The two were in the lane behind the church, at seven that same evening. Winifred, on some pretext, had escaped the watchful eyes of Rachel Craik, or fancied that she had, and came hurriedly to the waiting Carshaw. She was all aflutter with expectancy not untinged by fear, she knew not of what. The nights were beginning to darken early, and it was gloomy that evening, for the sky was covered with clouds and a little drizzle was falling.

“You are not to think that there is the least hint of impropriety about the matter,” Carshaw assured her. “Understand, please, Winifred, that this is no lovers’ meeting, but a business one, on which your whole future life depends. You cannot suppose that I have followed you to Fairfield for nothing.”

“How could you possibly know that I was here?”

“From the police.”

“The police again? What a strange thing!”

“Yes, a strange thing, and yet not so strange. They are keenly interested in you and your movements, for your good. And I, of course, still more so.”

“You are wonderfully good to care. But, tell me quickly, I cannot stay ten minutes. I think my aunt suspects something. She already knows about the note dropped to-day into my lap.”

“And about the boy in the fit. Does she suspect that, too?”

“What, was that a ruse? Good gracious, how artful you must be! I’m afraid of you – ”

“Endlessly artful for your sake, Winifred.”

“You are kind. But tell me quickly.”

“Winifred, you are in danger, from which there is only one way of escape for you – namely, absolute trust in me. Pray understand that the dream in which you heard some one say, ‘She must be taken away from New York’ was no dream. You are here in order to be taken. This may be the first stage of a long journey. Understand also that there is no bond of duty which forces you to go against your will, for the shrewdest men in the New York police have reason to think you are not who you imagine you are, and that the woman you call your aunt is no relative of yours.”

“What reason have they?” asked Winifred.

“I don’t care – I don’t know, they have not told me. But I believe them, and I want you to believe me. The persons who have charge of your destiny are not normal persons – more or less they have done, or are connected with wrong. There is no doubt about that. The police know it, though they cannot yet drag that wrong into the light. Do you credit what I say?”

“It is all very strange.”

“It is true. That is the point. Have you, by the way, ever seen a man called Voles?”

“Voles? No.”

“Yet that man at this moment is somewhere near you. He came in the same train with you from New York. He is always near you. He is the most intimate associate of your aunt. Think now, and tell me whether it is not a disturbing thing that you never saw this man face to face?”

“Most disturbing, if what you say is so.”

“But suppose I tell you what I firmly believe – that you have seen him; that it was his face which bent over you in your half-sleep the other night, and his voice which you heard?”

“I always thought that it was no dream,” said Winifred. “It was – not a nice face.”

“And remember, Winifred,” urged Carshaw earnestly, “that to-day and to-morrow are your last chances. You are about to be taken far away – possibly to France or England, as surely as you see those clouds. True, if you go, I shall go after you.”

“You?”

“Yes, I. But, if you go, I cannot be certain how far I may be able to defend and rescue you there, as I can in America. I know nothing of foreign laws, and those who have you in their power do. On that field they may easily beat me. So now is your chance, Winifred.”

“But what am I to do?” she asked in a scared tone, frightened at last by the sincerity blazing from his eyes.

“Necessity has no rules of propriety,” he answered. “I have a car here. You should come with me this very night to New York. Once back there, it is only what my interest in you gives me the right to expect that you will consent to use my purse for a short while, till you find suitable employment.”

Winifred covered her face and began to cry. “Oh, I couldn’t!” she sobbed.

“Don’t cry,” said Carshaw tenderly. “You must, you know, since it is the only way. You cry because you do not trust me.”

“Oh! I do. But what a thing it is that you propose! To break with all my past on a sudden. I hardly even know you; last week I had not seen you – ”

“There, that is mistrust. I know you as well as if I had always known you. In fact, I always did, in a sense. Please don’t cry. Say that you will come with me to-night. It will be the best piece of work that you ever did for yourself, and you will always thank me for having persuaded you.”

“But not to-night! I must have time to reflect, at least.”

“Then, when?”

“Perhaps to-morrow night. I don’t know. I must think it over first in all its bearings. To-morrow morning I will leave a letter in the office, telling you – ”

“Well, if you insist on the delay. But it is dangerous, Winifred – it is horribly dangerous!”

