_ CHAPTER XXIV. THE MUMMY'S LAST WARNING
Pauline had barely time to recognize in her new captors the four strange men who had attracted her attention on the train, before a bandage was drawn over her eyes, another over her mouth, and cruel, heavy hands began to bind her limbs.
As she listened to the rough voices of the men, the mystery of the "Carson & Brown" letter was entirely cleared away.
"That was easy," commented Wrentz.
"Easier than the rest of the work will be," said one.
"Shall we leave her on the floor, boss?" asked another.
"Yes, of course."
"Then I'll put a pillow under her head."
"Pillow? Why a pillow? Since when did you become tender-hearted, Rocco?"
Rocco scowled, but he made no reply.
"You don't need any pillows or Pullman cars on the way to heaven," said Wrentz with a snarling laugh.
The laugh was checked abruptly by a rap on the door. For an instant the ruffians looked at each other in alarm. There was no telling whether to open that door would be to face the drawn revolvers of detectives or only the expectant eyes of a bellboy.
There was nothing to do but to answer, however. Wrentz moved to the door.
"Who is it?" he asked.
"Your trunk, sir."
"You are the porter?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, you can leave the trunk at the door. I am too busy to be interrupted just now. But here--"
Wrentz opened the door an inch and passed a dollar bill to the porter. "I am going to need you again in a few hours," he said.
"Yes, sir; thank you, sir."
"Move the girl over behind the bed--out of range there," commanded Wrentz. Two men seized Pauline and dragged her across the room where she could not be seen through the door, which Wrentz now opened wide.
In the corridor outside stood a large trunk. Wrentz and one of the men lifted it and carried it into the room.
"Your baggage is light," said the man.
"It will be heavier in a little while. Open it."
They obeyed.
"Do you think it is large enough?" asked Wrentz.
"Large enough for what--the girl?" demanded Rocco, who had been sulking since his rebuke.
"You are shrewd, Rocco. You have guessed rightly I suppose you'll want to put a pillow in it."
"Yes, I would," said Rocco, who was the youngest of the band, "or else I would kill her first. What is the use of torture?"
Wrentz's dark fact grew even blacker as he eyed the young man.
"If you were a grown man, Rocco," he said, "instead of a soft-hearted boy, you would know that there is one form of murder that is always found out--the trunk murder. And I want to say this to you," he added with growing heat, "that if I hear one more word of rebellion from you this prisoner will be alive some hours after you have departed. Now, then, into the trunk with her."
Rocco sullenly helped the others in the grim task. The trunk, large as it was, was not deep enough to permit Pauline a sitting posture, nor long enough to prevent the painful cramping of her limbs. But she was deadened to physical pain. With the words of her doom still ringing in her ears--the calm discussion of her death--her terror was her torture. The choking gag, the cutting bonds, the stifling trunk--in which the knife of Wrentz had cut but a few air holes--these were as nothing to the agony of her spirit--the agony of a lingering journey toward a certain but mysterious end.
Pauline had been a prisoner before, had been through many and desperate dangers, but her heart had never failed her utterly until she felt the pressure of the trunk lid on her bent shoulders and heard the clamping of the locks that bound her in.
She could still hear the voices.
"I'll go down and settle my bill and send up that porter," Wrentz was saying. "Don't let him help with the trunk, except to run the elevator. You're sure your car is at the side entrance--not out in front?"
"Yes."
"I will meet you there."
Pauline had been so carefully bound that she could not stir in the trunk. As she felt it lifted and carried rapidly through the corridor to the hotel elevator she strained with all her might to make a noise --to beat with hands or feet or even with her head, the sides of the receptacle. But it was no use. She was carried through the hotel and out to the side entrance without attracting attention.
She felt the trunk lifted over the men's heads, and the whirring of an automobile told her that she was being placed in the machine.
"Well, you didn't care much for your pet room this time, Mr. Wrentz," smiled the clerk as Wrentz asked for his bill.
"Indeed I did, but a message has called me back to New York."
He paid his bill and hurried out to the big car in the back of which Pauline's trunk had been placed. Springing to the wheel, he ordered his followers in, and they drove away.
