Steingall, not Clancy, presented his bulk at Carshaw’s apartment next morning. He contrived to have a few minutes’ private talk with Mrs. Carshaw while her son was dressing. Early as it was, he lighted a second cigar as he stepped into the automobile, for Carshaw thought it an economy to retain a car.

“Surprised to see me?” he began. “Well, it’s this way. We may drop in for a rough-house to-day. Between them, Voles and ‘Mick the Wolf,’ own three sound legs and three strong arms. I can’t risk Clancy. He’s too precious. He kicked like a mule, of course, but I made it an order.”

“What of the local police?” said Carshaw.

“Nix on the cops,” laughed the chief. “You share the popular delusion that a policeman can arrest any one at sight. He can do nothing of the sort, unless he and his superior officers care to face a whacking demand for damages. And what charge can we bring against Voles and company? Winifred bolted of her own accord. We must tread lightly, Mr. Carshaw. Really, I shouldn’t be here at all. I came only to help, to put you on the right trail, to see that Winifred is not detained by force if she wishes to accompany you. Do you get me?”

“I believe there is good authority for the statement that the law is an ass,” grumbled the other.

“Not the law. Personal liberty has to be safeguarded by the law. Millions of men have died to uphold that principle. Remember, too, that I may have to explain in court why I did so-and-so. Strange as it may sound, I’ve been taught wisdom by legal adversity. Now, let’s talk of the business in hand. It’s an odd thing, but people who wish to do evil deeds often select secluded country places to live in. I don’t mind betting a box of cigars that ‘East Orange’ means a quiet, old-fashioned locality where there isn’t a crime once in a generation.”

“Some spot one would never suspect, eh?”

“Yes, in a sense. But if ever I set up as a crook – which is unlikely, as my pension is due in eighteen months – I’ll live in a Broadway flat.”

“I thought the city police kept a very close eye on evil-doers.”

“Yes, when we know them. But your real expert is not known; once held he’s done for. Of course he tries again, but he is a marked man – he has lost his confidence. Nevertheless, he will always try to be with the crowd. There is safety in numbers.”

“Do you mean that East Orange is a place favorable to our search?”

“Of course it is. The police, the letter-carriers, and the storekeepers, know everybody. They can tell us at once of several hundred people who certainly had nothing to do with the abduction of a young lady. There will remain a few dozens who might possibly be concerned in such an affair. Inquiry will soon whittle them down to three or four individuals. What a different job it would be if we had to search a New York precinct, which, I take it, is about as populous as East Orange.”

This was a new point of view to Carshaw, and it cheered him proportionately. He stepped on the gas, and a traffic policeman at Forty-second Street and Seventh Avenue cocked an eye at him.

“Steady,” laughed Steingall. “It would be a sad blow for mother if we were held for furious driving. These blessed machines jump from twelve to forty miles an hour before you can wink twice.”

Carshaw abated his ardor. Nevertheless, they were in East Orange forty minutes after crossing the ferry.

Unhappily, from that hour, the pace slackened. Gateway House had been rented from a New York agent for “Mr. and Mrs. Forest,” Westerners who wished to reside in New Jersey a year or so.

Its occupants had driven thither from New York. Rachel Craik, heavily veiled and quietly attired, did her shopping in the nearest suburb, and had choice of more than one line of rail. So East Orange knew them not, nor had it even seen them.

In nowise discouraged, the man from the Bureau set about his inquiry methodically. He interviewed policemen, railway officials, postmen, and cabmen. Although the day was Sunday, he tracked men to their homes and led them to talk. Empty houses, recently let houses, houses tenanted by people who were “not particular” as to their means of getting a living, divided his attention with persons who answered to the description of Voles, Fowle, Rachel, or even the broken-armed Mick the Wolf; while he plied every man with a minutely accurate picture of Winifred.

