"Queer. I can't find any trace of him – the other one – nor can I account for him. He doesn't seem to fit in anywhere. However" – his expression lightened – "I daresay you were right; he's probably only some idle, light-fingered prowler. I'd keep my eyes open for him, but I don't really believe you need worry much."

Within ten minutes he was off on his lonely tramp through two miles of woodland and as many more of little travelled country road, at dead of night, with a madman in handcuffs for sole company.

XIII
OFFSHORE

"You ask me, I think very excellent damn quick cure."

Sum Fat having for the third time since morning anointed with liniment and massaged Whitaker's ankle, tenderly adjusted and laced the makeshift canvas brace, drew a sock over it, and then with infinite care inserted the foot in a high-cut canvas tennis shoe.

He stood up, beaming.

Whitaker extended his leg and cast a critical eye over the heavily bandaged ankle.

"Anyway," he observed, "the effect is arresting. I look like a half Clydesdale."

Sum Fat's eyes clouded, then again gleamed with benevolent interest. "You take it easy one day or two – no walk much – just loaf – no go see pretty ladies – "

"Go 'way, you heathen – go clean your teeth!" cried Whitaker, indignantly.

" – and I think be all well and sound," concluded Sum Fat.

He waddled away, chuckling.

Waiting till he was well out of sight, Whitaker got up, and with the aid of a cane made a number of tentative experiments in the gentle art of short-distance pedestrianism. The results were highly satisfactory: he felt little or no pain, thanks to Sum Fat's ice-packs and assiduous attentions in general; and was hampered in free movement solely by the stiff brace and high-laced shoe.

On the other hand, he felt that the advice to which he had just listened was sound; it would be unwise to attempt a neighbourly call within at least another twenty-four hours.

He resumed his chair on the veranda, and sighed. It was late afternoon, and he was lonely. After the interest and excitement of the preceding day and night, to-day seemed very dull and uneventful; it had been, in truth, nothing less than stupid – a mere routine of meals and pipes interrupted by no communication from the outer world more blood-stirring than the daily calls of the village grocer and butcher. Ember had not telephoned, as Whitaker had hoped he would; and the chatelaine of the neighbouring cottage had not manifested any interest whatever in the well-being of the damaged amateur squire of dames.

Whitaker felt himself neglected and abused. He inclined to sulks. The loveliness of a day of unbroken calm offered him no consolation. Solitude in a lonely lodge is all very well, if one cares for that sort of thing; but it takes two properly to appreciate the beauties of the wilderness.

The trouble with him was (he began to realize) that he had lived too long a hermit. For six years he had been practically isolated and cut off from the better half of existence; femininity had formed no factor in his cosmos. Even since his return to America his associations had been almost exclusively confined to the wives and daughters of old friends, the former favouring him only with a calm maternal patronage, the daughters obviously regarding him as a sort of human curio old enough to be entitled to a certain amount of respectful consideration, but not to be taken seriously – "like a mummy," Whitaker told himself, not without sympathy for the view-point of the younger generation.

But now, of a sudden, he had been granted a flash of insight into the true significance of companionship between a man and a woman who had something in common aside from community in their generation. Not two hours altogether of such intercourse had been his, but it had been enough to infuse all his consciousness with a vague but irking discontent. He wanted more, and wanted it ardently; and what Whitaker desired he generally set himself to gain with a single-hearted earnestness of purpose calculated to compass the end in view with the least possible waste of time.

In this instance, however, he was handicapped to exasperation by that confounded ankle!

Besides, he couldn't in decency pursue the woman; she was entitled to a certain amount of privacy, of freedom from his attentions.

Furthermore, he had no right as yet to offer her attentions. It seemed necessary frequently to remind himself of that fact, in spite of the vile humour such reminders as a rule aroused.

He passed into one such now, scowling darkly in the face of an exquisite, flawless day.

One thing was settled, he assured himself: as soon as he was able to get about with comfort, he would lose no time in hunting up his wife's attorneys and finding out why they were slow about prosecuting her case. Failing satisfaction in that quarter – well, he would find some way to make things move. It wasn't fair to him to keep him bound to the vows of a farcical union. He was not prepared to submit to such injustice. He would, if needs must, hire detectives to find him his wife, that he might see and in person urge upon her his equal right to release from an unnatural bondage!

