THE RESCUE
Precisely at the hour of eight that night, a huge six-cylinder
limousine drew up at the gate of Number Twenty-six Maple Avenue.
Half-way down the block, well in the shadow of the trees which gave to
the avenue its name, two more cars and a motor ambulance had halted.
Doctor Alwyn, who had been excitedly awaiting the arrival of the
detective, was out of his door and down the path almost before the car
had pulled up at his gate. Within it were three men--Blaine himself
and two others whom the Doctor did not know. Henry Blaine greeted him,
introduced his operatives, Ross and Suraci, and they started swiftly
upon their journey.
The doctor was plainly nervous, but something in the grim, silent,
determined air of his companions imparted itself to him. The lights in
the interior of the car had not been turned on, nor the shades
lowered, and after a few tentative remarks which were not encouraged,
Doctor Alwyn turned to the window and watched the brightly lighted
cross streets dart by with ever-increasing speed. Once he glanced
back, and started, casting a perturbed glance at the immovable face of
the detective, as he remarked:
"Mr. Blaine, are you aware that we are being followed?"
"Oh, yes. Give yourself no uneasiness on that score, Doctor. They are
two of my machines, filled with my men, and a Walton ambulance for
Mr. Hamilton. We will reach Mac Alarney's retreat in an hour, now.
There will be a show of trouble, of course, and we may have to use
force, but I do not anticipate any very strenuous opposition to our
removal of your patient, when Mac is convinced that the game is up. No
harm will come to you, at any rate; you will be well guarded."
The Doctor drew himself up with simple dignity, quite free from
bombast or arrogance.
"I am not afraid," he replied, quietly. "I am armed, and am fully
prepared to help protect my patient."
"Armed?" the detective asked, sharply.
For answer, Doctor Alwyn drew from his capacious coat pocket a huge,
old-fashioned pistol, and held it out to Blaine. The latter took it
from him without ceremony.
"A grave mistake, Doctor. I am glad you told me, in time. Fire-arms
are unnecessary for your own protection, and would be a positive
menace to our plans for getting your patient safely away. Gun-play is
the last thing we must think of; my men will attend to all that, if it
comes to a show-down."
The Doctor watched him in silence as he slipped the pistol under one
of the side seats. If his confidence in the great man beside him
faltered for the moment, he gave no sign, but turned his attention
again to the window. They were now rapidly traversing the suburbs,
where the houses were widely separated by stretches of vacant lots,
and the streets deserted and but dimly lighted. Soon they rattled over
a narrow railroad bridge, and Doctor Alwyn exclaimed:
"By George! This is the way we went last night! With all my careful
thought, I forgot about that bridge until this moment!"
Minutes passed, long minutes which seemed like hours to the
overstrained nerves of the Doctor, while they speeded through the open
country.
All at once, from just behind them came a hideous, wailing cry, which
swelled in volume to a screech and ended abruptly.
Doctor Alwyn grasped Blaine's arm.
"The motor-horn!" he gasped. "The car I was in last night!"
The detective nodded shortly, without speaking, and leaning forward,
stared fixedly out of the window. A long, low-bodied limousine
appeared, creeping slowly up, inch by inch, until it was fairly
abreast of them. The curtain at the window was lowered, and the
chauffeur sat immovable, with his face turned from them, as the two
cars whirled side by side along the hard, glistening road. Blaine
leaned forward, and pressed the electric bell rapidly twice, and there
began a curious game. The other car put on extra speed and darted
ahead--their own shot forward and kept abreast of it. It slowed
suddenly, and made as if to swerve in behind; Blaine's driver slowed
also, until both cars almost came to a grinding halt. Three times
these maneuvers were repeated, and then there occurred what the
detective had evidently anticipated.
The curtain in the other car shot up; the window descended with a bang
and a huge, burly figure leaned half-way out. Henry Blaine noiselessly
lowered their own window, and suddenly flashed an electric pocket
light full in the heavy-jowled face, empurpled with inarticulate
rage.
"Is that your man?" he asked, quickly.
"The one with the three fingers! Yes! That's the man!" whispered the
Doctor, hoarsely.
"That's Mac Alarney." Blaine pressed the electric bell again, and
their own car lunged forward in a spurt of speed which left the other
hopelessly behind, although it was manifestly making desperate efforts
to overtake and pass them.
