Part 10

As he reached the steps that led up to the broad main entrance he became panic-stricken at the thought of entering a house the owner of which he did not know from Adam, on an errand that he felt himself incapable of explaining satisfactorily. He turned back and was moving toward the gates when the short, burly figure of a man loomed before him and heavy hands fell on his shoulders.

“I beg your pardon!” said Farrington breathlessly. An electric lamp flashed in his face, mud-splashed from his drive, and his captor demanded his business. “I was just passing,” he faltered, “and I thought perhaps----”

“Well, if you thought perhaps, you can just come up to the house and let us have a look at you,” said the stranger gruffly.

With a frantic effort Farrington wrenched himself free; but as he started to run he was caught by the collar of his raincoat and jerked back.

“None of that now! You climb right up to the house with me. You try bolting again and I’ll plug you.”

To risk a bullet in the back was not to be considered in any view of the matter, and Farrington set off with as much dignity as he could assume, his collar tightly gripped by his captor.

As they crossed the veranda the front door was thrown open and a man appeared at the threshold. Behind him hovered two other persons.

“Well, Gadsby, what have you found?”

“I think,” said Farrington’s captor with elation, “that we’ve got the man we’re looking for!”

Farrington was thrust roughly through the door and into a broad, brilliantly lighted hall.

II

Senator Banning was one of the most generously photographed of American statesmen, and the bewildered and chagrined Farrington was relieved to find his wits equal to identifying him from his newspaper pictures.

“Place your prisoner by the fireplace, where we can have a good look at him,” the Senator ordered. “And, if you please, Gadsby, I will question him myself.”

Rudely planted on the hearth, Farrington stared about him. Two of the persons on Arabella’s list had answered the summons at any rate. His eyes ran over the others. A short, stout woman, wearing mannish clothes and an air of authority, advanced and scrutinized him closely.

“A very harmless person, I should say,” she commented; and, having thus expressed herself sonorously, she sat down in the largest chair in the room.

The proceedings were arrested by a loud chugging and honking on the driveway.

Farrington forgot his own troubles now in the lively dialogue that followed the appearance on the scene of a handsome middle-aged woman, whose face betrayed surprise as she swept the room with a lorgnette for an instant, and then, beholding Banning, showed the keenest displeasure.

“I’d like to know,” she demanded, “the precise meaning of this! If it’s a trick--a scheme to compromise me--I’d have you know, Tracy Banning, that my opinion of you has not changed since I bade you farewell in Washington last April.”

“Before we proceed farther,” retorted Senator Banning testily, “I should like to ask just how you came to arrive here at this hour!”

She produced a telegram from her purse. “Do you deny that you sent that message, addressed to the Gassaway House at Putnam Springs? Do you suppose,” she demanded as the Senator put on his glasses to read the message, “that I’d have made this journey just to see you?”

“Arabella suffering from nervous breakdown; meet me at Corydon house Thursday evening,” read the Senator.

“Arabella ill!” exclaimed the indomitable stout lady. “She must have been seized very suddenly!”

“I haven’t seen Arabella and I never sent you this telegram,” declared the Senator. “I was brought here myself by a fraudulent message.” He drew a telegram from his pocket and read impressively:

Arabella has eloped. Am in pursuit. Meet me at your house in Corydon Thursday evening. SALLIE COLLINGWOOD.

The stout lady’s vigorous repudiation of this telegram consumed much time, but did not wholly appease the Senator. He irritably waved her aside, remarking sarcastically:

“It seems to me, Sallie Collingwood, that your presence here requires some explanation. I agreed to give you the custody of Arabella while Frances and I were settling our difficulties, because I thought you had wits enough to take care of her. Now you appear to have relinquished your charge, and without giving me any notice whatever. I had supposed, even if you are my wife’s sister, that you would let no harm come to my daughter.”

“I’ll trouble you, Tracy Banning, to be careful how you speak to me!” Miss Collingwood replied. “Poor Arabella was crushed by your outrageous behavior, and if any harm has come to her it’s your fault. She remained with me on the _Dashing Rover_ for two weeks; and last Saturday, when I anchored in Boston Harbor to file proceedings against the captain of a passenger boat who had foully tried to run me down off Cape Ann, she ran away. Last night a telegram from her reached me at Beverly saying you were effecting a reconciliation and asking me to be here tonight to join in a family jollification. Meantime I had wired to the Gadsby Detective Agency to search for Arabella and asked them to send a man here.”

