PURSUIT
Harriet Santoine, still clad only in the heavy robe over her nightdress
and in slippers, went from her father's bedroom swiftly down into the
study again; what she was going to do there she did not definitely
know. She heard, as she descended the stairs, the steward in the hall
outside the study calling up the police stations of the neighboring
villages and giving news of what had happened and instructions to watch
the roads; but as she reached the foot of the stairs, a servant closed
the study doors. The great, curtained room in its terrifying disorder
was brightly lighted, empty, absolutely still. She had given
directions that, except for the removal of Blatchford's body, all must
be left as it was in the room till the arrival of the police. She
stood an instant with hands pressed against her breast, staring down at
the spots upon the floor.
There were three of these spots now--one where Blatchford's body had
lain. They were soaking brownly into the rugs but standing still red
and thick upon the polished floor. Was one of them Eaton's?
Something within her told her that it was, and the fierce desire to go
to him, to help him, was all she felt just now. It was Donald Avery's
and her father's accusation of Eaton that had made her feel like this.
She had been feeling, the moment before Donald had spoken, that Philip
Eaton had played upon her that evening in making her take him to his
confederate in the ravine in order to plan and consummate something
here. Above her grief and horror at the killing of her cousin and the
danger to her father, had risen the anguish of her guilt with Eaton,
the agony of her betrayal. But their accusation that Eaton had killed
Wallace Blatchford, seeing him, knowing him--in the light--had swept
all that away; all there was of her seemed to have risen in denial of
that. Before her eyes, half shut, she saw again the body of her cousin
Wallace lying in its blood on the floor, with her father kneeling
beside it, his blind eyes raised in helplessness to the light; but she
saw now another body too--Eaton's--not here---lying somewhere in the
bare, wind-swept woods, shot down by those pursuing him.
She looked at the face of the clock and then down to the pendulum to
see whether it had stopped; but the pendulum was swinging. The hands
stood at half past one o'clock; now she recalled that, in her first
wild gaze about the room when she rushed in with the others, she had
seen the hands showing a minute or so short of twenty minutes past one.
Not quite a quarter of an hour had passed since the alarm! The pursuit
could not have moved far away. She reopened the window through which
the pursuers had passed and stepped out onto the dark lawn. She stood
drawing the robe about her against the chill night air, dazed, stunned.
The house behind her, the stables, the chauffeurs' quarters above the
garages, the gardeners' cottages, all blazed now with light, but she
saw no one about. The menservants--except the steward--had joined the
pursuit; she heard them to the south beating the naked woods and
shrubbery and calling to each other. A half mile down the beach she
heard shouts and a shot; she saw dimly through the night in that
direction a boat without lights moving swiftly out upon the lake.
Her hands clenched and pressed against her breast; she stood straining
at the sounds of the man-hunt. It had turned west, it seemed; it was
coming back her way, but to the west of the house. She staggered a
little and could not stand; she stepped away from the house in the
direction of the pursuit; following the way it seemed to be going, she
crossed the lawn toward the garage. A light suddenly shone out there,
and she went on.
The wide door at the car driveway was pushed open, and some one was
within working over a car. His back was toward her, and he was bent
over the engine, but, at the glance, she knew him and recoiled,
gasping. It was Eaton. He turned at the same instant and saw her.
"Oh; it's you!" he cried to her.
Her heart, which almost had ceased to beat, raced her pulses again. At
the sound she had made on the driveway, he had turned to her as a
hunted thing, cornered, desperate, certain that whoever came must be
against him. His cry to her had recognized her as the only one who
could come and not be against him; it had hailed her with relief as
bringing him help. He could not have cried out so at that instant at
sight of her if he had been guilty of what they had accused. Now she
saw too, as he faced her, blood flowing over his face; blood soaked a
shoulder of his coat, and his left arm dangling at his side; but now,
as he threw back his head and straightened in his relief at finding it
was she who had surprised him, she saw in him an exultation and
excitement she had never seen before--something which her presence
alone could not have caused. To-night, she sensed vaguely, something
had happened to him which had changed his attitude toward her and
everything else.
"Yes; it's I!" she cried quickly and rushed to him. "It's I! It's I!"
wildly she reassured him. "You're hurt!" She touched his shoulder.
