Part 17

Almost every day thereafter Mrs. Skelton would go for a ride in her own car or that of Castleman, taking Gregory if he would, and Imogene for companions. Blount, however, as he explicitly made clear at the very beginning, was opposed to this.

“Don’t ever be alone with her, I tell you, or just in the company of her and her friends anywhere except on this veranda. They’re after you, and they’re not finding it easy, and they’re beginning to work hard. They’ll give themselves away in some way pretty soon, just as sure as you’re sitting there. They want to cut me out, but don’t let them do it--or if you do, get some one in my place. You don’t know where they’ll take you. That’s the way people are framed. Take me, or get them to use my machine and you take some other man. Then you can regulate the conditions partially, anyhow.”

Gregory insisted that he had no desire to make any other arrangements, and so, thereafter, whenever an invitation was extended to him, Blount was always somehow included, although, as he could see, they did not like it. Not that Imogene seemed to mind, but Mrs. Skelton always complained, “Must we wait for him?” or “Isn’t it possible, ever, to go anywhere without him?”

Gregory explained how it was. Blount was an old and dear friend of his. They were practically spending the summer together. Blount had nothing to do just now.... They seemed to take it all in the best part, and thereafter Blount was always ready, and even willing to suggest that they come along with him in his car.

But the more these accidental prearrangements occurred, the more innocently perverse was Mrs. Skelton in proposing occasional trips of her own. There was an interesting walk through the pines and across the dunes to a neighboring hotel which had a delightful pavilion, and this she was always willing to essay with just Gregory. Only, whenever he agreed to this, and they were about to set out, Imogene would always appear and would have to be included. Then Mrs. Skelton would remember that she had forgotten her parasol or purse or handkerchief, and would return for it, leaving Imogene and Gregory to stroll on together. But Gregory would always wait until Mrs. Skelton returned. He was not to be entrapped like this.

By now he and Imogene, in spite of this atmosphere of suspicion and uncertainty, had become very friendly. She liked him, he could see that. She looked at him with a slight widening of the eyes and a faint distention of the nostrils at times, which spelled--what? And when seated with him in the car, or anywhere else, she drew near him in a gently inclusive and sympathetic and coaxing way. She had been trying to teach him to dance of late, and scolding him in almost endearing phrases such as “Now, you bad boy,” or “Oh, butterfingers!” (when once he had dropped something), or “Big, clumsy one--how big and strong you really are. I can scarcely guide you.”

And to him, in spite of all her dark chicane, she was really beautiful, and so graceful! What a complexion, he said to himself on more than one occasion. How light and silken her hair! And her eyes, hard and gray-brown, and yet soft, too--to him. Her nose was so small and straight, and her lip line so wavily cut, like an Englishwoman’s, full and drooping in the center of the upper lip. And she looked at him so when they were alone! It was disturbing.

But as to the Blue Trailer on these careening nights. Chancing one night to be invited by Mrs. Skelton for a twenty-five-mile run to Bayside, Blount accompanying them, they had not gone ten miles, it seemed to him, when the hum of a peculiarly and powerfully built motor came to him. It was like a distant bee buzzing, or a hornet caught under a glass. There was something fierce about it, savage. On the instant he recalled it now, recognized it as the great blue machine belonging to young Castleman. Why should he be always hearing it, he asked, when they were out? And then quite thoughtlessly he observed to Imogene:

“That sounds like Castleman’s car, doesn’t it?”

“It does, doesn’t it?” she innocently replied. “I wonder if it could be.”

Nothing caused him to think any more about it just then, but another time when he was passing along a distant road he heard its motor nearby on another road, and then it passed them. Again, it brought its customary group to the same inn in which he and Blount and Imogene and Mrs. Skelton were.

Suddenly it came to him just what it meant. The last time he had heard it, and every time before that, he now remembered, its sound had been followed by its appearance at some roadside inn or hotel whenever he, Imogene and Blount happened to be in the same party; and it always brought with it this self-same group of young men (“joy riders,” they called themselves), accidentally happening in on them, as they said. And now he remembered (and this fact was corroborated by the watchful Blount) that if the car had not been heard, and they had not appeared, either Mrs. Skelton or Imogene invariably sought the ladies’ retiring room once they had reached their destination, if they had one, when later the car would be heard tearing along in the distance and the “joy riders” would arrive. But what for? How to compromise him exactly, if at all?