“Reconciliation,” exploded the lady with the lorgnette, “has never been considered! And if I’ve been brought here merely to be told that you have allowed Arabella to walk off your silly schooner into the Atlantic Ocean----”

“You may as well calm yourself, Frances. There’s no reason for believing that either Tracy or I had a thing to do with this outrage.”

“Well, Bishop Giddings is with me; he, too, has been lured here by some one. We met on the train quite by chance and I shall rely on his protection.”

A black-bearded gentleman, who had followed Mrs. Banning into the hall and quietly peeled off a raincoat, was now disclosed in the garb of a clergyman--the Bishop of Tuscarora, Farrington assumed. He viewed the company quizzically, remarking:

“Well, we all seem to be having a good time!”

“A great outrage has been perpetrated on us,” trumpeted the Senator. “I’m amazed to see you here, Bishop. Some lawless person has opened this house and telegraphed these people to come here. When I found Gadsby on the premises I sent him out to search the grounds; and I strongly suspect”--he deliberated and eyed Farrington savagely--“that the culprit has been apprehended.”

A young man with fiery red hair, who had been nervously smoking a cigarette in the background, now made himself audible in a high piping voice:

“It’s a sell of some kind, of course. And a jolly good one!”

This provoked an outburst of wrath from the whole company with the exception of Farrington, who leaned heavily on the mantel in a state of helpless bewilderment. These people seemed to be acquainted; not only were they acquainted but they appeared to be bitterly hostile to one another.

Mrs. Banning had wheeled on the red-haired young man, whom Farrington checked off Arabella’s list as Birdie Coningsby, and was saying imperiously:

“Your presence adds nothing to my pleasure. If anything could increase the shame of my summons here you most adequately supply it.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Banning,” he pleaded; “but it’s really not my fault. When Senator Banning telegraphed asking me to arrive here tonight for a weekend I assumed that it meant that Arabella----”

“Before we go further, Tracy Banning,” interrupted the Senator’s wife, “I want to be sure that your intimacy with this young scamp has ceased and that this is not one of your contemptible tricks to persuade me that he is a suitable man for my child to marry. After all the scandal we suffered on account of that landgrab you were mixed up in with old man Coningsby, I should think you’d stop trying to marry his son to my poor, dear Arabella!”

The Bishop of Tuscarora planted a chair behind Mrs. Banning just in time to save her from falling to the floor.

“Somebody has played a trick on all of us,” said the detective. “My message was sent to my New York office and said that the Senator wished to see me here on urgent business. I got that message an hour after Miss Collingwood’s and I have six men looking for the lost girl.”

They compared notes with the result that each telegram was found to have been sent from a different railroad station between Great Barrington and Pittsfield. While this was in progress Farrington felt quite out of it and planned flight at the earliest moment. He pricked up his ears, however, as, with a loud laugh, the Bishop drew out his message and read it with oratorical effect:

Adventure waits! Hark to the silver bugle! Meet me at Tracy Banning’s on Corydon Road via Great Barrington at eight o’clock Thursday evening. X Y Z.

Farrington clung to the mantel for physical and mental support. His mind was chaos; the Stygian Pit yawned at his feet. Beyond doubt, his Arabella of the tea table had dispatched messages to all the persons on her list; and, in the Bishop’s case at least, she had given the telegram her own individual touch. No wonder they were paying no attention to him; the perspiration was trailing in visible rivulets down his mud-caked face and his appearance fully justified their suspicions.

“All my life,” the Bishop of Tuscarora was explaining good-humoredly, “I have hoped that adventure would call me some day. When I got that telegram I heard the bugles blowing and set off at once. Perhaps if I hadn’t known Senator Banning for many years, and hadn’t married him when I was a young minister, I shouldn’t have started for his house so gayly. Meeting Mrs. Banning on the train and seeing she was in great distress, I refrained from showing her my summons. How could I? But I’m in the same boat with the rest of you--I can’t for the life of me guess why I’m here.”