"You're hurt! I knew you were!"
He pushed her back with his right hand and held her away from him.
"Did they hurt your father?"
"Hurt Father? No."
"But Mr. Blatchford--"
"Dead," she answered dully.
"They killed him, then!"
"Yes; they--" She iterated. He was telling her
now--unnecessarily--that he had had nothing to do with it; it was the
others who had done that.
He released her and wiped the blood from his eyes with the heel of his
hand. "The poor old man," he said, "--the poor old man!"
She drew toward him in the realization that he could find sympathy for
others even in such a time as this.
"Where's the key?" he demanded of her. He stared over her again but
without surprise even in his eyes, at her state; if she was there at
all at that time, that was the only way she could have come.
"The key?"
"The key for the battery and magneto--the key you start the car with."
She ran to a shelf and brought it to him; he used it and pressed the
starting lever. The engine started and he sprang to the seat. His
left arm still hanging useless at his side; he tried to throw in the
gears with his right hand; but the mechanism of the car was strange to
him. She leaped up beside him.
"Move over!" she commanded. "It's this way!"
He slipped to the side and she took the driving seat, threw in the
gears expertly, and the car shot from the garage. She switched on the
electric headlights as they dashed down the driveway and threw a bright
white glare upon the roadway a hundred yards ahead to the gates.
Beyond the gates the public pike ran north and south.
"Which way?" she demanded of him, slowing the car.
"Stop!" he cried to her. "Stop and get out! You mustn't do this!"
"You could not pass alone," she said. "Father's men would close the
gates upon you."
"The men? There are no men there now--they went to the beach--before!
They must have heard something there! It was their being there that
turned him--the others back. They tried for the lake and were turned
back and got away in a machine; I followed--back up here!"
Harriet Santoine glanced at the face of the man beside her. She could
see his features only vaguely; she could see no expression; only the
position of his head. But now she knew that she was not helping him to
run away; he was no longer hunted--at least he was not only hunted; he
was hunting others too. As the car rolled down upon the open gates and
she strained forward in the seat beside her, she knew that what he was
feeling was a wild eagerness in this pursuit.
"Right or left--quick!" she demanded of him. "I'll take one or the
other."
"Right," he shot out; but already, remembering the direction of the
pursuit, she had chosen the road to the right and raced on. He caught
the driving wheel with his good hand and tried to take it from her; she
resisted and warned him:
"I'm going to drive this car; if you try to take it, it'll throw us
both into the ditch."
"If we catch up with them, they'll shoot; give me the car," he begged.
"We'll catch up with them first."
"Then you'll do what I say?"
"Yes," she made the bargain.
"There are their tracks!" he pointed for her.
The road was soft with the rains that precede spring, and she saw in
the bright flare of the headlights, where some heavy car, fast driven,
had gouged deep into the earth at the roadside; she noted the pattern
of the tires.
"How do you know those are their tracks?" she asked him.
"I told you, I followed them to where they got their machine."
"Who are they?"
"The men who shot Mr. Blatchford."
"Who are they?" she put to him directly again.
He waited, and she knew that he was not going to answer her directly.
She was running the car now at very high speed; the tiny electric light
above the speedometer showed they were running at forty-five miles an
hour and the strip was still turning to higher figures.
Suddenly he caught her arm. The road had forked, and he pointed to the
left; she swung the car that way, again seeing as they made the turn,
the tire-tracks they were following. She was not able now to watch
these tracks; she could watch only the road and car; but she was aware
that the way they were following had led them into and out of private
grounds. Plainly the men they were following knew the neighborhood
well and had chosen this road in advance as avoiding the more public
roads which might be watched. She noted they were turning always to
the left; now she understood that they were making a great circle to
west and north and returning toward, but well west of, her father's
house; thus she knew that those they were following had made this
circuit to confuse pursuit and that their objective was the great city
to the south.
They were racing now over a little used road which bisected a forested
section still held as acreage; old, rickety wooden bridges spanned the
ravines. One of these appeared in the radiance of the headlight a
hundred yards ahead; the next instant the car was dashing upon it.
Harriet could feel the shake and tremble of the loosely nailed boards
as the driving wheels struck; there was a crash as some strut, below,
gave way; the old bridge bent but recoiled; the car bounded across it,
the rear wheels skidding in the moist earth as they swung off the
boards.
