THE ROAD TO HOME
The motor-cycle was behaving excellently. As Pete began to get the feel
of his steed he experimented a bit with the throttle, twisting the hand
grip that controlled it farther and farther, until the machine responded
with a burst of speed that alarmed the lady in the bathtub. She clung to
the edges of the car and shut her eyes against the wind, bracing her
feet with the instinctive effort of trying to apply brakes.
Pete knew only in a general way the direction of the main road, which he
was seeking. When they emerged from the private grounds of the gentleman
who owned the last bottle, he turned the car in what seemed to be the
proper course and raced along a road that was bordered with villas. It
ended at a cross-road, where he was forced to make a change of
direction. Then, for the next five minutes, he was alternately covering
short stretches of straightaway and turning corners. The residential
section devoted to summer dwellers seemed to Pete to have been provided
with streets that were designed on the plan of a labyrinth. It baffled
escape.
They passed people on walks and cars in the roadways, passed them at a
nervous speed. Mary Wayne was huddled as low in the bathtub as she could
squeeze herself, but Pete was astride a saddle in the open, and he had
an annoying sense of conspicuity. He doubted if the ordinary citizen of
Larchmont would accept his pink-striped pajamas with the complete
equanimity that had characterized his late host. The silk garments
wrapped themselves tightly around his shins, but streamed out in the
rear like pennants in a gale. The rush of air sculptured his high-priced
haberdashery until he resembled the Winged Victory of Samothrace.
Mary reached both hands to her head with a little cry, but too late. The
picture hat had been snatched by a gust and went sailing into a hedge.
"Can't stop!" he yelled. "Mine went long ago."
She shook her head to signify that she did not want him to stop.
Still the labyrinth held them. One of its trick passages brought them
into a cul de sac, where he was forced to slow down and turn in his
tracks. A man on the sidewalk shouted at him, but Pete did not answer.
Mary huddled closer in her refuge.
They turned another corner and came to a dead stop, with a screeching of
brakes, in order to avoid collision with a touring-car approaching in
the opposite direction. The touring-car also stopped. Its driver uttered
an exclamation, and an instant afterward switched on a spotlight. Mary
shrieked as the merciless beam fell upon her. Somebody in the car
tittered.
"When did they turn the club dance into a masquerade?" asked a voice.
"Ages ago," answered Pete promptly. "Swing your car; you're on the wrong
side of the road."
There was more laughter; the spotlight still held its victims.
"He looks like the Sultan of Sulu," commented the voice behind the
spotlight.
"Running away with Marie Antoinette," said a second voice.
And then, in a sharp, feminine treble:
"Jack, look at that thing on her shoulders! Why, it's just exactly like
my----"
Mary hid her face and shuddered. Pete slipped in the clutch and made a
reckless detour that came within an ace of landing the side-car in a
ditch. They shot away again with an echo of excited voices in their
ears.
"We've got to get out of here quick!" shouted Pete. "I think they've got
our number."
Mary knew it to a certainty. No woman who owned the piece of lingerie
that graced her shoulders would ever fail to recognize it.
"Try the road to the left," she urged, as she looked back. "I think
they're turning the car around."
He acted on the suggestion, for want of anything better, and shot into a
new road that possessed the grateful advantage of poorer illumination.
Fear of pursuit caused him to forsake it after a few hundred yards, and
after that he spent several minutes dodging into one street after
another, until he felt that the touring car must have abandoned pursuit.
Every time they passed a street light he accelerated speed, regardless
of all considerations save a resolve not to linger in the illuminated
places.
Mary was grim. She had abandoned hope of ever escaping from the hated
town; she felt that she was the helpless prisoner of a nightmare, unable
to loose the invisible shackles. They would either be dashed to pieces
or fall afoul of the law, and between these alternatives she attempted
to make no choice; one was as unhappy as the other. Yet during all this
maddening and futile whirl she found a corner of her mind sufficiently
detached from imminent perils to give its entire attention to the hating
of Bill Marshall. He, and he alone, had done this thing, she told
herself over and over again. Oh, how she hated him!
