by Jack Steele
CHAPTER XIV
A PACKAGE OF DEATH
A low, distant rumble of thunder denoted a new gathering of storm.Five minutes passed, and then the lightning flashed across thefirmament directly overhead. A crash like the splitting of the heavensfollowed, and the rain came down as if it poured through the slit.
The violence lasted hardly more than five minutes, after which thedownpour abated a little of its fury. But a steadier, quieterprecipitation continued, with the swiftly moving center of disturbancealready far across the sky.
The rain in his face, and the brisk puff of newly washed ozone in hisheavily moving lungs, aroused Garrison's struggling consciousness byslow degrees. Strange, fantastic images, old memories, weird phantoms,and wholly impossible fancies played through his brain with the dull,torturing persistency of nightmares for a time that seemed to himendless.
It was fully half an hour before he was sufficiently aroused to roll toan upright position and pass his hand before his eyes.
He was sick and weak. He could not recall what had happened. He didnot know where he was.
He was all but soaked by the rain, despite the fact that a tree withdense foliage was spread above him, and he had lain beneath protectingshrubberies. Slowly the numbness seemed to pass from his brain, likethe mist from the surface of a lake. He remembered things, as it were,in patches.
Dorothy--that was it--and something had happened.
He was stupidly aware that he was sitting on something uncomfortable--alump, perhaps a stone--but he did not move. He was waiting for hisbrain to clear. When at length he hoisted his heavy weight upon hisknees, and then staggered drunkenly to his feet, to blunder toward atree and support himself by its trunk, his normal circulation began tobe restored, and pain assailed his skull, arousing him further to hissenses.
He leaned for some time against the tree, gathering up the threads ofthe tangle. It all came back, distinct and sharp at last, and, withmemory, his strength was returning. He felt of his head, on which hishat was jammed.
The bone and the muscles at the base of the skull were sore andsensitive, but the hurt had not gone deep. He felt incapable ofthinking it out--the reasons, and all that it meant. He wondered ifhis attacker had thought to leave him dead.
Mechanically his hands sought out his pockets. He found his watch andpocketbook in place. Some weight seemed dragging at his coat. Whenhis hand went slowly to the place, he found the lump on which he hadbeen lying. He pulled it out--a cold, cylindrical affair, of metal,with a thick cord hanging from its end. Then a chill crept all thedistance down his spine.
The thing was a bomb!
Cold perspiration and a sense of horror came upon him together. Anunderlying current of thought, feebly left unfocused in his brain--athought of himself as a victim, lured to the park for this deed--becameas stinging as a blow on the cheek.
The cord on this metal engine of destruction was a fuse. The rain haddrenched it and quenched its spark of fire, doubtless at some break inthe fiber, since fuse is supposedly water-proof. Nothing but thethunder-storm had availed to save his life. He had walked into a trap,like a trusting animal, and chance alone had intervened to bring himforth alive.
His brain by now was thoroughly active. Reactionary energy rushed inupon him to sharpen all his faculties. There was nothing left of thejoyous throbbing in his veins which thoughts of his tryst with Dorothyhad engendered. He felt like the wrathful dupe of a woman's wiles, forit seemed as plain as soot on snow that Dorothy, fearing theconsequences of his recent discoveries in the Hardy case, had made thispark appointment only with this treacherous intent.
All his old, banished suspicions rushed pell-mell upon his mind, andwith them came new indications of her guilt. Her voice on thetelephone had been weak and faltering. She had chosen the park astheir meeting place, as the only available spot for such a deed. Andthen--then----
It seemed too horrible to be true, but the wound was on his head, anddeath was in his hand. It was almost impossible that anyone could haveheard their talk over the 'phone. He was left no alternative theory towork on, except that perhaps the Robinsons had managed, through somemachination, to learn that he and Dorothy were to meet at thisconvenient place.
One struggling ray of hope was thus vouchsafed him, yet he felt as ifperhaps he had already given Dorothy the benefit of too many reasonabledoubts. He could be certain of one thing only--he was thoroughlyinvolved in a mesh of crime and intrigue that had now assumed a new andpersonal menace. Hereafter he must work more for Garrison and less forromantic ideals.
Anger came to assist in restoring his strength. Far from undergoingany sense of alarm which would frighten him out of further effort toprobe to the bottom of the business, he was stubbornly determined toremain on the case till the whole thing was stripped of its secrets.
Not without a certain weakness at the knees did he make his way back tothe path.
He had no fear of lurking enemies, since those who had placed the bombin his pocket would long before have fled the scene to make an alibicomplete. The rain had ceased. Wrapping the fuse about the metalcartridge in his hand, he came beneath a lamp-post by the walk, andlooked the thing over in the light.
There was nothing much to see. A nipple of gas-pipe, with a cap oneither end, one drilled through for the insertion of the fuse,described it completely. The kink in the fuse where the rain had foundentrance to dampen the powder, was plainly to be seen.
Garrison placed the contrivance in his pocket. He pulled out hiswatch. The hour, to his amazement, was nearly ten. He realized hemust have lain a considerable time unconscious in the wet. Halting towonder what cleverness might suggest as the best possible thing to bedone, he somewhat grimly determined to proceed to Dorothy's house.