“I can’t help that. How could a girl run away in that fashion?”

“Well, then, to-morrow night at eleven, precisely. I shall be at the end of this lane in my car, if your letter in the morning says ‘Yes.’ Is that understood?”

“Yes.”

“Let me warn you against bringing anything with you – any clothes or a grip. Just steal out of the inn as you are. And I shall be just there at the corner – at eleven.”

“Yes.”

“I may not have the chance of speaking to you again before – ”

But Carshaw’s pleading stopped short; from the near end of the lane a tall form entered it – Rachel Craik. She had followed Winifred from the hotel, suspecting that all was not well – had followed her, lost her, and now had refound her. She walked sedately, with an inscrutable face, toward the spot where the two were talking. The moment Carshaw saw this woman of ill omen he understood that all was lost, unless he acted with bewildering promptness, and quickly he whispered in Winifred’s ear:

“It must be to-night or never! Decide now. ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’”

“Yes,” said Winifred, in a voice so low that he could hardly hear.

“At eleven to-night?”

“Yes,” she murmured.

Rachel Craik was now up to them. She was in a vile temper, but contrived to curb it.

“What is the meaning of this, Winifred? And who is this gentleman?” she said.

Winifred, from the habit of a lifetime, stood in no small awe of that austere woman. All the blood fled from the girl’s face. She could only say brokenly:

“I am coming, aunt,” and went following with a dejected air a yard behind her captor. In this order they walked till they arrived at the door of the Maples Inn, neither having uttered a single word to the other. There Miss Craik halted abruptly. “Go to your room,” she muttered. “I’m ashamed of you. Sneaking out at night to meet a strange man! No kitchen-wench could have behaved worse.”

Winifred had no answer to that taunt. She could not explain her motives. Indeed, she would have failed lamentably had she attempted it. All she knew was that life had suddenly turned topsy-turvy. She distrusted her aunt, the woman to whom she seemed to owe duty and respect, and was inclined to trust a young man whom she had met three times in all. But she was gentle and soft-hearted. Perhaps, if this Mr. Rex Carshaw, with his earnest eyes and wheedling voice, could have a talk with “aunty,” his queer suspicions – so oddly borne out by events – might be dissipated.

“I’m sorry if I seem to have done wrong,” she said, laying a timid hand on Rachel Craik’s arm. “If you would only tell me a little, dear. Why have we left New York? Why – ”

“Do you want to see me in jail?” came the harsh whisper.

“No. Oh, no. But – ”

“Obey me, then! Remain in your room till I send for you. I’m in danger, and you, you foolish girl, are actually in league with my enemies. Go!”

Winifred sped through the porch, and hied her to a window in her room on the first floor which commanded a view of the main street. She could see neither Carshaw nor Aunt Rachel, the one having determined to lie low for a few hours, and the other being hidden from sight already as she hastened through the rain to the small inn where Voles and Mick the Wolf were located.

These worthies were out. The proprietor said they had hired a car and gone to Bridgeport. Miss Craik could only wait, and she sat in the lobby, prim and quiet, the picture of resignation, not betraying by a look or gesture the passions of anger, apprehension, and impatience which raged in her breast.

Voles did not come. An hour passed; eight struck, then nine. Once the word “carousing”! passed Miss Rachel’s lips with an intense bitterness; but, on the whole, she sat with a stiff back, patient as stone.

Then after ten there came the hum and whir of an automobile driven at high speed through the rain-sodden main street. It stopped outside the inn. A minute later the gallant body of Voles entered, cigar in his mouth, and a look of much champagne in his eyes.

“What, Rachel, girl, you here!” he said in his offhand way.

“Are you sober?” asked Rachel, rising quickly.

“Sober? Never been really soused in my life! What’s up?”

He dropped a huge paw roughly on her shoulder, and her hard eyes softened as she looked at his face and splendid frame, for Ralph “Voles” was Rachel Craik’s one weakness.

“What’s the trouble?” he went on, seeing that her lips were twitching.

“You should have been here,” she snapped. “Everything may be lost. A man is down here after Winifred, and I’ve caught her talking to him in secret.”

“A cop?” and Voles glanced around the otherwise deserted lobby.

