CHAPTER II.

THE COWARD.

With pallid face and nervous, twitching fingers, which his desperate grip on the wheel scarcely served to hide, Brose Stovebridge flew along the high road between Wilton and the Clover Country Club.

Now and then he looked back fearfully; at every crossroad his eyes darted keenly to right and left, as he let out the car to the very highest speed he dared, hoping and praying that he might reach his goal without encountering any one.

All the time fear--deadly, unreasoning, ignoble fear--was tugging at his heart-strings.

He had gone through just such an experience as this little more than a year ago in Kansas City. How vividly it all came back to him! The unexpected meeting with two old school chums whom he had not seen in months; their hilarious progress of celebration from one café to another, which ended, long past midnight, in that wild joy ride through the silent, deserted streets.

He shuddered. He thought he had succeeded in thrusting from his mind the details of it all: The sudden skidding around a corner on two wheels; the man’s face that flashed before them in the electric light, dazed--white--terrified. The thud--the fall--the sickening jolt, as the wheels went over him. Then that wild, unreasoning, terror-stricken impulse to fly, to escape the consequences at any cost, which possessed him. He gave no thought to his unconscious victim. He only wanted to get away before any one came, and somehow he had done so.

A few days later, in the safe seclusion of his home near Wilton, when he read that the fellow had succumbed to his injuries in the Kansas City hospital, his first thought was one of self-congratulation at his own cleverness in eluding pursuit.

His two chums he had never seen since that morning. Only a few weeks ago one of them had declined an invitation to visit him. He wondered why.

Once in his prep school days, when the dormitory caught fire, he had stumbled blindly down the fire escape and left his roommate sleeping heavily. Luckily the boy was roused in time; but it was no thanks to Brose that he escaped with his life.

For Stovebridge was a coward. In spite of his handsome face and dashing manner; in spite of his popularity, his athletic prowess, his many friends--in spite of all, he was a moral coward.

Few suspected it and still fewer knew, for the fellow was constantly on his guard and clever at hiding this unpleasant trait. But it was there just the same, ready to leap forth in a twinkling, as it had done this morning, and stamp his face with the brand of fear.

As the great, granite gateposts of the club appeared in sight, Stovebridge breathed a sigh of relief. By some extraordinary luck he had encountered no one on his wild ride thither. He had passed several crossroads, any one of which he was prepared to swear he had come by, and for the present he was safe.

Slowing down, he turned into the drive, and as he did so he took out a handkerchief and passed it over his moist forehead. He must compose himself before encountering any of his fellow members.

He carefully smoothed his ruffled hair with slim, brown fingers, and reached over for his cap.

The seat was empty. The cap had disappeared.

The discovery was like a physical blow, and for an instant his heart stood still.

Where had he lost it?

The spot where he had run down the child was the only feasible one. The cap must have fallen out when he put on the emergency, and probably lay in plain sight, a clue for the first passerby to pick up.

For a moment he had a wild idea of going back for it, but he thrust this from him instantly. It was impossible.

Then the clubhouse came in sight. He must pull himself together at once; he would get something to steady his nerves before he met any one.

Instead of continuing on to the front of the clubhouse, where a crowd was congregated on the wide veranda, he turned sharply to the right and drove his car into one of the open sheds back of the kitchen. Then he dived through a side door into the buffet.

“Whisky, Joe,” he said nervously to the attendant.

A bottle, glass and siphon were placed before him, and even the taciturn Joe was somewhat astonished at the size of the drink which Stovebridge poured with shaking hand and drained at a swallow.

He followed it with a little seltzer and, pouring out another three fingers, sat back in his chair and took out a gold cigarette case.

As he selected a cigarette with some care, and held it to the cigar lighter on the table, he noticed with satisfaction that his fingers scarcely trembled at all.

“That’s the stuff to steady a fellow’s nerves,” he muttered, blowing out a cloud of blue smoke. “There’s nothing like it.”

He took a swallow and then drained the glass for the second time.

Presently his view of life became slightly more optimistic.

“It was a new cap,” he remembered with a sudden feeling of relief.

“I’ve never worn it here, and there’s an old one in my locker. All I’ve got to do is to swear I never saw it before if I’m asked about it--which isn’t likely.”

When the cigarette was finished he went into the dressing room and took a thorough wash. There was no one there but the valet, who gave his clothes a good brushing, so he had no trouble in getting the old cap out of his locker and placing it at a becoming angle on his freshly brushed hair. Then he strolled out onto the veranda.

