THE MOTOR BANDIT
Early the next morning, the telephone bell began to ring violently. The
message must have been short, for I could not gather from Garrick's
reply what it was about, although I could tell by the startled look on
his face that something unexpected had happened.
"Hurry and finish dressing, Tom," he called, as he hung up the receiver.
"What's the matter?" I asked, from my room, still struggling with my
tie.
"Warrington was severely injured in a motor-car accident late last
night, or rather early this morning, near Tuxedo."
"Near Tuxedo?" I repeated incredulously. "How could he have got up
there? It was midnight when we left him in New York."
"I know it. Apparently he must have wanted to see Miss Winslow. She is
up there, you know. I suppose that in order to be there this morning,
early, he decided to start after he left us. I thought he seemed
anxious to get away. Besides, you remember he took that letter
yesterday afternoon, and I totally forgot to ask him for it last night.
I'll wager it was on account of that slanderous letter that he wanted
to go, that he wanted to explain it to her as soon as he could."
There had been no details in the hasty message over the wire, except
that Warrington was now at the home of a Doctor Mead, a local physician
in a little town across the border of New York and New Jersey. The more
I thought about it, the more I felt that it was extremely unlikely that
it could have been an accident, after all. Might it not have been the
result of an attack or a trap laid by some strong-arm man who had set
out to get him and had almost succeeded in accomplishing his purpose of
"getting him right," to use the vernacular of the class?
We made the trip by railroad, passing the town where the report had
come to us before of the finding of the body of Rena Taylor. There was,
of course, no one at the station to meet us, and, after wasting some
time in learning the direction, we at last walked to Dr. Mead's
cottage, a quaint home, facing the state road that led from Suffern up
to the Park, and northward.
Dr. Mead, who had telephoned, admitted us himself. We found Warrington
swathed in bandages, and only half conscious. He had been under the
influence of some drug, but, before that, the doctor told us, he had
been unconscious and had only one or two intervals in which he was
sufficiently lucid to talk.
"How did it happen?" asked Garrick, almost as soon as we had entered
the doctor's little office.
"I had had a bad case up the road," replied the doctor slowly, "and it
had kept me out late. I was driving my car along at a cautious pace
homeward, some time near two o'clock, when I came to a point in the
road where there are hills on one side and the river on the other. As I
neared the curve, a rather sharp curve, too, I remember the lights on
my own car were shining on the white fence that edged the river side of
the road. I was keeping carefully on my own side, which was toward the
hill.
"As I was about to turn, I heard the loud purring of an engine coming
in my direction, and a moment later I saw a car with glaring
headlights, driven at a furious pace, coming right at me. It slowed up
a little, and I hugged the hill as close as I could, for I know some of
these reckless young drivers up that way, and this curve was in the
direction where the temptation is for one going north to get on the
wrong side of the road--that is, my side--in order to take advantage of
the natural slope of the macadam in turning the curve at high speed.
Still, this fellow didn't prove so bad, after all. He gave me a wide
berth.
"Just then there came a blinding flash right out of the darkness. Back
of his car a huge, dark object had loomed up almost like a ghost. It
was another car, back of the first one, without a single light,
travelling apparently by the light shed by the forward car. It had
overtaken the first and had cut in between us with not half a foot to
spare on either side. It was the veriest piece of sheer luck I ever saw
that we did not all go down together.
"With the flash I heard what sounded like a bullet zip out of the
darkness. The driver of the forward car stiffened out for a moment.
Then he pitched forward, helpless, over the steering wheel. His car
dashed ahead, straight into the fence instead of taking the curve, and
threw the unconscious driver. Then the car wrecked itself."
"And the car in the rear?" inquired Garrick eagerly.
"Dashed ahead between us safely around the curve--and was gone. I
caught just one glimpse of its driver--a man all huddled up, his collar
up over his neck and chin, his cap pulled forward over his eyes,
goggles covering the rest of his face, and shrouded in what seemed to
be a black coat, absolutely as unrecognizable as if he had been a
phantom bandit, or death itself. He was steering with one hand, and in
the other he held what must have been a revolver."
"And then?" prompted Garrick.