He had lashed himself into a very respectable transport of resentful rage before he realized what way his thoughts were leading him; but he calmed down as quickly when, chancing to lift his eyes from their absorbed study of the planks composing the veranda floor, he discovered a motor-boat drawing in toward the landing-stage.

At once a smile of childlike serenity displaced the scowl. Instinctively he gathered himself together to rise, but on reconsideration retained his seat, gallantry yielding to an intuitive sense of dramatic values; a chair-bound invalid is a much more sympathetic object than a man demonstrating a surprisingly quick recovery from an incapacitating accident.

Nevertheless, there seemed no objection to his returning a cheerful flourish to the salute of a slender arm, brown and bare to the point where a turned-back shirtwaist sleeve met a rounded elbow.

At precisely the proper distance from the dock, the motor ceased its purring; the boat swept on, white water crisping beneath its stem, ripples widening fanlike from its flanks and sketching sweeping plumes of purple on the calm ultra-marine surface – its speed at first not perceptibly moderated. Gradually, then, it yielded to the passive resistance of the waters, moving slower and more slow until at length it nosed the landing-stage with a touch well-nigh as gentle as a caress.

Poised lightly over the bows, the woman waited, her figure all in white sharp-cut against the blue of sky and water, with an effect as vital as it was graceful. Then at the right instant leaping to the dock with the headwarp, she made the little vessel fast with two deft half-hitches round the out-most pile, and turning came swinging to dry land and up the gentle slope to the veranda, ease and strength and joy of living inherent in every flowing movement, matching well the bright comeliness of her countenance and the shining splendour of her friendly eyes.

No imaginable consideration, however selfish, could have kept Whitaker any longer in his chair.

"The most amiable person I know!" he cried, elated. "Greetings!"

She paused by the steps, looking up, a fascinating vision.

"No – please! I've only stopped for an instant. Do sit down."

"Shan't – until you do."

"But I really can't stop."

She ascended the steps and dropped coolly into a chair, laughing at her own lack of consistency. Whitaker resumed his seat.

"You're really able to stand without assistance?"

"I'm ashamed to admit it. Between you and me – a dead secret – there's nothing really the matter with me any more. Sum Fat's a famous physician. I could run a race – only it's pleasanter to pretend I mustn't."

"Very well. Then I shan't waste any more sympathy on you."

"As a matter of fact, I can move only at the cost of excruciating agony."

She considered him with a sober face and smiling eyes. "I don't believe you. You're a fraud. Besides, I didn't come to see you at all; I came to find out why Mr. Ember dares so to neglect me. Did you deliver my invitation?"

"I did, unwillingly. He was desolated, but he couldn't accept – had to run back to town immediately after dinner."

"He's as great a fraud as you. But since he isn't here, I shall go."

She got up with a very evident intention of being as good as her word. Whitaker in despair sought wildly for an excuse to detain her.

"Please – I'm famished for human society. Have pity. Sit down. Tell me where you've been with the boat."

"Merely to the head of the bay to have the gasoline tanks filled. A most boresome errand. They've no proper facilities for taking care of motor-boats. Imagine having to sit with your hands folded while garrulous natives fill a sixty-gallon tank by hand."

"Expressions of profound sympathy. Tell me some more. See, I even consent not to talk about myself as an extra inducement – if you'll only stay."

"No – really – unique though the prospect be! I left Elise and the cook alone, two poor defenceless women; the gardener is taking his weekly day-off in the village. We won't see anything of him till morning, probably – when he'll show up very meek and damp about the head."

"Aren't you afraid?"

"I? Nonsense! I'm shamelessly able-bodied – and not afraid to pull a trigger, besides. Moreover, there aren't any dangerous characters in this neighbourhood."

"Then I presume it's useless for me to offer my services as watch-dog?"

"Entirely so. And when I choose a protector, I shall pick out one sound of limb as well as wind."

"Snubbed," he said mournfully. "And me that lonesome… Think of the long, dull evening I've got to live through somehow."

"I have already thought of it. And being kind-hearted, it occurred to me that you might be one of those mean-spirited creatures who can enjoy double-dummy."

"It's the only game I really care for with a deathless passion."

"Then, if I promise to come over this evening and play you a rubber or two – will you permit me to go home now?"

