The next moment he was telling himself that it all was a part of the joke. This girl was a consummate actress evidently, and that explained the tone of her voice. McHugh knew he always was helping maidens in distress, and he had fixed up this little game. And there was the pigeon—the replica of a bird done in iron, not even bronzed or painted, a clumsy curio in a case. There could be nothing serious about an iron pigeon. Did not the word “pigeon” mean simpleton? It did, according to the best dictionaries. That explained it, didn’t it?
So Catlin determined to go his friend McHugh one better, to carry out the girl’s orders, and, when the denouement came, to refuse to accept the joke, but to take things seriously. That would turn the trick on McHugh. Perhaps he would even get a chance to “rough up” his friend in payment for the joke.
He turned slowly and glanced around the room. At the other end of it, two women were inspecting the contents of a case that held Indian relics. “Now,” the girl beside him whispered.
He stepped inside the other room and walked swiftly to the case. There, on the top-shelf, was the clumsy iron pigeon. The case was locked, but the key was in the lock. He turned it, threw back the glass door, and reached up and clutched the foolish iron pigeon by its neck.
The door behind him slammed. He heard a gasp of fear. He whirled quickly—and before him stood Hargrove, clutching the Spanish girl by the arm.
“So—caught, eh?” Hargrove cried. “I’ll deal with you—confound you!”
He whirled the girl halfway across the room, and she crashed against the wall and moaned with pain and fear. That act was the undoing of Hargrove. Catlin was the sort of man who goes into action when he sees a woman abused. He did not stop to question now whether it was a joke or not.
Hargrove was rushing toward him. Still clutching the iron pigeon by the neck, Catlin stepped swiftly to one side. Hargrove’s face told him this was no joke. The man was purple with passion. A man of, perhaps, forty-five he was, a man with the strength that comes from close application to outdoor sports—no mean antagonist for even Roger Catlin, who was something of an athlete himself.
“So you’ll steal it, will you?” Hargrove sneered, walking nearer.
“You stole it yourself!” came from the girl in a hoarse whisper.
“Hush—you! Yes, I stole it, and I’m going to keep it! I don’t know how you learned where it was hidden, and I don’t care. But don’t think I’ll let you get away with it. You—in the devil’s garb—put it back where you found it, then sneak away!”
“Oh! No—no! We can’t fail now! It is the last chance!” There was agony in the girl’s voice as she appealed to Catlin. The thing suddenly had passed out of the realm of jokes. What the iron pigeon contained, Catlin did not know. But he had heard this man admit that he had stolen it, and he knew that the girl wanted it back and was desperate about it. He didn’t like Hargrove’s words and actions. He decided to help the girl and stand the consequences.
“I’ve taken quite a fancy to this pigeon, and I intend to keep it,” he said firmly.
Hargrove’s face grew purple with wrath again. He dashed across the room, to where various weapons were fastened against the wall. He tore down a long rapier, one that had come from France and had been used by a famous duelist, and rushed at Catlin.
Catlin acted quickly. He couldn’t come to close quarters with the other man while he held that rapier in his hand. Beneath his cloak was his Mephisto sword. It was short, and made of inferior material, being intended for masquerade purposes, and not for combat, but he felt it would serve as a guard. So, as Hargrove rushed toward him, he clutched the pigeon in his left hand, and, with his right, drew the sword and stood on guard.
The girl crept along the wall to the door, and turned the key in the lock. Hargrove had friends who might interfere, and she knew that her defender would have his hands full with Hargrove alone. “Don’t—kill him!” she was gasping. “Just—just fix him—so we can get away!”
The weapons clashed. Hargrove could fence. Rage was in his face, but he handled his weapon cautiously. Roger Catlin, too, knew how to handle a sword. And so they fought, in an apartment of a great resort hotel, with merrymakers in the adjoining rooms and hundreds of maskers in the casino below—Hargrove in correct evening attire, and Catlin in his devil’s garb—fought silently and fiercely, Hargrove enraged, Catlin calm and devoting all his energy to warding off the other’s blade.
It would be difficult to say what had caused Hargrove to tear the rapier from the wall—perhaps because it was the first thing that he had noticed when he flew into a rage. No sooner had the blades crossed than Hargrove realized what he was doing, and where he was; and knew he did not dare slay this man. He wanted the iron pigeon safe again, that was all. Knowing what Catlin did not know, he realized that he could run his adversary through the shoulder, make him helpless for an instant, recover the pigeon, then tell every one that an accident had occurred during a friendly bout with the foils. Hargrove thought Catlin other than what he was. He believed that the truth of this matter would not be given to the public—that Catlin, if wounded, would agree to the story. But Catlin did not know in what cause he fought, save that he was helping a girl who had appealed to him.
They circled about the room, the blades ringing. The girl crouched against the wall, her eyes wide, waiting. Catlin gave way continually, for he was afraid that his poor weapon would be broken off at the hilt. Back and back Hargrove pressed him, until the look of rage began to leave his face, and an expression of triumph came in its place.