Farrington had been slowly backing toward a side door, with every intention of eliminating himself from the scene, when a heavy motor, which had entered the grounds with long, hideous honks, bumped into the entrance with a resounding bang, relieved by the pleasant tinkle of the smashed glass of its windshield.

Gadsby, supported by the agile Coningsby, leaped to the door; but before they could fortify it against attack it was flung open and a small, light figure landed in the middle of the room, and a young lady, a very slight, graceful young person in a modish automobile coat, stared at them a moment and then burst out laughing.

“Zaliska!” screamed Coningsby.

“Well,” she cried, “that’s what I call some entrance! Lordy! But I must be a sight!”

She calmly opened a violet leather vanity box, withdrew various trifles and made dexterous use of them, squinting at herself in a mirror the size of a silver dollar.

Farrington groaned and shuddered, but delayed his flight to watch the effect of this last arrival.

Banning turned on Coningsby and shouted:

“This is your work! You’ve brought this woman here! I hope you’re satisfied with it!”

“My work!” piped Coningsby very earnestly in his queer falsetto. “I never had a thing to do with it; but if Zaliska is good enough for you to dine with in New York it isn’t square for you to insult her here in your own house.”

“I’m not insulting her. When I dined with her it was at your invitation, you little fool!” foamed the Senator.

Zaliska danced to him on her toes, planted her tiny figure before him and folded her arms.

“Be calm, Tracy; I will protect you!” she lisped sweetly.

“Tracy! Tracy!” repeated Mrs. Banning.

Miss Collingwood laughed aloud. She and the Bishop seemed to be the only persons present who were enjoying themselves. Outside, the machine that had brought Zaliska had backed noisily off the steps and was now retreating.

“Oh, cheer up, everybody!” said Zaliska, helping herself to a chair. “My machine’s gone back to town; but I only brought a suitcase, so I can’t stay forever. By the way, you might bring it in, Harold,” she remarked to Coningsby with a yawn.

Mrs. Banning alone seemed willing to cope with her.

“If you are as French as you look, mademoiselle, I suppose----”

“French, ha! Not to say aha! I sound like a toothpaste all right, but I was born in good old Urbana, Ohio. Your face registers sorrow and distress, madam. Kindly smile, if you please!”

“No impertinence, young woman! It may interest you to know that the courts haven’t yet freed me of the ties that bind me to Tracy Banning, and until I get my decree he is still my husband. If that has entered into your frivolous head kindly tell me who invited you to this house.”

The girl pouted, opened her vanity box, and slowly drew out a crumpled bit of yellow paper, which she extended toward her inquisitor with the tips of her fingers.

“This message,” Mrs. Banning announced, “was sent from Berkville Tuesday night.” And then her face paled. “Incredible!” she breathed heavily.

Gadsby caught the telegram as it fluttered from her hand.

“Read it!” commanded Miss Collingwood.

“MADEMOISELLE HELENE ZALISKA, New Rochelle, N. Y.

Everything arranged. Meet me at Senator Banning’s country home, Corydon, Massachusetts, Thursday evening at eight.

ALEMBERT GIDDINGS, _Bishop of Tuscarora._”

The Bishop snatched the telegram from Gadsby and verified the detective’s reading with unfeigned astonishment. The reading of this message evoked another outburst of merriment from Miss Collingwood.

“Zaliska,” fluted young Coningsby, “how dare you!”

“Oh, I never take a dare,” said Zaliska. “I guessed it was one of your jokes; and I always thought it would be real sporty to be married by a bishop.”

“Yes,” said Miss Collingwood frigidly, “I suppose you’ve tried everything else!”

The Bishop met Mrs. Banning’s demand that he explain himself with all the gravity his good-natured countenance could assume.

“It’s too deep for me. I give it up!” he said. He crossed to Zaliska and took her hand.

“My dear young woman, I apologize as sincerely as though I were the guilty man. I never heard of you before in my life; and I wasn’t anywhere near Berkville day before yesterday. The receipt of my own telegram in New Hampshire at approximately the same hour proves that irrefutably.”

“Oh, that’ll be all right, Bishop,” said Zaliska. “I’m just as pleased as though you really sent it.”

