Chapter 2

Before Winthrop rose moving pictures of Miss Forbes appearing in a dirty police station before an officious Dogberry, and, as he and his car were well known along the Post road, appearing the next morning in the New York papers. "William Winthrop," he saw the printed words, "son of Endicott Winthrop, was arrested here this evening, with a young woman who refused to give her name, but who was recognized as Miss Beatrice Forbes, whose engagement to Ernest Peabody, the Reform candidate on the Independent ticket----"

And, of course, Peabody would blame her.

"If I have exceeded your speed limit," he said politely, "I shall be delighted to pay the fine. How much is it?"

"Judge Allen'll tell you what the fine is," said the selectman gruffly. "And he may want bail."

"Bail?" demanded Winthrop. "Do you mean to tell me he will detain us here?"

"He will, if he wants to," answered the chief of police combatively.

For an instant Winthrop sat gazing gloomily ahead, overcome apparently by the enormity of his offence. He was calculating whether, if he rammed the two-inch plank, it would hit the car or Miss Forbes. He decided swiftly it would hit his new two-hundred-dollar lamps. As swiftly he decided the new lamps must go. But he had read of guardians of the public safety so regardless of private safety as to try to puncture runaway tires with pistol bullets. He had no intention of subjecting Miss Forbes to a fusillade.

So he whirled upon the chief of police:

"Take your hand off that gun!" he growled. "How dare you threaten me?"

Amazed, the chief of police dropped from the step and advanced indignantly.

"Me?" he demanded. "I ain't got a gun. What you mean by----"

With sudden intelligence, the chauffeur precipitated himself upon the scene.

"It's the other one," he shouted. He shook an accusing finger at the selectman. "He pointed it at the lady."

To Miss Forbes the realism of Fred's acting was too convincing. To learn that one is covered with a loaded revolver is disconcerting. Miss Forbes gave a startled squeak, and ducked her head.

Winthrop roared aloud at the selectman.

"How dare you frighten the lady!" he cried. "Take your hand off that gun."

"What you talkin' about?" shouted the selectman. "The idea of my havin' a gun! I haven't got a----"

"All right, Fred!" cried Winthrop. "Low bridge."

There was a crash of shattered glass and brass, of scattered barrel staves, the smell of escaping gas, and the Scarlet Car was flying drunkenly down the main street.

"What are they doing now, Fred?" called the owner.

Fred peered over the stern of the flying car.

"The constable's jumping around the road," he replied, "and the long one's leaning against a tree. No, he's climbing the tree. I can't make out WHAT he's doing."

"_I_ know!" cried Miss Forbes; her voice vibrated with excitement. Defiance of the law had thrilled her with unsuspected satisfaction; her eyes were dancing. "There was a telephone fastened to the tree, a hand telephone. They are sending word to some one. They're trying to head us off."

Winthrop brought the car to a quick halt.

"We're in a police trap!" he said. Fred leaned forward and whispered to his employer. His voice also vibrated with the joy of the chase.

"This'll be our THIRD arrest," he said. "That means----"

"I know what it means," snapped Winthrop. "Tell me how we can get out of here."

"We can't get out of here, sir, unless we go back. Going south, the bridge is the only way out."

"The bridge!" Winthrop struck the wheel savagely with his knuckles. "I forgot their confounded bridge!" He turned to Miss Forbes. "Fairport is a sort of island," he explained.

"But after we're across the bridge," urged the chauffeur, "we needn't keep to the post road no more. We can turn into Stone Ridge, and strike south to White Plains. Then----"

"We haven't crossed the bridge yet," growled Winthrop. His voice had none of the joy of the others; he was greatly perturbed. "Look back," he commanded, "and see if there is any sign of those boys."

He was now quite willing to share responsibility. But there was no sign of the Yale men, and, unattended, the Scarlet Car crept warily forward. Ahead of it, across the little reed-grown inlet, stretched their road of escape, a long wooden bridge, lying white in the moonlight.

"I don't see a soul," whispered Miss Forbes.

"Anybody at that draw?" asked Winthrop. Unconsciously his voice also had sunk to a whisper.

"No," returned Fred. "I think the man that tends the draw goes home at night; there is no light there."