Catlin found himself at a great disadvantage. He sensed that the other meant to wound him and render him helpless. But he felt that he could not fight to wound. What could he say if he struck down this man in his own rooms? What excuse could he give? He never had seen the face of the girl for whom he fought; he did not know what the iron pigeon held, whether he was doing right or wrong to help the girl purloin it. But he remembered the entreaty in her voice, and that Hargrove had admitted that he stole the pigeon. “Just fix him so we can get away,” the girl had said. There was but one way to do that—disarm Hargrove without wounding him, seize him, keep him from crying out, bind and gag him, then slip away. Once outside, he would give the iron pigeon to the girl and then disappear. Hargrove had not seen his face, and neither had the girl, and, therefore, there could be no bad consequences for him.
He ceased retreating and became the aggressor. Hargrove would not give ground. Foot to foot they fought it out, the blades flashing and ringing. Catlin knew that the girl was slipping around the room, following the wall, but dared not look to see what she was doing. He was tiring, his wrist was getting lame. He had fenced considerably in college days, but not recently, and his lack of practice was beginning to tell.
Before Hargrove’s furious onslaught he gave way again. He avoided a lunge aimed at his shoulder, and tripped on the end of his long cloak. The iron pigeon fell to the floor as he tried to recover his balance. He heard the girl cry out, and realized she had run forward and picked up the pigeon. Hargrove drove him back without mercy. On one knee, Catlin fought him off, trying to rise.
And then the thing happened which he had feared—his cheap Mephistopheles sword snapped off at the hilt and left him defenseless.
Hargrove started to recover as Catlin sprang to his feet. In an instant, Catlin knew, the rapier would pierce his flesh. Hargrove, apparently, was not the man to show courtesy to an adversary, to carry out the ideas of chivalry, and offer his foe the mate to his own weapon, which hung on the wall. He bent forward, a sneering smile on his face.
“A few days in bed—to teach you not to clash with me,” Hargrove taunted, and stepped forward swiftly. And, as swiftly, the girl moved behind him, her arm swung through the air, and the heavy iron pigeon she held crashed against Hargrove’s head behind his left ear.
“Quick! The door to the hall!” sh
e cried.
Roger Catlin sprang after her.
CHAPTER III
UNMASKED.
The girl in the Spanish costume handed Catlin the pigeon as she wrenched the door open, and he put it beneath his cloak. They were in the broad corridor in an instant, and hurrying toward the stairs. But there was excitement behind them. Hargrove, in falling, had given a cry for help. Guests had burst open the door and poured into the bedchamber from the adjoining room.
“Man dressed like devil—girl—after them!” Hargrove stammered; and, as friends aided him, others took up the chase.
Catlin and the girl turned into a cross hall, and began to run. They reached the head of the stairs, and started to descend, slowing up a little so as not to attract too much attention. On the stairs they met the cavalier.
He stepped to one side and watched them pass; then, hearing the commotion above, started to follow them. Catlin rushed the girl through the lobby and out the rear door into the gardens. “Hurry—hurry!” she gasped.
In the hotel behind them they could hear calls and cries, a general alarm. Pursuit was almost at their heels. Catlin was unable to desert the girl now. It would be better, he decided, to go with her in the automobile until they had made good their escape, and then to give her the pigeon and let her go. He could return to his hotel in the city, remove his costume, and, perhaps, escape any consequences of his theft of the pigeon and his clash with Hargrove. There was a multitude of questions he felt he had the right to ask the girl, but there was no time now.
The machine was panting at the curb. As he helped her in, the cavalier came dashing after them. “No, you don’t!” he cried, and made for Catlin.
Catlin’s fighting blood was up now. He tossed the pigeon into the auto at the girl’s feet, and whirled to meet his new foe. The combat was short and furious; the cavalier measured his length on the sidewalk, and Catlin sprang into the car. The girl was in the driver’s seat. As the others came running through the gardens, the machine started to move.
“We’ll have to go around the bay,” she said to Catlin. “Can’t risk the ferry; we might be held up there, and they’d catch us.”
She swung the car around the gardens. Behind them were cries, shouts, advice to seize other machines and start in pursuit. In an instant, almost, they were out upon the road, running between the sea and the bay through the heavy sand. The car skidded, lurched, the sand stung their faces, the sea wind whipped them, now and then spray blew on them.
Far across the bay, Catlin could see the lights of the city. He knew little of San Diego, but he did know that this road around the end of the bay was some miles in length, and that the shortest cut from Coronado to San Diego proper was by ferry. The girl was right, he decided; it would have been folly to attempt the ferry, for they would have been caught if they had had to wait for the boat.
“They’ll take the ferry and try to head us off,” the girl was saying. “Once around the bay, we’ll have to take the back streets and watch for them. Here we are by the salt works, and the road is harder and better the rest of the way in. I’m going to stop. You take the wheel and drive, please.”
She stopped the auto as she finished speaking, and they changed seats. Then she took a long auto cloak from the rear and put it on, buttoning it up over her costume, tore off her mask, and reached for a hat and veil. Catlin got a good look at her face in the moonlight. She was as pretty as he had imagined, with her dark hair falling about her face, and her dark eyes flashing.