Hither and thither darted the motor till East Orange was scoured and noted, and among twenty habitations jotted in the detective’s notebook the name of Gateway House figured. It was slow work, this task of elimination, but they persisted, meeting rebuff after rebuff, especially in the one or two instances where a couple of sharp-looking strangers in a car were distinctly not welcome. They had luncheon at a local hotel, and, by idle chance, were not pleased by the way in which the meal was served.

So, when hungry again, and perhaps a trifle dispirited as the day waned to darkness with no result, they went to another inn to procure a meal. This time they were better looked after. Instead of a jaded German waiter they were served by the landlord’s daughter, a neat, befrilled young damsel, who cheered them by her smile; though, to be candid, she was anxious to get out for a walk with her young man.

“Have you traveled far?” she asked, by way of talk while laying the table.

“From New York,” said Steingall.

“At this hour – in a car?”

“Yes. Is that a remarkable thing here?”

“Not the car; but people in motors either whizz through of a morning going away down the coast, or whizz back again of an evening returning to New York.”

“Ah!” put in Carshaw, “here is a pretty head which holds brains. It goes in for ratiocinative reasoning. Now, I’ll be bound to say that this pretty head, which thinks, can help us.”

A good deal of this was lost on the girl, but she caught the compliment and smiled.

“It all depends on what you want to know,” she said.

“I really want to find a private prison of some sort,” he said. “The sort of place where a nice-looking young lady like you might be kept in against her will by nasty, ill-disposed people.”

“There is only one house of that kind in the town, and that is out of it, as an Irishman might say.”

“And where is it?”

“It’s called Gateway House – about a mile along the road from the depot.”

Steingall, inclined at first to doubt the expediency of gossip with the girl, now pricked up his ears.

“Who lives in Gateway House?” he asked.

“No one that I know of at the moment,” she answered. “It used to belong to a mad doctor. I don’t mean a doctor who was mad, but – ”

“No matter about his sanity. Is he dead?”

“No, in prison. There was a trial two years ago.”

“Oh! I remember the affair. A patient was beaten to death. So the house is empty?”

“It is, unless some one has rented it recently. I was taken through the place months ago. The rooms are all right, and it has beautiful grounds, but the windows frightened me. They were closely barred with iron, and the doors were covered with locks and chains. There were some old beds there, too, with straps on them. Oh, I quite shivered!”

“After we have eaten will you let us drive you in that direction in my car?” said Carshaw.

She simpered and blushed slightly. “I’ve an appointment with a friend,” she admitted, wondering whether the swain would protest too strongly if she accepted the invitation.

“Bring him also,” said Carshaw. “I assume it’s a ‘he.’”

“Oh, that’ll be all right!” she cried.

So in the deepening gloom the automobile flared with fierce eyes along the quiet road to Gateway House, and in its seat of honor sat the hotel maid and her young man.

“That is the place,” she said, after the, to her, all too brief run.

“Is this the only entrance?” demanded the chief, as he stepped out to try the gate.

“Yes. The high wall runs right round the property. It’s quite a big place.”

“Locked!” he announced. “Probably empty, too.”

He tried squinting through the keyhole to catch a gleam of interior light.

“No use in doin’ that,” announced the young man. “The house stands way back, an’ is hidden by trees.”

“I mean having a look at it, wall or no wall,” insisted Carshaw.

“But the gate is spiked and the wall covered with broken glass,” said the girl.

“Such obstacles can be surmounted by ladders and folded tarpaulins, or even thick overcoats,” observed Steingall.

“I’m a plumber,” said the East Orange man. “If you care to run back to my place, I c’n give you a telescope ladder and a tarpaulin. But perhaps we may butt into trouble?”

“For shame, Jim! I thought you’d do a little thing like that to help a girl in distress.”

“First I’ve heard of any girl.”

“My name is Carshaw,” came the prompt assurance. “Here’s my card; read it by the lamp there. I’ll guarantee you against consequences, pay any damages, and reward you if our search yields results.”

“Jim – ” commenced the girl reproachfully, but he stayed her with a squeeze.