Miss Collingwood had lighted her pipe--a performance that drew from Zaliska an astonished:

“Well, did you ever! Gwendolin, what have we here?”

“What I’d like to know,” cried Mrs. Banning, yielding suddenly to tears, “is what you’ve done with Arabella!”

The mention of Arabella precipitated a wild fusillade of questions and replies. She had been kidnapped, Mrs. Banning charged in tragic tones, and Tracy Banning should be brought to book for it.

“You knew the courts would give her to me and it was you who lured her away and hid her. This contemptible little Coningsby was your ideal of a husband for Arabella, to further your own schemes with his father. I knew it all the time! And you planned to meet him here, with this creature, in your own house! And he’s admitted that you’ve been dining with her. It’s too much! It’s more than I should be asked to suffer, after all--after all--I’ve--borne!”

“Look here, Mrs. Lady; creature is a name I won’t stand for!” flamed Zaliska.

“If you’ll all stop making a rotten fuss----” wheezed Coningsby.

“If we can all be reasonable beings for a few minutes----” began the Bishop.

Before they could finish their sentences Gadsby leaped to the doorway, through which Farrington was stealthily creeping, and dragged him back.

“It seems to me,” said the detective, depositing Farrington, cowed and frightened, in the center of the group, which closed tightly about him, “that it’s about time this bird was giving an account of himself. Everybody in the room was called here by a fake telegram, and I’m positive this is the scoundrel who sent ’em.”

“He undoubtedly enticed us here for the purpose of robbery,” said Senator Banning; “and the sooner we land him in jail the better.”

“If you’ll let me explain----” began Farrington, whose bedraggled appearance was little calculated to inspire confidence.

“We’ve already had too many explanations!” declared Mrs. Banning. “In all my visits to jails and penitentiaries I’ve rarely seen a man with a worse face than the prisoner’s. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if he turned out to be a murderer.”

“Rubbish!” sniffed Miss Collingwood. “He looks like somebody’s chauffeur who’s been joy-rolling in the mud.”

The truth would never be believed. Farrington resolved to lie boldly.

“I was on my way to Lenox and missed the road. I entered these grounds merely to make inquiries and get some gasoline. This man you call Gadsby assaulted me and dragged me in here; and, as I have nothing to do with any of you or your troubles, I protest against being detained longer.”

Gadsby’s derisive laugh expressed the general incredulity.

“You didn’t say anything to me about gasoline! You were prowling round the house, and when I nabbed you you tried to bolt. I guess we’ll just hold on to you until we find out who sent all those fake telegrams.”

“We’ll hold on to him until we find out who’s kidnapped Arabella!” declared Mrs. Banning.

“That’s a happy suggestion, Fanny,” affirmed the Senator, for the first time relaxing his severity toward his wife.

“What’s this outlaw’s name?” demanded Miss Collingwood in lugubrious tones.

Clever criminals never disclosed their identity. Farrington had no intention of telling his name. He glowered at them as he involuntarily lifted his hand to his mud-spattered face. Senator Banning jumped back, stepping heavily on Coningsby’s feet. Coningsby’s howl of pain caused Zaliska to laugh with delight.

“If you hold me here you’ll pay dearly for it,” said Farrington fiercely.

“Dear, dear; the little boy’s going to cry!” mocked the dancer. “I think he’d be nice if he had his face washed. By-the-way, who’s giving this party anyhow? I’m perfectly famished and just a little teeny-teeny bite of food would go far toward saving your little Zaliska’s life.”

“That’s another queer thing about all this!” exclaimed the Senator. “Some one has opened up the house and stocked it with provisions. The caretaker got a telegram purporting to be from me telling him I’d be down with a house party. However, the servants are not here. The scoundrel who arranged all this overlooked that.”

This for some occult reason drew attention back to Farrington, and Gadsby shook him severely, presumably in the hope of jarring loose some information. Farrington resented being shaken. He stood glumly watching them and awaiting his fate.

“It looks as though you’d all have to spend the night here,” remarked the Senator. “There are no trains out of Corydon until ten o’clock tomorrow. By morning we ought to be able to fix the responsibility for this dastardly outrage. In the meantime this criminal shall be locked up!”