Three or four fellows, lounging near the door, greeted him jovially as he appeared.

“Rather late, aren’t you, Brose?” one of them remarked, as he joined them.

“A little,” Stovebridge returned nonchalantly. “It was such a bully morning I took a spin along the river road.”

“Alone?” the other asked slyly.

Stovebridge laughed.

“Well, I happened to be--this time,” he answered, a little self-consciously.

Being very much of a lady’s man, it was rare for him to be unaccompanied.

“How I do love a hog!” drawled one of the fellows who had not spoken. “Why the deuce didn’t you ’phone me? I’ve been sitting here bored to death for two solid hours.”

Stovebridge was looking curiously at a big, red touring car which had just driven up to the entrance.

“Er--I beg pardon, Marston,” he stammered. “What did you say?”

“Really not worth repeating,” returned the other languidly. “You seem to have something on your mind, Brose.”

Stovebridge gave a slight start as he turned back to his friends.

“I was wondering who those fellows are that just drove up,” he said carelessly. “They’re talking to old Clingwood.”

Fred Marston turned with an effort and surveyed the newcomers.

“Don’t know, I’m sure,” he drawled sinking back in his chair. “Never saw them before.”

For some reason the strangers seemed to interest Stovebridge extremely, and he continued to watch them furtively. There were four of them. The one who had driven the car, and with whom Roger Clingwood was doing the most talking, was tall and handsome, with dark hair and eyes, and the figure of an athlete. The fellow who stood near him was good-looking, too, and much more heavily built. Behind them, a short, wiry youth was talking to a tremendously stout fellow with a fat, good-humored face.

Presently Stovebridge left his friends and wandered along the veranda, pausing now and then to exchange a remark with some acquaintance, and before long he had reached the vicinity of the strangers, where he leaned carelessly against a pillar and looked out across the golf links.

“Very glad you could get here this morning, Merriwell,” Roger Clingwood, an old Yale graduate was saying. “You’ll be able to look around a bit before the race this afternoon.”

“Merriwell!” exclaimed Stovebridge under his breath. “I wonder if that can be Dick Merriwell, of Yale.”

Suddenly a hand struck him on the shoulder and a voice exclaimed heartily:

“Hello, Brose, old boy! Wearing your old brown cap, I see. What’s the matter with the one you got at the governor’s shop yesterday?”

Stovebridge wheeled around with a sudden tightening of his throat and saw the grinning face of Bob Jennings, son of the haberdasher at Wilton, who had been in the store when he bought that wretched cap the day before. Here was the first complication.

Stovebridge forced himself to smile.

“Left it at home, Bob,” he returned carelessly. “This was the first one I picked up as I came out this morning.”

In the pause which followed Roger Clingwood stepped forward.

“I didn’t notice you were here, Stovebridge,” he said pleasantly. “I’d like you to meet my friend Merriwell, who has come up with some of his classmates to spend a day or two at the club.”

“Delighted, I’m sure,” Stovebridge said with an air of good fellowship. “I know Mr. Merriwell very well by reputation, but have never had the pleasure of meeting him.”

“Dick, this is Brose Stovebridge,” Clingwood went on. “We claim for him--and I think justly--the title of champion sprinter of the middle West.”

Merriwell smiled as he held out his hand.

“Very glad indeed to meet you, Mr. Stovebridge,” he said heartily.

Stovebridge gave a sudden gasp and faltered; then he took the proffered hand limply.

“Glad to meet you,” he said hoarsely.

Instead of meeting Merriwell’s glance, his eyes were fixed intently on the corner of a checked cap which protruded from the Yale man’s pocket.

It was the cap he had lost out of the car that morning, or one exactly like it. Apparently it did not belong to Merriwell, who held his own in his left hand. Where had he picked it up? Where could he have found it but in that fatal spot? Stovebridge’s brain reeled and he felt a little faint. Then he realized that Clingwood was speaking to him--introducing the other Yale men--and with a tremendous effort he forced himself to turn and greet them with apparent calmness.

For a time there was a confused medley of talk and laughter as some of the other members strolled up and were presented to the strangers. Stovebridge was very thankful for the chance it gave him to pull himself together and hide his emotion.

Presently there was a momentary lull and Dick pulled the cap out of his pocket.

“Does this belong to any of your fellows?” he asked carelessly. “We picked it up in the road this morning.”

