McClure's Magazine/Volume 30/Number 6/The Kidnapping of Cassandra
THE fancy-dress ball at Mrs. Calmaine's Capitol Hill mansion in Denver was a charity function; and Hungerford, chief engineer of the Red Mountain Extension, had been ensnared by young Calmaine at the eleventh hour.
At first he had refused point-blank to go. It was too late to procure the proper war-paint, and it was imperative that he should leave on the midnight train; whereupon Calmaine had treacherously sunk the hook barb-deep.
"Of course, Barty, if you can't; but Cassie Wainright and her Aunt de Brutz are in town, passing through on their way west, and they’ve promised to look in for an hour or so. I thought perhaps you'd like to . . ."
Hungerford had had two dances with Miss Wainright, and they were sitting out a third on the landing of the grand stair. Miss Cassie was not in costume; but Hungerford was wearing a footman’s livery, and his partner was admiring his audacity.
"Do you know, I fairly gasped when Mrs. Calmaine brought you over," she said. "What a daringly original notion—to come as a footman in a house where there are real footmen!"
"Handsome outfit, isn't it?" he acquiesced. "Harry shanghaied me at the hotel, and I had to come as I could."
"To oblige Harry?" she asked.
His square, determined jaw cut a clean line against the lights for her when he said: "No, not at all to oblige Harry; I came because Harry said you'd be here. And you ought not to be here; if I were responsible for you"
"I know; you'd bully me, as you did last summer at El Pinto—scold me for dissipating when I ought to be resting."
He looked down upon her thoughtfully.
"You need bullying; all really lovable women do. And you are not going to get it."
Her perfect eyebrows arched themselves faintly. "Meaning Cousin Percy?" she asked, with a mocking note in her voice.
"Yes; meaning Mr. Percy de Brutz."
She made a sign of assent. "You are quite right. Cousin Percy would not bully me. He would scrupulously say ‘My dear’ in public, and bore himself with me in private like a well-bred gentleman. What more could one ask? Are we not all hopelessly conventional?"
"No; at heart, human nature is just the same as it was in that back-number century when Young Lochinvar snatched his bride out of the ball-room at Netherby Hall. I know it; you know it; we all know it."
"The idea!" she ridiculed. "I'm sure Miss Netherby shrieked properly—and doubtless made it extremely uncomfortable for young Sir Lochinvar ever afterward."
"Don’t you believe it," he insisted. "Lochinvar was a man: he saw what he needed, and reached out and took it. And if the young woman made an outcry, it was only for the sake of appearances."
"There are no Young Lochinvars nowadays," she said, half absently. "If there were"
"Go on," he commanded.
"Cousin Percy would say they were bad form," she finished.
"Always ‘Cousin Percy’! Please don't quote him to me," he begged; "it’s too new yet."
She looked down.
"Harry has told you?"
"Yes; he told me that you were to be married to your cousin at Red Mountain to-morrow."
"But you knew a year ago that"
He let his gaze go out over the heads of the charity pleasurers thronging the great reception-room below. It had begun the year-ago summer, in what Miss Wainright's fellow-guests at El Pinto Inn smiled at as a harmless vacation romance. They had all agreed that Hungerford was a fine fellow and a rising young railroad-builder; but he had his fortune to make: and Miss Wainright was of the multimillionaire De Brutzes, engaged, as everybody must know, to old Hugo de Brutz's son Percy.
"Yes," he said, after the retrospective pause, "I knew it—after you told me. Also, I know that the world is coming to an end—sometime. It is only the definite catastrophe that appals us."
"How subtly you congratulate one!" she laughed.
"Mr. Percy de Brutz is the person to be congratulated," he countered. "Is your cousin here with you?"
"No; he missed the train last night at Dolomite. He is sending his man Hobbs to escort us from Denver."
A thought white-hot from the forge of audacity flashed into Hungerford's brain. He, too, was going west on the midnight train—in state, as it happened. President Brice's private car, the Sylvia, was in Denver, and Hungerford had been directed to bring it out on the line with him. He saw what might be done: how, if the Fates were propitious, the tormenting raptures of the present moment might be prolonged for a few hours at least.
"Miss Cassie, you used to enjoy riding in my old headquarters car on the Red Mountain. Would you like to ‘own the road’ just one more time before you promise to love, honor, and behave yourself?"
