One Wonderful Night Part 29

"Why?" demanded Curtis, whose recollections of map-study would have reminded him, in other conditions, that the avenue named by McCulloch is one of the few which slant across the city's rectangles.

"Well, sir, it's only a guess, but St. Nicholas Avenue is a short cut to Was.h.i.+ngton Heights, and cars often follow that route. Yes, there he goes!"

For an instant they caught a fleeting glimpse of Lenox Avenue, which runs parallel with Fifth, and then they were bowling along St. Nicholas Avenue. After a half-mile or less, they crossed Eighth Avenue at an acute angle, but the gray car kept steadily on, and soon was skirting St. Nicholas Park.

Thenceforth another mile and a half counted as little until the flying automobile gained the Harlem River Speedway. Here the pace improved.

There was practically no traffic to interfere with progress now, and Brodie had to maintain an equable rate of forty miles an hour in order to keep within sight of his quarry.

At last, by way of Nagle and Amsterdam Avenues, they regained Broadway itself, at the point where its many sinuosities end at the bridges over the Harlem River and Spuyten Creek.

By this time, McCulloch was undeniably anxious. Many a mile separated him from the busy activities of Madison Square and its surroundings, and the main roads of the State of New York were opening up their possibilities. Still, he was of Scotch-Irish stock, and even the most ardent Nationalist would be slow to maintain that the men from beyond the Boyne are what is popularly and tersely described as "quitters."

"I'd be better pleased if I had any sort of notion where that joker was heading for," he said, with a grim smile. "I didn't count on taking a joy-ride at this hour of the morning."

That was his sole concession to outraged official decorum. He accepted a cigar, and forthwith resigned himself to the exigencies of the chase, which lay not with him but with the dark and devious purposes of the sinister Anatole.

The end, however, was nearer than any of them was now inclined to imagine. A rapid run along the main road through Yonkers brought them to Hastings and the bank of the Hudson River. The comparatively level grades of New York were replaced by hilly ground, and if they would avoid courting observation beyond any doubt of error it was essential that the gray car should be allowed greater lat.i.tude. In fact, it was almost demonstrable that an alert criminal like the man they were pursuing--if he really were the ally of Hunter's slayers--could hardly have failed to realize much earlier that he was being followed.

Moreover, being an expert motorist, he would know that the car in the rear could not only hold him in the race but close up with him whenever its occupants were so minded. He would not be lulled into false security by the present widening of the gap, because that was an obvious maneuver due to altered circ.u.mstances. In a word, there was now no hope or prospect of running him to earth at a rendezvous, but, giving him credit for the possession and use of a criminal's brains, it became an urgent matter to overtake him and compel a halt by deliberately blocking the way.

They debated the point fully, and Devar was about to tell Brodie to act when the gray car disappeared.

Not wis.h.i.+ng to interfere at a critical moment, Devar drew back from the window. Brodie spurted down a hill and along a short level lined with suburban villas; he slowed to take a sharp corner, and the car ran along a winding lane which could lead nowhere but to the water's edge.

It was pitch dark, and a mist from the Hudson filled the valley.

Common sense urged a careful pace, because it had never been possible to stop and adjust the powerful headlights, while the luminous haze of an occasional street lamp served only to reveal the narrowness of the road and the presence of shacks and warehouses.

The descent was fairly steep, so Brodie shut off the engine, and the big car crept on with a stealthy and noiseless rapidity which seemed to betoken an actual sense of danger.

Suddenly they heard a loud splash, accompanied by a m.u.f.fled explosion, and McCulloch relieved his feelings by a few words, the use of which is expressly forbidden by the police manual. But their purport was ridiculously clear; the gray car had plunged into the Hudson, and who could tell whether or not Anatole had gone with it? Curtis was the first to adopt a definite line of reasoning: he a.s.sumed command now with the confidence of one accustomed to be in tight places and to depend on his own wits for extrication.

"Go forward slowly until the buildings stop, Brodie," he said, for the two front windows were lowered, and the three men were crowded at them.

