by Talbot Mundy
Thereafter Sherry “stepped on her” in real earnest. But the luck was still with Wahl. A bent nail punctured one of Sherry’s rear tires, and he lost six more minutes changing rims — made clumsy by darkness and his own impatience. By the time he had finished that job he knew by consulting his watch and figuring the mileage that it was a serious question whether he could catch Wahl before he reached the Mansfield cabin; the last twenty miles would be rough going over narrow dirt roads, on which high speed would be impossible. To make matters worse, he began to drive into a fog.
But that was not so good for Wahl’s prospects as might appear.
Like father, like son; Sherry Mansfield was a fighter, the main difference being that Sherry had more compunctions to begin with. Once determined to fight, Sherry would have to be knocked out and killed before the other side could safely claim a victory. And he was no bull-headed combatant, however keen; he used every ounce of energy the engine could be made to give and took all chances at curves and corners, but the back of his mind was busy planning what to do to Wahl in the likely event of his failing to overtake him.
One thing he knew he would do. If Wahl should reach cabin ahead of him, he would stop and cut the telephone wire somewhere on the last half-mile where it was looped from tree to tree beside the track. Then, though Wahl might identify Jacqueline, he could not phone the information to the Tribune. And after that:
“Well: I’ll beat him up, that’s all! He’s yellow. His sort always are. I bet I can lick the enthusiasm out of him!”
But Wahl’s enthusiasm was of a type beyond Sherry’s comprehension. The lone hunt suited him perfectly. He liked the fog; it made it difficult. He preferred things the way they were — would not have missed that chase into the mountains for a month’s pay. It turned the story into an epic. As he drove, his brain shaped headlines — coining phrases, with which to slander his victim without risk of libel suits.
“Lanier girl hiding in the mountains! — No, that’s not strong enough. Lanier girl takes to the woods — that’s better! Sub-head — caught in police net, slips through the fog and is brought to bay by Tribune reporter! That’s a good one! Gee! I’ll get a story from her! I’ll scare the living lights out of her! Taken in Mansfield’s cabin of all places! We’ll have to alibi that — cabin in the mountains is enough — nobody’s business whose cabin it was. Soon as I’ve identified her positively, I’ll phone the Tribune to O.K. what I’ve written, and then dictate ’em a follow-up over the wire. Hope it isn’t one of those cursed party lines. That’s not likely, though. Mansfield’s sure to have had a private wire put in.”
He had a keen sense of direction, sharpened by long experience in hunting down elusive victims of his pen. He drove with a road map pinned open on his knees, where he could just see it in the faint light from the dashboard, and he took the right turnings at top speed in the dark and the thickening mist with an almost unerring instinct, only slowing three or four times to read signboards by the way — until at last, near midnight, he came to a sandy road marked deeply by the wheels of one car, and only one, that had gone up recently. Then he knew he was on the right scent, and laughed aloud.
There was a man standing in the dark near that corner, who heard the laugh, and talked of it for many days afterward.
Wahl had no more sense of duty than the hound that hunts a leveret — or the wolf at the heels of a doe. His mind had pictured Jacqueline as something to destroy. The harder she fought for seclusion, the keener his zest to unearth her and strip her naked with his brain and pen. That was what life consisted in. For what was talent, if you did not use it? The public was not his taskmaster, it was his audience, that it delighted him to entertain — his paymaster, yes; the donor of rewards, yes; contributor of applause, as was fitting. In one sense Wahl was an amateur; he craved the laurels far more than his pay. As a man runs a race, he strove to outdo all competitors with the meaty, juicy scandals he brought to light, and colored with the touch of genius.
He felt more satisfaction in rounding up Jacqueline, and bringing her to bay as he intended to describe it, than some men would feel in winning thousands on a horse-race. If there had been no cruelty in his performance, two-thirds of the zest would have been gone.