"Well then," said Winthrop, with an anxious sigh, "we've got to make a dash for it."

The car shot forward, and, as it leaped lightly upon the bridge, there was a rapid rumble of creaking boards.

Between it and the highway to New York lay only two hundred yards of track, straight and empty.

In his excitement the chauffeur rose from the rear seat.

"They'll never catch us now," he muttered. "They'll never catch us!"

But even as he spoke there grated harshly the creak of rusty chains on a cogged wheel, the rattle of a brake. The black figure of a man with waving arms ran out upon the draw, and the draw gaped slowly open.

When the car halted there was between it and the broken edge of the bridge twenty feet of running water.

At the same moment from behind it came a patter of feet, and Winthrop turned to see racing toward them some dozen young men of Fairport. They surrounded him with noisy, raucous, belligerent cries. They were, as they proudly informed him, members of the Fairport "Volunteer Fire Department." That they might purchase new uniforms, they had arranged a trap for the automobiles returning in illegal haste from New Haven. In fines they had collected $300, and it was evident that already some of that money had been expended in bad whiskey. As many as could do so crowded into the car, others hung to the running boards and step, others ran beside it. They rejoiced over Winthrop's unsuccessful flight and capture with violent and humiliating laughter.

For the day, Judge Allen had made a temporary court in the clubroom of the fire department, which was over the engine house; and the proceedings were brief and decisive. The selectman told how Winthrop, after first breaking the speed law, had broken arrest and Judge Allen, refusing to fine him and let him go, held him and his companions for a hearing the following morning. He fixed the amount of bail at $500 each; failing to pay this, they would for the night be locked up in different parts of the engine house, which, it developed, contained on the ground floor the home of the fire engine, on the second floor the clubroom, on alternate nights, of the firemen, the local G. A. R., and the Knights of Pythias, and in its cellar the town jail.

Winthrop and the chauffeur the learned judge condemned to the cells in the basement. As a concession, he granted Miss Forbes the freedom of the entire clubroom to herself.

The objections raised by Winthrop to this arrangement were of a nature so violent, so vigorous, at one moment so specious and conciliatory, and the next so abusive, that his listeners were moved by awe, but not to pity.

In his indignation, Judge Allen rose to reply, and as, the better to hear him, the crowd pushed forward, Fred gave way before it, until he was left standing in sullen gloom upon its outer edge. In imitation of the real firemen of the great cities, the vamps of Fairport had cut a circular hole in the floor of their clubroom, and from the engine room below had reared a sliding pole of shining brass. When leaving their clubroom, it was always their pleasure to scorn the stairs and, like real firemen, slide down this pole. It had not escaped the notice of Fred, and since his entrance he had been gravitating toward it.

As the voice of the judge rose in violent objurgation, and all eyes were fixed upon him, the chauffeur crooked his leg tightly about the brass pole, and, like the devil in the pantomime, sank softly and swiftly through the floor.

The irate judge was shaking his finger in Winthrop's face.

"Don't you try to teach me no law," he shouted; "I know what I can do. Ef MY darter went gallivantin' around nights in one of them automobiles, it would serve her right to get locked up. Maybe this young woman will learn to stay at home nights with her folks. She ain't goin' to take no harm here. The constable sits up all night downstairs in the fire engine room, and that sofa's as good a place to sleep as the hotel. If you want me to let her go to the hotel, why don't you send to your folks and bail her out?"

"You know damn well why I don't," returned Winthrop. "I don't intend to give the newspapers and you and these other idiots the chance to annoy her further. This young lady's brother has been with us all day; he left us only by accident, and by forcing her to remain here alone you are acting outrageously. If you knew anything of decency, or law, you'd----"

"I know this much!" roared the justice triumphantly, pointing his spectacle-case at Miss Forbes. "I know her name ain't Lizzie Borden and yours ain't Charley Ross."

Winthrop crossed to where Miss Forbes stood in a corner. She still wore her veil, but through it, though her face was pale, she smiled at him.

His own distress was undisguised.

"I can never forgive myself," he said.