Bob Jennings pounced on it.

“Why, that looks like yours, Brose,” he said as he turned it over.

Stovebridge glanced at it indifferently. He had himself well in hand now.

“Rather like,” he drawled; “but mine is a little larger check; besides, I didn’t wear it this morning, you know.”

“I could have sworn that you bought one exactly like this,” Jennings said in a puzzled tone.

Stovebridge laughed.

“I wouldn’t advise you to put any money on it, Bob, because you’d lose,” he said lightly. “I’ll wear mine to-morrow, and you’ll see the difference.”

“Where did you find it, Dick?” Roger Clingwood asked.

Merriwell paused and glanced quietly around the circle of men. Most of them looked indifferent, as though they had very little interest in the cap or its unknown owner.

“It was picked up in the road about four miles this side of Wilton,” he said in a low, clear voice. “It lay near the body of a little girl who had been run over by some car and left there to die.”

There was a sudden, surprised hush, and then a perfect volley of questions were flung at the Yale man.

“Where was it?”

“Who was she?”

“Didn’t any one see it done?”

“Is she dead?”

The expression of languid indifference vanished from their faces with the rapidity and completeness of chalk under a wet sponge. Their eyes were full of eager interest, and, as soon as the clamor was quelled, Dick told the story with a brief eloquence which made more than one man curse fiercely and blink his eyes.

Once or twice the Yale man darted a keen glance at Stovebridge, but the latter had turned away so that only a small portion of his face was visible. He seemed to be one of the few to remain unmoved by the recital.

Another was his friend Fred Marston, a man of about thirty, with thin, dark hair plastered over a low forehead, sensuous lips, and that unwholesome flabbiness of figure which is always a sign of a life devoted wholly to ease.

As Dick finished the story, he shrugged his shoulders.

“Very likely she ran out in front of the car, and was bowled over before the fellow had time to stop,” he drawled. “Children are always doing things like that. Sometimes I believe they do it on purpose.”

Merriwell looked at him fixedly.

“That’s quite possible,” he said quietly, but with a certain challenging note in his voice. “But no one but a coward--a contemptible coward--would have run off and left her there.”

Marston flushed a little and started to reply, but before he could utter a word, a number of the club members began to voice their opinions, and for a time the talk ran fast and furious.

Merriwell noticed that Stovebridge took no part in it. He stood leaning against a pillar, his hands in his pockets, apparently absorbed in watching a putting match which was going on at a green just across the drive.

Presently the Yale man strolled over to his side.

“Nice links you have here,” he commented.

Stovebridge nodded silently without taking his eyes from the players.

“You have a car, haven’t you,” Dick went on casually.

The other’s shoulders moved a little.

“Yes,” he answered. “Racing roadster--sixty horse-power.”

There was a curious glitter in Dick Merriwell’s dark eyes.

“Dark red, isn’t she?” he queried.

Stovebridge hesitated for an instant.

“Ye-s.”

The players had finished their game and were coming slowly toward the clubhouse, but Stovebridge’s eyes never left the vivid patch of close-cropped turf.

He was afraid to look up, afraid to meet the glance of the man beside him. He dreaded the sound of the other’s low, clear voice. Why was he asking these questions? Why, indeed, unless he suspected?

“You didn’t happen to run over the main road from Wilton this morning, I suppose?”

The guilty man could not suppress a slight start. It had come, then. Merriwell did suspect him. His tongue clove to the roof of his mouth and for a moment he was speechless. He moistened his dry lips.

“No,” he said hoarsely. “I came--by the river road.”

What was the matter with him? That did not sound like his voice. It was not the way an innocent man would have answered an unmistakable innuendo. If he did not pull himself together instantly he would be lost.

The next moment he turned on the Yale man.

“Why do you ask that?” he said almost fiercely. “What do you mean by such a question?”

His face was calm, though a little pale. His long lashes drooped purposely over the blue eyes to hide the fear which filled them.

Merriwell looked at him keenly.

“I thought perhaps we could fix the time of the accident, if you had gone over the road before me,” he said quietly. “But I see we cannot.”

He turned away, with a slight shrug of his shoulders, and joined the others.

Brose Stovebridge gave a shiver as he saw him go. He had the desperate feeling of going to pieces; unless he could steady his nerves he felt that in a very few minutes he would give himself away.

Without a word to any one, he slipped through the big reception hall of the clubhouse and thence to the buffet. Here he tossed off another drink and then hurried out the side door.