“Cut it out, Polly,” he said. “You don’t wish me to start housebreaking, do you? But if there’s a lady to be helped, an’ Mr. Carshaw says it’s O.K., I’m on. A fellow who was with Funston in the Philippines won’t sidestep a little job of that sort.”

Polly, appeased and delighted with the adventure, giggled. “I’d think not, indeed.”

“It is lawbreaking, but I am inclined to back you up,” confided Steingall to Carshaw when the car was humming back to East Orange. “At the worst you can only be charged with trespass, as my evidence will be taken that you had no unlawful intent.”

“Won’t you come with me?”

“Better not. You see, I am only helping you. You have an excuse; I, as an official, have none – if a row springs up and doors have to be kicked open, for instance. Moreover, this is the State of New Jersey and outside my bailiwick.”

“Perhaps the joker behind us may be useful.”

“He will be, or his girl will know the reason why. He may have fought in every battle in the Spanish War, but she has more pep in her.”

The soldierly plumber was as good as his word. He produced the ladder and the tarpaulin, and a steel wrench as well.

“If you do a thing at all do it thoroughly. That’s what Funston taught us,” he grinned.

Carshaw thanked him, and in a few minutes they were again looking at the tall gate and the dark masses of the garden trees silhouetted against the sky. They had not encountered many wayfarers during their three journeys. The presence of a car at the entrance to such a pretentious place would not attract attention, and the scaling of the wall was only a matter of half a minute.

“No use in raising the dust by knocking. Go over,” counseled Steingall. “Try to open the gate. Then you can return the ladder and tarpaulin at once. Otherwise, leave them in position. If satisfied that the house is inhabited by those with whom you have no concern, come away unnoticed, if possible.”

Carshaw climbed the ladder, sat on the tarpaulin, and dropped the ladder on the inner side of the wall. They heard him shaking the gate. His head reappeared over the wall.

“Locked,” he said, “and the key gone. I’ll come back and report quickly.”

Jim, who had been nudged earnestly several times by his companion, cried quickly:

“Isn’t your friend goin’ along, too, mister?”

“No. I may as well tell you that I am a detective,” put in Steingall.

“Gee whizz! Why didn’t you cough it up earlier? Hol’ on, there! Lower that ladder. I’m with you.”

“Good old U. S. Army!” said Steingall, and Polly glowed with pride.

Jim climbed rapidly to Carshaw’s side, the latter being astride the wall. Then they vanished.

For a long time the two in the car listened intently. A couple of cyclists passed, and a small boy, prowling about, took an interest in the car, but was sternly warned off by Steingall. At last they caught the faint but easily discerned sound of heavy blows and broken woodwork.

“Things are happening,” cried Steingall. “I wish I had gone with them.”

“Oh, I hope my Jim won’t get hurt,” said Polly, somewhat pale now.

They heard more furious blows and the crash of glass.

“Confound it!” growled Steingall. “Why didn’t I go?”

“If I stood on the back of the car against the gate, and you climbed onto my shoulders, you might manage to stand between the spikes and jump down,” cried Polly desperately.

“Great Scott, but you’re the right sort of girl. The wall is too high, but the gate is possible. I’ll try it,” he answered.

With difficulty, having only slight knowledge of heavy cars, he backed the machine against the gate. Then the girl caught the top with her hands, standing on the back cushions.

Steingall was no light weight for her soft shoulders, but she uttered no word until she heard him drop heavily on the gravel drive within.

“Thank goodness!” she whispered. “There are three of them now. I only wish I was there, too!”

CHAPTER XXIII
“HE WHO FIGHTS AND RUNS AWAY – ”

“I don’t like the proposition, an’ that’s a fact,” muttered Fowle, lifting a glass of whisky and glancing furtively at Voles, when the domineering eyes of the superior scoundrel were averted for a moment.

“Whether you like it or not, you’ve got to lump it,” was the ready answer.