"Nonsense!" replied Miss Forbes briskly. "You were perfectly right. If we had sent for any one, it would have had to come out. Now, we'll pay the fine in the morning and get home, and no one will know anything of it excepting the family and Mr. Peabody, and they'll understand. But if I ever lay hands on my brother Sam!"--she clasped her fingers together helplessly. "To think of his leaving you to spend the night in a cell----"

Winthrop interrupted her.

"I will get one of these men to send his wife or sister over to stay with you," he said.

But Miss Forbes protested that she did not want a companion. The constable would protect her, she said, and she would sit up all night and read. She nodded at the periodicals on the club table.

"This is the only chance I may ever have," she said, "to read the 'Police Gazette'!"

"You ready there?" called the constable.

"Good-night," said Winthrop.

Under the eyes of the grinning yokels, they shook hands.

"Good-night," said the girl.

"Where's your young man?" demanded the chief of police.

"My what?" inquired Winthrop.

"The young fellow that was with you when we held you up that first time."

The constable, or the chief of police as he called himself, on the principle that if there were only one policeman he must necessarily be the chief, glanced hastily over the heads of the crowd.

"Any of you holding that shoffer?" he called.

No one was holding the chauffeur.

The chauffeur had vanished.

The cell to which the constable led Winthrop was in a corner of the cellar in which formerly coal had been stored. This corner was now fenced off with boards, and a wooden door with chain and padlock.

High in the wall, on a level with the ground, was the opening, or window, through which the coal had been dumped. This window now was barricaded with iron bars. Winthrop tested the door by shaking it, and landed a heavy kick on one of the hinges. It gave slightly, and emitted a feeble groan.

"What you tryin' to do?" demanded the constable. "That's town property."

In the light of the constable's lantern, Winthrop surveyed his cell with extreme dissatisfaction.

"I call this a cheap cell," he said.

"It's good enough for a cheap sport," returned the constable. It was so overwhelming a retort that after the constable had turned the key in the padlock, and taken himself and his lantern to the floor above, Winthrop could hear him repeating it to the volunteer firemen. They received it with delighted howls.

For an hour, on the three empty boxes that formed his bed, Winthrop sat, with his chin on his fists, planning the nameless atrocities he would inflict upon the village of Fairport. Compared to his tortures, those of Neuremberg were merely reprimands. Also he considered the particular punishment he would mete out to Sam Forbes for his desertion of his sister, and to Fred. He could not understand Fred. It was not like the chauffeur to think only of himself. Nevertheless, for abandoning Miss Forbes in the hour of need, Fred must be discharged. He had, with some regret, determined upon this discipline, when from directly over his head the voice of Fred hailed him cautiously.

"Mr. Winthrop," the voice called, "are you there?"

To Winthrop the question seemed superfluous. He jumped to his feet, and peered up into the darkness.

"Where are YOU?" he demanded.

"At the window," came the answer. "We're in the back yard. Mr. Sam wants to speak to you."

On Miss Forbes's account, Winthrop gave a gasp of relief. On his own, one of savage satisfaction.

"And _I_ want to speak to HIM!" he whispered.

The moonlight, which had been faintly shining through the iron bars of the coal chute, was eclipsed by a head and shoulders. The comfortable voice of Sam Forbes greeted him in a playful whisper.

"Hullo, Billy! You down there?"

"Where the devil did you think I was?" Winthrop answered at white heat. "Let me tell you if I was not down here I'd be punching your head."

"That's all right, Billy," Sam answered soothingly. "But I'll save you just the same. It shall never be said of Sam Forbes he deserted a comrade----"

"Stop that! Do you know," Winthrop demanded fiercely, "that your sister is a prisoner upstairs?"

"I do," replied the unfeeling brother, "but she won't be long. All the low-comedy parts are out now arranging a rescue."

"Who are? Todd and those boys?" demanded Winthrop. "They mustn't think of it! They'll only make it worse. It is impossible to get your sister out of here with those drunken firemen in the building. You must wait till they've gone home. Do you hear me?"

"Pardon ME!" returned Sam stiffly, "but this is MY relief expedition. I have sent two of the boys to hold the bridge, like Horatius, and two to guard the motors, and the others are going to entice the firemen away from the engine house."