"I had stopped with my heart in my mouth at the narrowness of my own
escape from the rushing black death. Pursuit was impossible. My car was
capable of no such burst of speed as his. And then, too, there was a
groaning man down in the ravine below. I got out, clambered over the
fence, and down in the shrubbery into the pitch darkness.
"Fortunately, the man had been catapulted out before his car turned
over. I found him, and with all the strength I could muster and as
gently as I was able carried him up to the road. When I held him under
the light of my lamps, I saw at once that there was not a moment to
lose. I fixed him in the rear of my car as comfortably as I could and
then began a race to get him home here where I have almost a private
hospital of my own, as quickly as possible."
Cards in his pocket had identified Warrington and Dr. Mead remembered
having heard the name. The prompt attention of the doctor had
undoubtedly saved the young man's life.
Over and over again, Dr. Mead said, in his delirium Warrington had
repeated the name, "Violet--Violet!" It was as Garrick had surmised,
his desire to stand well in her eyes that had prompted the midnight
journey. Yet who the assailant might be, neither Dr. Mead nor the
broken raving of Warrington seemed to afford even the slightest clew.
That he was a desperate character, without doubt in desperate straits
over something, required no great acumen to deduce.
Toward morning in a fleeting moment of lucidity, Warrington had
mentioned Garrick's name in such a way that Dr. Mead had looked it up
in the telephone directory and then at the earliest moment had called
up.
"Exactly the right thing," reassured Garrick. "Can't you think of
anything else that would identify the driver of that other car?"
"Only that he was a wonderful driver, that fellow," pursued the doctor,
admiration getting the better of his horror now that the thing was
over. "I couldn't describe the car, except that it was a big one and
seemed to be of a foreign make. He was crowding Warrington as much as
he dared with safety to himself--and not a light on his own car, too,
remember."
Garrick's face was puckered in thought.
"And the most remarkable thing of all about it," added the doctor,
rising and going over to a white enameled cabinet in the corner of his
office, "was that wound from the pistol."
The doctor paused to emphasize the point he was about to make.
"Apparently it put Warrington out," he resumed. "And yet, after all, I
find that it is only a very superficial flesh wound of the shoulder.
Warrington's condition is really due to the contusions he received
owing to his being thrown from the car. His car wasn't going very fast
at the time, for it had slowed down for me. In one way that was
fortunate--although one might say it was the cause of everything, since
his slowing down gave the car behind a chance to creep up on him the
few feet necessary.
"Really I am sure that even the shock of such a wound wasn't enough to
make an experienced driver like Warrington lose control of the machine.
It is a fairly wide curve, after all, and--well, my contention is
proved by the fact that I examined the wreck of the car this morning
and found that he had had time to shut off the gas and cut out the
engine. He had time to think of and do that before he lost absolute
control of the car."
Dr. Mead had been standing by the cabinet as he talked. Now he opened
it and took from it the bullet which he had probed out of the wound. He
looked at it a minute himself, then handed it to Garrick. I bent over
also and examined it as it lay in Guy's hand.
At first I thought it was an ordinary bullet. But the more I examined
it the more I was convinced that there was something peculiar about it.
In the nose, which was steel-jacketed, were several little round
depressions, just the least fraction of an inch in depth.
"It is no wonder Warrington was put out, even by that superficial
wound," remarked Garrick at last. "His assailant's aim may have been
bad, as it must necessarily have been from one rapidly approaching car
at a person in another rapidly moving car, also. But the motor bandit,
whoever he is, provided against that. That bullet is what is known as
an anesthetic bullet."
"An anesthetic bullet?" repeated both Dr. Mead and myself. "What is
that?"
"A narcotic bullet," Garrick explained, "a sleep-producing bullet, if
you please, a sedative bullet that lulls its victim into almost instant
slumber. It was invented quite recently by a Pittsburgh scientist. The
anesthetic bullet provides the poor marksman with all the advantages of
the expert gunman of unerring aim."
I marvelled at the ingenuity of the man who could figure out how to
overcome the seeming impossibility of accurate shooting from a car
racing at high speed. Surely, he must be a desperate fellow.
While we were talking, the doctor's wife who had been attending
Warrington until a nurse arrived, came to inform him that the effect of
the sedative, which he had administered while Warrington was restless
and groaning, was wearing off. We waited a little while, and then Dr.