“I don’t see that. I agreed to help you up to a certain point – ”

Voles swung around at him furiously, as a mastiff might turn on a wretched mongrel.

“Say, listen! If I’m up to the neck in this business, you’re in it over your ears. You can’t duck now, you white-livered cur! The cops know you. They had you in their hands once, and warned you to leave this girl alone. If I stand in the dock you’ll stand there, too, and I’m not the man to say the word that’ll save you.”

“But she’s with her aunt. She’s under age. Her aunt is her legal guardian. I know a bit about the law, you see. This notion of yours is a bird of another color. Sham weddings are no joke. It will mean ten years.”

“Who wants you to go in for a sham wedding, you swab?”

“You do, or I haven’t got the hang of things.”

Voles looked as though he would like to hammer his argument into Fowle with his fists. He forebore. There was too much at stake to allow a sudden access of bad temper to defeat his ends.

He was tired of vagabondage. It was true, as he told his brother long before, that he hungered for the flesh-pots of Egypt, for the life and ease and gayety of New York. An unexpected vista had opened up before him. When he came back to the East his intention was to squeeze funds out of Meiklejohn wherewith to plunge again into the outer wilderness. Now events had conspired to give him some chance of earning a fortune quickly, had not the irony of fate raised the winsome face and figure of Winifred as a bogey from the grave to bar his path.

So he choked back his wrath, and shoved the decanter of spirits across the table to his morose companion. They were sitting in the hall of Gateway House, about the hour that Carshaw and the detective, tired by their weary hunt through East Orange, sought the inn.

“Now look here, Fowle,” he said, “don’t be a poor dub, and don’t kick at my way of speaking. Por Dios! man, I’ve lived too long in the sage country to scrape my tongue to a smooth spiel like my – my friend, the Senator. Let’s look squarely at the facts. You admire the girl?”

“Who wouldn’t? A pippin, every inch of her.”

“You’re broke?”

“Well – er – ”

“You were fired from your last job. You’re in wrong with the police. You adopted a disguise and told lies about Winifred to those who would employ her. What chance have you of getting back into your trade, even if you’d be satisfied with it after having lived like a plute for weeks?”

“That goes,” said Fowle, waving his pipe.

“You’d like to hand one to that fellow Carshaw?”

“Wouldn’t I!”

“Yet you kick like a steer when I offer you the girl, a soft, well-paid job, and the worst revenge you can take on Carshaw.”

“Yes, all damn fine. But the risk – the infernal risk!”

“That’s where I don’t agree with you. You go away with her and her father – ”

“Father! You’re not her father!”

“You should be the first to believe it. Her aunt will swear it to you or to any judge in the country. Once out of the United States, she will be only too glad to avail herself of the protection matrimony is supposed to offer. What are you afraid of?”

“You talked of puttin’ up some guy to pretend to marry us.”

“Forget it. We can’t keep her insensible or dumb for days. But, in the company of her loving father and her devoted husband, what can she do? Who will believe her? Depend on me to have the right sort of boys on the ship. They’ll just grin at her. By the time she reaches Costa Rica she’ll be howling for a missionary to come aboard in order to satisfy her scruples. You can suggest it yourself.”

“I believe she’d die sooner.”

“What matter? You only lose a pretty wife. There’s lots more of the same sort when your wad is thick enough. Why, man, it means a three-months’ trip and a fortune for life, however things turn out. You’re tossing against luck with an eagle on both sides of the quarter.”

Fowle hesitated. The other suppressed a smile. He knew his man.

“Don’t decide in a minute,” he said seriously. “But, once settled, there must be no shirking. Make up your mind either to go straight ahead by my orders or clear out to-night. I’ll give you a ten-spot to begin life again. After that don’t come near me.”

“I’ll do it,” said Fowle, and they shook hands on their compact.

