The Air Trust Part 20

Five minutes later she was in the new-comer's car, which had been turned around and now was headed back toward Haverstraw. The shawl and robe serving her as wraps, she was made comfortable in the tonneau.

"Think you can stand it, all right?" asked Gabriel, as he took in his the hand she extended. "In half an hour, you'll be under a doctor's care, and your father will be on his way toward you."

She nodded, and for a second tightened the grasp of her hand.

"I--I'm not even going to know who you are?" she asked, a strange tone in her voice.

"No," he answered. "And now, good luck, and good-bye!"

"Good-bye," she echoed, her voice almost inaudible. "I--I won't forget you."

He made no answer, but only smiled in a peculiar way.

Then, as the car rolled slowly forward, their hands separated.

Gabriel, bareheaded and with level gaze, stood there in the middle of the great highway, looking after her. A minute, under the darkening arches of the forest road, he saw her, still. Then the car swung round a bend, and vanished.

Had she waved her hand at him? He could not tell. Motionless he stood, a while, then cleared away the barrier of branches that obstructed the road, took up his knapsack, and with slow steps returned to the sugar-house.

Almost on the threshold, a white something caught his eye. He picked it up. Her handkerchief! A moment he held the dainty, filmy thing in his rough hand. A vague perfume reached his nostrils, disquieting and seductive.

"More than eighteen dollars an ounce, perhaps!" he exclaimed, with sudden bitterness; but still he did not throw the handkerchief away.

Instead, he looked at it more keenly. In one corner, the fading light just showed him some initials. He studied them, a moment.

"C. J. F." he read. Then, yielding to a sudden impulse, he folded the kerchief and put it in his pocket.

He entered the sugar-house, to make sure, before departing, that he had left no danger of fire behind him.

Another impulse bade him sit down on a rough box, there, before the dying embers. He gazed at the bed of leaves, a while, immersed in thought, then filled his pipe and lighted it with a glowing brand, and sat there--while the night came--smoking and musing, in a reverie.

The overpowering lure of the woman who had lain in his arms, as he had borne her thither; her breath upon his face; the perfume of her, even her blood that he had washed away--all these were working on his senses, still. But most of all he seemed to see her eyes, there in the ember-lit gloom, and hear her voice, and feel her lithe young body and her breast against his breast.

For a long time he sat there, thinking, dreaming, smoking, till the last shred of tobacco was burned out in the heel of his briar; till the last ember had winked and died under the old sheet-iron stove.

At last, with a peculiar laugh, he rose, slung the knapsack once more on his shoulders, settled his cap upon his head, and made ready to depart.

But still, one moment, he lingered in the doorway. Lingered and looked back, as though in his mind's eye he would have borne the place away with him forever.

Suddenly he stooped, picked up a leaf from the bed where she had lain, and put that, too, in his pocket where the kerchief was.

Then, looking no more behind him, he strode off across the maple-grove, through which, now, the first pale stars were glimmering. He reached the road again, swung to the north, and, striking into his long marching stride, pushed onward northward, away and away into the soft June twilight.

CHAPTER XVI.

TIGER WALDRON "COMES BACK."

Old Isaac Flint loved but two things in all this world--power, and his daughter Catherine.

I speak advisedly in putting "power" first. Much as he idolized the girl, much as she reminded him of the long-dead wife of his youth, he could have survived the loss of her. The loss of power would inevitably have crushed and broken him, stunned him, killed him. Yet, so far as human affection could still blossom in that withered heart, shrunk by cold scheming and the cruel piracies of many decades, he loved the girl.

And so it was that when the message came in, that evening, over the telephone, the news that Kate had been injured in an auto-accident which had entirely destroyed the machine and killed Herrick, he paled, trembled, and clutched the receiver, hardly able to hold it to his ear with his shaking hand.

"Here! You!" he cried. "She--she's not badly hurt? She's living? She's safe? No lies, now! The truth!"

"Your daughter is very much alive, and perfectly safe," a voice answered. "This is Doctor MacDougal, of Haverstraw, speaking. The patient is now having a superficial scalp wound dressed by my a.s.sistant.

You can speak to her, in a few minutes, if you like."

"Now! For G.o.d's sake, let me speak _now_!" entreated the Billionaire; but the doctor refused. Not all Flint's urging or bribing would turn him one hair's breadth.