"Entice them? How?" demanded Winthrop. "They're drunk, and they won't leave here till morning."

Outside the engine house, suspended from a heavy cross-bar, was a steel rail borrowed from a railroad track, and bent into a hoop. When hit with a sledge-hammer it proclaimed to Fairport that the "consuming element" was at large.

At the moment Winthrop asked his question, over the village of Fairport and over the bay and marshes, and far out across the Sound, the great steel bar sent forth a shuddering boom of warning.

From the room above came a wild tumult of joyous yells.

"Fire!" shrieked the vamps, "fire!"

The two men crouching by the cellar window heard the rush of feet, the engine banging and bumping across the sidewalk, its brass bell clanking crazily, the happy vamps shouting hoarse, incoherent orders.

Through the window Sam lowered a bag of tools he had taken from Winthrop's car.

"Can you open the lock with any of these?" he asked.

"I can kick it open!" yelled Winthrop joyfully. "Get to your sister, quick!"

He threw his shoulder against the door, and the staples flying before him sent him sprawling in the coal-dust. When he reached the head of the stairs, Beatrice Forbes was descending from the clubroom, and in front of the door the two cars, with their lamps unlit and numbers hidden, were panting to be free.

And in the North, reaching to the sky, rose a roaring column of flame, shameless in the pale moonlight, dragging into naked day the sleeping village, the shingled houses, the clock-face in the church steeple.

"What the devil have you done?" gasped Winthrop.

Before he answered, Sam waited until the cars were rattling to safety across the bridge.

"We have been protecting the face of nature," he shouted. "The only way to get that gang out of the engine house was to set fire to something. Tommy wanted to burn up the railroad station, because he doesn't like the New York and New Haven, and Fred was for setting fire to Judge Allen's house, because he was rude to Beatrice. But we finally formed the Village Improvement Society, organized to burn all advertising signs. You know those that stood in the marshes, and hid the view from the trains, so that you could not see the Sound. We chopped them down and put them in a pile, and poured gasolene on them, and that fire is all that is left of the pickles, fly-screens, and pills."

It was midnight when the cars drew up at the door of the house of Forbes. Anxiously waiting in the library were Mrs. Forbes and Ernest Peabody.

"At last!" cried Mrs. Forbes, smiling her relief; "we thought maybe Sam and you had decided to spend the night in New Haven."

"No," said Miss Forbes, "there WAS some talk about spending the night at Fairport, but we pushed right on."

II

THE TRESPASSERS

With a long, nervous shudder, the Scarlet Car came to a stop, and the lamps bored a round hole in the night, leaving the rest of the encircling world in a chill and silent darkness.

The lamps showed a flickering picture of a country road between high banks covered with loose stones, and overhead, a fringe of pine boughs. It looked like a colored photograph thrown from a stereopticon in a darkened theater.

From the back of the car the voice of the owner said briskly: "We will now sing that beautiful ballad entitled 'He Is Sleeping in the Yukon Vale To-night.' What are you stopping for, Fred?" he asked.

The tone of the chauffeur suggested he was again upon the defensive.

"For water, sir," he mumbled.

Miss Forbes in the front seat laughed, and her brother in the rear seat, groaned in dismay.

"Oh, for water?" said the owner cordially. "I thought maybe it was for coal."

Save a dignified silence, there was no answer to this, until there came a rolling of loose stones and the sound of a heavy body suddenly precipitated down the bank, and landing with a thump in the road.

"He didn't get the water," said the owner sadly.

"Are you hurt, Fred?" asked the girl.

The chauffeur limped in front of the lamps, appearing suddenly, like an actor stepping into the limelight.

"No, ma'am," he said. In the rays of the lamp, he unfolded a road map and scowled at it. He shook his head aggrievedly.

"There OUGHT to be a house just about here," he explained.

"There OUGHT to be a hotel and a garage, and a cold supper, just about here," said the girl cheerfully.

"That's the way with those houses," complained the owner. "They never stay where they're put. At night they go around and visit each other. Where do you think you are, Fred?"

"I think we're in that long woods, between Loon Lake and Stoughton on the Boston Pike," said the chauffeur, "and," he reiterated, "there OUGHT to be a house somewhere about here--where we get water."

