"No use, sir!" he confided. "They've skipped. But don't let on _I_ told you. Call up the Detective Bureau!"

CHAPTER X

CARSHAW TAKES UP THE CHASE

"Busy, Mr. Carshaw?" inquired some one when an impatient young man got in touch with Mulberry Street after an exasperating delay.

"Not too busy to try and defeat the scoundrels who are plotting against a defenseless girl," he cried.

"Well, come down-town. We'll expect you in half an hour."

"But, Mr. Clancy asked me--"

"Better come," said the voice, and Carshaw, though fuming, bowed to authority.

It is good for the idle rich that they should be brought occasionally into sharp contact with life's realities. During his twenty-seven years Rex Carshaw had hardly ever known what it meant to have a purpose balked. Luckily for him, he was of good stock and had been well reared.

The instinct of sport, fostered by triumphs at Harvard, had developed an innate quality of self-reliance and given him a physical hardihood which revelled in conquest over difficulties. Each winter, instead of lounging in flannels at the Poinciana, he was out with guides and dogs in the Northwest after moose and caribou.

He preferred polo to tennis. He would rather pa.s.s a fortnight in oilskins with the rough and ready fisher-folk of the Maine coast than don the white ducks and smart caps of his wealthy yachting friends. In a word, society and riches had not spoiled him. But he did like to have his own way, and the suspicion that he might be thwarted in his desire to help Winifred Bartlett cut him now like a sword. So he chafed against the seeming slowness of the Subway, and fuel was added to the fire when he was kept waiting five minutes on arriving at police headquarters.

He found Clancy closeted with a big man who had just lighted a fat cigar, and this fact in itself betokened official callousness as to Winifred's fate. Hot words leaped from his lips.

"Why have you allowed Miss Bartlett to be spirited away? Is there no law in this State, nor any one who cares whether or not the law is obeyed?

She's gone--taken by force. I'm certain of it."

"And we also are certain of it, Mr. Carshaw," said Steingall placidly.

"Sit down. Do you smoke? You'll find these cigars in good shape," and he pushed forward a box.

"But, is nothing being done?" Nevertheless, Carshaw sat down and took a cigar. He had sufficient sense to see that bl.u.s.ter was useless and only meant loss of dignity.

"Sure. That's why I asked you to come along."

"You see," put in Clancy, "you short-circuited the connections the night before last, so we let you cool your heels in the rain this evening. We want no 'first I will and then I won't' helpers in this business."

Carshaw met those beady brown eyes steadily. "I deserved that," he said.

"Now, perhaps, you'll forget a pa.s.sing mood. I have come to like Winifred."

Clancy stared suddenly at a clock.

"Tick, tick!" he said. "Eight fifteen. _Nom d'un pipe_, now I understand."

For the first time the true explanation of Senator Meiklejohn's covert glance at the clock the previous morning had occurred to him. That wily gentleman wanted Winifred out of the house for her day's work before the police interviewed Rachel Craik. He had fought hard to gain even a few hours in the effort to hinder inquiry.

"What's bitten you, Frog?" inquired the chief.

Probably--who knows?--but there was some reasonable likelihood that the Senator's name might have reached Carshaw's ears had not the telephone bell jangled. Steingall picked up the receiver.

"Long-distance call. This is it, I guess," and his free hand enjoined silence. The talk was brief and one-sided. Steingall smiled as he replaced the instrument.

"Now, we're ready for you, Mr. Carshaw," he said, lolling back in his chair again. "The Misses Craik and Bartlett have arrived for the night at the Maples Inn, Fairfield, Connecticut. Thanks to you, we knew that some one was desperately anxious that Winifred should leave New York.

Thanks to you, too, she has gone. Neither her aunt nor the other interested people cared to have her strolling in Central Park with an eligible and fairly intelligent bachelor like Mr. Rex Carshaw."

Carshaw's lips parted eagerly, but a gesture stayed him.

"Yes. Of course, I know you're straining at the leash, but please don't go off on false trails. You never lose time casting about for the true line. This is the actual position of affairs: A man known as Ralph V.

Voles, a.s.sisted by an amiable person named Mick the Wolf--he was so christened in Leadville, where they sum up a tough accurately--hauled Mr. Ronald Tower into the river. For some reason best known to himself, Mr. Tower treats the matter rather as a joke, so the police can carry it no further. But Voles is a.s.sociated with Rachel Craik, and was in her house during several hours on the night of the river incident and the night following. It is almost safe to a.s.sume that he counseled the girl's removal from New York because she is 'the image of her mother.'