"Do you suppose he suspected our errand?" the Doctor asked.
"Suspected? Lord bless you, man, he knows! He had already passed the
two open cars full of my men, and the ambulance. He'd give ten years
of his life to beat us out and reach his place ahead of us to-night,
but he hasn't a chance in the world unless we blow out a tire, and if
we do we'll all go back in the ambulance together, what's left of
us!"
Even as he spoke, there came a swift change in the even drone of their
engine,--a jarring, discordant note, slight but unmistakable, and a
series of irregular thudding knocks.
"One of the cylinder's missing, sir." Ross turned to the detective,
and spoke with eager anxiety.
"We'll make it on five." The quiet confidence in Blaine's voice, with
its underlying note of grim, indomitable determination, seemed to
communicate itself to the other men, and no further word was said,
although they all heard the thunder of the approaching car behind.
The Doctor restrained with difficulty the impulse to look backward,
and instead kept his eyes sternly fixed upon the trees and hedge-rows
flying past, more sharply defined shadows in the lesser dark.
Then, all at once, the shriek of a locomotive burst upon his ears, and
the roar and rattle of a train going over a trestle.
"The railroad bridge!" he cried, excitedly. "We're there, Mr.
Blaine!"
The noise of the passing train had scarcely died away, when from just
behind them the hideous shriek of Mac Alarney's motor-horn rose
blastingly three times upon the night air, the last fainter than the
others, as if the pursuing car had dropped back.
"He's beaten! He couldn't keep up the pace, much less better it,"
Blaine remarked. "Those three blasts sounded a warning to the guards
of the retreat. It was probably a signal agreed upon in case of
danger. We're in for it now!"
They swerved abruptly, between two high stone gateposts, and up a
broad sweep of graveled driveway. Lights gleamed suddenly in the
windows of the hitherto darkened house, which loomed up gaunt and
squarely defined against the sullen sky.
"Your men, in the other cars--" Doctor Alwyn stammered, as they came
to a crunching stop before the door. "Will they arrive in time to be
of service? Mac Alarney will reach here first--"
"My men will be at his heels," returned Blaine, shortly. "They held
back purposely, acting under my instructions. Come on now."
He sprang from the car and up the steps, and the Doctor found himself
following, with Ross and Suraci on either side. The driver turned
their car around and ran it upon the lawn, its searchlight trained on
the circling drive, its engine throbbing like the throat of an
impatient horse.
In response to the detective's vigorous ring, the door was opened by a
short, stocky man, at sight of whom the Doctor gave a start of
surprise, but did not falter. The man was clad in the white coat of a
hospital attendant, beneath which the great, bunchy muscles of his
shoulders and upper arms were plainly visible.
"Hello, Al!" exclaimed Blaine, briskly.
The veins on the thick bull neck seemed to swell, but there was no
sign of recognition in the stolid jaw. Only the lower lip protruded as
the man set his jaw, and the little, close-set, porcine eyes
narrowed.
"You were a rubber at the Hoffmeister Baths the last time I saw you,"
went on the detective, smoothly, as he deftly inserted his foot
between the door and jamb. "You remember me, of course. I'm Henry
Blaine. My friends and I have come here to-night on a confidential
errand, and I'd like a word in private with you."
The man he called "Al" muttered something which sounded like a
disclaimer. Then he caught sight of the Doctor's face over Blaine's
shoulder, and a spasm of black rage seized him.
"Oh, it's you, is it? You've snitched, d--n you! I'll do for you, for
this!"
He lunged forward, but Blaine, with a strength of which the Doctor
would not a moment before have thought him possessed, grasped the
ex-rubber and flung him backward, advancing into the hall at the same
time, while his two operatives and the Doctor crowded in behind him.
"Al" staggered, regained his balance, and came on in a blind rush,
bull neck lowered, long, monkey-like arms taut and rigid for the first
blow. Blaine set himself to meet it, but it was never delivered. At
that instant the whirring roar of a high-powered car, unmuffled,
sounded in all their ears, and a second machine drew up at the steps.
Its single passenger flung himself out and bounded up to the door.
"What in h--l does this mean?" he bellowed. "Didn't you hear my
horn?"