Harriet felt Eaton grab her arm.
"You mustn't do that again!"
"Why?"
"You mustn't do that again!" he repeated the order; it was too obvious
to tell her it was not safe.
She laughed. Less than five minutes before, as she stood outside the
room where her father's cousin had just been murdered, it had seemed
she could never laugh again. The car raced up a little hill and now
again was descending; the headlights showed another bridge over a
ravine.
"Slow! Stop!" her companion commanded.
She paid no attention and raced the car on; he put his hand on the
wheel and with his foot tried to push hers from the accelerator; but
she fought him; the car swayed and all but ran away as they approached
the bridge. "Give it to me!" she screamed to him and wrenched the car
about. It was upon the bridge and across it; as they skidded upon the
mud of the road again, they could hear the bridge cracking behind.
"Harriet!" he pleaded with her.
She steered the car on, recklessly, her heart thumping with more than
the thrill of the chase. "They're the men who tried to kill you,
aren't they?" she rejoined. The speed at which they were going did not
permit her to look about; she had to keep her eyes on the road at that
moment when she knew within herself and was telling the man beside her
that she from that moment must be at one with him. For already she had
said it; as she risked herself in the pursuit, she thought of the men
they were after not chiefly as those who had killed her cousin but as
those who had threatened Eaton. "What do I care what happens to me, if
we catch them?" she cried.
"Harriet!" he repeated her name again.
"Philip!"
She felt him shrink and change as she called the name. It had been
clear to her, of course, that, since she had known him, the name he had
been using was not his own. Often she had wondered what his name was;
now she had to know. "What should I call you?" she demanded of him.
"My name," he said, "is Hugh."
"Hugh!" she called it.
"Yes."
"Hugh--" She waited for the rest; but he told no more. "Hugh!" she
whispered to herself again his name now. "Hugh!"
Her eyes, which had watched the road for the guiding of the car, had
followed his gesture from time to time pointing out the tracks made by
the machine they were pursuing. These tracks still ran on ahead; as
she gazed down the road, a red glow beyond the bare trees was lighting
the sky. A glance at Hugh told that he also had seen it.
"A fire?" she referred to him.
"Looks like it."
They said no more as they rushed on; but the red glow was spreading,
and yellow flames soon were in sight shooting higher and higher; these
were clouded off for an instant only to appear flaring higher again,
and the breeze brought the smell of seasoned wood burning.
"It's right across the road!" Hugh announced as they neared it.
"It's the bridge over the next ravine," Harriet said. Her foot already
was bearing upon the brake, and the power was shut off; the car coasted
on slowly. For both could see now that the wooden span was blazing
from end to end; it was old wood, swift to burn and going like tinder.
There was no possible chance for the car to cross it. The girl brought
the machine to a stop fifty feet from the edge of the ravine; the fire
was so hot that the gasoline tank would not be safe nearer. She gazed
down at the tire-marks on the road.
"They crossed with their machine," she said to Hugh.
"And fired the bridge behind. They must have poured gasoline over it
and lighted it at both ends."
She sat with one hand still straining at the driving wheel, the other
playing with the gear lever.
"There's no other way across that ravine, I suppose," Hugh questioned
her.
"The other road's back more than a mile, and two miles about." She
threw in the reverse and started to turn. Hugh shook his head.
"That's no use."
"No," she agreed, and stopped the car again. Hugh stepped down on the
ground. A man appeared on the other side of the ravine. He stood and
stared at the burning span and, seeing the machine on the other side,
he scrambled down the slope of the ravine. Eaton met him as he came up
to the road again. The man was one of the artisans--a carpenter or
jack-of-all-work--who had little cottages, with patches for garden,
through the undivided acreage beyond the big estates. He had hastily
and only partly dressed; he stared at Eaton's hurt with astonishment
which increased as he gazed at the girl in the driving seat of the car.
He did not recognize her except as one of the class to whom he owed
employment; he pulled off his cap and stared back to Eaton with wonder.
"What's happened, sir? What's the matter?"
Eaton did not answer, but Harriet now recognized the man. "Mr.
Blatchford was shot to-night at Father's house, Dibley," she said.
