A CHANGE OF SCENE.
“What we ought to do now,” Doctor Bolt declared, as the night matron,
indignant chin in air, turned toward the door of the private room, “is
to notify the officers of Westchester county.”
“I don’t see the necessity for that,” Havens replied. “One may as well
look for a pearl in a train-load of oysters as to look for that fellow
in Westchester county to-night. Depend upon it, the men who sought
employment at the hospital a few days ago were sent here because the
hospital happened to be near my home.”
The night matron shrugged her shoulders and passed a scornful glance at
the surgeon. The surgeon turned angrily away.
“That relieves me of a great responsibility,” she said. “Ordinarily one
becomes responsible for the actions of employes, but when men are sent
into your service by a criminal gang for a criminal purpose,
responsibility ought to end there.”
“I don’t agree with your reasoning at all!” declared the surgeon. “One
should know better than to employ strangers in positions of trust.”
“And when,” continued the night matron, glaring at the surgeon, “a
country doctor takes it upon himself to override the rules of a hospital
and keeps watch beside a patient to the exclusion of the regular
attendants, one certainly should not be held accountable for the safety
of that patient. And that’s all I have to say,” she added.
“Settle the responsibility as you will,” Havens broke in. “I have
nothing to do with that. What I want now is a promise from each of you
that nothing whatever shall be said regarding the matter until private
detectives shall have an opportunity to recapture the escaped prisoner.”
“But why the secrecy?” asked the night matron.
“It is my duty as a surgeon to report the entire matter to the police,”
shouted Bolt. “I shall do so at once.”
Havens argued with the two for a long time, and finally secured a
promise that nothing would be said either of the capture or the escape
for three days. The millionaire’s idea was to get the prisoner into his
own hands if possible. He knew that the fellow would have a hundred
chances of escaping without ever revealing the story of the crime he had
committed that night with the police, where he would have not one if
guarded by private detectives.
He was well satisfied from the incidents of the night that some person
high up in the councils of the police department had leaked in the
matter of the employment of the boys on the murder case. He believed,
too, that the same influence which had been able to secure the carefully
guarded information would be powerful enough to protect the escaped
prisoner in case he should regain consciousness and, on promise of
immunity, threaten to disclose the names of his accomplices in the
incendiary act.
After exacting the promise from the surgeon and the night matron, Havens
ordered every workman about the place to remain on guard until morning
and, calling his chauffeur, departed for New York in a high-powered
touring car. Worn out with the anxiety and exertions of the night, he
fell asleep on the soft cushions of the machine, and awoke only when the
chauffeur shook him gently by the shoulder and announced that they were
at the Grand Central station.
“And I’d like to ask you a question, sir,” the chauffeur said, as Havens
stepped out of the car. “It’s about what took place on the way down.”
“What took place on the way down!” laughed the young millionaire. “It
has all been a blank to me. I must have slept very soundly.”
“Indeed you did, sir,” replied the chauffeur, “and that’s why I didn’t
wake you. You seemed to need the sleep very much, sir.”
“Well, tell me what happened?” Havens said impatiently.
“Why, sir,” the chauffeur went on, “a big car picked us up half a mile
this side of the hangar and followed on down to within three blocks of
this place. When I drove fast, they drove fast; when I slowed up, they
slowed up, too. Very strange, sir.”
“Why didn’t you investigate?” asked Havens angrily.
“You see that marble column at the corner of the building,” declared the
chauffeur, pointing. “Well, I stopped once to ask questions of the
chauffeur in the other car, and that marble column I’m pointing out,
sir, would be just as communicative as that other chauffeur was. He only
grunted when I asked questions and kept right on as before.”
Havens thanked the man for the information and went on about the
business which had brought him to the city. He was busy all day with
lawyers and brokers and real estate managers, and was very tired and
sleepy when night fell. It had been his intention to take an afternoon
train for St. Louis, but his business had not permitted of so sudden a
departure from the city.
He regretted extremely that he had not arranged with the boys to wire
their address in the Missouri city. However, he thought, the boys would
wait at least twenty-four hours at the point selected, and this delay
would enable him to overtake them by train at Denver. He was positive
that he could do so if he could catch the Overland Limited at Chicago.
