第 17 页

"Jump!" yelled Betcher Long and leapt obliquely.

The machine flew up on the sidewalk, swerved, and, with a banging of bursting tires, skidded round until its bonnet was pointed back the way it had come. In a second Betcher had leapt upon the running board and, gripping the driver by the collar, had jerked him out of the machine. The man was unknown to him; a wizen-faced, chinless individual, half-dead with shock. Five minutes later he was standing in the steel pen, listening, dazed and uncomprehending, to the charge which was read to him.

"There was a man at each entrance to signal when I came out," explained Betcher to his dumbfounded assistant. "The moment the signals were given, these machines, which had also been waiting, were sent forward to organize a fatal accident. The Terrible People knew that I hadn't a car here and that I am in the habit of walking out to get a taxi, and they had probably been waiting hours for this opportunity. If they hadn't seen me on the sidewalk they'd have charged the cab I was in, on the off-chance of putting me out of action."

They were in a police car now, travelling westward, and it was an opportunity for Rouch to deliver himself of certain views he held upon the Terrible People.

"They're too clever for us, Mr. Long," he said. "Ordinary detectives won't catch 'em. The little hooks they use for their dirty work know nothing about their bosses, and I'll bet you that Ruffy Jones has got no more idea than the man in the moon who put him on to this job. Who's this professor he talked about?"

"He's been reading detective stories," said Betcher shortly. "On one point I'm certain— I know every member of the Terrible People!"

"Ruffy says—" began Rouch.

"Ruffy is the sort of man who would say anything for a pint of beer," said Betcher. "He's had ten convictions and two laggings, and that hasn't stopped him talking."

Ruffy's favourite offence, Arnold Long learnt, was to act as motorman to the hold-up gangs that travel the country and secure a precarious livelihood by halting before a jeweller's shop, smashing the window and taking what hands can reach, thereafter vanishing on the car into the blue.

By this time they had reached Colville Gardens, and, stopping the machine, Betcher sprang out. He gave one glance at the face of the maid who opened the door, and his heart sank.

Chapter 25

"NO, SIR, Miss Sanders went out an hour ago. I didn't see her go— there is her bag."

Betcher turned to Rouch, and the sergeant signalled the man who had watched their arrival from the other side of the street. There was a brief consultation. The watcher was emphatic that nobody had left the house.

"I've been here for the last hour and a half, and I'll swear that neither the man who called nor Miss Sanders has left," he asserted.

Betcher returned to question the maid and learnt all that she knew.

"When I came down with the bag, Miss Sanders had gone," she said. "I didn't, hear the door close on her, either."

Betcher strode into the drawing room. The silver tray was still where the girl had left it, and he picked up the half-empty coffee-pot and smelt.

"Smell that, Rouch."

The sergeant sniffed.

"That's 'knock-out' all right," he said.

Betcher went out into the hall.

"Is there any other way out of this house?" he asked the frightened girl.

"There's a door in Miss Revelstoke's study that leads to the garage," she said, and led the way.

The door was unlocked, indeed ajar. They passed down to the garage, the big door of which was also open. Betcher took a flash-lamp from his pocket and examined the little building. There was no clue here, and, unfastening the door, he went out into the mews.

Here he had better luck. A woman, the wife of a chauffeur who occupied two rooms above a garage in the mews, had seen the car come out and the man get down to lock the door behind him. It was a very old Daimler, she told him, for, being a chauffeur's wife, she was wise in the makes of cars.

The detective who had been watching the house and had joined them remembered seeing an old Daimler pass in front of the house a quarter of an hour after the man had gone in.

"Its blinds were drawn; I thought it was one of those soft-goods travellers' machines," he said.

He had seen it pass along Elgin Crescent out of sight. A police officer on duty in Ladbroke Grove had also seen the car, Betcher discovered later. It had gone in a westerly direction, he reported. He had noticed the car because the number plate at the back was damaged, and he tried to attract the driver's attention, intending to pull him up.