"Well, get there, then, and get the water," commanded the owner.

"But I can't get there, sir, till I get the water," returned the chauffeur.

He shook out two collapsible buckets, and started down the shaft of light.

"I won't be more nor five minutes," he called.

"I'm going with him," said the girl, "I'm cold."

She stepped down from the front seat, and the owner with sudden alacrity vaulted the door and started after her.

"You coming?" he inquired of Ernest Peabody. But Ernest Peabody being soundly asleep made no reply. Winthrop turned to Sam. "Are YOU coming?" he repeated.

The tone of the invitation seemed to suggest that a refusal would not necessarily lead to a quarrel.

"I am NOT!" said the brother. "You've kept Peabody and me twelve hours in the open air, and it's past two, and we're going to sleep. You can take it from me that we are going to spend the rest of this night here in this road."

He moved his cramped joints cautiously, and stretched his legs the full width of the car.

"If you can't get plain water," he called, "get club soda."

He buried his nose in the collar of his fur coat, and the odors of camphor and raccoon skins instantly assailed him, but he only yawned luxuriously and disappeared into the coat as a turtle draws into its shell. From the woods about him the smell of the pine needles pressed upon him like a drug, and before the footsteps of his companions were lost in the silence he was asleep. But his sleep was only a review of his waking hours. Still on either hand rose flying dust clouds and twirling leaves; still on either side raced gray stone walls, telegraph poles, hills rich in autumn colors; and before him a long white road, unending, interminable, stretching out finally into a darkness lit by flashing shop-windows, like open fireplaces, by street lamps, by swinging electric globes, by the blinding searchlights of hundreds of darting trolley cars with terrifying gongs, and then a cold white mist, and again on every side, darkness, except where the four great lamps blazed a path through stretches of ghostly woods.

As the two young men slumbered, the lamps spluttered and sizzled like bacon in a frying-pan, a stone rolled noisily down the bank, a white owl, both appalled and fascinated by the dazzling eyes of the monster blocking the road, hooted, and flapped itself away. But the men in the car only shivered slightly, deep in the sleep of utter weariness.

In silence the girl and Winthrop followed the chauffeur. They had passed out of the light of the lamps, and in the autumn mist the electric torch of the owner was as ineffective as a glow-worm. The mystery of the forest fell heavily upon them. From their feet the dead leaves sent up a clean, damp odor, and on either side and overhead the giant pine trees whispered and rustled in the night wind.

"Take my coat, too," said the young man. "You'll catch cold." He spoke with authority and began to slip the loops from the big horn buttons. It was not the habit of the girl to consider her health. Nor did she permit the members of her family to show solicitude concerning it. But the anxiety of the young man, did not seem to offend her. She thanked him generously. "No; these coats are hard to walk in, and I want to walk," she exclaimed.

"I like to hear the leaves rustle when you kick them, don't you? When I was so high, I used to pretend it was wading in the surf."

The young man moved over to the gutter of the road where the leaves were deepest and kicked violently. "And the more noise you make," he said, "the more you frighten away the wild animals."

The girl shuddered in a most helpless and fascinating fashion.

"Don't!" she whispered. "I didn't mention it, but already I have seen several lions crouching behind the trees."

"Indeed?" said the young man. His tone was preoccupied. He had just kicked a rock, hidden by the leaves, and was standing on one leg.

"Do you mean you don't believe me?" asked the girl, "or is it that you are merely brave?"

"Merely brave!" exclaimed the young man. "Massachusetts is so far north for lions," he continued, "that I fancy what you saw was a grizzly bear. But I have my trusty electric torch with me, and if there is anything a bear cannot abide, it is to be pointed at by an electric torch."

"Let us pretend," cried the girl, "that we are the babes in the wood, and that we are lost."

"We don't have to pretend we're lost," said the man, "and as I remember it, the babes came to a sad end. Didn't they die, and didn't the birds bury them with leaves?"

"Sam and Mr. Peabody can be the birds," suggested the girl.

"Sam and Peabody hopping around with leaves in their teeth would look silly," objected the man, "I doubt if I could keep from laughing."

"Then," said the girl, "they can be the wicked robbers who came to kill the babes."