“Take off the law, and there’d be bull-fights in a week, playing to standing room only. The public wants to see ’em suffer! Nine-tenths of slumming’s for the sake of the thrill they get out of seeing kids go hungry! Hell — I know the public. I’ve got a good one for ’em this time! Let’s hope she makes a scene and tries to scratch my eyes out! What sells newspapers is what sells books — Gibbon, for instance — Rabelais — accounts of women and children torn in the arena — salacious stuff — and the censorship makes it easier — you can suggest things without saying ’em — tickle imagination — and ho! watch the public gloat!”
He neither worshiped nor despised the public, any more than a hyena does the other ghouls that it consorts with. Morals did not enter into it; he had no conception of them, other than as standards used by the public for destroying other people. He prided himself, on always having taken good care to have a thoroughly sound moral basis from which to attack his victims.
“But lord! I never had such a good one as this. She’s perfect! Brains enough to be a red-hot vamp, and not enough sense to be a hypocrite! Didn’t even shed crocodile’s tears, with two lovers shot dead in her own bedroom! She’s a hot one! Damn this road! Are we never going to get there?”
The sandy track had narrowed until there was room for only one car, and a high bank on the right shut off the moonlight. As he followed a curve rather warily up a steep incline Wahl’s lights projected at a tangent from the road, their milky whiteness lost among rocks and trees. He leaned forward close to the windshield, keeping his eyes on the edge of the track at the left, slowing more and more, feeling his way — when suddenly his eyes were blinded by the fierce lights of Miro’s returning limousine coming downhill noiselessly, following its own ruts in the sand, its driver taking the curve at thirty miles an hour without a suspicion that any other car would be on that road at that hour.
Wahl tried to sound his horn, but it did not answer the button. There was just time — possibly just room if he hugged the outside edge. But the wheels held in the rut; he had to use all his strength and step hard on the gas to force the car out of them. He cried out, but the cry was drowned in the din of his own racing engine and as the car jumped clear of the ruts the edge of the soft bank yielded under the sudden weight. The limousine purred by, untouched, before Wahl felt the roadster capsizing and tried to jump to save himself. He was half out of the car and half in it when it turned completely over and pinned him by the shoulders face-downward among grass and leaves. He struggled for a minute, yelling for help and then lay still.
A mile lower down Sherry Mansfield halted the limousine by waiting in mid- track for it with his lights pointing straight uphill. Yes; the driver had delivered the lady and her companion safely. He had opened up the cabin, built a fire on the hearth for the visitors and had come away. Yes, they were all right; yes, he had passed another car on his way back — had nearly collided with it.
Sherry pulled out to let him pass, and drove like fury uphill. If he could not overtake Wahl — but he must! If Wahl identified her, and could use the telephone, that cursed story would be on every breakfast-table. He would kill Wahl first!
But he was driving dead-slow because of the sand at a turn when he saw dancing flame through the fog to his left about twenty feet below the track. He would have passed, believing it a forest fire, only he suddenly remembered it was not the time of year for those, and stared again. The outline of a pair of wheels in air was unmistakable. It was a burning auto, and he got out to investigate.
In less than a minute he discovered Wahl, pinned under the side of the car, breathing, but unconscious and beginning to be scorched by the heat of the burning gasoline.
“Let him burn! Serve him right! That’s what he’ll get in hell!” Sh
erry muttered to himself, and tried at once to lift the car off Wahl’s shoulders. But he could not move it, and the heat drove him off. He rushed into the fog searching for a pole of some sort — found one — shoved it under the car — lifted it six inches — rested the end of the pole on his shoulders — and dragged Wahl clear.
“Now leave him here to rot, damn him!”
He picked Wahl up, and carried him up the bank staggering under the weight and swearing each time he caught his breath.
“Lie there, you swine, while I turn the car around, I’ll dump you at the first house on the road to Frisco, and I hope you die!”
He stooped to look at Wahl — switched on his search-light, and looked again.