She looked up quickly. "You are going on the night train, too?—in your car? But Aunt Janet and—and Hobbs?"
"Leave the details to me. Will you go as my guest if I can persuade your aunt?"
She neither consented nor refused. The orchestra had begun the next number, and she was tilting the tiny watch pinned upon her shoulder.
"This is Harry's dance, and he has forgotten it. Will you go and find him for me, Mr. Hungerford?"
He saw the watch-hands pointing to eleven-ten. Since he must go to the hotel and dress before train-time, the interval was none too long; but he did not hesitate.
"You’ll give me this last dance—and punish Harry as he deserves?" he pleaded.
She rose and dipped him a mocking curtsy.
"Who could deny the masterful Sir Lochinvar?" she jested; adding, as he led her down the steps and into the ball-room: "I feel perfectly safe—knowing that you can’t by any possibility have your fleet steed at the door."
It lacked barely the half-hour of midnight when the music paused again; and when Miss Wainright saw the time she was panic-stricken.
"Mercy! we shall miss the train! Find Aunt Janet for me instantly," she commanded; and a moment later Hungerford was acknowledging a hurried introduction to a rather martial-looking lady with the De Brutz nose and the disconcerting De Brutz manner.
"Ah, Mr. Hungerford? Harry's railroad friend, I infer; I’ve heard him speak of you, We are going west on your road to-night; you mustn’t let us get left. We shall see you later—at the train, perhaps?"
Hungerford begged his boon abruptly:
"I am going on the same train, in Mr. Brice's private car— which will be otherwise unoccupied. If you and Miss Cassie will accept the hospitality of the Sylvia"
"Why, how kind! We’ll be delighted, I’m sure. But there is Hobbs, Mr. Percy de Brutz's man. He is to meet us at the station and accompany us."
"I'll take care of Hobbs," said Hungerford; then he excused himself and hastened to find young Calmaine.
"Where’s your auto?" he demanded, finding and grappling his host in the upper corridor.
"They're both at the door, the touring-car and the runabout."
"All right; take me in the little one by way of the Brown, and let your man drive the ladies. Tell him to kill a little time, so that I can get there first. Miss Wainright and her aunt are to be my guests in the Sylvia."
"So?" queried Calmaine curiously. Then: "I'll fix it; but if chauffie is a minute or two late, you'll have to hold the train. They mustn't miss: there’s money at stake."
"How’s that?" asked Hungerford, struggling into his rain-coat.
"Eccentric old uncle and a will," explained Calmaine stenographically. "Pot of money to go to Cassie and Percy, jointly, if they marry before Cassie is twenty-one. If not, it goes to some college endowment. The old uncle wasn’t a crank—I don’t think!"
"He deserved to have to make a will," was Hungerford’s comment. "And the present haste?"
"It’s needed. Cassie will be twenty-one to-morrow."
"Humph!" snorted the engineer, following his host to the street. "Neither of them needs the legacy, I take it?"
"Not the least in the world. Here's my buggy; climb in and we'll go."
It lacked eight minutes of twelve when the runabout, having made the pause at Hungerford’s hotel, stopped at the Union Depot.
"There is the irreproachable Hobbs waiting for his charges," said Calmaine, pointing out a smug-faced man standing guard at the cab-stand. "Go and see to your car; I'll take the strain off Hobbsy."
Hungerford sprang out, and left Calmaine talking to the valet. When he came back, his host was waiting for him in the vestibule.
"Hold on, Bartley; you needn’t rush," he said. "The jig's up. Percy de Brutz got away from Dolomite on the Transcontinental, and he'll be here at twelve-two. Hobbs is waiting to tell the ladies."
Hungerford stopped like a man who has met a soft-nosed bullet in mid-rush.
"De Brutz coming?" he gasped. "Then the wedding will be here—in Denver?"
"Sure thing, you'd say—wouldn’t you?"
Hungerford shoved his hands into his pockets and took three steps toward his train. Then he came back and thrust his face into Calmaine’s.
"Harry, Miss de Brutz and Miss Wainright have both told me that they positively must make our west-bound train, and I'm not supposed to know anything different. Will you go out and kill Hobbs? or shall I?"
