The Professor's Mystery Part 11

"Murder!" some one shouted hoa.r.s.ely. "Police! police! police!"

From far down the block came the regular thud of running feet, and the shrill blast of a whistle; and along with it, a stumbling clatter from the tenement hallway, and Carucci, a great smear of blood across his convulsed and swollen face, lurched drunkenly to the sidewalk.

CHAPTER X

AND HOW WE BROUGHT HOME A DIFFICULTY

It was a matter of seconds. I vaulted over the spare tires into the chauffeur's seat, pulling the throttle open while I felt for my pedals; and as I did so, I heard the door of the limousine slam behind me. A hasty glance over my shoulder showed me that the back of the car was clear. I jerked in the reverse and raised my feet; and with a roar and a stream of blue smoke, the machine swung backward across the street, while I twisted furiously at the wheel. One of the men caught at me as we began to move, but the suddenness of our starting helped the push I gave him to throw him off his balance. He sprawled on his back in the gutter, and an instant later I was in my second speed and half-way up the block. The policeman behind us was firing his revolver; whether at us or our tires or the sky I had no time to guess. And I took the first corner with my heart in my mouth and an empty feeling in my stomach, praying that we might get around it right side up. A shadow ran out from the curb and sprang for the running-board; but my hands and eyes were so busy in front of me that I did not know whether we missed him or ran him down.

Speed was impossible over the cobbles; our only chance was to take as many turnings as possible to avoid being headed, and for the next few minutes we swayed and slid around treacherous corners through a darkness that was full of shouts and whistlings and gesticulating enemies. I wondered that every blue-coated figure running blindly up the lane of our lights did not stop us, and that at every turning we had neither upset nor skidded into the opposite curb. It was wild work at the best; and considering that I was driving a heavy and unfamiliar car over slimy pavements, I can not understand now how we avoided either accident or capture. But presently the headlights showed a long, dark street, clear of interference. We raced up it at a rate that seemed to loosen every tooth in my head, and numbed my fingers upon the rattling wheel. The noise was fairly behind us. After a couple more turns, it had grown fainter; and I slowed to a saner speed, watching the street lamps for knowledge of my whereabouts. Then I became conscious that there was a man beside me in the car.

He was huddled in a heap on the floor, between the seat and the dash, hanging on desperately, and crowding himself into the least possible s.p.a.ce as if to keep out of sight. As soon as I could spare a hand, I began to pound him over the head and neck. I was in no mood for half measures. He cowered back on to the running-board, s.h.i.+elding himself with an arm and turning up an absurd and ugly face of terror. It was our highly respectable chauffeur.

"Oh, for G.o.d's sake, don't, sir!" he croaked, shrinking back out of reach. "I won't interfere with you nor nothing. I'll get out as soon as we get fair away. Only I'd ha' been took up sure, sir, and there's me character gone."

"Get into that seat and keep still," I said, "or you'll have us all taken up. Get in, I tell you."

He crawled into the seat, shaking and protesting. There were tears in his voice, and I think actually in his eyes.

"Do you know your way out of this?" I demanded.

"No, sir. I haven't a notion. I'll get out and ask." He was apparently too frightened to know his own mind, but I had made up mine. He was better with us than wandering about the city, telling murder stories.

"Stay where you are," I snapped, "you'll go home with us, and keep your head shut."

"Oh, I can't think of it, sir. We'll never get home after this. I'll get out here. It's murder and resisting arrest and endangering traffic.

They'll have me an accomplice."

I caught at his collar as he tried to stand up, and jerked him back into the seat. Before he could make another move, I had shut off and got my right hand on the revolver. I held it across my knees under the wheel, and slipped the holster off it.

"You're going to sit still and keep quiet," I said, "and you're going wherever we go. Do you understand?"

He sat like a graven image after that, with no sound but an occasional sniff. I slid the revolver between me and the edge of the seat, and we went on. He might have known that I should never have dared to use it; but either he was too shaken and stupid to put himself in my place, or he lacked the nerve to try me. All this time we had been working westward as fast as the rough going and my divided attention would allow. Now and then some one shouted after us. But it was still dark and we were soon out of sight around a corner, and the few policemen who concerned themselves with us at all did not trouble themselves to whistle up a hue and cry. Presently the black bulk of the elevated gave me my bearings, and I turned north under it, running along the car tracks. The lights and the scattered traffic, and the occasional roaring of a train overhead, seemed curiously homelike and comfortable. I felt as if I were waking out of a nightmare.

We crossed over to Union Square and hurried carefully through civilization. I was afraid of Fifth Avenue; even at this hour, too many of the guardians of the peace there were provided with better means of speed than their own feet; and I did not like the attention we still seemed to attract, now that we were safe away from our original trouble and running at an ordinary rate. Madison Avenue was decently asleep; and its empty length must have tempted me to unreasonable speed, for the few people we pa.s.sed stopped to stare, and call after us unmeaningly. I expected every moment to meet a mounted policeman, and held myself ready to slow down or take a sudden corner; but none appeared, and I turned into the leafy darkness of Central Park with a sigh of relief. I was more than a little anxious for the safety of my pa.s.sengers within.

I stopped in the deepest shade I could find, and clambered out. Lady's face was at the door almost before I could open it.

"Are you all right?" she panted. I could see only her eyes and the outline of her face like a white shadow.