“I don’t know – most probably. Or he may be that same man who was walking with her on Wednesday night in Central Park. Anyway, this afternoon he tried to hand her a note in offering her a newspaper. The note fell, and I saw it. Afterward he managed to get it to her in some way, though I never for a moment let her out of my sight; and they met about seven o’clock behind the church.”

“The little cat! She beat you to it, Rachel!”

“There is no time for talk, Ralph. That man will take her from us, and then woe to you, to William, to us all. Things come out; they do, they do – the deepest secrets! Man, man – oh, rouse yourself, sober yourself, and act! We must be far from this place before morning.”

“No more trains from here – ”

“You could hire a car for your own amusement. Rush her off in that. Snatch her away to Boston. We may catch a liner to-morrow.”

“But we can’t have her seeing us!”

“We can’t help that. It is dark; she won’t see your face. Let us be gone. We must have been watched, or how could that man have found us out? Ralph! Don’t you understand? You must do something.”

“Where’s this spy you gab of? I’ll – ”

“This is not the Mexican border. You can’t shoot here. The man is not the point, but the girl. She must be gotten away at once.”

“Nothing easier. Off, now to the hotel, and be ready in half an hour. I’ll bring the car around.”

Rachel Craik wanted no further discussion. She reached the Maples Inn in a flurry of little runs. Before the door she saw two glaring lights, the lamps of Carshaw’s automobile. It was not far from eleven. Even as she approached the hotel, Carshaw got in and drove down the street. He drew up on a patch of grass by the roadside at the end of the lane behind the church. Soon after this he heard a clock strike eleven.

His eyes peered down the darkness of the lane to see Winifred coming, as she had promised. It was still drizzling slightly – the night was heavy, stagnant and silent. Winifred did not come, and Carshaw’s brows puckered with care and foreboding. A quarter of an hour passed, but no light tread gladdened his ear. Fairfield lay fast asleep.

Carshaw could no longer sit still. He paced restlessly about the wet grass to ease his anxious heart. And so another quarter of an hour wore slowly. Then the sound of a fast-moving car broke the silence. Down the road a pair of dragon-eyes blazed. The car came like the chariots of Sennacherib, in reckless flight. Soon it was upon him. He drew back out of the road toward his own racer.

Though rather surprised at this urgent flight he had no suspicion that Winifred might be the cause of it. As the car dashed past he clearly saw on the front seat two men, and in the tonneau he made out the forms of two women. The faces of any of the quartet were wholly merged in speed and the night, but some white object fluttered in the swirl of air and fell forlornly in the road, dropping swiftly in its final plunge, like a stricken bird. He darted forward and picked up a lady’s handkerchief. Then he knew! Winifred was being reft from him again. He leaped to his own car, started the engine, turned with reckless haste, and in a few seconds was hot in chase.

CHAPTER XII
THE PURSUIT

The two automobiles rushed along the Boston Post Road, heading for Bridgeport. The loud rivalry of their straining engines awoke many a wayside dweller, and brought down maledictions on the heads of all midnight joy-riders.

Carshaw knew the road well, and his car was slightly superior to the other in speed. His hastily evolved plan was to hold the kidnappers until they were in the main street of Bridgeport. There he could dash ahead, block further progress, risking a partial collision if necessary, and refer the instant quarrel to the police, bidding them verify his version of the dispute by telephoning New York.

He could only hope that Winifred would bear him out as against her “aunt,” and he felt sure that Voles and his fellow-adventurer dare not risk close investigation by the law. At any rate, his main object at present was to overtake the car in front, which had gained a flying start, and thus spoil any maneuvering for escape, such as turning into a side road. In his enthusiasm he pressed on too rapidly.

He was seen, and his intent guessed. The leading car slowed a trifle in rounding a bend; as Carshaw careened into view a revolver-shot rang out, and a bullet drilled a neat hole in the wind-screen, making a noise like the sharp crack of a whip. Simultaneously came a scream!

That must be Winifred’s cry of terror in his behalf. The sound nerved him anew. He saw red. A second shot, followed by a wilder shriek, spat lead somewhere in the bonnet. Carshaw set his teeth, gave the engine every ounce of power, and the two chariots of steel went raging, reckless of consequences, along the road.