“Dying, I guess. Dad-blame the luck! The brute’s got burns on him. Have to do something about those, or he’ll be gone in fifteen minutes! I wonder if she knows how to fix them! Consuelo’s sure to — old hens like her know everything! Well — it’s the only chance the devil’s got — here goes!”
He lifted Wahl again and hoisted him into his own car as carefully as he could.
“I hope you die before we get there!” he panted, climbing in beside him. “I hope you jolt to death!”
He drove awfully carefully, getting out once or twice to make sure of the best places in the road, for the fog was denser than ever; and it was about ten minutes before he saw the lights in the cabin window and turned in cautiously through the gap in the rough stone wall. Leaving Wahl in the car, he ran up the cabin steps and opened without knocking.
CHAPTER 32.
“D’you suppose we’re very wicked people?”
“There is a destiny doth shape our ends,” and destiny itself doubtless governed by intelligence whose vision comprehends the finished scheme. But the business of being shaped is often no more comfortable than a toad’s under the harrow. One may imagine that the toad resents the teeth and lacks enthusiasm for high farming.
And so Jacqueline. She had time, while John Miro’s sumptuous limousine devoured leagues of fog-wrapped road toward the mountains, to learn all over again what helplessness and dimness are, the fog and Consuelo seconding young human nature.
The fog made Consuelo nervous, and she tried to drive from the back seat, as she used to when Zeke was piloting Don Andres’ car below the levees. Jacqueline endured that for an hour, and then her own nerves began to give way under the strain.
“Be still, Consuelo! If we’re lucky, he may drive us over a precipice! I hope he will!”
That remark set Consuelo in earnest to the task of mustering herself — a stern fight, needing time. She sat with pursed lips, breathing through her nose, for fifteen minutes able to do no more than to refrain from screaming at the turns, or when headlights appeared suddenly in the fog. But no more that night did she add to Jacqueline’s burden, and it was not long before she became a very tower of strength.
The fog was a symbol of Jacqueline’s thoughts. So was the limousine. She felt that she was being swept along, even as she had been when the flood broke through the levees, by a power there was no resisting, through obscurity, toward terrors none could foresee. Was she not in a car that belonged to Desmio’s enemy? John Miro’ sky-sign blazed in her memory beside the Tribune’s golden boast of “ALL THE NEWS THE PUBLIC WANTS.” She was news — news — news again — news in her night-dress with a lover coming through the bedroom window. Only this time the lover was Sherry, and her heart ached for him; and that made it worse.
What could she do? There was nothing — nothing to do but to sit there and be bowled along — toward what? She had no notion even of where John Miro’s car was taking her, except that it was to be somewhere in the mountains. And what then? What after that, but more trouble, and more disgrace, and more awful drawings in the Sunday papers, with people reading them in curl-papers and slippers at the breakfast table?
And if Sherry should “stick to her through thick and thin,” as he had promised, and as she did not doubt he intended, there would be the ghastly knowledge that she had dragged down the man she truly loved to the hell into which destiny had plunged her.
It was worse, not better, now that Sherry had discovered her. What craziness had induced her to come to San Francisco of all places? Weren’t there other places where she and Consuelo could have scrubbed floors? Scrubbing only made your back and arms ache, whereas’ this — But even scrubbing had its mental terror. She recalled the Chinaman. Were there always people after you, whatever you did? People like Wahl and the Chinaman, hungry to sell you in the market-place as news or something worse. She did not know even now just what the Chinaman had meant, and did not want to know; but it was something hideously dreadful, that her whole being shrank from.
“Consuelo, d’you suppose we’re very wicked people, you and I?” she asked suddenly. “Why else should this happen?”
“Honey dear, there’ll be an end to it.”
“I know there will. I can’t stand it much longer.”
