel my eyelids once more beginning to droop.
"I'm going to take you where you can have a good sleep," he finally told me.
"Thanks," I said. "And then what?"
"That question we can't answer until to-morrow."
I could see the Hudson shining in the clear starlight. I could see wooded hills, and the vague line of a stone wall. We turned suddenly to the left, went down a winding lane, and swept in close to two gate-pillars that seemed to be covered with ivy.
As we did so the man at my side switched out his head-lights. Then, after a moment's deliberation, he shut them all off. He brought the car to a stop, stepped out and seemed to be fumbling with the huge lock which I could just discern at the center of a pair of massive iron gates. A moment later he had the gates swung open and was tooling the car slowly in past them. Then he again stepped out, closed the gates, locked them, and climbed into the seat beside me.
We went along very slowly, this time, and he kept peering ahead through the darkness. We were no longer crunching over a hard roadway, I noticed, but weaving our way in past tree-trunks and shrubbery over the close-cut grass of a lawn. I could see dimly outlined flower-beds, and borders of bushes. Then we swung in under the branches of a huge tree, pushing our way in past screening shrubbery that brushed the side of the car. Then we came to a stop.
"Where are you taking me?" I asked, as I sat up and tried to stare out through the leafy silence that suddenly enisled us. In the distance, toward the river, I could just make out the vague gray pile of a house. It seemed very big. It also seemed to have many gables.
"Where are you taking me?" I repeated in my best Bertha-The-Beautiful-Cloak-Model tones, as Wendy Washburn stepped down out of the car.
"To the Big House up the River!" responded my Hero-Man, with the faintest sound of a laugh. And he stood waiting to help me alight.
It was my turn to laugh as I stepped down beside him. For there isn't a law-breaker on all Manhattan Island, I suppose, who doesn't know the Big House up the River to be the other name for Sing Sing itself.
"I thought I was headed for something like that!" I told him, He leaned close, and peered into my face, as though my flippancy rather puzzled him. Then he led me cautiously out through the tangle of wet shrubbery, stopping and peering ahead every few steps. We were quite close to that vague and shadowy house by this time.
"This place is as empty as a church," he explained to me in a lowered voice, "and I want you to wait here until I open it up."
"How?" I demanded.
He showed me a bar of metal. He explained that it was the handle that fitted into the socket of a motor-jack.
"I'll jimmy one of the windows open," he calmly announced. "Then I'll come back for you!"
The next moment he was gone. I was too tired to think what to do, or what I ought to do. I merely stood there, waiting, in no way amazed that my one-time Hero-Man was at that moment engaged in jimmying his way into an empty summer-home. And it seemed to take him a very long time. Bud, I remembered, would have done the job in one quarter of what it took my new confederate.
"Come on!" he whispered, as he led me toward the side of the house. A door stood open, but no lights showed behind it. I wasn't thinking much about lights, however. I was thinking more about a bed, a big wide bed with an Ostermoor and a duck- feather pillow or two, and ten long hours far from the madding crowd.
"Whose house is this, anyway?" I languidly inquired, as I mounted the wide steps of Milton bricks with tubbed plants on either side of them.
"What difference does it make?" asked Wendy Washburn as he waited to close the door behind me. The next moment he had switched on the lights.
"It looks like a very nice one," I admitted, as I stared about me. It didn't interest me much more, though, than the foyer of a hotel interests a road-weary trooper on the grape-vine circuits.
"I pride myself on being a good picker," said my guide. I noticed that he had carefully locked the door. But even this did not disturb me.
"Are you—er—nervous?" he asked.
"Not a bit!" I told him.
"Would you feel safer with this?" he next inquired, I noticed that he was holding out a pearl-handled Colt revolver.
"What am I to do with it?" I asked.
"Keep it under you pillow," he explained. That pregnant word of "pillow" caught and held my attention. The man who had been so intently studying my face seemed to realize this.
"There's a cream and gold room at the head of the stairway—the first door at the right there!"
He ventured this announcement with a certain vague constraint which made me smile in spite of myself.
"Thank you, Prince Charming!"
"I think you'll find everything there—and quite comfortable," he went on, still a little embarrassed by my steady stare.
"You seem to know this house," I told him.
"I at least know that it is empty," he retorted.
"You're quite sure of that?" I asked, already a step or two up the stairway.
"Positive!" he replied.
"Then me for the hay!" I flippantly announced.
"I'll wait here until you've locked yourself in," he rather ponderously explained.
I crept up to the door that stood first on the right, with a sigh of weariness as I reached the top of the stairs. Then I quietly opened the door, subdued in some way by the sheer silence of that empty house. I was feeling about the wall for a light-switch when something arrested my attention. I stood there for a full minute, listening.
Then, scarcely without breathing, I crept noiselessly toward the center of the room, where a wide cream and gold bed stood scarcely discernible in the half-light. I stood studying that bed for some time. Then I backed as noiselessly away, and out of the room, softly closing the door behind me.
My Hero-Man was still standing at the foot of the stairs, in an attitude of puzzled expectancy. I went slowly and thoughtfully down to him.
"What is it?" he asked, in a nervous whisper.
"Is there any other room in this house I could sleep in?" I offhandedly inquired.
"Why?" he demanded.
"I don't exactly like that cream and gold room," I told him.
He was silent for a moment.
"Why, yes, of course," he finally said. "The whole house Is empty. You can take any room on that floor."
"Then supposing I take one on this left side," I suggested.
"Yes, the delft blue room," he agreed. "That's as good as any."
"Blue's more my color," I said, as I started up the stairs again.
I don't know whether he believed me or not. I didn't even care. I was too tired to worry over it. But weary as I was, I was at least wide enough awake to know that I stood face to face with a new mystery.
For in the bed of the cream and gold room of that empty house there was a young woman lying, fast asleep.
And remembering that, I not only locked my door and wheeled a dressing-table across it, but I also laid out Wendy Washburn's pearl-handled Colt, on what looked like a Louis-Seize vitrine of hand-painted glass standing close beside the bed. For I intended to sleep, even though I had to shoot a dozen mysterious females to do it!