Mead himself informed us that we might see our friend for a minute.
Even in his half-drowsy state of pain Warrington appeared to recognise
Garrick and assume that he had come in response to his own summons.
Garrick bent down, and I could just distinguish what Warrington was
trying to say to him.
"Wh--where's Violet?" he whispered huskily, "Does she know? Don't let
her get--frightened--I'll be--all right."
Garrick laid his hand on Warrington's unbandaged shoulder, but said
nothing.
"The--the letter," he murmured ramblingly. "I have it--in my
apartment--in the little safe. I was going to Tuxedo--to see
Violet--explain slander--tell her closing place--didn't know it was
mine before. Good thing to close it--Forbes is a heavy loser. She
doesn't know that."
Warrington lapsed back on his pillow and Dr. Mead beckoned to us to
withdraw without exciting him any further.
"What difference does it make whether she knows about Forbes or not?" I
queried as we tiptoed down the hall.
Garrick shook his head doubtfully. "Can't say," he replied succinctly.
"It may be that Forbes, too, has aspirations."
The idea sent me off into a maze of speculations, but it did not
enlighten me much. At any rate, I felt, Warrington had said enough to
explain his presence in that part of the country. On one thing, as I
have said, Garrick had guessed right. The blackmailing letter and what
we had seen the night before at the crooked gambling joint had been too
much for him. He had not been able to rest as long as he was under a
cloud with Miss Winslow until he had had a chance to set himself right
in her eyes.
There seemed to be nothing that we could do for him just then. He was
in excellent hands, and now that the doctor knew who he was, a trained
nurse had even been sent for from the city and arrived on the train
following our own, thus relieving Mrs. Mead of her faithful care of him.
Garrick gave the nurse strict instructions to make exact notes of
anything that Warrington might say, and then requested the doctor to
take us to the scene of the tragedy. We were about to start, when
Garrick excused himself and hurried back into the house, reappearing in
a few minutes.
"I thought perhaps, after all, it would be best to let Miss Winslow
know of the accident, as long as it isn't likely to turn out seriously
in the end for Warrington," he explained, joining us again in Dr.
Mead's car which was waiting in front of the house. "So I called up her
aunt's at Tuxedo and when Miss Winslow answered the telephone I broke
the news to her as gently as I could. Warrington need have no fear
about that girl," he added.
The wrecked car, we found, had not yet been moved, nor had the broken
fence been repaired. It was, in fact, an accident worth studying
topographically. That part of the road itself near the fence seemed to
interest Garrick greatly. Two or three cars passed while we waited and
he noted how carefully each of them seemed to avoid that side toward
the broken fence, as though it were haunted.
"I hope they've all done that," Garrick remarked, as he continued to
examine the road, which was a trifle damp under the high trees that
shaded it.
As he worked, I could not believe that it was wholly fancy that caused
me to think of him as searching with dilated nostrils, like a
scientific human bloodhound. For, it was not long before I began to
realize what he was looking for in the marks of cars left on the oiled
roadway.
During perhaps half an hour he continued studying the road, above and
below the exact point of the accident. At length a low exclamation from
him brought me to his side. He had dropped down in the grease,
regardless of his knees and was peering at some rather deep imprints in
the surface dressing. There, for a few feet, were plainly the marks of
the outside tires of a car, still unobliterated.
Garrick had pulled out copies of the photographs he had made of the
tire marks that had been left at the scene of the finding of the
unfortunate Rena Taylor's body, and was busy comparing them with the
marks that were before him.
"Of course," Garrick muttered to me, "if the anti-skid marks of the
tires were different, it would have proved nothing, just as in the
other case where we looked for the tire prints. But here, too, a glance
shows that at least it is the same make of tires."
He continued his comparison. It did not take me long to surmise what he
was doing. He was taking the two sets of marks and, inch by inch, going
over them, checking up the little round metal insertions that were
placed in this style of tire to give it a firmer grip.
"Here's one missing, there's another," he cried excitedly. "By Jove, it
can't be mere coincidence. There's one that is worn--another broken.
They correspond. Yes, that MUST be the same car, in each case. And if
it was the stolen car, then it was Warrington's own car that was used
in pursuing him and in almost making away with him!"