"No," he insisted. "In ten minutes she can talk to you. Not now. But have no fear, sir. She is perfectly safe and--barring her wound, which will probably heal almost without a scar--is as well as ever. A little nervous and unstrung, of course, but that's to be expected."

"What happened, and how?" demanded Flint, in terrible agitation.

The doctor briefly gave him such facts as he knew, ending with the statement that a pa.s.sing automobilist had brought the girl to him, and outlining the situation of the first-aid measures in the sugar-house. At the thought that Herrick, the drunken cause of it all, was dead and burned, Flint smiled with real satisfaction.

"d.a.m.n him! It's too good for the sc.u.m!" he muttered. Then, aloud, he asked over the wire:

"And who was the rescuer?"

"I don't know," MacDougal answered. "Your daughter didn't tell me. But from what I've learned, he must have been a man of rare strength and presence of mind. It may well be that you owe your daughter's life to his prompt work."

"I'll find him, yet. He'll be suitably rewarded," thought the Billionaire. "No matter what my enemies have called me, I'm not incapable of grat.i.tude!"

Some few minutes later, having paced the library floor meanwhile, in great excitement, he called the doctor's house again by long-distance, and this time succeeded in having speech with his daughter. Her voice, though a little weak, vastly rea.s.sured him. Once more he asked for the outline of the story. She told him all the essentials, and finished by:

"Now, come and get me, won't you, father dear? I want to go home. And the quicker you come for me, the happier I'll be."

"Bless your heart, Kate!" he exclaimed, deeply moved. "Nothing like the old man, after all, is there? Yes, I'll start at once. I've only been waiting here, to talk with you and _know_ you're safe. In five minutes I'll be on my way, with the racing-car. And if I don't break a few records between here and Haverstraw, my name's not Isaac Flint!"

After an affectionate good-bye, the old man hung up, rang for Slawson, his private valet, and ordered the swiftest car in his garage made ready at once, for a quick run.

Two hours later, Doctor MacDougal had pocketed the largest fee he ever had received or ever would, again; and Kate was safe at home, in Idle Hour.

On the homeward journey, Flint learned every detail of the affair, from start to finish; and again grimly consigned the soul of the dead chauffeur to the nethermost pits of h.e.l.l. Yes, he realized, he must have the body brought in and decently buried, after the coroner's verdict had been rendered; but in his heart he knew that, save for the eye of public opinion and the law, he would let those charred remnants lie and rot there, by the river bank, under the twisted wreckage of the car--and revel in the thought of that last, barbarous revenge.

Arrived at home, Flint routed specialists out of their offices, and at a large expense satisfied himself the girl had really taken no serious harm. Next day, and the days following, all that money and science could do to make the gash heal without a scar, was done. Waldron called, greatly unnerved and not at all himself; and Kate received him with amicable interest. She had not yet informed her father of the rupture between Waldron and herself, nor did he suspect it. As for "Tiger," he realized the time was inopportune for any statement of conditions, and held his peace. But once she should be well, again, he had savagely resolved this decision of hers should not stand.

"d.a.m.n it, it can't! It mustn't!" he reflected, as on the third evening he returned to his Fifth Avenue house. "Now that I'm really in danger of losing her, I'm just beginning to realize what an extraordinary woman she is! As a wife, the mistress of my establishment, a hostess, a social leader, what a figure she would make! And too, the alliance between Flint and myself simply must not be shattered. Kate is the only child.

The old man's billion, or more, will surely come to her, practically every penny of it. Flint is more than sixty-three this very minute, he's a dope-fiend, and his heart's d.a.m.ned weak. He's liable to drop off, any moment. If I get Kate, and he dies, what a fortune! What a prize! Added to my interests, it will make me master of the world!

"Then, too, this new Air Trust scheme positively demands that Flint and I should be bound together by something closer than mere financial a.s.sociation. I've simply got to be one of the family. I've got to be his son-in-law. That's a positive necessity! G.o.d, what a fool I was at Longmeadow, to have taken those three drinks, and have been piqued at her beating me--to have let my tongue and temper slip--in short, to have acted like an a.s.s!"

Ugly and grim, he puffed at his Londres. Vast schemes of finance and of conquest wove through his busy, plotting brain. Visions of the girl arose, too, tempting him still more, though his chill heart was powerless to feel the urge of any real, self-sacrificing or devoted love. Sensual pa.s.sion he knew, and ambition, and the l.u.s.t of power; nothing else. But these all opened his eyes to the vast blunder he had committed, and nerved him to reconquest of the ground that he had lost.