"That fellow knew exactly where he was going. When you pull up, light the acetylene lamps, and we will take the other pair and search the wharf from which that car was shot into the stream."

Within a few yards the brakes went on with a jerk, and a tall crane loomed up vaguely in front. All four men sprang to the ground, and while the chauffeur busied himself with the big lamps Curtis and Devar disconnected the smaller ones.

They found themselves standing on a wooden quay, evidently used for the trans-s.h.i.+pment of building materials, and a quick scrutiny showed that the lane supplied the only practicable means of egress. Some gaunt sheds blocked one end of the wharf and piles of dressed stone c.u.mbered the other. The tiny wavelets of the river murmured and gurgled amid the heavy piles which sh.o.r.ed up the landing-place, and Devar's sharp eyes soon detected a corner of the gray-colored limousine round which a ripple had formed. In all probability the heated cylinders had burst when the water rushed in, and the explosion had tilted the cha.s.sis, else the river, necessarily deep by the side of the quay, would have concealed the wreckage completely.

From out of the mist came a white glare. Brodie had set the lamps going, and now the square section of the submerged car became distinctly visible. A little to one side a barge was moored, and the policeman, who had produced a serviceable looking revolver, determined to search it.

A plank spanned the foot or so of interstice between the quay and the rough deck, and, in the flurry of the moment, the three men crossed without warning the chauffeur as to their movements. The squat craft had an open well amids.h.i.+ps, but there were two covered-in ends, and McCulloch, taking one of the lamps, peered down into the nearest hatchway.

"If anyone is below there, speak," he said, "or I give you warning that I shall shoot at sight."

There was no answer; he knelt down, lowered the lamp, and peered inside.

"Empty!" he announced. "Now for the other one."

He repeated the same tactics, but the cavity revealed no lurking form within. Naturally, his companions were absorbed in McCulloch's actions, because they knew that any instant a blinding sheet of flame might leap out of the darkness and a bullet send him prostrate and writhing. Of the three, Curtis was most inured to an environment that was unusual and weird, and he it was who first noticed that the barge was altering its position with regard to the white discs of light which the lamps of the automobile formed in the mist, and a splash caused by the falling plank confirmed his frenzied doubt.

One glance showed what had happened. Already they were ten or twelve feet from the quay, which stood fully two feet above the deck of the barge. Even while the fantastic notion flashed through his mind, a sh.o.r.eward jump barely achievable by a first-rate athlete became a sheer impossibility.

"Good Lord!" he cried, almost laughing with vexation. "The barge has been cast off from her moorings!"

Devar and McCulloch greeted the discovery with appropriate remarks, but the situation called for deeds rather than words. The c.u.mbrous craft was swinging gayly out into the stream, displaying a light-hearted energy and ease of motion which would certainly not have been forthcoming had it been the object of her unwilling crew to get her under way.

The whereabouts of Brodie and the automobile were still vaguely discernible by two fast converging luminous circles now some twenty yards distant, and the fact was painfully borne in on them that in another few seconds this landmark would be swallowed in a sea of mist and swirling waters.

Curtis, accustomed to the vagaries of Chinese junks in the swift currents of the Yang-tse-Kiang, adopted the only measures which promised any degree of success. He ran to the helm, which had been lashed on the starboard side to keep it from fouling any submerged piles near the bank. Casting it loose, he put it hard a-port, and shouted to the policeman and Devar to bring a couple of boards from the floor of the well, and use them to sheer in the hulk to the bank.

The night was pitch dark, the mist fell on them like an impenetrable veil, and the wooded heights which dominated both banks of the river prevented any ray of light from coming to their a.s.sistance. Still, they had two lamps, which at least enabled them to see each other, and Curtis could judge with reasonable accuracy of the direction they were taking by the set of the stream. They seemed to have been toiling a weary time before the helmsman fancied he could see something looming out of the void. He believed that, however slowly, they were surely forging insh.o.r.e again, and was about to ask Devar to abandon his valiant efforts to convert a long plank into a paddle and go forward in order to keep a lookout, when the barge crashed heavily into the stern of a s.h.i.+p of some sort, and simultaneously b.u.mped into a wharf. The noise was terrific, coming so unexpectedly out of the silence, and their argosy careened dangerously under some obstruction forward.