"On such terms I'll do anything you can possibly suggest," he declared, enchanted. "You mean it – honest Injun?"

"Cross my heart and hope to die – "

"But … how will you get here? Not alone, through the woods! I can't permit that."

"Elise shall row me down the shore and then go back to keep cook company. Sum Fat can see me home – if you find it still necessary to keep up the invalid pose."

"I'm afraid," he laughed, "I shall call my own bluff… Must you really go so soon?"

"Good afternoon," she returned demurely; and ran down the steps and off to her boat.

Smiling quietly to himself, Whitaker watched her cast the boat off, get under way, and swing it out of sight behind the trees. Then his smile wavered and faded and gave place to a look of acute discontent.

He rose and limped indoors to ransack Ember's wardrobe for evening clothes – which he failed, perhaps fortunately, to find.

He regarded with an overwhelming sense of desolation the tremendous arid waste of time which must intervene before he dared expect her: a good four hours – no, four and a half, since she would in all likelihood dine at a sensible hour, say about eight o'clock. By half-past eight, then, he might begin to look for her; but, since she was indisputably no woman to cheapen herself, she would probably keep him waiting till nearly nine.

Colossal waste of time, impossible to contemplate without exacerbation…!

To make matters worse, Sum Fat innocently enough served Whitaker's dinner promptly at six, under the misapprehension that a decent consideration for his foot would induce the young man to seek his bed something earlier than usual.

Three mortal hours to fritter away in profitless anticipation …

At seven Whitaker was merely nervous.

By eight he was unable to sit still.

Half an hour later the house was too small to contain him. He found his cane and took to the veranda, but only to be driven from its shelter by a swarm of mosquitoes attracted by the illuminated windows. Not in the least resentful, since his ankle was occasioning him no pain whatever, he strolled down toward the shore: not a bad idea at all – to be there to welcome her.

The night was loud and dark. The moon was not to rise for another half-hour, and since sundown the wind had come in from the southwest to dissipate the immaculate day-long calm and set the waters and the trees in motion with its urgent, animating breath. Blowing at first fitfully, it was settling momentarily down into a steady, league-devouring stride, strong with the promise of greater strength to come.

Whitaker reflected: "If she doesn't hurry, she won't come by boat at all, for fear of a wetting."

He thought again: "And of course – I might've known – she won't start till moonrise, on account of the light."

And again, analyzing the soft, warm rush of air: "We'll have rain before morning."

He found himself at the end of the dock, tingling with impatience, but finding some little consolation in the restless sweep of the wind against his face and body. He stood peering up along the curve of the shore toward the other landing-stage. He could see little – a mere impressionistic suggestion of the shore-line picked out with the dim, semi-phosphorescent glow of breaking wavelets. The night was musical with the clash of rushing waters, crisp and lively above the long, soughing drone of the wind in the trees. Eastward the barrier beach was looming stark and black against a growing greenish pallor in the sky. A mile to the westward, down the shore, the landlocked lighthouse reared its tower, so obscure in gloom that the lamp had an effect of hanging without support, like a dim yellow Japanese lantern afloat in mid-air.

Some minutes elapsed. The pallor of the east grew more marked. Whitaker fancied he could detect a figure moving on the Fiske dock.

Then, startled, he grew conscious of the thick drone of a heavily-powered motor boat near inshore. Turning quickly, he discovered it almost at once: a black, vague shape not twenty yards from where he stood, showing neither bow nor side-lights: a stealthy and mysterious apparition creeping toward the dock with something of the effect of an animal about to spring.

And immediately he heard a man's voice from the boat, abrupt with anger:

"Not this place, you ass – the next."

"Shut up," another voice replied. "There's somebody on that dock."

At the same time the bows of the boat swung off and the shadow slipped away to westward – toward the Fiske place.

A wondering apprehension of some nameless and desperate enterprise, somehow involving the woman who obsessed his thoughts, crawled in Whitaker's mind. The boat – running without cruising lights! – was seeking the next landing-stage. Those in charge of it had certainly some reason for wishing to escape observation.