It was not in Winifred’s nature to remain long in a state of active resentment with any human being. A prisoner, watched diligently during the day, locked into her room at night, she met Rachel Craik’s grim espionage and Mick the Wolf’s evil temper with an equable cheerfulness that exasperated the one while mollifying the other.

She wondered greatly what they meant to do with her. It was impossible to believe that in the State of New Jersey, within a few miles of New York, they could keep her indefinitely in close confinement. She knew that her Rex would move heaven and earth to rescue her. She knew that the authorities, in the person of Mr. Steingall, would take up the hunt with unwearying diligence, and she reasoned, acutely enough, that a plot which embraced in its scope so many different individuals could not long defy the efforts made to elucidate it.

How thankful she was now that she had at last written and posted that long-deferred letter to the agent. Here, surely, was a clue to be followed – she had quite forgotten, in the first whirlwind of her distress, the second letter which reached her in the Twenty-seventh Street lodgings, but pinned her faith to the fact that her own note concerning the appointment “near East Orange” was in existence.

Perhaps her sweetheart was already rushing over every road in the place and making exhaustive inquiries about her. It was possible that he had passed Gateway House more than once. He might have seen amid the trees the tall chimneys of the very jail against whose iron bars her spirit was fluttering in fearful hope. Oh, why was she not endowed with that power she had read of, whose fortunate possessors could leap time and space in their astral subconsciousness and make known their thoughts and wishes to those dear to them?

She even smiled at the conceit that a true wireless telegraphy did exist between Carshaw and herself. Daily, nightly, she thought of him and he of her. But their alphabet was lacking; they could utter only the thrilling language of love, which is not bound by such earthly things as signs and symbols.

Yet was she utterly confident, and her demeanor rendered Rachel Craik more and more suspicious. Since the girl had scornfully disowned her kinship, the elder woman had not made further protest on that score. She frankly behaved as a wardress in a prison, and Winifred as frankly accepted the rôle of prisoner. There remained Mick the Wolf. Under the circumstances, no doctor or professional nurse could be brought to attend his injured arm. The broken limb had of course been properly set after the accident, but it required skilled dressing daily, and this Winifred undertook. She had no real knowledge of the subject, but her willingness to help, joined to the instruction given by the man himself, achieved her object.

It was well-nigh impossible for this rough, callous rogue, brought in contact with such a girl for the first time in his life, to resist her influence. She did not know it, but gradually she was winning him to her side. He swore at her as the cause of his suffering, yet found himself regretting even the passive part he was taking in her imprisonment.

On the very Sunday evening that Voles and Fowle were concocting their vile and mysterious scheme, Mick the Wolf, their trusted associate, partner of Voles in many a desperate enterprise in other lands, was sitting in an armchair up-stairs listening to Winifred reading from a book she had found in her bedroom. It was some simple story of love and adventure, and certainly its author had never dreamed that his exciting situations would be perused under conditions as dramatic as any pictured in the novel.

“It’s a queer thing,” said the man after a pause, when Winifred stopped to light a lamp, “but nobody pipin’ us just now ’ud think we was what we are.”

She laughed at the involved sentence. “I don’t think you are half so bad as you think you are, Mr. Grey,” she said softly. “For my part, I am happy in the belief that my friends will not desert me.”

“Lookut here,” he said with gruff sympathy, “why don’t you pull with your people instead of ag’in’ ’em. I know what I’m talkin’ about. This yer Voles – but, steady! Mebbe I best shut up.”

Winifred’s heart bounded. If this man would speak he might tell her something of great value to her lover and Mr. Steingall when they came to reckon up accounts with her persecutors.

“Anything you tell me, Mr. Grey, shall not be repeated,” she said.

He glanced toward the door. She understood his thought. Rachel Craik was preparing their evening meal. She might enter the room at any moment, and it was not advisable that she should suspect them of amicable relations. Assuredly, up to that hour, Mick the Wolf’s manner admitted of no doubt on the point. He had been intractable as the animal which supplied his oddly appropriate nickname.