“Shudders, and clank, clank, as the prisoner goes to his doom,” mocked Zaliska.

“The sooner he’s out of my sight the better,” Mrs. Banning agreed heartily. “If he’s hidden my poor dear Arabella away somewhere he’ll pay the severest penalty of the law for it. I warn him of that.”

“In some states they hang kidnappers,” Miss Collingwood recalled, as though the thought of hanging gave her pleasure.

“We’ll put the prisoner in one of the servants’ rooms on the third floor,” said the Senator; “and in the morning we’ll drive him to Pittsfield and turn him over to the authorities. Bring him along, Gadsby.”

Gadsby dragged Farrington upstairs and to the back of the house, with rather more force than was necessary. Banning led the way, bearing a poker he had snatched up from the fireplace. Pushing him roughly into the butler’s room, Gadsby told Farrington to hold up his hands.

“We’ll just have a look at your pockets, young man. No foolishness now!”

This was the last straw. Farrington fought. For the first time in his life he struck a fellow man, and enjoyed the sensation. He was angry, and the instant Gadsby thrust a hand into his coat pocket he landed on the detective’s nose with all the power he could put into the blow.

Banning dropped the poker and ran out, slamming the door after him. Two more sharp punches in the detective’s face caused him to jump for a corner and draw his gun. As he swung round, Farrington grabbed the poker and dealt the officer’s wrist a sharp thwack that knocked the pistol to the floor with a bang. In a second the gun was in Farrington’s hand and he backed to the door and jerked it open.

“Come in here, Senator!” he said as Banning’s white face appeared. “Don’t yell or attempt to make a row. I want you to put the key of that door on the inside. If you don’t I’m going to shoot your friend here. I don’t know who or what he is, but if you don’t obey orders I’m going to kill him. And if you’re not pretty lively with that key I’m going to shoot you too. Shooting is one of the best things I do--careful there, Mr. Gadsby! If you try to rush me you’re a dead man!”

To demonstrate his prowess he played on both of them with the automatic. Gadsby stood blinking, apparently uncertain what to do. The key in Banning’s hand beat a lively rat-tat in the lock as the frightened statesman shifted it to the inside. Farrington was enjoying himself; it was a sweeter pleasure than he had ever before tasted to find that he could point pistols and intimidate senators and detectives.

“That will do; thanks! Now Mr. Gadsby, or whatever your name is, I must trouble you to remove yourself. In other words, get out of here--quick! There’s a bed in this room and I’m going to make myself comfortable until morning. If you or any of you make any effort to annoy me during the night I’ll shoot you, without the slightest compunction. And when you go downstairs you may save your faces by telling your friends that you’ve locked me up and searched me, and given me the third degree--and anything you please; but don’t you dare come back! Just a moment more, please! You’d better give yourself first aid for nosebleed before you go down, Mr. Gadsby; but not here. The sight of blood is displeasing to me. That is all now. Good night, gentlemen!”

He turned the key, heard them conferring in low tones for a few minutes, and then they retreated down the hall. Zaliska had begun to thump the piano. Her voice rose stridently to the popular air: Any Time’s A Good Time When Hearts are Light and Merry.

Farrington sat on the bed and consoled himself with a cigarette. As a fiction writer he had given much study to human motives; but just why the delectable Arabella had mixed him up in this fashion with the company below was beyond him. Perversity was all he could see in it. He recalled now that she herself had chosen all the names for her list, with the exception of Banning and Gadsby; and, now that he thought of it, she had more or less directly suggested them.

To be sure he had suggested the Senator; but only in a whimsical spirit, as he might have named any other person whose name was familiar in contemporaneous history. Arabella had accepted it, he remembered, with alacrity. He had read in the newspapers about the Bannings’ marital difficulties, and he recalled that Coningsby, a millionaire in one of the Western mining states, had been implicated with Banning in a big irrigation scandal.

It was no wonder that Mrs. Banning had been outraged by her husband’s efforts to marry Arabella to the wheezing son of the magnate. In adding to the dramatis personæ Zaliska, whose name had glittered on Broadway in the biggest sign that thoroughfare had ever seen, Arabella had contributed another element to the situation which caused Farrington to grin broadly.