Automatically Whitaker turned back, let himself down to the beach, and began to pick his way toward the Fiske dock, half running despite his stiff ankle and following a course at once more direct and more difficult than the way through the woods. That last would have afforded him sure footing, but he would have lost much time seeking and sticking to its meanderings, in the uncertain light. As it was, he had on one hand a low, concave wall of earth, on the other the wash of crisping wavelets; and between the two a yard-wide track with a treacherous surface of wave-smoothed pebbles largely encumbered with heavy bolster-like rolls of seaweed, springy and slippery, washed up by the recent gale.

But in the dark and formless alarm that possessed him, he did not stop to choose between the ways. He had no time. As it was, if there were anything evil afoot, no earthly power could help him cover the distance in time to be of any aid. Indeed, he had not gone half the way before he pulled up with a thumping heart, startled beyond expression by a cry in the night – a cry of wild appeal and protest thrown out violently into the turbulent night, and abruptly arrested in full peal as if a hand had closed the mouth that uttered it.

And then ringing clear down the wind, a voice whose timbre was unmistakably that of a woman: "Aux secours! Aux secours!"

Twice it cried out, and then was hushed as grimly as the first incoherent scream. No need now to guess at what was towards: Whitaker could see it all as clearly as though he were already there; the power-boat at the dock, two women attacked as they were on the point of entering their rowboat, the cry of the mistress suddenly cut short by her assailant, the maid taking up the appeal, in her fright unconsciously reverting to her native tongue, in her turn being forcibly silenced…

All the while he was running, heedless of his injured foot – pitching, slipping, stumbling, leaping – somehow making progress.

By now the moon had lifted above the beach high enough to aid him somewhat with its waxing light; and, looking ahead, he could distinguish dimly shapes about the dock and upon it that seemed to bear out his most cruel fears. The power-boat was passably distinct, her white side showing plainly through the tempered darkness. Midway down the dock he made out struggling figures – two of them, he judged: a man at close grips with a frantic woman. And where the structure joined the land, a second pair, again a man and a woman, strove and swayed…

And always the night grew brighter with the spectral glow of the moon and the mirroring waters.

For all his haste, he was too slow; he was still a fair thirty yards away when the struggle on the dock ended abruptly with the collapse of the woman; it was as if, he thought, her strength had failed all in an instant – as if she had fainted. He saw the man catch her up in his arms, where she lay limp and unresisting, and with this burden step from the stage to the boat and disappear from sight beneath the coaming. An instant later he reappeared, standing at full height in the cockpit. Without warning his arm straightened out and a tongue of flame jetted from his hand; there was a report; in the same breath a bullet buried itself in the low earth bank on Whitaker's right. Heedless, he pelted on.

The shot seemed to signal the end of the other struggle at the landing-stage. Scarcely had it rung out ere Whitaker saw the man lift a fist and dash it brutally into the woman's face. Without a sound audible at that distance she reeled and fell away; while the man turned, ran swiftly out to the end of the dock, cast off the headwarp and jumped aboard the boat.

She began to sheer off as Whitaker set foot upon the stage. She was twenty feet distant when he found himself both at its end and at the end of his resource. He was too late. Already he could hear the deeper resonance of the engine as the spark was advanced and the throttle opened. In another moment she would be heading away at full tilt.

Frantic with despair, he thrashed the air with impotent arms: a fair mark, his white garments shining bright against the dark background of the land. Aboard the moving boat an automatic fluttered, spitting ten shots in as many seconds. The thud and splash of bullets all round him brought him to his senses. Choking with rage, he stumbled back to the land.

On the narrow beach, near the dock, a small flat-bottomed rowboat lay, its stern afloat, its bows aground – as it had been left by the women surprised in the act of launching it. Jumping down, Whitaker put his shoulder to the stem.

As he did so, the other woman roused, got unsteadily to her feet, screamed, then catching sight of him staggered to his side. It was – as he had assumed – the maid, Elise.

"M'sieur!" she shrieked, thrusting a tragic face with bruised and blood-stained mouth close to his. "Ah, m'sieur – madame – ces canailles-là – !"

"Yes, I know," he said brusquely. "Get out of the way – don't hinder me!"

The boat was now all afloat. He jumped in, dropped upon the middle thwart, and fitted the oars in the rowlocks.

"But, m'sieur, what mean you to do?"

"Don't know yet," he panted – "follow – keep them in sight – "

The blades dipped; he bent his back to them; the rowboat shot away.

