CHAPTER XVII

PLANNING FOR REVENGE

“I hope you didn’t injure him too much, Joe,” said Mabel, snuggling close to him in the crowded little runabout.

“Do I look like a murderer?” chaffed Joe.

“But really, Joe, what did you do to him?” asked Mabel.

“Less than the rascal deserved,” Joe answered. “He got a good thrashing; and it was surely coming to him. I don’t think he’ll ever trouble you again.”

“I was so relieved when I caught sight of you in this car,” sighed Mabel.

“How did it happen that you were riding with him?” asked Joe, as he threw on a little extra speed.

“He was out at the Country Club when Reggie and I reached there,” Mabel replied. “I hadn’t told Reggie how he had acted the last time he called at the Marlborough, because I didn’t want to make trouble, and I thought after the way I cut him then he’d never bother me again. But he was dining at the Country Club with a party of friends that we both knew, and I couldn’t make a scene without being conspicuous. I avoided him, however, as much as I could.

“You know, of course, Reggie’s car is in New York and we were using a hired machine. When we were getting ready to come away, I had just stepped into the car when Reggie was called to the telephone. This man, Fleming, was standing by, and before I knew it he jumped in, took the wheel, and started the auto going.

“I ordered him to stop, but he only kept going faster. He had been drinking, and he was loud and boisterous. I begged and threatened, but he only laughed and went on at a greater speed. Said he was going to get even with me for the cut I had given him the other night, and was going to take me on a long ride whether I wanted to go or not.

“I never was so frightened in all my life. I told him that my friends and my brother would punish him for what he was doing, but he only laughed and said they would have to catch him first. I hoped a policeman would stop us, for he was going at a furious rate. Then I thought of jumping, though I knew I would probably be killed if I did. I screamed, but we were going at such a rate and making so much noise that no one heard me. Then I caught sight of you, and when I looked back and waved and saw that you were coming after us, I knew that everything would be all right. Oh, Joe, it seems as though you are always on hand when I need you most.”

Her nerves had been so badly shaken that she was on the verge of tears again, and she fumbled for her absurdly little handkerchief in the cuff of her sleeve.

Joe’s heart thrilled, and if Jim had not been there and he could have taken his hands from the wheel, he would have comforted her again as he had on the road.

“I’d have followed you to the end of the world,” he said rather huskily.

“How lucky it was that that freight train just happened to be passing at the time,” chuckled Jim. “Can’t you imagine how desperate Fleming must have been when he saw the way barred?”

“It was a friend in need for us, all right,” grinned Joe. “Fleming wasn’t quite tipsy enough to try to butt the train off the tracks.”

“He ought to sue the railroad for damages,” Jim suggested.

“He might get them, too,” laughed Joe. “If a jury saw his face as it is just now, they’d know that he’d been in a mix-up of some kind.”

They found Reggie in a state of great bewilderment and agitation at the hotel. They had told him at the club that Fleming had driven off with Mabel, and though he had not known of the latter’s offensive behavior toward his sister previously, he knew that Fleming had been drinking that afternoon and was in no condition to handle a car.

He was enormously relieved, therefore, when he saw Mabel return safely, though he wondered to see her escorted by Joe and Jim.

They told him all the circumstances and he was furious. He was for starting out at once to hunt up Fleming, but Joe dissuaded him.

“He’s had a good trimming already,” Joe assured him. “We don’t want anything that may bring notoriety to Mabel’s name. I don’t imagine we’ll ever be bothered by him again.”

In the meantime, Fleming, left battered and disheveled on the country road, was wild with pain and rage. His heart was a tumult of seething emotions. He had undergone that afternoon more humiliation than comes to most men in a lifetime. He had been thwarted in his impudent venture. He had been taken by the collar and shaken as a rat by a terrier. He had had to get down on his knees in the dirt of the road and humbly apologize. And then he had been bruised and beaten until he had begged for mercy.

He ground his teeth in unavailing fury. He had been accustomed all his life to have his way. Money had made his path easy. He was not used to the sensation of being the “under dog.”

He took out his handkerchief and wiped the blood and dust from his face, brushed and adjusted his disarranged clothing as well as he could, then climbed into the car and by a roundabout route made his way back to town.

His first visit was to a Turkish bath where he attempted to have some of the soreness rubbed from his battered frame. Then he visited one of the facial artists who make a specialty of painting black eyes into some semblance of flesh color.

In this way he managed to efface the worst traces of the afternoon’s encounter, though his face still remained somewhat swelled and puffy. Then he set out to make a night of it and drown his troubles in the way with which he was the most familiar.

He was seated at a table in a crowded café patronized chiefly by gamblers, when he was accosted by a friend whose dissipated face showed that he was of the same type as Fleming.

“Hello, old man,” said the former. “Drinking here all by your lonesome?”

“How are you, Bixby,” responded Fleming. “Sit down here and have something with me.”

His friend did so and Fleming motioned to the waiter and ordered a couple of drinks.

“Why, what’s the matter with your face, Fleming?” asked Bixby, as he looked at his friend curiously. “Been in a scrap?”

“Nothing like that,” lied Fleming in a surly tone. “Ran a car into a ditch and had an upset.”

“Doesn’t improve your beauty any,” laughed his friend lightly. “Still, you can’t kick if you’ve come out of a smash with nothing worse than that. What are you doing here in Boston, anyway? Come over to see the game?”

Fleming growled a moody assent.

“They say Matson is going to pitch to-morrow,” Bixby continued.

Fleming greeted the mention of the name with a lurid outburst that left no doubt as to his feelings.

His friend looked at him with surprise.

“You seem to be horribly sore,” he ventured. “I thought that like most New Yorkers you’d be rooting for him to win.”

“I hope they knock him out of the box,” Fleming hissed, with the venom of a snake.