No orders were needed now. They scrambled ash.o.r.e, abandoning one of the lamps in their desperate hurry, and the policeman instantly extinguished the light of the other by pressing the gla.s.s closely to his breast when a rumble of curses heralded the coming on deck of two men who had been aroused from sleep on board the vessel by the thunderous onset of the colliding barge.

CHAPTER XII

TWO-THIRTY A. M.

Few men or women of sympathetic nature, and gifted with ordinary powers of observation, can go through life without learning, at some time or other in the course of their careers, that circ.u.mstances wholly beyond human control can display on occasion a fiendish faculty of converting patent honesty into apparent dishonesty--and that which is true of motive holds equally good in the case of conduct.

The three men standing breathless and unmoved on some unknown wharf on the left bank of the Hudson might fairly be described as superlatively honest persons, nor had they done any act which could be construed as wrongful by the most captious critic; yet McCulloch's concealment of the lamp suggested something thievish and illicit, and, though he alone could give a valid reason for exercising extreme discretion, because he realized, better than the others, what a choice morsel this adventure would supply to the press if ever it became known, both Curtis and Devar listened like himself with bated breath to the oaths and e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns which came from the after part of the moored vessel.

"Howly war!" cried one of the startled crew. "See what's b.u.t.ted into us--the divvle's own battherin'-ram av a scow, an' wid an ilegant lanthern shtuck on her mangy hide, if ye plaze."

A s.h.i.+p's lamp bobbed up and down in the gloom, and another voice said gruffly:

"Mighty good job we had those fenders out, or she would have knocked a hole in us. She seems to be wedged in good and hard under our mooring rope; but s.h.i.+n over, Pat, an' make her fast. Somebody owns the brute, an' there'll be damages to pay for this, an' p'raps salvage as well."

The Irishman dropped down into the barge. The silent trio on the quay heard him walking to the lamp, and saw its dull orb of radiance lifted from the deck.

"Begob, but this is a bit of a fairy tale," came the comment. "Here is none o' yer tin-cint Standard Ile prapositions, but a rale dandy uv a lamp, fit for a lady's cabin on Vandherbilt's yacht. An', for the luv o' Hiven, look at the make uv it, wid a handle where the bottom ought to be, an' all polished up like the pewther in Casey's saloon."

"Oh, get a move on, Pat, an' tie her up," said the other voice. "It's the Lord knows what o'clock, an' we've a long day before us to-morrow."

The lamp moved astern, and the Irishman investigated matters further.

"There's bin black wur-rk here, George," he shouted. "The moorin' rope nivver bruk. It was cut."

A sharp hiss of breath between McCulloch's teeth betrayed the stress of his emotions. To think that he, a smart roundsman of the Broadway squad, should have been bested so thoroughly by a miserable alien chauffeur! The man had merely slipped over the edge of the quay, and clung like a limpet to the rough baulks of timber which faced it; when his pursuers were safely disposed of on board the barge, one cut of a sharp knife had sent them adrift by the stern, while the forward rope, released of any strain, had probably uncoiled itself from a stanchion with the diabolical ingenuity which inanimate objects can display at unlooked-for moments.

"Fling a coil uv line here," continued the speaker. "This f.a.g ind is no good, at all at all."

The thud of a falling rope, and various grunts and comments from the Irishman, showed that the barge was being secured. Still the three waited. The primary display of secrecy, the instinct to remain unseen, had pa.s.sed, but there was nothing to be gained by entering into a long and difficult explanation with the s.h.i.+p's hands, while it would be a simple matter to recoup the owner of the barge for any charge which might be levied on him for injury to the vessel, provided the liability rested with him and not with others.

Swearing and grumbling, Pat stumbled along the quay, carrying the lamp.

He pa.s.sed within a few feet of the motionless group, and soon they heard him and his mate descending the companionway to their bunks.

"Now for a light," said the policeman, "and let's get out of this!"