Only one hope remained. There had been an epidemic of car robberies in the preceding week, and officers had been detailed to watch all the principal avenues, to detect a Rolls that had been stolen from the sacred courtyard of the Houses of Parliament. He knew that he would find these watchers at the London end of the Great West Road, and, by great good luck, he reached that arterial thoroughfare just as the second of the police officers was leaving for the night.

"Yes, I remember the old Daimler," said the officer. "She had blue blinds, which were drawn."

He, too, had thought it was the car of a commercial traveller.

Betcher sent his machine along the surface of the broad road, stopping at every police point to continue his inquiries. He picked up the trail on the Bath Road. Here an automobile scout identified the machine.

"It went along the Staines extension," he said. "You can't mistake it; the car has a defaced number plate at the back. The policeman on point asked me if I had noticed it."

Midway between the Staines and the Bath Road end it had been seen again, but when they reached the final stretch of the new road and came to the filling station on the Hounslow Road the trail was lost again.

Both the scout and the policeman who had been on duty at the time were emphatic that no such machine had passed them. And they had a reason for being so sure. An officer farther up the road had telephoned asking them to stop the machine because of its battered number plate.

The police car went back on its tracks. There were two side thoroughfares down which the machine might have passed. There were also a number of newly built houses; one block of six, and one that stood by itself, and obviously empty. Long went to the occupied block and made inquiries which yielded no satisfactory result, and he drove on to the house that stood alone.

It seemed hardly worth while to make an inspection of the place, but he saw there was a private roadway across the path, and he guessed a garage, and opened the gate.

The builders had not yet completed their work. A heap of gravel stood on the drive, which had not yet been made, and here, on the soft earth, he saw recent tracks of car wheels. He followed them until they came to the back of the house. And then his heart leapt, for a dust-stained car showed in the rays of his lamp.

It was the old Daimler!

He looked inside; the car was empty and the engine, when he felt it, was cold. He tried the door to the back of the house, but this was locked; the windows were fastened.

The two detectives sent their lamps into the untidy looking room, but there was no sign of life. Without hesitation, Betcher pulled out his Browning and smashed the window. In another instant the catch was unfastened and the sash was raised. The room was empty, but somebody had been here, and recently. There was a half-filled paper of sandwiches on the floor, and the bread was new.

And then Rouch, flashing his lamp along the wall, uttered an exclamation.

"What's this?" he asked.

Betcher Long stooped and read. Scratched upon the distemper was a word:

"Marlow!"

He made a rapid search of the house. There was not a stick of furniture in the place, and obviously this had been intended merely as a halfway station. But there was in this little villa something which he did not expect to find— a telephone newly installed. He rang up the exchange and revealed his identity.

"Have any calls come through here to-night?"

There was a pause while the operator made inquiries, and then she said:

"Yes, two; both from London. One at eight-thirty and one just before ten. There was no answer to the eight-thirty call."

Betcher called the local police station. When he came back to the sergeant, Rouch was still continuing his search, but he had found no further clue.

"I've sent for a man to guard that car all night, and to arrest anybody who comes for it, though it is very unlikely that the devils will take such a risk," he said.

"Where do we go from here?" asked Rouch as they climbed into the police car.

"To Marlow," said Betcher Long briefly. "To the house of Mr. Jackson Crayley— and God help him if any harm has come to that girl!"

Chapter 26

NORA SANDERS'S head was still aching when the telephone bell rang, and the man, who had sat in silence for the past hour, rose noisily.

"Don't you try to escape out of that window, because, if you do, you'll get hurt," he said, and from the hollow sound of his footsteps on the uncarpeted floor she guessed, rather than knew, that he had gone into the hall.

Presently she heard the rattle of the receiver being taken off, and heard him speaking in a low tone. Evidently he was expostulating about something, but finally she heard his sullen agreement, and then he uttered an incautious word.

"Marlow? All right."

Then he came back to her:

"You've got to get ready to walk."

"Where am I going?" she asked.