He stopped abruptly in sheer amazement, for Blaine had turned, with
beaming face and outstretched hand.
"Mac Alarney!" he exclaimed. "Thank the Lord you've come! This
thick-skulled boob wouldn't give me time for a word, and every minute
is precious! Come where I can talk to you, quick!"
Then, as if catching sight of the car in which Mac Alarney had come,
for the first time his eyes widened and he seemed struggling to
suppress an outburst of mirth.
"Great guns! Is that _your_ car, yours? Do you mean to tell me it was
you I was playing with, back there on the road? When I flashed the
light in your face I was sure you were Donnelley!"
As he uttered the name of the Chief of Police, Mac Alarney involuntarily
stepped backward, and a wave of startled apprehension swept the
amazement from his face, to be succeeded in turn by the primitive
craftiness of the brute instinct on guard.
"And what may you be wanting here, Mr. Blaine?" he demanded, warily.
"To beat the police to it!" Blaine replied in a gruff whisper, adding
as he jerked his thumb in the direction of the waiting Al. "Get rid of
him! We haven't got a minute, I tell you!"
"The police!" repeated the other man, sharply. "Sure, I passed two
cars full of plain-clothes bulls, with an ambulance trailing
them!--You can go now, Al."
Without giving the burly proprietor of the retreat time to discover
him for himself, Blaine pulled the astonished Doctor forward.
"Here's Doctor Alwyn, whom you brought here last night. The police
trailed you, and got his number, but fortunately when they began to
question him, he smelled a rat in the whole business and came to me.
They told him a man named Paddington had double-crossed you, but of
course I knew that was all rot, the minute I'd doped it out. You've
got a fortune under your roof this minute, and you don't know it, Mac!
That's the best joke of all! You're entertaining an angel unawares!"
"Say, what're you gettin' at, Mr. Blaine?" Mac Alarney's brows drew
close together, and he stared levelly from beneath them at the
detective's exultant face.
"That young man with the fractured skull in the corner room
upstairs--the one you brought Doctor Alwyn to attend last night--when
you know who he is you're going up in the air! I don't know who
brought him here, or what flim-flam line of talk they gave you, but
it's a wonder you haven't guessed from the start who he was, with the
papers full of it for days! Of course they must have given you a lot
of money to get him well, and hush it all up, when you were able to
pay the Doctor, here, five thousand dollars, but whatever they paid,
it's a drop in the bucket compared to the reward they expected to get.
Mac, it's Ramon Hamilton you've got upstairs!"
Blaine stepped back himself, as if the better to observe the effect of
what he manifestly seemed to believe would be astounding news, and
clumsily and cautiously the other tried to play up to his lead.
"Ramon Hamilton!" he echoed. "You're crazy, Blaine! You don't know
what you're talking about!"
"You'd better believe I do! See this photograph?" He held the tiny
thumbnail picture before Mac Alarney's amazed eyes. "The Doctor took
it last night, at the bedside of the young man upstairs, when you
thought he was feeling his pulse. That watch of his was in reality a
camera."
With a roar, the burly man turned upon the erect, unshrinking figure
of the gray-haired doctor, but Blaine halted him.
"Not so fast, Mac. If it hadn't been for him, you'd be in the hands of
the police now, remember, and they've only been waiting to get
something on you, as you know. You can't blame Doctor Alwyn for being
suspicious, after all the mysterious fuss you made bringing him here.
I know Ramon Hamilton well, and I recognized his face the instant it
was handed to me! I'm on the case, myself--Miss Lawton, the girl he's
going to marry, engaged me. I might have come and tried to take him
away from you, so as to cop all the reward myself, but as it is, we'll
split fifty-fifty--unless the police get here while we're wasting time
talking! Man, don't you see how you've been done?"
"You can bet your life I do--that is, if the young man I've got
upstairs is the guy you think he is," he added, in an afterthought of
cautious self-protection. The acid of the hint that Paddington had
betrayed him to the police had burned deep, however, as Blaine had
anticipated, and he walked blindly into the snare laid for him. "I'll
tell you all about how he come to be here, later, and I'll fix them
that tried to pull the wool over my eyes! Now, for the love of Heaven,
Mr. Blaine, tell me what to do with him before the bulls come! Thank
God, they can search the rest of the place, and welcome--I've got
nothin' here but a half-dozen souses, and two light-weights,
training."
