He began to look savage, also alarmed:

"I don't know what you're talking about. I never saw you before in my life."

He made a movement to pa.s.s on, but I drew up close, wiped off the smile, and put on the look of true love that won't let go.

"Oh, dearie, don't say that. Haven't I worn the soles off my shoes hunting for you ever since, ever since-" Gee, I didn't know how to finish it, then it came in a flash. I moaned out, "ever since we parted."

"Look 'ere, young woman," he said, low, with a face on him like a meat ax, "this doesn't go with me. Now get out; get off or I'll 'ave you run in."

I knew he wouldn't do _that_; he'd hand over the jewels first. I raised up my voice in a wail and said:

"Oh, dearie, you're faking; I won't believe it. You can't have forgot-back in the old country, me and you."

A messenger boy, slouching by, heard me and drew up, hopeful of some fun. Willitts saw him and began to look like murder would be added to his other offenses. I gave a glance up the street-still only drays and wagons, not a taxi in sight. Fatima with Sister Anne reporting from the tower, had nothing over me for watchful waiting.

"It's Rosie," I whined, "it's your own little Rosie. If I don't look the same it's the suffering you've caused me and Gawd knows it."

I laid my hand on his arm. With a movement of fury he shook it off and began to back away from me. Another boy had come up against the messenger and lodged there like a leaf in a stream, caught in an eddy. I heard him say, "What's on?" and the other answered:

"Don't know but I guess it's the movies."

And they both looked round for the camera man.

I don't think Willitts heard them. His back was that way and his face to me, hard as iron and savage as a hungry wolf's. He tried to speak low and soothing:

"Now 'old your tongue, don't make such a fuss. I'll give you something and you go off quiet and respectable." His hand felt in his pocket and I raised a loud, tearful howl:

"_Money!_ Is it money you're offering? What's money to me whose heart you've broken?"

"I don't see no camera man," came the messenger boy's voice.

"Aw, he's in one of them wagons," said the other. "I've seen 'em in wagons."

The perspiration was on Willitts' forehead in beads, he was whitening round the mouth. Putting his face close down to mine he breathed out through his teeth:

"What in 'ell do you want?"

"_You!_" I cried and out of the tail of my eye I saw a taxi shoot round the corner from Fifth Avenue. Willitts drew away from me, shrunk together for a race. I saw it and I knew even now, with O'Malley plunging through the traffic, it might be too late. Embracing is not my strong suit, no man but my lawful husband ever felt my arms about him.

But duty's a strong word with me and then my sporting blood was up. So with my teeth set, I just made a lunge at that crook and clasped him like an octopus.

I didn't know a man was so much stronger than a woman. Willitts wasn't much taller than I and he was a thin little shrimp, but believe me, he was as tough as leather and as slippery as an eel. I could see the two boys, delighted, drinking it in, and a dray man in a jumper, drop a crate and come up on the run, bawling: "Say, you feller, let the lady alone," The boys chorused out: "Aw, keep out-it's the movies!" Willitts must have heard too, and I guess he saw his chance, for he suddenly squirmed one arm loose, and whang! came a blow on the side of my head.

It might have seemed part of the play but he did it too hard-calculated wrong in his excitement. I let go, seeing everything-the houses, the sky, the crowd that seemed to start up out of the pavements-whirling round and shot over with zigzags. There was a roaring noise in my ears and all about, and I dropped over into somebody's arms, things getting swimmy and dark.

When I came out of it I was sitting on a packing box with a man fanning me and O'Malley, red as a tomato and Willitts the color of ashes in the middle of a mob. There was a terrible hubbub, people jamming together, the wagons stopped and the drivers yelling to know what was up, heads out of every window, and then two policemen, fighting their way through.

I felt queer, sickish, and as if the muscles of my face were all slack so my mouth wouldn't stay shut. But the gentleman fanning me acted awful kind and a clerk came out of a store with ice water and a wet handkerchief that he patted soft on the side of my head.

I could see O'Malley and the policeman (they'd come from headquarters I heard afterward) go off into a vestibule with Willitts and the crowd that couldn't get a look-in came squeezing round me, heads peering up over heads. They'd got the idea that Willitts was my husband, seeming to think only a lawful spouse would dare to hit a woman before witnesses in the public street. The guys in the front were explaining it to the guys in the back and calling Willitts names I couldn't put down in these refined pages.

It got me laughing, especially when an old Jew who had been sizing me up like a piece of goods nodded slow and solemn and said: "And she ain'd zo bad lookin' neither." I burst right out at that and the man with the fan waved his arms at them, shouting:

"Give way there-back-back! She wants air-she's hysterical. She's gone through more than she can bear."

Gee, how I laughed!

Presently in the center of a surging ma.s.s we crowded our way to the taxi, the policemen going in front and hitting round light with their clubs. O'Malley with Willitts handcuffed to him got in the back seat, me opposite, with my hat off, holding the handkerchief against my head. As we pulled out I looked back over the sea of faces and caught the eye of one of the policemen. He straightened up, very serious and dignified, and saluted.