"I'll do it," said Calmaine promptly. "But hold on a minute. Bartley. What do you hope to gain? It's all settled. You may make them lose their million or so, but"
"Never mind; you go and kill Hobbs!"
Calmaine turned and ran out to the cab-stand, and was back almost immediately.
"It’s didded," he said tersely. "Sergeant Connolly has him in charge as a suspicious character. What next?"
"Next we’ll pray that your chauffeur gets my passengers here in time," said Hungerford. "If we leave on the dot, De Brutz will be only two minutes away."
"Then we’d better split," said Calmaine. "You get your conductor enthusiastic, and I’ll meet your fares, make Hobbs's excuses, and do the porter act."
Hungerford found Hinckley, the conductor of the Dolomite Short Line Flier, standing at the steps of the Sylvia.
"Ready to go, John?" he asked; and, when Hinckley nodded: "All right. Don’t lose a second after I give you the word. We want to miss connections with the incoming T. C., if we have to leave ahead of time."
The conductor promised, and went forward. Hungerford paced back and forth in a frenzy of impatience. Would Calmaine never show up with the women? It was one minute past twelve when Hinckley came back to say: "All set, Mr. Hungerford, when you are. The T. C. has whistled in."
Hungerford had heard the whistle, and now the headlight of the train which presumably carried Mr. Percy de Brutz was in sight. Hope was giving its final gasp when Calmaine came hurrying across the platform, luggage-laden, and leading his small procession like the father of a family.
"Chauffie overdid it; and Hobbs has made his escape from the policeman!" he gasped in an aside to Hungerford, heaving the hand-bags up to the porter on the steps of the Sylvia.
"Dear me, what a rush!" panted Miss Janet, when Calmaine and Hungerford fairly lifted her and her niece up the steps. "So good of you to wait for us, Mr. Hungerford—why, where has he gone?"
Hungerford had gone to pass the word to Hinckley, who had mysteriously disappeared. Four seconds, five, six, were lost; and the T. C. train from Dolomite was pulling in. Hungerford stopped and threw up his arms in the "go ahead" signal, on the bare chance that Hinckley might be looking. Hinckley was looking. From the head of the train came the answering signal, a lantern swung in a circle, and the wheels began to turn.
Hungerford dashed back along the line of moving cars and boarded the Sylvia. Through the windows in the rear he saw his guests on the observation-platform, and quickly joined them. He was just in time to hear Miss de Brutz say: "Bless me! what is that? It—it looks like a fight!"
The Flier was barely moving. The electric headlight of the lately arrived T. C. flooded the platforms with dazzling radiance, pricking out with startling distinctness the incident to which Miss Janet was calling attention.
Hungerford did not have to look twice. It was a fight. A smug-faced man wearing an English tourist’s cap was apparently assaulting the police. To him, running, came a neatly garmented little gentleman. side-stepping from the stream of ingoing T. C. passengers. Instantly the fight ceased; for a passing moment the little gentleman seemed to be shaking hands with the policeman. Then the two, rescuer and rescued, turned and ran neck and neck down the platform toward the outcrawling Flier.
Hungerford said something under his breath and reached for the signal-cord. The Flier's speed quickened suddenly, and Miss Cassie said sympathetically:
"Wasn't that too bad! I believe those two men were trying to catch our train."
"Yes," said Hungerford, "I'm afraid they were. There are always some members of the great family of potterers getting left. Shall we go in?"
In the central compartment the white-jacketed porter was setting out a tea-table, and Hungerford made the tea himself, calling forth encomiums from Miss Janet.
"You railroad gentlemen manage to get the best of everything," she said in genial raillery, adjusting her eye-glasses to take in the luxurious fittings of the president's car. "Brother Hugo declares that you are all pirates and robbers of the strong hand. Are you a pirate, Mr. Hungerford?"
Hungerford laughed.
"Ask Miss Cassie," he said. "She has seen me in action—with a pick-handle for my badge of authority."
"Oh, yes," recollected Miss Janet; "I had forgotten Cassie’s summer at El Pinto." And she went off upon a loosely linked chain of reminiscence which ran on unbroken until Miss Wainright said:
"You may keep Mr. Hungerford up all night, if you are cruel enough. Aunt Janet; but I’m going to bed. May I, Sir Loch—Mr. Hungerford?"