A glance over his shoulder showed him the boat of the marauders already well away. She now wore running lights; the red lamp swung into view as he glanced, like an obscene and sardonic eye. They were, then, making eastwards. He wrought only the more lustily with the oars.

Happily the Fiske motor-boat swung at a mooring not a great distance from the shore. Surprisingly soon he had the small boat alongside. Dropping the oars, he rose, grasped the coaming and lifted himself into the cockpit. Then scrambling hastily forward to the bows, he disengaged the mooring hook and let it splash. As soon as this happened, the liberated Trouble began to drift sluggishly shoreward, swinging broadside to the wind.

Jumping back into the cockpit, Whitaker located the switch and closed the battery circuit. An angry buzzing broke out beneath the engine-pit hatch, but was almost instantly drowned out by the response of the motor to a single turn of the new-fangled starting-crank which Whitaker had approved on the previous morning.

He went at once to the wheel. Half a mile away the red light was slipping swiftly eastward over silvered waters. He steadied the bows toward it, listening to the regular and business-like chug-chug of the motor with the concentrated intentness of a physician with an ear over the heart of a patient. But the throbbing he heard was true if slow; already the boat was responding to the propeller, resisting the action of wind and water, even beginning to surge heavily forward.

Hastily kicking the hatch cover out of the way, he bent over the open engine-pit, quickly solved the puzzle of the controlling levers, accelerated the ignition and opened the throttle wide. The motor answered this manipulation with an instantaneous change of tune; the staccato drumming of the slow speed merged into a long, incessant rumble like the roll of a dozen muffled snare-drums. The Trouble leaped out like a live thing, settling to its course with the fleet precision of an arrow truly loosed.

With a brief exclamation of satisfaction, Whitaker went back to the wheel, shifted the ignition from batteries to magneto; and for the first time since he had appreciated the magnitude of the outrage found himself with time to think, to take stock of his position, to consider what he had already accomplished and what he must henceforward hold himself prepared to attempt. Up to that moment he had acted almost blindly, swayed by impulse as a tree by the wind, guided by unquestioning instinct in every action. Now…

He had got the boat under way with what in retrospect appealed to him as amazing celerity, bearing in mind his unfamiliarity with its equipment. The other boat had a lead of little if any more than half a mile; or so he gauged the distance that separated them, making due allowance for the illusion of the moon-smitten night. Whether that gap was to diminish or to widen would develop before many minutes had passed. The Trouble was making a fair pace: roughly reckoned, between fourteen and sixteen miles an hour. He suspected the other boat of having more power, but this did not necessarily imply greater speed. At all events (he concluded) twenty minutes at the outside would see the end of the chase – however it was to end: the eastern head of the bay was not over five miles away; they could not long hold to their present course without running aground.

He hazarded wild guesses as to their plans: of which the least implausible was that they were making for some out-of-the-way landing, intending there to transfer to a motor-car. At least, this would presumably prove to be the case, if the outrage were what, at first blush, it gave evidence of being: a kidnapping uncomplicated by any fouler motive… And what else could it be?.. But who was he to say? What did he know of the woman, of her antecedents and circumstances? Nothing more than her name, that she had attracted him – as any handsome woman might have – that she had been spied upon within his personal knowledge and had now been set upon and carried off by force majeure.

And knowing no more than this, he had without an instant's thought of consequences elected himself her champion! O headlong and infatuate!

Probably no more severe critic of his own chivalric foolishness ever set himself to succour a damsel in distress. Withal he entertained not the shadow of a thought of drawing back. As long as the other boat remained in sight; as long as the gasoline and his strength held out; as long as the Trouble held together and he retained the wit to guide her – so long was Whitaker determined to stick to the wake of the kidnappers.

A little more than halfway between their starting-point and the head of the bay, the leading boat swung sharply in toward the shore, then shot into the mouth of a narrow indentation. Whitaker found that he was catching up quickly, showing that speed had been slackened for this man[oe]uvre. But the advantage was merely momentary, soon lost. The boat slipped out of sight between high banks. And he, imitating faithfully its course, was himself compelled to throttle down the engine, lest he run aground.