One asks why this very natural fact should render Winifred Bartlett an undesirable resident of New York. There is a ready answer. She might be recognized. Such recognition would be awkward for somebody. But the girl has lived in almost total seclusion. She is nineteen. If she is so like her mother as to be recognized, her mother must have been a person of no small consequence, a lady known to and admired by a very large circle of friends. The daughter of any other woman, presumably long since dead, who was not of social importance, could hardly be recognized. You follow this?"

"Perfectly." Carshaw was beginning to remodel his opinion of the Bureau generally, and of its easy-going, genial-looking chief in particular.

"This fear of recognition, with its certain consequences," went on Steingall, pausing to flick the ash off his cigar, "is the dominant factor in Winifred's career as directed by Rachel Craik. This woman, swayed by some lingering shreds of decent thought, had the child well educated, but the instant she approaches maturity, Winifred is set to earn a living in a bookbinding factory. Why? Social New York does not visit wholesale trade houses, nor travel on the elevated during rush hours. But it does go to the big stores and fashionable milliners where a pretty, well proportioned girl can obtain employment readily.

Moreover, Rachel Craik would never 'hear of' the stage, though Winifred can sing, and believes she could dance. And how prompt recognition might be in a theater. It all comes to this, Mr. Carshaw: the Bureau's hands are tied, but it can and will a.s.sist an outsider, whom it trusts, who means rescuing Miss Bartlett from the exile which threatens her. We have looked you over carefully, and think you are trustworthy--"

"The Lord help you if you're not!" broke in Clancy. "I like the girl. It will be a bad day for the man who works her evil."

Carshaw's eyes clashed with Clancy's, as rapiers rasp in thrust and parry. From that instant the two men became firm friends, for the young millionaire said quietly:

"I have her promise to call for help on me, first, Mr. Clancy."

"You'll follow her to Fairfield then?" and Steingall sat up suddenly.

"Yes. Please advise me."

"That's the way to talk. I wish there was a heap more boys like you among the Four Hundred. But I can't advise you. I'm an official.

Suppose, however, I were a young gentleman of leisure who wanted to befriend a deserving young lady in Winifred Bartlett's very peculiar circ.u.mstances. I'd persuade her to leave a highly undesirable 'aunt,'

and strike out for herself. I'd ask my mother, or some other lady of good standing, to take the girl under her wing, and see that she was cared for until a place was found in some business or profession suited to her talents. And that's as far as I care to go at this sitting. As for the ways and means, in these days of fast cars and dare-devil drivers who are in daily danger of losing their licenses--"

"By gad, I'll do it," and Carshaw's emphatic fist thumped the table.

"Steady! This Voles is a tremendous fellow. In a personal encounter you would stand no chance. And he's the sort that shoots at sight. Mick the Wolf, too, is a bad man from the wild and woolly West. The type exists, even to-day. We have gunmen here in New York who'd clean up a whole saloonful of modern cowboys. Voles and Mick are in Fairfield, but I've a notion they'll not stay in the same hotel as Winifred and her aunt. I think, too, that they may lie low for a day or two. You'll observe, of course, that Rachel Craik, so poverty-stricken that Winifred had to earn eight dollars a week to eke out the housekeeping, can now afford to travel and live in expensive hotels. All this means that Winifred ought to be urged to break loose and come back to New York. The police will protect her if she gives them the opportunity, but the law won't let us b.u.t.t in between relatives, even supposed ones, without sufficient justification. One last word--you must forget everything I've said."

"And another last word," cried Clancy. "The Bureau is a regular old woman for t.i.ttle-tattle. We listen to all sorts of gossip. Some of it is real news."

"And, by jing, I was nearly omitting one bit of scandal," said Steingall. "It seems that Mick the Wolf and a fellow named Fowle met in a corner saloon round about One Hundred and Twelfth Street the night before last. They soon grew thick as thieves, and Fowle, it appears, watched a certain young couple stroll off into the gloaming last night."

"Next time I happen on Fowle!" growled Carshaw.

"You'll leave him alone. Brains are better than brawn. Ask Clancy."

"Sure thing!" chuckled the little man. "Look at us two!"

"Anyhow, I'd hate to have the combination working against me," and with this deft rejoinder Carshaw hurried away to a garage where he was known. At dawn he was hooting an open pa.s.sage along the Boston Post Road in a car which temporarily replaced his own damaged cruiser.