There must be a special Providence that looks after chauffeurs, as well as after children and drunkards, for at some places the road, though wide enough, was so dismal with shadow that if any danger lurked within the darkness it would not have been seen in time to be avoided.

“Drunkenness” is, indeed, the word to describe the state of mind of the two drivers by this time – a heat to be on, a wrath against obstacles, a storm in the blood, and a light in the eyes. Voles would have whirled through a battalion of soldiers on the march, if he had met them, and would have hissed curses at them as he pitched over their bodies. He knew how to handle an automobile, having driven one over the rough tracks of the Rockies, so this well-kept road offered no difficulties. For five minutes the cars raged ahead, passed through a sleeping village street and down a hill into open country beyond.

No sound was made by their occupants, whose minds and purposes remained dark one to the other. Voles might have fancied himself chased by the flight of witches who harried Tam o’ Shanter, while Carshaw might have been hunting a cargo of ghosts; only the running hum of the cars droned its music along the highway, with a staccato accompaniment of revolver-shots and Winifred’s appeals to heaven for aid. Meantime, the rear car still gained on the one in front. And, on a sudden, Carshaw was aware of a shouting, though he could not make out the words. It was Mick the Wolf, who had clambered into the tonneau and was bellowing:

“Pull up, you – Pull up, or I’ll get you sure!”

Nor was the threat a waste of words, for he had hardly shouted when again a bullet flicked past Carshaw’s head.

Just then a bend of the road and a patch of woodland hid the two cars from each other; but they had hardly come out upon a reach of straight road again when another shot was fired. Carshaw, however, was now crouched low over the steering wheel, and using the hood of the car as a breast-work; though, since he was obliged to look out, his head was still more or less exposed.

He bated no whit of speed on this account, but raced on; still, that firing in the dark had an effect upon his nerves, making him feel rather queer and small, for every now and again at intervals of a few seconds, it was sure to come, the desperado taking slow, cool aim with the perseverance of a man plying his day’s work, of a man repeating to himself the motto:

“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again.”

Those shots, moreover, were coming from a hand whose aim seldom failed – a dead shot, baffled only by the unconquerable vibration. And yet Carshaw was untouched. He could not even think. He was conscious only of the thrum of the car, the spurts of flame, the whistle of lead, the hysterical frenzy of Winifred’s plaints.

The darkness alone saved him, but the more he caught up with the fugitive the less was this advantage likely to stand him in good stead. And when he should actually catch them up – what then? This question presented itself now to his heated mind. He had no plan of action. None was possible. Even in Bridgeport what could he do? There were two against one – he would simply be shot as he passed the other car.

It was only the heat of the hunt that had created in him the feeling that he must overtake them, though he died for it; but when he was within thirty yards of the front car, and two shots had come dangerously near in swift succession, a flash of reason warned him, and he determined to slacken speed a little. He was not given time to do this. There was an outcry on the car in front from three throats in it.

A mob of oxen, being driven to some market, blocked the road just beyond a bend. The men in charge had heard the thunder of the oncoming racers, with its ominous obbligato of screams and shooting. They had striven desperately to whack the animals to the hedge on either side, and were bawling loud warnings to those thrice accursed gunmen whom they imagined chased by police. Their efforts, their yells, were useless. Sixty miles an hour demands at least sixty yards for safety. When Voles put hand and foot to the brakes he had hardly a clear space of ten. An obstreperous bullock was the immediate cause of disaster. Facing the dragon eyes, it charged valiantly!

Mick the Wolf, running short of cartridges, was about to ask Voles to slow down until he “got” the reckless pursuer, when he found himself describing a parabola backward through the air. He landed in the roadway, breaking his left arm.

Voles had an extraordinary lurid oath squeezed out of his vast bulk as he was forced onto the steering-wheel, the pillar snapping like a carrot. Winifred and Rachel Craik were flung against the padded back of the driving seat, but saved from real injury because of their crouching to avoid Mick the Wolf.

Voles was as quick as a wildcat in an emergency like this. He was on his feet in a second, with a leg over the door, meaning to shoot Carshaw ere the latter could do anything to protect himself. But luck, dead against honesty thus far, suddenly veered against crime. Carshaw’s car smashed into the rear of the heavy mass composed of crushed bullock and automobile no longer mobile, and dislocated its own engine and feed pipes. The jerk threw Voles heavily, and nearly, not quite, sprained his ankle. So, during a precious second or two, he lay almost stunned on the left side of the road.