“It’s this way,” he went on in a lower tone. “Voles an’ Meiklejohn are brothers born. Meiklejohn, bein’ a Senator, an’ well in with some of the top-notchers, has a cotton concession in Costa Rica which means a pile of money. Voles is cute as a pet fox. He winded the turkey, an’ has forced his brother to make him manager, with a whackin’ salary and an interest. I’m in on the deal, too. Bless your little heart, you just stan’ pat, an’ you kin make a dress outer dollar bills.”

“But what have I to do with all this? Why cannot you settle your business without pursuing me?” was the mournful question, for Winifred never guessed how greatly the man’s information affected her.

“I can’t rightly say, but you’re either with us or ag’in’ us. If you’re on our side it’ll be a joy-ride. If you stick to that guy, Carshaw – ”

To their ears, as to the ears of those waiting in the car at the gate, came the sound of violent blows and the wrenching open of the door. In that large house – in a room situated, too, on the side removed from the road – they could not catch Carshaw’s exulting cry after a peep through the window:

“I have them! Voles and Fowle! There they are! Now you, who fought with Funston, fight for a year’s pay to be earned in a minute. Here! use this wrench. You understand it. Use it on the head of any one who resists you. These scoundrels must be taken red-handed.”

Voles at the first alarm sprang to his feet and whipped out a revolver. He knew that a vigorous assault was being made on the stout door. Running to the blind of the nearest window, he saw Carshaw pull out an iron bar by sheer strength and use it as a lever to pry open a sash. Tempted though he was to shoot, he dared not. There might be police outside. Murder would shatter his dreams of wealth and luxury. He must outwit his pursuers.

Rachel Craik came running from the kitchen, alarmed by the sudden hubbub.

“Fowle,” he said to his amazed confederate, “stand them off for a minute or two. You, Rachel, can help. You know where to find me when the coast is clear. They cannot touch you. Remember that. They’re breaking into this house without a warrant. Bluff hard, and they cannot even frame a charge against you if the girl is secured – and she will be if you give me time.”

Trusting more to Rachel than to vacillating Fowle, he raced up-stairs, though his injured leg made rapid progress difficult. He ran into a room and grabbed a small bag which lay in readiness. Then he rushed toward the room in which Winifred and Mick the Wolf were listening with mixed feelings to the row which had sprung up beneath.

He tried the door. It was locked. Rachel had the key in her pocket. A trifle of that nature did not deter a man like Voles. With his shoulder he burst the lock, coming face to face with his partner in crime, who had grasped a poker in his serviceable hand.

“Atta-boy!” he yelled. “Down-stairs, and floor ’em as they come. You’ve one sound arm. Go for ’em – they can’t lay a finger on you.”

Now, it was one thing to sympathize with a helpless and gentle girl, but another to resist the call of the wild. The dominant note in Mick the Wolf was brutality, and the fighting instinct conquered even his pain. With an oath he made his way to the hall, and it needed all of Steingall’s great strength to overpower him, wounded though he was.

It took Carshaw and Jim a couple of minutes to force their way in. There was a lively fight, in which the detective lent a hand. When Mick the Wolf was down, groaning and cursing because his fractured arm was broken again; when Fowle was held to the floor, with Rachel Craik, struggling and screaming, pinned beneath him by the valiant Jim, Carshaw sped to the first floor.

Soon, after using hand-cuffs on the man and woman, and leaving Jim in charge of them and Mick the Wolf, Steingall joined him. But, search as they might, they could not find either Winifred or Voles. Almost beside himself with rage, Carshaw rushed back to the grim-visaged Rachel.

“Where is she?” he cried. “What have you done with her? By Heaven, I’ll kill you – ”

Her face lit up with a malignant joy. “A nice thing!” she screamed. “Respectable folk to be treated in this way! What have we done, I’d like to know? Breaking into our house and assaulting us!”

“No good talking to her,” said the chief. “She’s a deep one – tough as they make ’em. Let’s search the grounds.”