Eight o’clock found him sound asleep in the stateroom of a Pullman car
due to start for the west in an hour. He was so tired that the noises of
the station; the arrival and departure of trains; the calls of the train
starters; the rattling of the couplings under vestibules, soon died away
into a dull blur, and then he passed into a dreamless sleep.
His last memory was of a powerful light shining through a slender crack
in the drawn blind of a stateroom window. When he awoke again the
slender finger of light had become a deep red glow the size of a pail,
and the perfumed air of the stateroom had, somehow, taken on the close
and unsavory smell of a riverside basement.
Havens made an effort to lift his hands to his head, but found that he
was unable to do so. The great red light was staring viciously into his
smarting eyes so he closed them, turned his head aside, and lay for a
moment in silent thought.
He had no idea as to where he was, or how, or how long ago he had been
transported to that villainous place. He knew that violence had been
used, for there was a trickle of moisture on his forehead which could
not be the result of heat or exertion. There was a smart there, too, and
so the moisture must be blood.
The air was thick and damp, bearing the odor of long confinement in
filthy quarters. Opening his eyes, directly, he saw that the walls were
dark, but not with paint or paper. They were stained with the mold and
unsavory accumulations of many years.
The light which shone in his face came from an electric contrivance
which seemed at that moment to be a long distance off. Finally, after
much study and many smarting examinations, he saw that it was a light
nodding and swaying on a mast, and that it shone through the dirty panes
of a window before entering the gloom where he lay.
It was plain to the millionaire, then, that, in some mysterious manner,
he had been taken from the stateroom and conveyed to one of the
disreputable resorts on the river front. He had no idea as to whether he
was looking out on the East river or the North river. All he knew was
that his hands and feet were tied; that his head ached furiously, and
that his lips and tongue were parched with thirst. In a moment he heard
a door open and then an old woman, toothless and shrunken of shoulders,
stood before him, bearing in her hand a smoking kerosene lamp.
“Well, dearie,” she said with a wicked leer in her watery old eyes.
Havens indicated by motions of his lips and tongue that he needed a
drink of water. The old woman had undoubtedly been prepared for this,
for she drew a flask of spirits from a capacious pocket in her clothing
and held it exultantly before the eyes of the captive.
Havens shook his head.
“It will give you strength,” pleaded the hag. “Strength for what you’ve
got to endure. Better take a drop or two!”
In a moment the young millionaire managed to say that he wanted water,
and the old hag, with the air of one who considered that a weak-minded
man was turning away a blessed boon, restored the bottle to her pocket
and brought water in as filthy a tin cup as Havens had ever set eyes on.
The woman eyed him curiously as she held the cup to his lips.
After draining the cup Havens found strength to ask:
“How did I come here?”
“The boys brought you,” was the reply.
“The boys?” repeated Havens. “What boys?”
“The boys always will be having their sport!” the old woman answered
indefinitely. “Very bad boys, I’m sure.”
“Why?” demanded the millionaire.
“Oh, my, oh, my!” exclaimed the old hag. “You mustn’t ask so many
questions. I’m not here to answer questions.”
“How much do they want?” demanded Havens, coming at once to the point,
as there was no doubt whatever in his mind that he had been abducted
purely as a financial speculation. “How much?”
The old hag shook her head gravely.
“After a few days,” she said, “the boys will listen to talk of money.
Just now,” she went on, “your society is what they desire.”
Then, for the first time since his rude awakening, the events of the
night before flashed across the brain of the millionaire. He remembered
the pursuit of the _Louise_, the act of arson at the hangar, the
shooting of the stranger, and the escape from the hospital. To his mind,
also, came with double force and meaning of the story the chauffeur had
told of the pursuing car. With all these memories in his mind he had
little difficulty in associating his present situation with the efforts
which had been made to prevent the departure of the boys for the Pacific
coast.
“How long do you intend to keep me here?” he asked in a moment.
Again the old woman shook her head.
“I’ll give you ten thousand dollars,” he said, “if you’ll set me down at
the Grand Central station in an hour.”
“Not near enough, dearie,” the old hag replied, a greedy gleam coming
into her watery eyes. “Not near enough, dearie!”
“Twenty thousand!” exclaimed Havens.
The old woman glanced about the apartment cautiously.