“Your mask,” she said. “You’d better take it off now.” Catlin removed it quickly, and she looked at his face in turn. “Why, you’re not bad looking!” she said. “I had imagined you would have a—er—brutal face.”
“Why on earth should you imagine that?”
“You were supposed to be a fighting man, you know. I supposed all fighting men had sort of bulldog faces.”
“I beg your pardon! I was supposed to be a fighting man, eh? I wish you’d tell me—”
“There’s no time to talk now. Drive on. Where are your clothes? Haven’t you a coat and hat? You can’t go through with it dressed like this.”
“My clothes are at the U.S. Grant Hotel.”
“We’ll have to stop while you change. I’ll stay in the car. You can stop it on the side of the plaza opposite the hotel. And you keep the pigeon, so that if they find me they’ll not get it. They’ll scarcely dare attack either of us on the plaza. We’ll have to run the risk of getting away from them again, but there’s no other way. Hurry—start the car!”
“I’m afraid you’ve made a mistake,” he said, speaking rapidly. “When you first attracted my attention, I thought it was all a joke. I found out it wasn’t when we were in Hargrove’s apartments. I do not know you, or what you are doing, or what the pigeon contains, or what this all means—” Her cry made him stop.
“You—you were not sent?”
“My name is Roger Catlin, and I arrived from New York only this morning. I had a card for the ball—”
“But your Mephistopheles costume and—”
“The first thing I found when I went to the costumer’s,” he said.
“Oh! Oh!” There was despair in her voice.
“Tell me what it means,” he said gently.
“I can’t—I can’t!” she moaned. “But as you are a true man, do not take advantage of my mistake and desert me now. I swear to you what I am doing is righting a wrong—overcoming a scoundrel. I cannot explain now. Won’t you trust me, help me? So much depends on it. Ah, if you knew—”
“Answer one question. I am not participating in a crime?”
“I swear you are not! You are aiding me, and other women, and other men—honest women and men. You are helping right a wrong!”
“Yet I’ve already committed a theft.”
“You have helped regain what was stolen. You heard Hargrove admit it was stolen.”
“Can’t you tell me what is in the pigeon?”
“No, I cannot—now. Just trust me—won’t you do that? And help me, please. It is all for the right. A man was to be at the ball—one of our men—dressed as Mephistopheles. If any of us located what we sought, we were to call on him for aid to recover it.”
“That’s how you made the mistake?”
“Yes.”
“And what is it you wish to do now?”
“Drive to the city, dodge the people who are after us, and go to the hotel so that you can change your clothes; then drive to La Jolla, fifteen miles down the coast, to a house there, and deliver the pigeon—that is all. Help me do that, and your reward will be great. If I dared explain, you’d help me in a moment—that is, if you are the man I think you are.”
Catlin looked at her, and she met his eyes squarely. He felt that this girl could not be taking part in any enterprise outside the law. It was so absurd—stealing an iron pigeon and dashing away with it with a pack at his heels. But there was something in her voice and manner that told him it was not absurd. “I am going to trust you,” Catlin said. “And I am going to help you. I do not think I am making a mistake.”
“Thank you—thank you! And you are not—making a mistake! Oh,” she added; “I forgot to say that my name is Myra Randolph.”
He bowed, and started the car, and they flew over the road, past the great pools of the salt works, and around the bend, toward the distant city. Far behind they could see the lights of another car, but it was a question whether that car held pursuers or persons returning to the town from the hotel. Catlin got all the power possible out of the machine he was driving, and it was far from being a toy. He knew by the way the engine sang that it would take a good car to overhaul them.
They reached the outskirts of the town. “Show me which streets to take,” he said.
“We can’t take any of the main boulevards.
If they crossed by the ferry, they’ll hurry through town and come out to try to meet us. Out here they might put up a fight, but they’ll scarcely dare do it in the heart of the city. Only two or three men knew and will take part. Hargrove is the scoundrel—and I’m sure he has fooled the other men, lied to them.”
They took a side street and rushed down the long hill. No other machines were in sight. They slipped along swiftly, under huge pepper trees whose branches made arches over the road. Now they were on the paved streets, and the going was better. “I’ve a better plan,” she said. “We’ll stop at the Spreckels Theater. There is a good show tonight, and it’s about time for it to be letting out. There’ll be a jumble of machines there. Drive into the curb and leave me, and hurry to the hotel and change. The hotel is but a block and a half away, and you can go in the side door. Only you must hurry.”
“I understand,” he said.
“Turn down this street. If they’re searching for us, we’ve probably dodged them for the time being. They have perhaps hurried along the La Jolla Road and expect to stop us there. That will be the danger. But I know a back road by which we can get around them.”
He made another turning. They were on Third Street now, two blocks from D Street, where the theater was. They watched for their foes as they hurried along, the girl sitting low in the seat. They made the turning and passed the Union Building, and slowed down at the corner before the Elks’ Building and the Chamber of Commerce. The girl had guessed correctly; here was a mass of automobiles, and it was almost time for the show to be out. A minute later the scene would be one of confusion, and the girl would have a chance to escape notice.
The Adventure Novella MEGAPACK® Page 6