Hungerford was on his feet instantly; and when the state-room door closed upon his retiring guests the Flier had just made its first stop, and Hinckley came in with two telegrams— one, sealed, for Miss Janet de Brutz, and the other an open one for Hungerford. The latter was from Harry Calmaine:
Devil to pay, and no pitch in the kettle. De B. has chartered a special train and a clergyman, and will chase you. Doesn't know you're in it, and is wiring Aunt de B. and Miss W. to stop off at first decent hotel town.
Hungerford jammed the telegram into his pocket and spoke to Hinckley as man to man:
"There will be a special following us from Denver in a few minutes. How long will it take it to overhaul us in the ordinary run of business on this division?"
Hinckley frowned over the problem for a moment. "With our start and the Flier's fast schedule, I’d say you’d be safe in taking a four- or five-hour nap, Mr. Hungerford. I can call you if anything's due to happen."
Hungerford nodded, let the conductor go, and began to walk the floor, feeling uncomfortably like a criminal. What would Miss de Brutz say when he should finally deliver the sealed telegram—which he had carefully buttoned into an inside pocket? And—what was of vastly greater importance—what would Miss Wainright say when she learned that she had been deliberately kidnapped?
Not being able to face these unnerving questions alone and at half-past one o’clock in the morning, he flung himself into the easiest of the wicker chairs and resolutely shut his eyes- to the consequences.
He was dreaming that the special had overtaken the Flier and was telescoping the Sylvia when he awoke. But it was only the grinding of the brakes for the stop at Alpine—that and Hinckley gently shaking him.
"Daytime," said the conductor genially, "and nothing doing yet. As near as I can get it from the wires, we’ve still got eight miles to the good."
"Eight miles?" gasped Hungerford. "Why man, they’ll catch us right here!" And, the Flier had fairly stopped, he was holding an excited conference with Brockley, the superintendent at the High Mountain division station.
"No, I shouldn't dare to hold him back," said Brockley, when he had been told all that he needed to know. "He has contrived to get a ‘regardless’ order from Mr. Brice’s office, and we can’t slur that. But I'll send the Sylvia ahead of the Flier, if you say the word, giving you McBride, the best engine we have, and the right of way."
"Do it," snapped Hungerford.
Brockley gave the necessary orders: a switching—engine flew to cut out the Sylvia, and a ’phone call went to the roundhouse for the 610.
"We'll make it," said Brockley confidently. and he kept his word. The Sylvia was detached and rushed swiftly around the Flier; the coupling was made to the waiting 610; and twenty minutes later the private car was storming up the last grade on the Shunt Pass approach. Hungerford looked back. The one-car special was at that moment crawling like a black worm out of the Alpine yards—but it, also, was ahead of the Flier!
The Sylvia's guests slept late, as Hungerford had hoped they might. When the leisurely breakfast was over, the big car had descended the mountain and was rocketing smoothly down the great cañon of the Boiling Water, with the pursuing special still invisible.
After breakfast Miss Janet begged the privilege of writing some letters; and, when Hungerford had installed her at the president's desk, he suggested the observation-platform to Miss Wainright.
"Is it permitted to wish you many happy returns of the day?" he asked, when they were together under the "umbrella roof."
"Oh," she said, coloring faintly, "so Harry told you that, too, did he? Did he leave nothing at all to your imagination?"
"He didn’t need to leave that," was the quick response. "I was with you a year ago to-day—at El Pinto; you wore a bunch of my roses that had come all the way from a Denver greenhouse."
"So I did," she admitted, adding: "And to-day I am hurrying to my wedding. Is that what Harry told you?"
"Yes; isn't it true?"
"That remains to he seen," she rejoined lightly. "‘There's many a slip,’ you know. What time shall we reach Red Mountain?"
"About supper-time,"
"I thought Dolomite was the supper station."
"So it is for the Flier; hut we are—er—we’re running special, you know."
"I do know," she agreed impressively. "I turned the wrong way in the passage when I came out of my room this morning, and I saw the engine. Where is the Flier?"
"I don't know," he answered lamely. "It's—it's quite a number of miles behind us by this time, I'm sure."
