THE KIDNAPPING
"If the goodman of the house had known in what watch the thief would
come, he would have watched and would not have suffered his home to
be broken up."--Matt. xxiv, 43
Bill Swazey, the gentleman who wore a plaid suit, brilliant stick pin
and sneakers was not a detective. Had anyone mistaken him for one he
would have considered himself insulted. In fact, he loathed the
word, detective. Yet the report which Mr. Swazey submitted to his
superior, registered at the Mansion House as "W. J. Bailey, Phila.,"
might easily have been mistaken for the report of an operative to his
chief. It read:
"Re: Wayne. (Harris A.)--BZ. reports:
"House about four miles out. Large. White. Pillared entrance.
Yard. Trees. Shrubbery. French Windows. Good get-a-way. Nursery,
second floor, over library, east side. Fruit tree near with
convenient ladder. Classy servants. Child three years old. Name,
Doris. Mother dead. Nurse in charge.
"Housemaid recently married chauffeur. Received check from Wayne for
wedding present. Servants plan private blow-out to-night to
celebrate the affair. Wayne will address War Veterans at regimental
rally in town. After child's abed nurse will go down stairs to
attend wedding banquet. Zero hour, 9 P.M. Little Billie on the job.
Park car, engine running, cedar clump, east side. Don't fail. If it
rains, all the better."
Bailey found the "memo" waiting for him when he asked for his mail at
the hotel. It was in a sealed envelope. The clerk said a small
colored boy had brought it. Bailey thanked the clerk and withdrew to
the privacy of his room to read the missive. After doing so he
leaned back in his chair and puffed vigorously at his cigar.
At last, he was about to even up his score with Harris Wayne. The
thought pleased him. It made his lip draw back from his teeth, and
brought his mustache down over it with an expression so sinister and
revengeful that if Harris Wayne, formerly of the United States Marine
Corps, had seen it, he would have been tempted to kick Mr. Bailey a
good deal harder than he had kicked him the day he found him
appropriating another marine's wallet in a Y.M.C.A. hut in France.
"I told Wayne then I'd make him pay for it, and now he's going to do
it," exclaimed Bailey aloud, bringing the legs of his chair down to
the floor with an emphatic thud. "He made me lose money that day,
damn him! That leatherneck was bumped off two hours afterward and
somebody else got the dough. I've waited years for this chance.
Wayne didn't hesitate to turn me over to the M.P.'s. Now it's my
turn."
He paced the floor a few times then put on his hat and went out to a
public telephone booth. The number he called was located in a city
some little distance away. When given the connection he spoke
briefly.
"Hello, Louis. This is Jim. Is the car ready?--All right, send her
down right away. Don't bring her into town. Hold her at the edge of
the woods just beyond the tobacco patch north of the Help-U Gas
Station. I'll meet you there around seven o'clock. Watch out, now.
If anything goes blooey you'll be out of luck."
The day that little Stephen made his forlorn exit from Peter Grimes'
farm was also the day of the regimental reunion of war veterans at
the county seat.
Harris Wayne was not a member of that regiment but he had a brilliant
over seas' record and, moreover, was the wealthiest and most
influential land owner in that section of the country. As a matter
of courtesy and also because of his personal popularity he had been
invited to address the assembly after their banquet that evening.
The veterans who extended the invitation were unaware that for Wayne
the day was fraught with sad and bitter memories that made his
participation in any gala occasion painful and his interest forced.
On that day, only two short years before, his wife, the beautiful
young mother of his little Doris, had sacrificed her life to save
another's child from drowning. She had loved little children. It
had been her dream to rear a large family. She had proved how great
was her love but she had left behind her only one child--a little
girl, less than a year old.
The bereft father idolized the child but his heart ached with grief
and loneliness. The loss of his bride and the shattering of all
their bright dreams of the future was to the young veteran a more
terrible wound than any he had endured in France. Except for little
Doris he would have given way to complete despair. She, too, mourned
for the lovely lady whose caresses were so tender and who murmured
such loving words.
But little Doris' mother would never come to her again. She would
have to be happy now in the nurse's arms. Choking back his own sobs
Harris Wayne told this to the child again and again. Doris could not
understand. She did not want the nurse. She wanted her mother.
No one but Wayne, himself, could comfort her. He was compelled,
therefore, to devote himself to her childish moods. As a result
there had grown up between the two such a bond of sympathy and
affection that now, when Doris was nearly three years old, he lived
solely for her and was uneasy every minute she was out of his sight.
"She is all alone there in that great house," he would say when
chided about his nervousness. "It is not as if she had brothers and
sisters to play with and grow up among. It is unnatural for a child
to thrive in solitude, cared for only by servants. She must have the
companionship of someone not a hireling; one who is actuated by love,
not gold."
But the thought of marrying again and supplying his darling with a
step-mother was repugnant. The memory of his shattered romance and
lost bride was too keen and poignant, for one thing, and for another
he was afraid, for Doris' sake. The woman he chose might not possess
those deep maternal instincts that would make Doris happy and
transform the solitude of that great mansion into a children's
paradise. So Harris Wayne did not re-marry, and the nurse said
little Doris was spoiled.
"Oh, the child is safe enough," the nurse remarked in reply to the
butler's question when she appeared in the servant's dining room that
evening to partake of the wedding feast. "She was just falling
asleep. She thinks I've gone to fetch her a glass of milk."
"There's a storm coming," announced the chauffeur-bridegroom. "I
hope that banquet keeps up so late Mr. Wayne will 'phone me not to
come for him. I don't like driving in a thunder storm."
