Again the cabby uttered that peculiar cough which was half a whistle, and in response two men, whose features were covered by black masks, sprang from the adjacent bushes.

Our hero put up a splendid defense, but the united strength of his three antagonists at length overpowered him.

What was there in the figure of one of the men that seemed so familiar to him? he wondered, and just as they were bearing him to the ground by their united efforts, he suddenly reached forward and tore the mask from his a.s.sailant's face.

One glance, and the horror of death seemed to suddenly freeze the blood in his veins. His eyes dilated and seemed to nearly burst from their sockets. The face into which he gazed was that of Clinton Kendale, his cousin.

"You!" he gasped, quite disbelieving the evidence of his own senses.

Kendale laughed a diabolical laugh, while his features were distorted into those of a fiend incarnate.

"I haven't the least hesitation in admitting my ident.i.ty," he said, coolly. "Yes, you are in good hands, if you give us no trouble, and come along quietly, without compelling us to use further force."

"What is the meaning of this outrage?" cried Lester, white to the lips.

"That you shall learn all in good time, cousin mine," replied Kendale, mockingly.

In struggling out of their grasp to better protect himself, Lester fell headlong on the icy ground, striking his head heavily against the gnarled, projecting root of a tree and lying at their feet like one dead.

"He will give us little enough trouble now," said Kendale, grimly. "Lend a hand there, both of you, and get him into the house quickly. I am almost frozen to death here."

In less time than it takes to narrate it, Lester Armstrong was hurriedly conveyed into the house.

The place consisted of but two rooms, and into the inner one Lester was thrust with but little ceremony, and tossed upon a pallet of straw in the corner.

He had not entirely lost consciousness, as they supposed, but was only stunned, realizing fully all that was transpiring about him.

"Your scheme has worked like a charm, Halloran," said Kendale. "We have bagged our game more easily than I imagined we would. Now there is nothing in the way between me and the fortune that liberal old fool Marsh willed to my amiable cousin."

"Everything rests with the shrewdness with which you play your part,"

answered the man addressed as Halloran.

"You ought not to have any scruples on that score," exclaimed Kendale, boastfully. "After leaving my amiable cousin on the night of the accident, did I not go immediately to the pretty little heiress, Faynie Fairfax, and successfully pa.s.s myself off as the lover she was waiting to elope with? And the little beauty never knew the difference."

"I must own that you played your cards successfully in that direction,"

was the response, "but this will be a far different matter from hoodwinking a young, unsophisticated girl."

"Within a month from to-day I shall have the Fairfax fortune and the Marsh millions added to it," said Clinton Kendale, emphatically.

"I would put an eternal quietus upon my fortunate cousin here, did I not need his a.s.sistance in one or two matters concerning the method of running the business, which was known only to old Marsh and himself."

"Are you fool enough to think that he will divulge those secrets to you?" said Halloran, impatiently.

"They can be forced from him. I know how," returned Kendale, with a brutal laugh. "Come," he said, turning on his heel.

His companion followed him from the apartment, and the door closed with a resounding bang, and Lester lay there too horror-stricken to move hand or foot, fairly spellbound by the disclosures he had overheard as they stood over him, believing him unconscious.

All in an instant a great wave of awakened memory swept over him, opening out the flood-gates of recollection like a flash. He remembered his interview with his sweetheart, his darling Faynie, and how he was arranging to hurry back to marry her when the fatal accident occurred, and how, believing himself dying, he had confided all to his treacherous cousin, bidding him take the message to his darling, that even in death his only thought was of her.

Oh, merciful G.o.d! how horribly had his treacherous cousin betrayed that sacred trust, because of his fatal resemblance to himself! He cried out to G.o.d and the listening angels:

"Heaven help my beautiful darling and save her from the machinations of that desperate villain!"

He knew that Clinton Kendale would stop at nothing to gain his end, and his agony at the thought that he might be unable to prevent it in time almost drove him to the verge of madness.

He felt that they would hold him there until they tortured from him whatever secret he held which they wished to learn; then they would deliberately make away with him. Clinton Kendale would step into his place, personating himself so cleverly that the great world, under whose very eyes the terrible tragedy had taken place, would never know the difference. Even Faynie would not know how she had been tricked and cheated, and the last thought almost drove him to the point of frenzy, nearly succeeding in turning his tortured brain.

CHAPTER XIV.

"YOU ARE OUR PRISONER!"

For hours Lester Armstrong lay like one stunned, turning over and over in his mind the awful revelation he had heard. That a human being, especially his cousin, Clinton Kendale, should have plotted so horribly against him seemed almost past believing. Then he remembered how treacherous he had been in his early days, and he wondered that he had been so mad as to have trusted him.

"Heaven save my darling from him!" he cried out in an agony too great for words. To realize that she was in the mercy of such a man was a sorrow so great that all else on earth paled before it. Then a mighty resolve came to him--to foil the villainous plot, weak though he was; he must make his escape and fly to his darling's aid.

He knew that Clinton Kendale would follow out his line of action, keeping him there as long as it was necessary--that is, until he learned all the secrets that he was so anxious to ascertain--then he would put him out of the way with as little compunction as he would a dog. He might expect little mercy at Kendale's hands, when two fortunes and a beautiful young girl hung in the balance.

For hours he lay there, turning the matter over in his mind. He knew he was terribly weak from the awful fall which he had received, and which had hurt his head the second time in almost the same place; but escape he must from the clutches of the conspirators, even though he were dying.

Suddenly the key turned in the lock, the door swung open and Kendale entered, bearing a lighted candle in his hand.

"Ah, you have come to, have you?" he remarked, seeing the other's eyes turn toward him; and before Lester Armstrong could answer he went on quickly: "You are the only one who knows the combination which opens the safe of the late Marsh & Co., and as I intend to open it to-morrow morning at the usual hour in place of your punctual self, it will be most necessary for you to give me the required information."

For one moment Lester Armstrong gazed steadily into the face of the fiend incarnate before him--a look before which the other quailed despite his apparent bravado.

"I am in your power and at your mercy," he said, "but though you torture me on the rack I shall never tell you what you want to know. That safe contains valuable papers which belong to others; they are secure in my keeping. You can kill me, but the secret of the safe combination will die with me."

Kendale laughed a little short, hard laugh.

"You are mad to thus defy me," he cried, harshly, "when you stop to consider that I can open it in any event. I can simply say the combination has slipped from my mind. Who is there to question Mr.

Lester Armstrong, the head of the firm? No one--no one. It will be broken open quite as soon as workmen can be found to accomplish it."

The lines about the sufferer's mouth tightened; he clutched his hands hard. He knew the dare devil Kendale would stop at nothing--nothing.

"I will give you until daylight to decide. I promise you that it will go hard with you if you are not complaisant."

With that he turned on his heel and quitted the room.

During all the long hours of that never-to-be-forgotten night Lester Armstrong lay there on his pallet of straw praying for strength to foil the villain--for Heaven to direct him what to do.

For the Marsh millions he cared nothing; but his heart was wrung with anguish when he trusted himself to think of Faynie.

He knew that Kendale had kept the appointment made by himself, but for some reason the elopement could not have taken place. A thousand causes might have prevented its successful carrying out, though Kendale was sure of a satisfactory finish, he imagined.