"Then what train is that?" she queried, pointing backward. They had left the cañon, and had doubled a great loop that led the track, after a grade-descending detour of several miles, back to the valley of the Boiling Water. As the Sylvia curved out of the loop, another one-car train curved into it on the higher track.
"I think—I guess it must be another special," said Hungerford.
"Chasing us?" she pressed. "I fancied one of the men on the car waved to us as we passed."
Hungerford's immediate answer formed itself in sundry sharp tugs at the air-whistle cord, calling for more speed.
"It looks as if they were," he assented, for the verbal part of his reply.
"And you'll not let them catch us?"
"I don't mean to let them get near enough to tangle us in a rear-end collision."
This was in the hill country, twenty miles below Broken Arrow. An hour farther along, the prospect was wider, and the following train was frequently in sight. Miss Cassie seemed to have lost interest in it. She let Hungerford push the talk into the past, to the El Pinto summer, to her year in Europe. Later Miss de Brutz joined them, and Hungerford had the late luncheon served where they sat.
At two-ten Castle Cliff, the headquarters town of the Dolomite Short Line, was in sight a few miles ahead; and at two-twelve the Sylvia made a momentary stop at the switch and crossing where a stub from the Transcontinental—whose main track was now closely paralleling the Short Line—ran over to the coal-mines in the Burnt Hills.
Hungerford "saw his finish." By all the Medo-Persian laws of railroading, the stop of the Sylvia at Castle Cliff must be more than momentary. The train must register and take new orders for the Dolomite branch, which, with De Brutz’s train no more than five or six miles to the rear, meant failure and utter defeat.
One slender hope remained. If Brockley had wired ahead from Alpine, the Castle Cliff despatcher might let the Sylvia through to the Dolomite track without the customary division-end delay.
Things happened swiftly during the next three minutes. Hungerford, listening abstractedly to Miss Janet's description of her ascent of the Rigi, saw the De Brutz train stop at the T. C. crossing-switch, and, though he could scarcely believe his own eyes, saw it swerve to the right and hasten with increasing speed around the great curve that led across to the T. C. main line.
"Excuse me," he said abruptly, and sprang to the side-rail to look out ahead. In a flash he comprehended. Brockley had wired the urgencies to Castle Cliff. The distance, home, and station semaphores were all wagging the Sylvia the "clear track" signal, and in the yard the switching crews were repeating it with vigorous and emphatic arm-wavings.
ln spite of his triumphant joy, Hungerford could not help admiring the quick wit of his rival. De Brutz had evidently seen the signals, had interpreted them correctly, and had struck out a new plan of campaign on the spur of the moment. The Transcontinental’s branch paralleled the Short Line's all the way to Dolomite. De Brutz would get orders on the other line, and try to outrun the Sylvia to the gold-camp.
"My-oh!" exclaimed Miss Cassie, when the private car tore through the Castle Cliff yard and took the branch curve at a speed that made the wheel-flanges shriek, "don’t we stop anywhere any more? If this were one of the other centuries, and you were a chief of the Clan Ranald instead of a Sheffield graduate, I should be tempted to believe that you were running away with us," she laughed. And then: "Why, there comes that other train, and it's on the other track! Do you suppose it is trying to beat us to Dolomite?"
Miss Janet had gone in, and he could scowl unrestrained. "I’m afraid it is."
She laid a hand on his arm. "Are you going to let it?" she asked.
He looked her squarely in the eyes. The moment had come when his ridiculously romantic house of hope must fall to pieces.
"That is for you to say," he began gravely; "and, before you say, I must tell you"
"I don't like to be beaten," she interrupted. "If you let that odious train get to Dolomite before we do"
He rose at once. "I’m going forward to the engine," he said. "We'll beat that train to Dolomite, and then I’ll come back to you and take what's owing to me."
In the cab of the 610 he took the throttle himself, and sent the outworn McBride to stretch himself on the fireman's box. Mile after mile the quickening wheels spurned the rails, and at Betterman's, Hungerford, lying far out of the cab-window, could see nothing of the pursuing train.
ln the yards at Dolomite he was on his own division. McGlasher, his yard-foreman, climbed to the cab as he was slowing for the stop.
"Ye can go sthraight on to Red Mountain if ye like, Misther Hungerford," said the big Irishman. "The worrd come from Castle Cliff to give you the clear thrack, an’ the sivin-thirty's ready to skidoo wid ye."