And then came sudden liberation from the labyrinth. They shot out of a
narrow lane upon what was unmistakably the main road, missed a
juggernaut limousine by inches, careened sickeningly as their machine
straightened out in the direction of the city, and then gathered speed
to put behind them forever the place of their undoing.
"We're all clear, now," he called, bending his head toward her. "Making
out all right?"
"Go on," was her only answer.
There was but one goal in the mind of Pete Stearns--the Marshall mansion
in lower Fifth Avenue. It was of no avail to stop short of that; they
had no money, no friends, no spare wardrobe elsewhere. A return to
Larchmont was not for an instant to be considered. Probably the
_Sunshine_ was back in the harbor, looking for them. Well, let Bill
Marshall look--and then worry when he did not find them. The same
thought was in the mind of Mary Wayne; she prayed that Bill might now be
in a frenzy of fright and anxiety.
In a general way, Pete knew the main road; if he had not, the volume of
traffic easily served as a guide. They passed anywhere from a dozen to
twenty cars every mile, and inasmuch as speed was their one available
refuge from curious eyes, Pete employed it. It would have been better
for peace of mind to make their way to the city by sequestered roads,
but he did not know all the byways and turnings of the Westchester
highway system, and there was the risk of getting lost in unfamiliar
paths. The labyrinth of Larchmont had been a sufficient lesson in that.
The evening was warm, yet Pete found that two sets of silken pajamas
were none too much for comfort, for the motor-cycle created its own
little gale. Mary sat crouched in her lingerie, trying desperately to
keep everything in place, yet discovering every little while that a
homeward-bound pennant of filmy stuff was whipping the air half a dozen
feet behind her.
New Rochelle flew past them in a blur of light. Pelham Manor came and
went in a flash. Mount Vernon was little more than a brief burst of
illumination.
"Safety first," whispered Pete to himself. "That means speed."
They were crossing the Harlem, still at a pace that was barred by
all law save the primitive one to which alone they held
allegiance--self-preservation. Riverside Drive! Should they risk it or
seek less traveled paths?
"Stick to the Drive," urged the guiding spirit.
Pete stuck to it. Better to come to grief boldly on the highway of
pleasure and fashion than to meet disaster ignominiously along some
furtive route. But even the desperate urge of speed could not be
completely satisfied now. There was the summer evening's traffic to be
considered, and often it slowed them to a maddeningly moderate pace.
Mary was aware of the fact that they were not without observers. With
another driver she felt that her own costume would have escaped notice;
she was making herself as small as possible, wrapped tightly in her
raiment. But Pete Stearns, astride the saddle, flaunted himself. He
could not help it. The coat of purple and green shone in the city's
glare like the plumage of a peacock. As for the trousers striped in
salmon pink, they shrieked like a siren.
People in cars stared and turned to stare again. People atop the buses
gesticulated and waved. People on the sidewalks halted in their tracks
and blinked. A million eyes, it seemed to Mary, were boring into her
from all sides. Oh, wait till she laid hands on Bill Marshall!
Fifth Avenue! The traffic increased; the pace slackened perforce. Mary
gripped the edges of the car and closed her eyes. Why had they risked
it? Why hadn't she urged him to seek a hiding place until long past
midnight? Too late now. The machine came to a stop. She opened her eyes
long enough to photograph the awful picture on her mind.
Fifth Avenue and Forty-Second Street--with the east and west traffic
holding the right of way! A bus towered above them on the curb side. A
millionaire touring-car flanked them on the left. Ahead were most of the
automobiles in the world; of that she was certain. She did not dare to
look behind. Her eyes were shut again, but her ears were open. She could
hear voices, laughter, a screeching of horns. Somebody flung a question;
a dozen followed. And Pete Stearns was flinging answers! Oh, why didn't
he keep still?
The traffic moved again, and with it the little chariot that had become
their ark of preservation. Mary felt it bumping across the tracks on
Forty-Second Street. Somebody shouted; she knew without looking that it
was a policeman. There was a shrill whistle. The motor-cycle plunged
forward.
"Hold fast!" yelled Pete, bending over. "That guy wants us, but he'll
have to step some. No more traffic stops for mine!"