But Harris Wayne also disliked motoring during a thunder storm. When
he mentioned to the chairman of the program that he would like to get
home, if possible, before the storm broke, a change in the order of
speeches was immediately made to suit his convenience and a motor car
placed at his disposal.
Thus it happened that Harris Wayne was being driven rapidly in the
direction of his home when the terrific thunder storm that had been
brewing all day broke in its full intensity.
Ever since leaving his home that evening after kissing Doris good
night he had been haunted by a strange foreboding, a sense of
impending disaster. There were moments when he seemed to hear a
voice warning him to watch for something. What it was he must watch
for he could not determine. No sooner had he arrived at the banquet
and dismissed his chauffeur, telling the latter he would telephone
him when to return, than he had again been conscious of the voice, or
influence or whatever it was, this time urging him to go
home--home--hurry home.
It was this mysterious warning and not mere dislike of a thunder
storm that had impelled him to make his request of the committee
chairman. And now, as he rode on through the black night with the
thunder crashing about him and the lightning blinding his eyes, even
with the curtains of the car drawn, he could hear, it seemed, but one
word:
"Hurry--Hurry--Hurry!"
Wayne felt as if he were again on the battlefield, struggling to save
a wounded comrade's life. He clinched his fists and, for a moment,
closed his eyes.
"Oh, God," he groaned, "whatever it is, let me get there in time!"
The car tore up the driveway like a mad thing and stopped at the
great, porticoed entrance of the old, colonial house where several
generations of Wayne's had lived.
The servants, laughing and dancing to radio music heard it above
their own din.
"Mr. Wayne has come," said the butler, and vanished swiftly in the
direction of the entrance hall to meet his master.
"Thank the Lord, I don't have to go out again to-night!" exclaimed
the chauffeur kissing his bride.
"Oh, my heavens!" cried the nurse, disappearing like a flash up the
rear stairway.
The cook chuckled. "If Mr. Wayne gets to the nursery before she
does, there'll be hell to pay."
"Rufus will delay him in the hall. That'll give her time," answered
the bride. Rufus was the butler.
Then they heard the nurse shriek.
It was a penetrating, hysterical shriek such as a woman utters when
she comes face to face with a burglar or finds the house afire. It
was not repeated. Just that one, wild, amazed outcry that echoed
through every room in the house and into the grounds beyond.
Harris Wayne heard it as he was handing his hat to Rufus and asking
if everything was all right at the house. The chauffeur who had
driven Wayne home and who had been told to drive on around to the
garage and wait until the storm was over, heard it and wondered what
calamity had occurred. Then, thinking discretion the better part of
valor, decided not to wait but quickly turned his car and started
back toward town. As he left the driveway he thought he saw a low,
dark racing car scud silently out from behind a group of cedars and
off into the night in an easterly direction. He, himself, was going
north.
Almost as the shriek sounded, Wayne mounted the stairs in two bounds,
the butler following. The nursery door stood wide and the nurse,
speechless for the moment, was gesticulating frantically from the
baby's empty crib to the open window through which the rain was
beating and the ends of a ladder extended.
"What is it? Did she fall?" cried the alarmed father, passing the
bewildered nurse and striving to peer out the window. "Who put this
ladder up here? Where's Doris--the baby?"
Then the nurse got her breath. With a trembling finger she pointed
toward the bed.
"Gone!" she gasped. "She was there--sleeping--when I left--" She
commenced to sob.
"When you left?" repeated Wayne, questioningly, with difficulty
restraining himself from taking hold of the nurse and shaking some
information out of her. "Where were you? Weren't you here? Where's
the baby, I say?"
Unable, unwilling to sense the fact that the child had been stolen,
he looked from the nurse to the butler for an answer.
"I only went to get her a drink of milk," faltered the nurse.
"But you said she was asleep," interrupted Wayne. "There's something
wrong here. You're not telling me the truth." Like a flash came a
recollection of the permission he had given for the chauffeur's
wedding feast. "Were you down in the dining room?" he thundered.
"Was the baby left here alone?"
The nurse burst into tears.
Wayne turned to the butler.
"What about it, Wilkins? Was she down there? Tell me the truth or
I'll choke it out of you."
The butler knew better than to refuse.
"Yes sir," he said, "for just a short time, sir."
"That will do. That's all I want to know. The baby was here alone.
Anna ran in when she heard me come. She found the baby gone--stolen.
You don't know whether it was done before the storm or afterward. Am
I right?"
The words came like a rain of bullets.
They both nodded, helplessly.
"Yes sir. It couldn't have been very long ago, sir," commenced the
butler, "for Anna only came--"
He caught a glimpse of the cold fire in his employer's eyes and
paused, trembling, lest he, himself, be cast bodily out of the open
window, through which the baby had been taken.
"Get out of the room--Get out of my sight before I kill you," shouted
Wayne as he sprang toward the telephone. "Call James--get the
gardners--everybody--search the grounds. Never mind the rain--turn
on the lights--raise the devil--but find the man who's got my baby or
I'll break every one of your necks." Then, getting an answer to his
violent rattling of the hook on the telephone, he shouted to the
operator:
"Call the chief of police--Send men and detectives to Harris Wayne's
and drive like hell. Baby kidnapped. Five thousand dollars reward--"
The receiver dropped limply from his hand, his body lurched heavily
to one side and his head drooped forward upon the table. For the
first time in his life Harris Wayne had fainted.