"Never mind where you're going; you'll have to walk for a mile at least, and then they'll pick us up. That friend of yours is a little too hot; he's trailed us to the end of the road."

Her heart leapt. "That friend of yours" could only mean one man. What could she do? She was confident that sooner or later he would find the house. Could she leave him a message? She had neither pencil nor paper.

And then her hand touched the distempered wall, and with her finger-nail she scratched the word.

"What are you doing?" he asked suspiciously, as he turned his lamp upon her.

"Nothing," she said unsteadily. "I can't possibly walk; I'm too tired, and my head is aching."

By this time he had opened the door.

"You'll walk and be glad that you have a chance of walking," he said ominously, and, gripping her by the arm, led her out into the open.

Until then she had not realized that her aching head was due in no small measure to the fact that she had been sitting in an unventilated room. The fresh air of the night revived her, and she walked obediently by his side, through a little gate in the fence, into the wilderness behind the house.

Evidently, he was not well acquainted with the topography of the place. Once they nearly stumbled into a pond, but, skirting this, they came at last to a field-path which led, she knew not whither. Ahead of them and to the right she saw the lights of a house, and heard the barking of a watchdog, and this seemed to make the man nervous, for he dragged her from the path, and they stumbled through high grasses, so heavy with dew that her stockings and shoes were wet through before they had gone far.

A quarter of an hour's walk brought them to a hedge, along which he walked in search of an opening. After a while, they found a gate and passed on to a rough wagon track.

"This is the place," he said, evidently relieved.

They turned now to the right, and twenty minutes over this rough roadway brought them to what was clearly a main road, for, long before they reached the gate that gave on to the thoroughfare, she could see the lights of automobiles passing to and fro.

At some distance from the road he stopped.

"You can sit down," he said. "We've got to wait a little while."

She was glad of the rest; her feet were sore, her limbs aching, and she sank down to the ground breathless and weary.

Only now she was beginning to understand the extent of her peril. Why she should have been abducted it was hardly worth while considering. In a misty way she realized that it had something to do with the Monkford legacy.

She marvelled at her own courage, and facing facts, she knew that it was based upon her faith in Arnold Long.

"Get up," said her captor's voice. "Here he is!"

A car, its lights burning so dimly that she did not see it until she heard the whine of its brakes, had stopped before the gate, and, grasping her arm, he hurried her forward. The gate was fastened with a chain and padlock; she had to climb over with his assistance. The door of the car was opened and he pushed her inside, springing in after her.

They were on the Bath Road, and soon they were passing through a town which she recognized as Slough. At one place they were held up by a traffic policeman to allow a big steam lorry to pass, and she had a wild impulse to scream and attract his attention. The man must have felt her muscles tense, for he still held her arm.

"You shout, and see what happens to you!" he said in a fierce whisper, and she relaxed into a corner of the car.

They passed through Maidenhead, turned right and up the hill that led to Quarry Wood and Marlow. Whither were they taking her? Not to Monkford's house. Then where else? And then she remembered Jackson Crayley and his rose-covered lawn, and the little white house that stood behind. Apparently this was their objective, for they turned abruptly before they reached Marlow Bridge, and through the window she saw the twisted chimneys of poor Monkford's home. The next house would be Crayley's. To her surprise, the machine did not slacken pace, but continued until it stopped at the edge of a meadow. Her arm tightly held, she was hurried across the grass before she saw the sheen of the river, and far away the glow of a Chinese lantern that bobbed to and fro on the prow of a belated punting party.

Drawn up close to the bank was a big launch, and into the well of this she was assisted. The launch was unattended, as she learnt.

"There's only you and me here," said the man, as the unknown chauffeur unfastened the ropes that tied them to the bank. "We're going through Temple Lock, and you'll remember what I told you before. I suppose you know, miss, what I'll get if they catch me— fifteen years! There's no life in the world that is worth fifteen years. I'd strangle you where you sit and drop you into the water before the lock-keeper knew what was happening!"