Consuelo racked her mind for solace, but found none to offer. She felt she was no longer in Jacqueline’s confidence. Ever since their meeting after the flood she had known there was a secret being kept from her. Dad Lawrence’s arrival on the scene, and his unexpected, unexplained friendliness had only added to the mystery. And who was the young man who had cannoned into her in the bedroom doorway at the El Toro — whom Lawrence had told to make haste by the fire-escape — and who had waited outside in the street?
Having nothing to say, she said nothing, mastering her own emotions, and waiting watchfully in the hope that Jacqueline would presently take her into confidence.
But she was no nearer to the truth when they reached the Mansfield cabin and the chauffeur set a light to the wood already piled in the great stone fireplace. Jacqueline hardly thanked the man; he belonged to John Miro, who was Desmio’s enemy, and so hers. But his going made Consuelo feel friendless and afraid, and to keep herself from hysteria she set to work to explore the cabin at once with a housekeeper’s eye for details. She knew within ten minutes where to lay her hands on everything the place contained.
But Jacqueline knew all that she wanted to know — and more — within thirty seconds after the fire leaped on the hearth. It was an extravagantly luxurious cabin, and on one wall was an oil-painting of Mansfield senior, with a gilt shield attached to the frame, and thereon the legend that the portrait was a token of esteem from the staff of the San Francisco Tribune.
So she was in Mansfield’s house — his guest!
Well — she would not trouble him long; she would be gone by morning. She would go now, only she felt so tired. And at last she was able to be glad about something; she was in the mountains; there would be caves, or a forest she could hide in. She was glad she had seen Mansfield and had called him names. Perhaps she would leave a note for him on the table before she went away forever, telling him things she had forgotten to say to his face.
She did not think of him as Sherry’s father just then, but as a dragon that she had faced in its lair, and that had turned out to be only a coward and a bully after all. She despised him. She felt no longer in the least afraid of him.
But tired — no, not tired — crushed, and almost dead, with no desire to go on living. The world was an awful place, with nothing in it but cruelty. Even her own love for Sherry was a cruel thing, because it would inevitably ruin him, and she wished she had disguised her real feelings when he made love to her in the barn, so that she might have saved him from what must follow.
She wished she might love him without his loving her, because then only she would suffer. But what was the use of wishing? She lay down on the couch before the fire and tried to go to sleep and forget everything.
But Consuelo had found things to eat, and came and warmed them at the fire, and it was useless to try to forget with Consuelo at your elbow urging you to take stuff from a spoon— “so that you’ll feel strong again, honey.” She did not want to feel strong, and was not strong enough to resist. But even so, she did
not eat the stuff, for she spilt it when the door burst open and she saw Sherry framed against the night.
She did not feel glad to see him, although her heart leaped. She felt too weak and tired to endure a scene with him, and to send him away forever as she knew she must do. But life seemed to be just one cruelty after another; and she supposed she must stand up and face it. However, Sherry only flashed one glance at her, as if to make sure she was there, and then made one of his abrupt remarks, to Consuelo, not to her:
“Come out here and lend a hand, please.”
No explanation — hardly a pause before he had disappeared again, leaving the door wide open and the mist pouring in. Consuelo ran to slam the door with an exclamation of disgust — caught sight of something — exclaimed “Heavens and earth, what next!” — and disappeared too. Jacqueline was too tired even to feel curious, but got off the couch; and about two minutes after that Sherry and Consuelo came staggering up the steps carrying a man between them. They laid the man on the couch and Jacqueline looked at him. It was Wahl.
“Found him under a burning auto. He’ll die if he’s not seen to,” announced Sherry, and then turned to Jacqueline, as if all that were Consuelo’s business. He tried to take Jacqueline’s hand, but she snatched it away, seizing on Wahl as the excuse. Anything — anything to postpone argument.
“Burns! Burns!” cried Consuelo, running for the bathroom, where she knew there were medicines in a cupboard. She came back with arnica, and then found a bedsheet and tore it into strips. “Scissors!” she demanded. “I can’t find any.”