Carshaw, given a hint of disaster by the slightest fraction of time, and already braced low in the body of his car, was able to jump unobserved from the wreck. As though his brain were illumined by a flash of lightning, he remembered that the signal handkerchief had fluttered from the off side of the flying car, so he ran to the right, and grabbed a breathless bundle of soft femininity out of the ruin.

“Winifred,” he gasped.

“Oh, are you safe?” came the strangled sob. So that was her first thought, his safety! It is a thrilling moment in a man’s life when he learns that his well-being provides an all-sufficing content for some dear woman. Come weal, come woe, Carshaw knew then that he was clasping his future wife in his arms. He ran with her through a mob of frightened cattle, and discovered a gate leading into a field.

“Can you stand if I lift you over?” he said, leaning against the bars.

“Of course! I can run, too,” and, in maidenly effort to free herself, she hugged him closer. They crossed the gate and together breasted a slight rise through scattered sheaves of corn-shucks. Meanwhile, Voles and the cattlemen were engaged in a cursing match until Rachel Craik, recovering her wind, screamed an eldrich command:

“Stop, you fool! They’re getting away. He has taken her down the road!”

Voles limped off in pursuit, and Mick the Wolf took up the fierce argument with the drivers. At that instant the wreck blazed into flame. Rachel had to move quickly to avoid a holocaust in which a hapless bullock provided the burnt offering. The light of this pyre revealed the distant figures of Winifred and Carshaw, whereupon the maddened Voles tried pot shots at a hundred yards. Bullets came close, too. One cut the heel of Carshaw’s shoe; another plowed a ridge through his motoring cap. Realizing that Voles would aim only at him, he told Winifred to run wide.

She caught his hand.

“Please – help!” she breathed. “I cannot run far.”

He smothered a laugh of sheer joy. Winifred’s legs were supple as his. She was probably the fleeter of the two. It was the mother-instinct that spoke in her. This was her man, and she must protect him, cover him from enemies with her own slim body.

Soon they were safe from even a chance shot. On climbing a rail fence, Carshaw led the girl clearly into view until a fold in the ground offered. Then they doubled and zigzagged. They saw some houses, but Carshaw wanted no explanation or parleying then and pressed on. They entered a lane, or driveway, and followed it. There came a murmuring of mighty waters, the voice of the sea; they were on the beach of Long Island Sound. Far behind, in the gloom, shone a lurid redness, marking the spot where the two cars and the bullock were being converted into ardent gasses.

Carshaw halted and surveyed a long, low line of blackness breaking into the deep-blue plain of the sea to the right.

“I know where we are,” he said. “There’s a hotel on that point. It’s about two miles. You could walk twenty, couldn’t you?”

“Oh, yes,” said Winifred unthinkingly.

“Or run five at a jog-trot?” he teased her.

“Well – er – ”

She blushed furiously, and thanked the night that hid her from his eyes. No maid wishes a man to think she is in love with him before he has uttered the word of love. When next she spoke, Winifred’s tone was reserved, almost distant.

“Now tell me what has caused this tornado,” she said. “I have been acting on impulse. Please give me some reasonable theory of to-night’s madness.”

It was on the tip of Carshaw’s tongue to assure her that they were going to New York by the first train, and would hie themselves straight to the City Hall for a marriage license. But – he had a mother, a prized and deeply reverenced mother. Ought he to break in on her placid and well-balanced existence with the curt announcement that he was married, even to a wife like Winifred. Would he be playing the game with those good fellows in the detective bureau? Was it fair even to Winifred that she should be asked to pay the immediate price, as it were, of her rescue? So the fateful words were not uttered, and the two trudged on, talking with much common sense, probing the doubtful things in Winifred’s past life, and ever avoiding the tumult of passion which must have followed their first kiss.

In due course an innkeeper was aroused and the mishap of a car explained. The man took them for husband and wife; happily, Winifred did not overhear Carshaw’s smothered:

“Not yet!”

The girl soon went to her room. They parted with a formal hand-shake; but, to still the ready lips of scandal, Carshaw discovered the landlord’s favorite brand of wine and sat up all night in his company.