One night after Mrs. Skelton had left them in one of these inns, but before the joy riders had arrived, Gregory was sitting at the edge of a balcony overlooking a silent grove of pines when suddenly it seemed to him that he heard it coming in the distance, this great rumbling brute, baying afar off, like a bloodhound on the scent. There was something so eerie, uncanny about it or about the night, which made it so. And then a few moments later it appeared, and the four cronies strolled in, smart and summery in their appearance, seemingly surprised to find them all there. Gregory felt a bit cold and chill at the subtlety of it all. How horrible it was, trailing a man in this way! How tremendous the depths of politics, how important the control of all the great seething cities’ millions, to these men--Tilney and his friends,--if they could find it important to plot against one lone investigating man like this! Their crimes! Their financial robberies! How well he knew some of them--and how near he was to being able to prove some of them and drive them out, away from the public treasury and the emoluments and honors of office!

That was why he was so important to them now--he a self-established newspaperman with a self-established investigating bureau. Actually, it was villainous, so dark and crafty. What were they planning, these two smiling women at his side and these four smart rounders, with their pink cheeks and affable manners? What could they want of him really? How would it all end?

As Mrs. Skelton, Imogene, Blount and himself were preparing to return, and Castleman and his friends were entering their own car, a third party hitherto unknown to Blount or Gregory appeared and engaged the two women in conversation, finally persuading them to return with them in their car. Mrs. Skelton thereupon apologized and explained that they were old friends whom she had not seen for a long time, and that they would all meet at the hotel later for a game of bridge. Blount and Gregory, left thus to themselves, decided to take a short cut to a nearby turnpike so as to beat them home. The move interested them, although they could not explain it at the time. It was while they were following this road, however, through a section heavily shaded with trees, that they were suddenly confronted by the blazing lights of another machine descending upon them at full speed from the opposite direction, and even though Blount by the most amazing dexterity managed to throw his car into the adjacent fence and wood, still it came so close and was traveling at such terrific speed that it clipped their left rear wheel as he did so.

“Castleman’s car!” Blount said softly after it had passed. “I saw him. They missed us by an inch!”

“What do you think of that!” exclaimed Gregory cynically. “I wonder if they’ll come back to see the result of their work?”

Even as they were talking, however, they heard the big car returning.

“Say, this looks serious! I don’t like the looks of it!” whispered Blount. “That car would have torn us to bits and never been scratched. And here they are now. Better look out for them. It’s just as well that we’re armed. You have your gun, haven’t you?”

The other group approached most brazenly.

“Hello! Any trouble?” they called from a distance. “So sorry,” and then as though they had just discovered it, “--well, if it isn’t Gregory and Blount! Well, well, fellows, so sorry! It was an accident, I assure you. Our steering gear is out of order.”

Gregory and Blount had previously agreed to stand their ground, and if any further treachery were intended it was to be frustrated with bullets. The situation was partially saved or cleared up by the arrival of a third car containing a party of four middle-aged men who, seeing them in the wood and the other car standing by, stopped to investigate. It was Gregory’s presence of mind which kept them there.

“Do you mind staying by, Mister, until that other car leaves?” he whispered to one of the newcomers who was helping to extricate Blount’s machine. “I think they purposely tried to wreck us, but I’m not sure; anyway, we don’t want to be left alone with them.”

Finding themselves thus replaced and the others determined to stay, Castleman and his followers were most apologetic and helpful. They had forgotten something back at the inn, they explained, and were returning for it. As they had reached this particular spot and had seen the lights of Blount’s car, they had tried to stop, but something had gone wrong with the steering gear. They had tried to turn, but couldn’t, and had almost wrecked their own car. Was there any damage? They would gladly pay. Blount assured them there was not, the while he and Gregory accepted their apologies in seeming good part, insisting, however, that they needed no help. After they had gone Blount and Gregory, with the strangers as guards, made their way to the hotel, only to find it dark and deserted.

What an amazing thing it all was, Gregory said to himself over and over, the great metropolis threaded with plots like this for spoil--cold blooded murder attempted, and that by a young girl and these young men scarcely in their middle twenties, and yet there was no way to fix it on them. Here he was, fairly convinced that on two occasions murder had been planned or attempted, and still he could prove nothing, not a word, did not even dare to accuse any one! And Imogene, this girl of beauty and gayety, pretending an affection for him--and he half believing it--and at the same time convinced that she was in on the plot in some way. Had he lost his senses?