"Miss Santoine!" Dibley cried.
"We think the men went this way," she continued.
"Did you see any one pass?" Eaton challenged the man.
"In a motor, sir?"
"Yes; down this road in a motor."
"Yes, sir."
"When?"
"Just now, sir."
"Just now?"
"Not five minutes ago. Just before I saw the bridge on fire here."
"How was that?"
"I live there just beyond, near the road. I heard my pump going."
"Your pump?"
"Yes, sir. I've a pump in my front yard. There's no water piped
through here, sir."
"Of course. Go on, Dibley."
"I looked out and saw a machine stopped out in the road. One man was
pumping water into a bucket for another."
"Then what did you do?"
"Nothing, sir. I just watched them. Motor people often stop at my
pump for water."
"I see. Go on."
"That's all about them, sir. I thought nothing about it--they wouldn't
wake me to ask for water; they'd just take it. Then I saw the fire
over there--"
"No; go back," Eaton interrupted. "First, how many men were there in
the car?"
"How many? Three, sir."
Eaton started. "Only three; you're sure?"
"Yes, sir; I could see them plain. There was the two at the pump; one
more stayed in the car."
Eaton seized the man in his intentness. "You're sure there weren't any
more, Dibley? Think; be sure! There weren't three more or even one
more person hidden in the tonneau of the car?"
"The tonneau, sir?"
"The back seats, I mean."
"No, sir; I could see into the car. It was almost right below me, sir.
My house has a room above; that's where I was sleeping."
"Then did you watch the men with the water?"
"Watch them, sir?"
"What they did with it; you're sure they didn't take it to the rear
seat to give it to some one there. You see, we think one of the men
was hurt," Eaton explained.
"No, sir. I'd noticed if they did that."
"Then did they put it into the radiator--here in front where motorists
use water?"
Dibley stared. "No, sir; I didn't think of it then, but they didn't.
They didn't put it into the car. They took it in their bucket with
them. It was one of those folding buckets motor people have."
Eaton gazed at the man. "Only three, you are sure!" he repeated. "And
none of them seemed to be hurt!"
"No, sir."
"Then they went off in the other direction from the bridge?"
"Yes, sir. I didn't notice the bridge burning till after they went.
So I came down here."
Eaton let the man go. Dibley looked again at the girl and moved away a
little. She turned to Eaton.
"What does that mean?" she called to him. "How many should there have
been in the machine? What did they want with the water?"
"Six!" Eaton told her. "There should have been six in the machine, and
one, at least, badly hurt!"
Dibley stood dully apart, staring at one and then at the other and next
to the flaming bridge. He looked down the road. "There's another car
coming," he announced. "Two cars!"
The double glare from the headlights of a motor shone through the
tree-trunks as the car topped and came swiftly down a rise three
quarters of a mile away and around the last turn back on the road;
another pair of blinding lights followed. There was no doubt that this
must be the pursuit from Santoine's house. Eaton stood beside Harriet,
who had stayed in the driving-seat of the car.
"You know Dibley well, Harriet?" he asked.
"He's worked on our place. He's dependable," she answered.
Eaton put his hand over hers which still clung to the driving wheel.
"I'm going just beside the road here," he said to her, quietly. "I'm
armed, of course. If those are your people, you'd better go back with
them. I'm sure they are; but I'll wait and see."
She caught at his hand. "No; no!" she cried. "You must get as far
away as you can before they come! I'm going back to meet and hold
them." She threw the car into the reverse, backed and turned it and
brought it again onto the road. He came beside her again, putting out
his hand; she seized it. Her hands for an instant clung to it, his to
hers.
"You must go--quick!" she urged; "but how am I to know what becomes of
you--where you are? Shall I hear from you--shall I ever see you?"
"No news will be good news," he said, "until--"
"Until what?"
"Until--" And again that unknown something which a thousand times--it
seemed to her--had checked his word and action toward her made him
pause; but nothing could completely bar them from one another now.
"Until they catch and destroy me, or--until I come to you as--as you
have never known me yet!"