Just what they did after that Mary never knew. Nor was Pete himself
particularly clear. They lurched, swayed, dodged; they scraped mudguards
right and left; they shot behind, in front of, and around automobiles
that were stupidly content to keep within the law; they scattered
pedestrians; they ran past traffic semaphores that were set against
them; they mocked cross-town trolleys by dashing across their paths; and
all this to a constant din of shouting people and piercing police
whistles.
The home of Miss Caroline Marshall stood on a corner, and the entrance
to the garden and stable yard in the rear was on the side street. As
Pete swerved from the avenue, Mary opened her eyes again and gasped
incredulously. They were home!
He had leaped from the saddle, crossed the sidewalk, tried the tall,
iron gate that barred the driveway and was back again before she could
move her cramped body from the position into which she had twisted it.
"Gate's locked!" he cried. "We haven't any keys. Got to climb the wall.
Hurry!"
Saying which, he seized her by an arm and dragged her out of the little
bathtub. The brick wall that flanked the Marshall garden on the street
side stood about seven feet in height. Pete reached for the top, chinned
himself, and squirmed astride it.
"Gimme your hands!"
Mary lifted them, felt them seized, and found herself slowly rising
from the sidewalk. For Bill Marshall she would have been a feather; for
Pete Stearns she was a burden. He gritted his teeth and lifted until his
muscles cracked. Inch by inch he raised her. Mary tried to dig her toes
into the bricks, but they offered no foothold; all she accomplished was
to tangle her feet in the lingerie. Two people across the street stopped
to stare. Pete sighted them and gave another grim hoist.
Then victory. She was sitting on top of the wall, swinging her feet on
the garden side, as he leaped down into a flower-bed and reached for
her.
"Oh! The rose-bushes!" she cried, as he caught her and deposited her in
the flower-bed.
"Damn the roses!"
"But it's me! The thorns!"
"Forget it."
Some of her raiment was clinging to Aunt Caroline's treasured plants as
she stepped painfully out on the grass.
"Now to get into the house," he said briskly. "We'll have to break in.
There isn't a soul home."
"Thank goodness," murmured Mary.
The house was dark, but never had Mary seen it when it looked so
friendly and sheltering. The nightmare was over. They were really home!
Pete ran to the kitchen entrance. Locked, and undoubtedly the stout bar
on the inside was also in place. It was not worth while to try the
window-catches, for even if he were able to raise a sash there were
stout steel bars through which they could not pass. He went to the
cellar entrance, turned the knob in the door, and threw his weight
against it. Nothing budged.
He stepped back on the lawn and made a survey of the rear elevation of
the house. All of the windows that lacked bars were beyond his reach or
that of any ordinary climber. If he could find a ladder---- He ran back
to the stable, but discovered it to be as stoutly resistant to intrusion
as the house itself.
Mary beckoned to him.
"I should think you could climb up on the wall," she said, pointing,
"right where it joins the house, and then make a jump for that nearest
window."
Pete looked at her severely.
"Do you think I'm a trapeze performer? Do you want me to break a leg?"
Mary measured the jump with her eye.
"Mr. Marshall could do it," she said.
"Rot!"
"But he could. And he'd be willing to try, too."
Pete's glance had turned into a glare.
"There's gratitude for you! That's a fine thing to throw up in my face.
Just because I'm not an overgrown brute you think it's a lot of fun to
stand there making dares."
"If you think I'm having any fun," she said sharply, "you're
tremendously wrong. I'm all stiff and scratched up from those
rose-thorns--and I'm hungry. And thirsty! And Mr. Marshall may be
large--but he is not an overgrown brute."
"Oh, that's it, is it? You're singing another tune. The last time you
mentioned him it was in connection with murder, I think."
"Never mind. He could get in that window, just the same."
Pete eyed her for an instant, then walked toward the garden wall.
"Wait till I'm lying crushed at your feet," he said bitterly. "You're
driving me to suicide."
"Pooh!" said Mary.
He climbed the wall and tested his reach in the direction of the window.
The sill was at least a foot beyond the tips of his fingers.
"Jump for it," she said from below. "It looks easy."