"Yes; are you?"

She laughed nervously. "I'm as well as when we started, and Sheila is better. She has come to herself now. Can you find some water? I have a flask here."

"There are fountains all along these drives. We'll run ahead until we come to one of them."

As I spoke, there was a thud behind me, and a quick patter of running feet. The excellent Thomas had taken advantage of my forgetfulness to break for liberty. He was out of sight almost before I turned; and he had been thoughtful enough to throw the revolver away as he jumped.

"I'm a clever idiot," I said ruefully, "your chauffeur has been trying to desert all along, and now he's done it."

"But you were driving, yourself. What difference does it make?"

"I was thinking of what he might say," said I. "But for that matter, I suppose I have got you into a newspaper sc.r.a.pe anyhow, if nothing worse.

Every policeman on the East Side must have our number."

"I was just going to ask you about that," said Lady, with a queer little crow in her voice. "Perhaps we had better carry this outside now." She felt about her feet and handed me a muddy strip of metal. "I took this off while you were starting the car. And I put out that red lantern thing, too."

For an instant I forgot Doctor Reid and all the mountain of impossibility that lay between us. She had always been more than other women. And now she was that rarest thing of all, a comrade ready in a moment of need. I reached out my hand, as if she had been a man.

"You're a miracle," I said, "and I'm not half good enough to be your lieutenant. Good work."

There was a broken whisper from the darkness within.

"The water," said Lady, "we're forgetting Sheila."

I replaced our number, lighted the tail-lamp, and a little farther on found a drinking fountain and got the water. Mrs. Carucci was able to speak only a few words of unsteady thanks; but that was enough to make me fall in love with the crooning voice of her. We pushed on out of town without any further adventure; and on the open roads off to the northward were free to make the most of our speed.

The night slowly faded, not as if any light were coming, but as if the darkness itself were growing faint and weak. The roadside trees were still mysterious bulks against remoter gloom, but their blackness now gave a dull hint of green and the yellow glare of our lamps grew washed out and lifeless. The crowing of c.o.c.ks, reiterated from place to place, sounded fict.i.tious and unnatural. The air chilled a little and here and there we ran through a momentary blindness of mist, as if a small cloud had fallen to drift along the surface of the earth. I sat back half drowsily, with relaxed nerves; and although I had no desire for sleep, although I never loosened my hands upon the wheel, nor took my eyes for a second from the wavering end of the ribbon of light that unwound itself continually toward me, yet I felt somehow unreal and very peaceful, without will or memory, like a person in a dream. The car obeyed me without my being conscious of any movement, as if I guided it by my mere volition. Slowly the pallor around me changed from green to gray; the air freshened as the stars went out; and the twitter of birds and the scattered barking of dogs underran the unvarying, inevitable drumming of the engine. That sound itself dried and hardened in the keener atmosphere. And in the pleasure of the perfect power under me, I let the car out nearly to the limit of its speed, until the sidelong sway of the body warned me that I was driving too fast for the road. We pa.s.sed a milk wagon or two and an occasional early trolley. Then came the dawn, so swiftly that it was full day of sunlight and shadow before I thought to look for color in the east. Somehow it did not seem like morning, but like coming out of a curtained house into the midst of afternoon.

It was part of this same strangeness that I only felt the exhilaration of the present without any thought of trouble that lay before me and behind. I was a conquering hero, carrying my princess home in triumph out of the castle of the enchanter. I had overcome desperate accidents and won my spurs; this page of the fairy-tale bore a picture in s.h.i.+ning colors, and I knew of neither the last page nor the next. It was in this mood that I pa.s.sed, unheeding, through the gathering familiarity of nearer landmarks, past the inn and up the winding hill, and drew up at last before the Tabors' door with some vague fancy that I should hear a trumpet blown. I suppose that I was unconsciously very tired and in part asleep, so that it came upon me with the shock of a violent awakening when the front door swung open and Mr. Tabor hurried out to meet us, followed by Doctor Reid.

The fairy-tale burst like a bubble, and the actuality of all that those two men stood for in my last few days and all the days to come drowned me in a breath. I got down mechanically to help them. I suppose we must have spoken a few words while Lady was getting out of the car and Mrs.

Carucci was helped down and half-carried into the house between the two men. But I do not remember. I remember only the three figures in the doorway, the drooping woman, with their arms about her. Then the door closed, and Lady stood alone upon the steps above me. Her eyes were larger for the shadows under them; but there was no bloom upon her, and I wondered why I had thought her really beautiful.

"I'll take the car around and leave it," I said. "Good-by."

"You're a strange man," she muttered; then with her sudden smile, "Aren't you coming in to breakfast? You've had an adventure, and you ought to be hungry."

Her tone jarred. "Never mind that," I said bitterly. "I was to go this morning, and I'm going. There's still plenty of time for my train. The sooner it's over with, the better."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"Mean? I mean what you told me--and one thing more, I understand now what you meant yesterday, because I found your marriage notice in an old paper."

"What marriage notice? I don't understand."

"Yours; on the twenty-sixth of May three years ago, to Doctor Reid.

That's all. I beg your pardon."

The color came back into her face; and under the trouble of her brows I thought she almost smiled.

"That was my sister," she said quietly. "My name's Margaret; I thought you knew."