For two or three minutes he could see nothing of the other. Then he emerged from a tortuous and constricted channel into a deep cut, perhaps fifty feet in width and spanned by a draw-bridge and a railroad trestle. At the farther end of this tide-gate canal connecting the Great West Bay with the Great Peconic, the leading power boat was visible, heading out at full speed. And by the time he had thrown the motor of the Trouble back into its full stride, the half-mile lead was fully reëstablished, if not improved upon.

The tide was setting in through the canal – otherwise the gates had been closed – with a strength that taxed the Trouble to surpass. It seemed an interminable time before the banks slipped behind and the boat picked up her heels anew and swept out over the broad reaches of the Peconic like a hound on the trail. The starboard light of the leader was slowly becoming more and more distinct as she swung again to the eastward. That way, Whitaker figured, with his brows perplexed, lay Shelter Island, Greenport, Sag Harbor (names only in his understanding) and what else he could not say. Here he found himself in strange waters, knowing no more than that the chase seemed about to penetrate a tangled maze of islands and distorted channels, in whose intricacies it should prove a matter of facility to lose a pursuer already well distanced.

Abandoning the forward wheel in favour of that at the side, near the engine pit, for a time he divided his attention between steering and tinkering with the motor, with the result that the Trouble began presently to develop more speed. Slowly she crept up on the leader, until, with Robins Island abeam (though he knew it not by name) the distance between them had been abridged by half. But more than that she seemed unable to accomplish. He surmised shrewdly that the others, tardily observing his gain, had met it with an equalizing demand upon their motor – that both boats were now running at the extreme of their power. The Trouble, at least, could do no better. To this he must be resigned.

Empty of all other craft, weird and desolate in moonlight, the Little Peconic waters widened and then narrowed about the flying vessels. Shore lights watched them, now dim and far, now bright and near at hand. Shelter Island Sound received them, slapped their flanks encouragingly with its racing waves, sped them with an ebbing tide that tore seawards between constricted shores, carried them past high-wooded bluffs and low wastes of sedge, past simple cottage and pretentious country home, past bobbing buoys – nun and can and spar – and moored flotillas of small pleasure craft, past Sag Harbor and past Cedar Island Light, delivering them at length into the lonelier wastes of Gardiner's Bay. Their relative positions were unchanged: still the Trouble retained her hard-won advantage.

But it was little comfort that Whitaker derived from contemplation of this fact. He was beginning to be more definitely perplexed and distressed. He had no watch with him, no means of ascertaining the time even roughly; but unquestionably they had been upwards of two hours if not more at full tilt, and now were braving wilder waters; and still he saw no sign of anything resembling a termination of the adventure. In fact, they were leaving behind them every likely landing place.

"Damn it!" he grumbled. "What are they aiming at – Boston?"

Near the forward wheel a miniature binnacle housing a compass with phosphorescent card, advised him from time to time, as he consulted it, of the lay of their course. They were just then ploughing almost due northeast over a broad expanse, beckoned on by the distant flicker of a gas-buoy. But the information was less than worthless, and every reasonable guess he might have made as to their next move would have proved even more futile than merely idle; for when they had rounded the buoy, instead of standing, as any reasonable beings might have been expected to, on to Fisher's Island or at a tangent north toward the Connecticut littoral, they swung off something south of east – a course that could lead them nowhere but to the immensities of the sea itself.

Whitaker's breath caught in his throat as he examined this startling prospect. The Atlantic was something a trifle bigger than he had bargained for. To dare its temper, with a southwester brewing (by every weather sign he knew) in what was to all intents an open boat, since he would never be able to leave the cockpit for an instant's shelter in the cabin in any sort of a seaway – !

He shook a dubious, vastly troubled head. But he held on grimly in the face of dire forebodings.

Once out from under the lee of Gardiner's Island, a heavier run of waves beset them, catching the boats almost squarely on the beam: fortunately a sea of long, smooth, slow shouldering rollers, as yet not angry. Now and again, for all that, one would favour the Trouble with a quartering slap that sent a shower of spray aboard her to drench Whitaker and swash noisily round the cockpit ere the self-bailing channels could carry it off. He was quickly wet to the skin and shivering. The hour was past midnight, and the strong air whipping in from the open sea had a bitter edge. His only consolation inhered in the reflection that he had companions in his misery: those who drove the leading boat could hardly escape what he must suffer; though he hoped and believed that the woman was shut below, warm and dry in the cabin.