"Does it?" he said scornfully. "You ought to see it from here."
"I can see it perfectly well. I could do it myself."
Pete Stearns marveled. Why had she turned on him thus? Had he not been
playing the hero since mid-afternoon? Had he not brought her out of the
jaws of Larchmont and into the sanctuary of Aunt Caroline's back yard?
And now she taunted him, mocked him, dared him to take a senseless
hazard.
"Are you going to stand on that wall all night?" she demanded.
"Everybody in the street can see you."
He turned and faced the window desperately. He stepped back a pace and
viewed it again. He considered the relative advantages of a standing or
a running jump and decided upon the former. He crouched. He straightened
and again measured the distance with his eye.
"Well?" asked the pitiless voice from below.
"Oh, give me a chance to figure it out," he retorted. "Stop staring at
me. You make me nervous."
So Mary looked away. She even walked away. Her steps carried her to an
asphalt driveway, where she paused, staring down at a metal disk that
lay directly in front of her. It was about two feet in diameter, and
fitted closely into an iron rim that was embedded in the pavement. She
recognized the thing instantly. It was the cover of the coal hole. Aunt
Caroline had objected to coal wagons unloading at her curb; and being
the possessor of a back yard, into which wagons could be driven, she had
built a chute from that point directly into the bins. Mary remembered
that she had seen ton after ton of coal poured down that very hole.
She turned and glanced toward the adventurer on the wall. He was still
staring up at the window, now crouching, now standing erect, now
advancing, now retreating, but never leaping. With an exclamation of
disdain, she stooped and laid hold of the cover of the coal chute.
As she tugged at the handle it moved. She applied both hands to the
task. The disk came out of its rim and she dragged it clear of the
aperture. She glanced downward into the depths. She might as well have
closed her eyes, for the darkness within that coal chute was total. It
was spooky. Yet her common sense told her that there was nothing spooky
about it; it was merely a coal chute that sloped at an easy angle into a
cellar bin.
She looked again to see what progress Pete had made; she could not
observe that he had made any. He was still standing on top of the wall,
making calculations and having visions of a little white cot in an
emergency ward.
"He's afraid," she said. "I'm not!"
But she was, despite the brave boast--she was dreadfully afraid. Yet
fear did not prevent her from sitting down and letting her feet dangle
into the hole. Of course, she could summon Pete Stearns and bid him
plunge into the Stygian shaft. But she scorned that; she was minded to
show him what a little woman could do.
He was still fiddling on top of the wall when she glanced up.
"Oh, don't bother," she called. "If you're so afraid----"
"I'm not. I'm just taking precautions. If you'll leave me alone a
minute----"
"I'm tired of waiting. You don't seem to be able to make up what you
call your mind."
"If you'd stop talking to me----"
He turned to glare down at her.
Zip!
She was gone. He blinked rapidly and stared again. What---- How---- He
rubbed his eyes. Only an instant before she was there; she was sitting
in the middle of the driveway. Her white figure had been perfectly
distinct; there could not be a possible doubt about it. And then the
earth swallowed her!
Hastily he scrambled down from the top of the wall and ran across the
yard. The open coal chute yawned at his feet. He stooped and listened.
There was no sound. He called into the depths. There was no answer.
"The son of a gun!" he muttered in an awed whisper.
He was still standing there, dully contemplating the hole in the earth,
when a flicker of light caused him to lift his head. She was in the
kitchen. He heard the lifting of the bar and the turning of the key in
the lock, followed by a rattle of bolts. As he approached the door it
opened.
Mary Wayne looked as weird as the witch of Endor. Her white robes were
streaked with black. Her face was smeared with coal dust; her hands, her
hair. Out of a sooty countenance gleamed two dangerous gray eyes.
"You coward!" she said. "See what you've done!"
"But if you'd waited----"
"You've just made me ruin the loveliest things I ever wore in all my
life. Look at this peignoir. It's ripped, it's torn, it's---- Oh, don't
stand there! I'll slam the door in a second, and then you can stay out
or else come in by way of the coal bin."
Pete entered meekly and closed the door behind him. Single file they
mounted the back stairs that led to the servants' quarters.