An instant more she clung to him. The double headlights flared into
sight again upon the road, much nearer now and coming fast. She
released him; he plunged into the bushes beside the road, and the damp,
bare twigs lashed against one another at his passage; then she shot her
car forward. But she had made only a few hundred yards when the first
of the two cars met her. It turned to its right to pass, she turned
the same way; the approaching car twisted to the left, she swung hers
to oppose it. The two cars did not strike; they stopped, radiator to
radiator, with rear wheels locked. The second car drew up behind the
first. The glare of her headlights showed her both were full of armed
men. Their headlights, revealing her to them, hushed suddenly their
angry ejaculations. She recognized Avery in the first car; he leaped
out and ran up to her.
"Harriet! In God's name, what are you doing here?"
She sat unmoved in her seat, gazing at him. Men leaping from the cars,
ran past her down the road toward the ravine and the burning bridge.
She longed to look once more in the direction in which Eaton had
disappeared, but she did not. Avery reached up and over the side of
the car and caught her arm, repeating his demand for an explanation.
She could see, turning in her seat, the men who had run past
surrounding Dibley on the road and questioning him. Avery, gaining no
satisfaction from her, let go her arm; his hand dropped to the back of
the seat and he drew it up quickly.
"Harriet, there's blood here!"
She did not reply. He stared at her and seemed to comprehend.
He shouted to the men around Dibley and ran toward them. They called
in answer to his shout, and she could see Dibley pointing out to them
the way Eaton had gone. The men, scattering themselves at intervals
along the edge of the wood and, under Avery's direction, posting others
in each direction to watch the road, began to beat through the bushes
after Eaton. She sat watching; she put her cold hands to her face;
then, recalling how just now Eaton's hand had clung to hers, she
pressed them to her lips. Avery came running back to her.
"You drove him out here, Harriet!" he charged. "Dibley says so."
"Him? Who?" she asked coolly.
"Eaton. Dibley did not know him, but describes him. It can have been
no one else. He was hurt!" The triumph in the ejaculation made her
recoil. "He was hurt and could not drive, and you drove him out"--his
tone changed suddenly--"like this!"
For the first time since she had left the garage she was suddenly
conscious that she was in her night-dress with only a robe and
slippers. She drew the robe quickly about her, shrinking and staring
at him. In all the miles she had driven that night with Eaton at her
side, she never a moment had shrunk from her companion or thought how
she was dressed. It was not the exaltation and excitement of what she
was doing that had prevented her; it went deeper than that; it was the
attitude of her companion toward her. But Avery had thought of it, and
made her think of it, at once, even in the excitement under which he
was laboring.
He left her again, running after the men into the woods. She sat in
the car, listening to the sounds of the hunt. She could see, back of
her, in the light of the burning bridge, one of the armed men standing
to watch the road; ahead of her, but almost indistinguishable in the
darkness, was another. The noise of the hunt had moved further into
the woods; she had no immediate fear that they would find Eaton; her
present anxiety was over his condition from his hurts and what might
happen if he encountered those he had been pursuing. In that
neighborhood, with its woods and bushes and ravines to furnish cover,
the darkness made discovery of him by Avery and his men impossible if
Eaton wished to hide himself. Avery appeared to have realized this;
for now the voices in the woods ceased and the men began to straggle
back toward the cars. A party was sent on foot across the ravine,
evidently to guard the road beyond. The rest began to clamber into the
cars. She backed her car away from the one in front of it and started
home.
She had gone only a short distance when the cars again passed her,
traveling at high speed. She began then to pass individual men left by
those in the cars to watch the road. At the first large house she saw
one of the cars again, standing empty. She passed it without stopping.
A mile farther, a little group of men carrying guns stopped her,
recognized her and let her pass. They had been called out, they told
her, by Mr. Avery over the telephone to watch the roads for Eaton; they
had Eaton's description; members of the local police were to take
charge of them and direct them. She comprehended that Avery was
surrounding the vacant acreage where Eaton had taken refuge to be
certain that Eaton did not get away until daylight came and a search
for him was possible.
Lights gleamed at her across the broad lawns of the houses near her
father's great house as she approached it; at the sound of her car,
people came to the windows and looked out. She understood that news of
the murder at Basil Santoine's had aroused the neighbors and brought
them from their beds.
As she left her motor on the drive beside the house--for to-night no
one came from the garages to take it--the little clock upon its dash
marked half past two.