"That's all right! You're safe if we can get him away without loss of
time. That ambulance you saw don't belong to the police; it's mine. I
saw them first, away back in the outskirts of the city, and I ordered
it to drop behind and take the short cut up through Wheelbarrow Lane.
It's waiting now under the clump of elms by the brook, up the road a
little--you know the spot! Bring him down and we'll take him there in
my car. You come too, of course, and Al, and help load him into the
ambulance. Then Al can come back, if you don't want to trust him, and
you go on with us, back to the city."
"Where you goin' to take him?" asked Mac Alarney, warily. "You can't
hide him from them in town."
"Who's talking about hiding him!" Blaine demanded, with contemptuous
impatience. "Your brain must be taking a rest cure, Mac! We'll go
straight to Miss Lawton, deliver the goods and get the reward, before
they beat us to it! It'll be easy to explain matters to her; she won't
care much about the story as long as she's got him again alive, and at
that you've only got to stick to the truth, and I'm right there to
back you up in it. Any fool could realize that you'd have produced him
and claimed the reward, if you had known who he actually was. Whoever
brought him here gave you the wrong dope and you fell for it, that's
all--For the Lord's sake, hurry!"
"You're right, Mr. Blaine. It's the only thing to do now. I fell for
their dope, all right, but they'll fall harder before I'm through with
them! Lend me your two men, here. There's no use having any of mine
except Al get wise. You and the Doctor wait in the car, and we'll
bring him out."
Henry Blaine motioned to his operatives, with a curt wave of his hand,
to follow Mac Alarney, and turning, he went out of the door and down
the steps to his car, with the Doctor at his heels.
"You don't suppose that he saw through your story, do you, Mr.
Blaine?" the latter queried in an anxious whisper, as they settled
themselves to wait with what patience they could muster. "Could that
suggestion of his have been merely a ruse to separate your assistants
from you?"
The detective smiled.
"Hardly, Doctor. It's part of my profession to have made a study of
human nature, and Mac Alarney's type is an open book to me. Added to
that, I've known the man himself for years, in an offhand way. I've
got his confidence, and now that he realizes he is in a hole, he's a
child in my hands, even if he thinks for the moment that as a
detective I'm about the poorest specimen in captivity. Steady now,
here they come!"
The large double doors had been thrown wide open and Mac Alarney, the
burly Al, and the two operatives appeared, bearing between them a
limp, unconscious, blanket-swathed form. As they eased it into the
back seat of the limousine, Blaine flashed his electric pocket light
upon the sleeping face.
"I knew I wasn't mistaken!" he whispered exultantly to Mac Alarney and
the Doctor. "It's young Hamilton, all right. Now, let's be off!"
The others crowded in, and they whirled down the drive and out once
more upon the wide State road, in the opposite direction to that in
which they had come. A bare half-mile away, and they came abruptly
upon the ambulance, screened by the clump of naked elms at the side of
the road.
"You get in first, Doctor," ordered Blaine, significantly. "You've got
to look after your patient now."
As the Doctor obeyed, Mac Alarney, with a shrewd gleam in his eyes,
turned to the detective.
"I think I'd better ride with him, too, Mr. Blaine," he observed. "You
don't know who you can trust these days. Your ambulance driver may
give you the slip."
"All right, Mac!" Blaine assented, with bluff heartiness. "We'll both
ride with him! Did you think I'd try to double-cross you, too? I can't
blame you, after the rotten deal that's been handed to you, but we
won't waste time arguing. Here's the stretcher. Come on, shove him
in!"
The Doctor had been wondering when the denouement of this adventure
would be. Now it came without warning, with a startling suddenness
which left him dazed and agape.
The inert body of his patient was laid carefully beside him, and he
glanced out of the ambulance door in time to see Mac Alarney dismiss
his burly assistant, and turn to enter the vehicle. His foot was
already upon the lowest step, when the Doctor saw Blaine raise his
hand to his lips. A short, sharp blast of a whistle pierced the air,
and in an instant a dozen men had sprung out of the darkness and
leaped upon the two surprised miscreants. Then ensued a struggle,
brief but awful to the onlooker in its silent, grim ferocity, as the
two separate knots of men battled each about their central orbit. The
scuffle of many feet on the hard-packed road, the mutter of curses,
the dull thud of blows, the hoarse, strangulated breathing of men
fighting against odds to the last ounce of their strength, came to the
Doctor's startled ears in a confused babel of half-suppressed sound,
with the purring drone of the two engines as an undertone.