"All right," said Hungerford; then, "There’s a special following over the T. C., Mike, and"
"Was, ye mane," cut in the yard-master. "’Tis broke down, ut is—at Bettherman's. The wire came to the j’int yard-office two minutes ago. ’Tis grea-at joy we’re all wishin’ ye, Misther Hungerford"; and the quick-witted Irishman dropped off.
Hungerford rode the first thirty miles on the Extension in the cab of the 730, getting off finally at Elroyo to go back and take his punishment. As he was boarding the Sylvia, the telegraph operator ran out with a message for Miss Wainright, and he took it absently.
Miss de Brutz was dozing comfortably in one of the drawing-room wicker chairs, and he was careful not to disturb her as he passed out to the observation-platform.
"Back at last?" said Miss Cassie cheerfully, shutting her magazine on her finger. "I had quite given you up. Have we outrun the other train—for keeps?"
"We have; and now I am ready to take my medicine," he replied soberly. "Do you know what I have done? I have deliberately kidnapped you; I have taken you by force from the man you have promised to marry; I have caused you to lose the chance of saving your uncle’s legacy. Oh, you needn’t say a word! I know how it must appear to you—as the act of a frantic madman. But I am mad-with love for you, Cassie. You let me go too far—last summer—before you told me."
She was looking up at him with an unfathomable light in her eyes.
"You are the clumsiest plotter!" she declared. "Do you suppose I didn’t know? Percy wired me yesterday at Denver that he was coming; and, besides, I saw him and Hobbs trying to catch our train last night. And this afternoon, when his train passed ours on the great curve up in the valley, I saw him and a—a clergyman, I think it must have been, on the platform of their car."
Hungerford dropped into the camp-chair beside her. He was well over his depth now.
"You—you knew all this, and you didn’t interfere?" he gasped.
"No," she said; and now the embarrassment was hers. "I know what Percy was coming for: he doesn't care so very much for me, but he does hate to see Uncle Seth’s money go to the colleges. I knew he would try to make me change my mind at the last moment, and I"
"To change your mind?" he stammered. "Then you had broken off your engagement?"
"Long ago," she said simply. "Harry was merely jumping at conclusions when he told you I was on my way to my wedding with Percy. You see, he had taxed me with it, and I hadn't denied it; that was all. Percy had cabled me that it would be necessary for us to appear together before the probate judge in Red Mountain,—so there wouldn’t be any fight about Uncle Seth's will, you know—and that is why we were hurrying so."
Hungerford was still floundering, but the water was not quite as deep as it had been.
"Harry jumped at that conclusion," he said slowly; "I wonder if he jumped at any more. He said you would lose the legacy if you didn’t marry your cousin before you are twenty-one."
She laughed softly.
"He merely got that one twisted a little. I lose it if I'm not married—to some one—before I am twenty-one."
Hungerford shut his eyes and tried to gather himself for a last despairing assault on the barriers.
"Married—to some one," he was saying inanely; and then he realized that Miss Wainright had taken her telegram from his hand and was reading it. Her laugh rang sweet and clear.
"Of all things!" she said; and then she handed the telegram back to him, open.
It was from De Brutz, and it was dated at Dolomite:
Don't be silly and lose all that money. If Hungerford is the man, well and good. Have him stop train at Ariposa till Father Billy and I can catch up. You have three hours yet before you are twenty-one.
Hungerford sprang up and reached for the whistle-cord.
"What are you going to do?" she asked quickly.
"I’m going to signal the engineer to stop the Sylvia at Ariposa," he rejoined masterfully, quite sure of himself once more.
"Really?" she queried mockingly, rising to stand beside him. "What makes you think I'd let you do such a thing as that, Mr. Young-Lochinvar Hungerford? Isn't it about time to drop the curtain on the little comedy?"
"No," he retorted, sheer audacity coming once more to the rescue. "What I have I hold, and what has been given to me I keep. You love me—you know you do; and I'll—I’ll never let you go!"
"Wooh!" she shuddered, yielding in well-simulated helplessness to the strong arm that encircled her. "I—I think it's Miss Netherby’s time to scream. Listen and perhaps you'll hear her]? And she reached up and pulled the whistle-cord herself.