CHAPTER XXVI-THE COUNTER PLOT

Ferguson's knock on Suzanne's door was promptly answered by the lady herself, still in her hat and wrap. She clutched at him as she had done when he came to her in her dark hour, drawing him into the room and gasping her news. He was in no mood to follow her ramblings and, as soon as she spoke of a letter, interrupted her with a brusque demand for it.

After he had mastered its contents he told her to 'phone at once to Larkin that it was all right, and while she delivered the message, stood by studying the paper. When she turned back to him he laid his hands on her shoulders and looked into her eyes. The touch that once would have sent the blood burning to her cheeks called up no responsive thrill now:

"This lets you out-it's the end of your responsibility. Your part now is to be quiet and wait. To-morrow night you'll have Bebita back. Just nail that up in your mind and keep your eyes on it."

"Back where? Will you bring her here?"

It was so like her-so indicative of a mental att.i.tude invariably small and personal, that he could have smiled:

"I can't say, but probably Gra.s.slands. The end of the route laid down isn't so far from there."

"Shall I go back to Gra.s.slands?"

He pondered a moment, then decided it was wiser to trust nothing to her, even so simple a matter as her withdrawal to the country.

"No, stay where you are. There'd be a lot of questioning if you went, bothersome, hard to answer. When we have her I'll let you know. For the rest of this afternoon I'll be in town, in my room here on the floor below. If anything of moment should happen send for me, but don't unless it's vital. I'll be busy getting things ready. Be silent, be grave, be hopeful-that's all you have to do now."

He left her, going directly to his room on a lower floor of the hotel.

She felt numb and dazed, wondering how she was to live through the next twenty-four hours. Her parents returned from their drive and close on their entrance came a communication from the Whitney office, saying the jewels had been found and Mr. and Mrs. Janney were wanted downtown. In the midst of their bustling excitement she sat mute, following their movements with vacant eyes. She saw them leave in agitated haste, Mr.

Janney forgetful of her, her mother throwing out phrases of comfort as she hurried to the door. She was glad when they were gone and she could be still, draw all her energies inward in the fight for endurance and courage.

His coat off, the windows wide for such breaths of air as floated across the heated roofs, Ferguson paced back and forth with a long, even stride. His uncertainty was ended, the tension relaxed; he stood face to face with the event and measured it.

His a.s.surances to Suzanne that he would make no attempt to apprehend the kidnapers had been sops thrown to pacify her terror. He had no more intention of a supine acquiescence than Mrs. Janney would have had.

Beyond the clearing of Esther, stood out the man's desire to bring to justice the perpetrators of a foul and dastardly deed. Now, with their cards laid on the table, it rose higher, burned into a steady, hot blaze of rage and resolution.

But between his desire and its fulfilment stretched a maze of difficulties. He saw at once what Larkin had seen-that their plan was as nearly impregnable as such a plan could be. Though he knew every mile of the country they had selected, he knew that the chances of waylaying or flanking them were ten to one against him. Numerous roads, north and south, led from the Cresson Pike, some to the sh.o.r.e drive along the Sound, some inland crossing the various highways that threaded the center of the Island. Any one of these might be chosen as the road down which their car would turn, and any one of them, winding through woods and lonely tracts of country, would offer avenues of escape.

He thought of stationing men along the designated route but it would take an army, impossible to gather at such short notice and impossible to place without his opponent's cognizance. Hundreds of men could not be picketed along a ten-mile stretch of highway without those who were the authors of so daring a scheme being aware. They would be on the watch; no move of such magnitude could be hidden from them. It would be the same if he called in the police. They would know it, and what could the police do that he could not do more secretly, more efficiently?

A following car was also out of the question. There was no reason to suppose that they would not have several cars of their own, pa.s.sing and repa.s.sing him, making sure that he was unescorted. The threats of injury to the child he had set down as efforts to reduce Suzanne to a paralyzed silence. But if they saw an attempt was on foot to trap them they might not show up at all-go as they had come, unknown and unsighted, their car lost among the procession of motors that pa.s.sed along the Cresson Pike.

Then taken fright, they might not dare another effort, might drop out of sight with their hostage unredeemed. A chill crept over the young man, he had a dread vision of the old people's despair, of Suzanne distraught, crazed perhaps. It behooved him to run no risks; to make sure of the child was his first duty, to strike at her abductors his second.

The course he finally decided on was the only one that made Bebita's restoration certain and offered a possibility of routing his opponents.

At the hour named he would place on the road six motors, driven by his own chauffeurs and garage men, and entering the turnpike at intervals of ten minutes. Three would start from its eastern end, meeting him en route, three from its western, strung out behind him, now and then speeding up, overhauling him and pa.s.sing on. Of a summer's Sat.u.r.day night the Cresson Pike was full of vehicles, and the six, merged in the shifting stream, would suggest no connection with him or his mission.