A minute, and it was all over. The thick-set Al went down like a
felled ox, and Mac Alarney wavered under an avalanche of blows and
crumpled to his knees. Handcuffed and securely bound, the two were
bundled into Blaine's waiting car.
"Paddington never double-crossed me!" groaned Mac Alarney, before the
door closed upon him. "But you did, Blaine! Just as I meant to get
him, I'll get you! I fell for your d--d scheme, and since you've got
the goods on me, I suppose I'll go up, but God help you when I come
out! I can wait--it'll be the better when it comes!"
"But the others--" queried the Doctor, as he and Blaine, with the
injured man between them, settled down in the ambulance for the slow,
careful journey back to the city. "That third man who came for me last
night--the one with the French accent and the cough--and the rest who
are in this kidnaping plot? Will you get them, too?"
"Ross and Suraci are enough to guard Mac Alarney and Al on their way
to the lock-up," the detective responded quietly. "The others will go
on up to the sanitarium and clean the place out. They'll get French
Louis, all right. And as for the rest who are concerned in this,
Doctor Alwyn, be sure that I intend to see that they get their just
deserts."
"And it is said that you have never lost a case!" the Doctor
remarked.
"I shall not lose this one." Blaine spoke with quiet confidence,
unmixed with any boastfulness. "I cannot lose; there is too much at
stake."
Late that night, Anita Lawton was awakened from a tortured, feverish
dream by the violent ringing of the telephone bell at her bedside. The
voice of Henry Blaine, fraught with a latent tension of suppressed
elation, came to her over the wire.
"Miss Lawton, I shall come to you in twenty minutes. Please be
prepared to go out with me in my car. No, don't ask me any questions
now. I will explain when I reach you."
His arrival found her dressed and restlessly pacing the floor of the
reception-room, in a fever of mingled hope and anxiety.
"What is it, Mr. Blaine?" she cried, seizing his hand and pressing it
convulsively in both of hers. "You have news for me! I can read it in
your face! Ramon--"
"Is safe!" he responded. "Can you bear a sudden shock now, Miss
Lawton? After all that has gone before, can you withstand one more
blow?"
"Oh, tell me! Tell me quickly! I can endure everything, if only Ramon
is safe!"
"I found him to-night, and brought him back to the city. I have come
to take you to him."
"But why--why did he not come with you? Does he not realize what I
have suffered--that every moment of suspense, of waiting for him, is
an added torture?"
"He realizes nothing." Blaine hesitated, and then went on: "It is best
for you to know the truth at once. Mr. Hamilton has suffered a severe
injury. He is lying almost at the point of death, but the physicians
say he has a chance, a good chance, for recovery, now that he is where
he can receive expert care and attention. How he came by his shattered
skull--he has a fracture at the base of the brain--we shall not know
until he recovers sufficient consciousness to tell us. At present, he
is in a state of coma, recognizing no one, nothing that goes on about
him. He will not rouse to hear your voice; he will not know of your
presence; but I thought that it would comfort you to see him, to feel
that everything is being done for him that can be done."
"Ah, yes!" she sobbed. "Take me to him, Mr. Blaine! Thank God, thank
God that you have found him! Just to look upon his dear face again, to
touch him, to know that at least he still lives! He must not die, now;
he cannot die! The God who has permitted you to restore him to me,
would not allow that! Take me to him!"
So it was that a few short minutes later, Henry Blaine tasted the
first real fruit of his victory, as he stood aside in the quiet
hospital room, and with dimmed eyes beheld the scene before him. The
wide, white bed, the silent, motionless, bandage-swathed figure upon
it, the slender, dark-robed, kneeling girl--only that, and the echo of
her low-breathed sob of love and gratitude. His own great, fatherly
heart swelled with the joy of work well done, of the happiness he had
brought to a spirit all but broken, and a sure, triumphant premonition
that the struggle still before him would be crowned with victory.