He was for getting out now posthaste, feeling as he did that he was dealing with a band of murderers who were plotting his death by “accident” in case they failed to discredit him by some trick or plot, but Blount was of another mind. He could not feel that this was a good time to quit. After all, everything had been in their favor so far. In addition, Blount had come to the conclusion that the girl was a very weak tool of these other people, not a clever plotter herself. He argued this, he said, from certain things which he had been able thus far to find out about her. She had once been, he said, the private secretary or personal assistant to a well known banker whose institution had been connected with the Tilney interests in Penyank, and whose career had ended in his indictment and flight. Perhaps there had been some papers which she had signed as the ostensible secretary or treasurer, which might make her the victim of Tilney or of some of his political friends. Besides, by now he was willing to help raise money to carry Gregory’s work on in case he needed any. The city should be protected from such people. But Blount considered Imogene a little soft or easy, and thought that Gregory could influence her to help him if he tried.

“Stick it out,” he insisted. “Stick it out. It looks pretty serious, I know, but you want to remember that you won’t be any better off anywhere else, and here we at least know what we’re up against. They know by now that we’re getting on to them. They must. They’re getting anxious, that’s all, and the time is getting short. You might send for your wife, but that wouldn’t help any. Besides, if you play your cards right with this girl you might get her to come over to your side. In spite of what she’s doing, I think she likes you.” Gregory snorted. “Or you might make her like you, and then you could get the whole scheme out of her. See how she looks at you all the time! And don’t forget that every day you string this thing along without letting them bring it to a disastrous finish, the nearer you are to the election. If this goes on much longer without their accomplishing anything, Tilney won’t have a chance to frame up anything new before the election will be upon him, and then it will be too late. Don’t you see?”

On the strength of this, Gregory agreed to linger a little while longer, but he felt that it was telling on his nerves. He was becoming irritable and savage, and the more he thought about it the worse he felt. To think of having to be pleasant to people who were murderers at heart and trying to destroy you!

The next morning, however, he saw Imogene at breakfast, fresh and pleasant, and with that look of friendly interest in her eyes which more and more of late she seemed to wear and in spite of himself he was drawn to her, although he did his best to conceal it.

“Why didn’t you come back last night to play cards with us?” she asked. “We waited and waited for you.”

“Oh, haven’t you heard about the latest ‘accident’?” he asked, with a peculiar emphasis on the word, and looking at her with a cynical mocking light in his eyes.

“No. What accident?” She seemed thoroughly unaware that anything had happened.

“You didn’t know, of course, that Castleman’s car almost ran us down after you left us last night?”

“No!” she exclaimed with genuine surprise. “Where?”

“Well, just after you left us, in the wood beyond Bellepoint. It was so fortunate of you two to have left just when you did.” And he smiled and explained briefly and with some cynical comments as to the steering gear that wouldn’t work.

As he did so, he examined her sharply and she looked at him with what he thought might be pain or fear or horror in her glance. Certainly it was not a look disguising a sympathetic interest in the plans of her friends or employers, if they were such. Her astonishment was so obviously sincere, confusing, revealing, in a way that it all but won him. He could not make himself believe that she had had a hand in that anyhow. It must be as Blount said, that she was more of a tool herself than anything else. She probably couldn’t help herself very well or didn’t know the lengths to which her pretended “friends” were prepared to go. Her eyes seemed troubled, sad. She seemed weaker, more futile, than at any time since he had known her, and this, while it did not add particularly to his respect, softened his personal animosity. He felt that under the circumstances he might come to like her. He also thought that she might be made to like him enough to help him. He had the emotional mastery of her, he thought, and that was something. He had described the incident with all the vividness of detail that he could, showing how he and Blount had escaped death by a hair’s breadth. She seemed a little sick, and shortly after left the table. Gregory had taken good care to make it plain that the strangers in the other car had been informed as to the exact details of the case, and had offered their services as witnesses in case they were wanted.

“But we don’t propose to do anything about it,” he said genially, “not now, anyhow,” and it was then that she seemed to become a little sick or faint, and left him.

Whether owing to this conversation or the accident itself, or to circumstances concerning which he knew nothing, there now seemed to come a temporary lull in the activities of this group. The Blue Trailer disappeared as an active daily fact in their lives. Mrs. Skelton was called to the city on business for a few days, as well as Mr. Diamondberg, the “cloak and suit man,” as Blount always called him, who in all the time he had been there had never publicly joined them. Mrs. Skelton came back later as cheerful and optimistic as ever, but in the meanwhile there had been an approach on the part of Imogene toward himself which seemed to promise a new order of things. She was freer, more natural and more genial than she had been hitherto. She was with him more, smiling, playful, and yet concerned, he thought. Because of their conversation the morning after the accident, he felt easier in her presence, more confidential, as though he might be able to talk to her about all this soon and get her to help him.