The attendant looked after him with a shake of his head.

“He’s got something on his mind, he has,” he muttered. “Never knew him to take so much of a morning--and the very day he’s going to run, too.”

Stovebridge walked over to the automobile sheds. He was not likely to be disturbed there, and if some one did come around he could pretend to be fussing with his car.

He scarcely noticed Merriwell’s touring car, which had been put into the shed next to his own. At another time he would have examined it with interest, for he was a regular motor fiend. But now he passed it with a glance, and going up to his own car, lifted up the hood and leaned over the cylinders.

He had not been there more than a minute or two when he felt a hand grasp his shoulder firmly.

With a snarl of terror, he straightened up and whirled around.

He had expected to find Merriwell, come to accuse him. Instead, he saw before him Jim Hanlon, a deaf mute, who occasionally did odd jobs around the club. The fellow’s face was distorted with rage, his eyes flashed fire, his slight frame fairly quivered with emotion.

Stovebridge stepped back instinctively.

“What’s the matter with you?” he asked harshly. “What are you doing here?”

As the clubman spoke the deaf mute’s eyes were fixed upon his lips. Evidently he understood what the other said, for his own mouth writhed and twisted in his desperate, futile efforts to give voice to his emotion.

The next instant he snatched a scrap of soiled brown paper from his pocket and produced the stub of a pencil.

Stovebridge watched him with a vague uneasiness as he scrawled a few words and then thrust the paper into the clubman’s hand.

“Somebudy run over Amy an kill her.”

As he deciphered the illiterate sentence, Stovebridge shivered. Until that moment he had forgotten that this fellow was the child’s brother. What was he about to do? He looked as though he were capable of anything. Above all, how much did he know?

Looking up, Brose met the fellow’s eyes fixed fiercely on his own. He shivered again.

“Yes,” he said, with an effort at calmness. “I heard about it. It’s too bad.”

As the words left his lips he realized their utter inadequacy.

With a scowl, Hanlon snatched the paper from his hands and wrote again.

“I’ll kill the man that did it--kill him!”

The word kill was heavily underlined in a pitiful attempt at emphasis.

As Stovebridge read the short line he felt a cold chill going down his back. He had not the slightest doubt that the fellow meant what he had written. But how had he found out? Who had told him? Was it possible that he could have witnessed the accident from some place out of sight?

He shot another glance at Hanlon and met the same malignant glare of hate. The fellow looked positively murderous.

The next moment the deaf mute had pulled a long, keen knife out of his pocket, which he held up before Stovebridge’s terror-stricken eyes and shook it significantly. At the same time he nodded his head fiercely.

Brose gave a low gasp as he gazed at the wicked blade with fascinated horror. Why had he ever come out here alone and given the fellow this chance? Why hadn’t he stayed with the others? No matter what else might have happened, he would have been safe. Arrest, conviction, disgrace--anything would have been better than this.

Overcome by a momentary faintness, he closed his eyes.

Suddenly the paper was twitched from his fingers, and, with a frightened gasp, he looked up.

The knife had disappeared and Hanlon was writing, again.

Desperately, as a drowning man clutches a straw, Stovebridge snatched at the paper.

“What’s the name of the feller that came with three others in that car.”

Puzzled, the clubman looked at Hanlon and found him pointing at Dick Merriwell’s touring car. What did he mean? What could he want with Merriwell? Was it possible that he did not really know--that he wanted to get proof from the Yale man before proceeding with his murderous attack?

“Why do you want to know?” he faltered.

The other seized the paper from the man’s trembling fingers, wrote three words and thrust it back.

“He killed Amy.”

As Stovebridge read the short sentence, he could have shouted with joy. Hanlon did not know the truth, after all. For some unaccountable reason he suspected Merriwell. Perhaps it was because the Yale man had carried the child into the house; anyhow it did not matter, so long as he himself was safe.

Then another thought flashed into his mind. The fellow suspected Merriwell--not only suspected, but was convinced. He would try to kill the Yale man, and perhaps succeed. Well, what of that? With Merriwell out of the way Stovebridge would be safe--quite safe. No one else had the slightest suspicion.

He took the pencil out of the deaf mute’s hand, and, after a moment’s hesitation wrote, on the bottom of the paper:

“His name is Dick Merriwell.”

Somehow, as he handed the paper to the wild-eyed youth, he had the odd feeling that he had signed a death warrant.