They had two hours together on the second afternoon of the absence of the others which brought them within sight of each other’s point of view. It began after lunch, because Gregory had some reports to examine and was staying here to do it. She came over and stood beside him.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Oh, I’m looking up some facts,” he replied enigmatically, smiling up at her. “Sit down.”

They fell into conversation first about a tennis match which was being held here, and then about his work, which he described in part after observing that she knew all about it, or ought to.

“Why do you always talk to me that way about everything in connection with you?” she asked after a moment’s pause. “You have such a queer way of speaking, as though I knew something I ought not to know about your affairs.”

“Well, you do, don’t you?” he questioned grimly, staring at her.

“Now, there it is again! What do you mean by that?”

“Do you really need to have me explain to you?” he went on in a hard cynical manner. “As though you didn’t know! I don’t suppose you ever heard of the Union Bank of Penyank, for instance? Or Mr. Swayne, its president? Or Mr. Riley, or Mr. Mears, the cashier?”

At the mention of these, as at the mention of the automobile accident, there was something which seemed to click like a camera shutter in her eyes, only this time there was no sign of pain, none even of confusion. She seemed, except for a faint trace of color, to be fairly calm and poised. She opened her mouth slightly, but more in an attempted smile of tolerance than anything else.

“The Union Bank? Mr. Swayne? Mr. Tilney? What are you talking about?” she persisted. “Who is Mr. Swayne, and where is the Union Bank?”

“Really, now, Miss Carle,” he said with a kind of dogmatic fury, “if you want me to have any regard of any kind for you in the future, quit lying about this. You know well enough what I mean. You know who Mr. Swayne is, all right, and why he left Eastridge. You also know Mr. Diamondberg, although I heard you say you didn’t, and that right after I had seen you walking with him out here on the dunes three weeks ago. You don’t remember that, I suppose?” this as she fluttered slightly.

She stared, completely shaken out of her composure, and a real flush spread over her cheeks and neck. For the moment her expression hardened the least bit, then gave way to one of mingled weakness and confusion. She looked more or less guilty and genuinely distrait.

“Why, Mr. Gregory,” she pleaded weakly, “how you talk! Positively, I haven’t the slightest idea of what you mean, and I wish you wouldn’t be so rough. I don’t think you know what you’re talking about, or if you do you certainly don’t know anything about me. You must have me mixed up with some one else, or with something that I don’t know anything about.” She moved as if to leave.

“Now listen to me a minute,” he said sharply, “and don’t be so ready to leave. You know who I am, and just what I’m doing. I’m running an investigation bureau on my own account with which I mean to break up the present city political ring, and I have a lot of evidence which might cause Mr. Tilney and the mayor and some others a lot of trouble this fall, and they know it, and that’s why you’re out here. Mr. Tilney is connected with the mayor, and he used to be a bosom friend of your friend, Jack Swayne. And Diamondberg and Mrs. Skelton are in his employ right now, and so are you. You think I don’t know that Castleman and his friends were working with you and Mrs. Skelton, and Diamondberg and these ‘brokers’ also, and that Castleman tried to run into us the other night and kill me, and that I’m being watched here all the time and spied on, but I am, and I know it, and I’m not in the dark as to anything--not one thing--not even you,” and he leered at her angrily.

“Now wait a moment,” he went on quickly as she opened her mouth and started to say something. “You don’t look to me to be so crafty and devilish as all this seems, or I wouldn’t be talking to you at all, and your manner all along has been so different--you’ve appeared so friendly and sympathetic, that I’ve thought at times that maybe you didn’t know exactly what was going on. Now, however, I see that you do. Your manner the other morning at breakfast made me think that possibly you were not so bad as you seemed. But now I see that you’ve been lying to me all along about all this, just as I thought, only I must say that up to now I haven’t been willing to believe it. This isn’t the first time an attempt has been made to get people in this way, though. It’s an old political trick, only you’re trying to work it once more, and I don’t propose that you shall work it on me if I can help it. Plainly, you people wouldn’t hesitate to kill me, any more than Tilney hesitated to ruin Crothers three years ago, or than he would hesitate to ruin me or any other man or woman who got in his path, but he hasn’t got me yet, and he’s not going to, and you can tell him that for me. He’s a crook. He controls a bunch of crooks--the mayor and all the people working with him--and if you’re in with them, as I know you are, and know what you’re doing, you’re a crook too.”

“Oh, oh, oh! Don’t!” she exclaimed. “Please don’t! This is too terrible! To think that you should talk to me in this way!” but she made no attempt to leave.