Once on suburban roads, Wrentz, either fearful of pursuit or drunk with success, began speeding.
Along the railroad tracks the noise of their speed drew a tumult of wild sounds from a string of gaily painted cars on the siding. The snarls and howls of beasts were mingled with the angry cries of men who seemed to be at work on the other side of the cars.
To Pauline the noises came faintly, but with a horrid and unearthly note. She, who had been the victim of so many cruet and fantastic plots, knew not what new danger the roaring of the beasts threatened.
In a moment, though, her mind was set at rest on this point. For Rocco, the young bandit, turning to the man next him, asked: "What does it mean? What are they doing?"
"It is a circus train," answered the man. "They are loading the beasts into the cars."
Pauline felt the machine swerve sharply and evidently take to a by-road, for she could hear the swish of leaves on overhanging branches as they brushed through.
"This place will do," she heard Wrentz say. "Now, be quick about it."
"It has come," breathed Pauline to herself. "This is the place where I am to die."
Through her mind, in piteous pageant, flashed thoughts of home, of Harry, of even Raymond Owen. There was a great loneliness in the hour of doom. But it would be over quickly. She shut her eyes tight and clenched her tied hands as the trunk was taken from the machine and placed upon the ground.
"Open it," commanded Wrentz. "I don't want her to die in there."
The men quickly unclamped the locks and lifted Pauline out.
"Take off the ropes and the bandages," ordered Wrentz.
"Take them off? Why, she'll scream," exclaimed one.
"If she does you may choke her to death in the car," replied Wrentz.
"Why not here?" asked the oldest of the men. "Didn't Mr. --"
"Hush your mouth! You confounded rascal!" Wrentz screamed. "Are you going to mention that name here?"
"What harm--as long as she is to die? Dead women tell no more tales than dead men."
"I will name all names that are to be spoken," declared Wrentz.
"Well, he of the name that is unspoken--at least he did say that we must have no delays. We want to earn our money as well as you, Louis --remember that."
"Come, come," he said. "This is no way to be arguing among friends. You'll get your money all right; but there is one thing to remember-you ain't get it except through me. So let me handle the matter. Put the girl in the car."
Pauline, although her bonds had been cut away, was unable to rise to her feet. They lifted her to her feet. She took a step or two, while they watched her curiously. Quickly strength and self-control came back to her. With a sudden spring, she struck at Wrentz with her fist, and as he drew back, astonished she darted across the roadway toward the wood.
It was but a futile, maneuver. She had gone but a few paces when she was gripped from behind and snatched back.
"You see, Louis--I told you she would do something of the kind," said the old bandit.
"And I told you it would do no harm. Place her in the car between you and Rocco. If she screams or makes a move to get away you may do as you wish, but not until then."
Pauline still struggled feebly as she was lifted into the machine. Wrentz kicked the empty trunk to the side of the byroad and took the wheel again. He drove back to the main drive that skirted the railroad.
Distant as they were by now, the clamor of the caged beasts in the circus train could still be heard. To Pauline the creatures seemed less wild and cruel than these, her human captors.
Wrentz put on even greater speed than he had ventured before. Two policemen, Burgess and Blount, of the Motorcycle Squad, were standing by their wheels in the roadway when the sound of the car's rush reached their ears from half a mile away.
"By George, that fellow's coming some," exclaimed Blount.
"And looks as if he wasn't going to stop," said the other. "Halt! Halt, there!" he commanded, as the machine flashed up in a mantle of dust.
"They are coming, Louis," said one of the men.
"I know they are. But there is no machine made that can catch this one. Have your guns ready, though. In case they begin to fire, pick them off."
Pauline shuddered at the matter-of-fact way in which Rocco and the man on the other side drew their heavy pistols from their hip pockets and rested them on their knees.
"Do you see the girl in that car?" yelled Burgess to his companion over the din of their streaking machines.
"Yes. We want that party for more than speeding, I guess," answered Blount. They bent low over their handle-bars and raced on.
"If he takes the 'S' curve like that we've got him--dead or alive," said Burgess.
"And it looks as if he would. By George, he is!"
Wrentz's car had shot suddenly out of sight around a twist in the road. Wrentz was an able driver, and, even at its terrific speed, the machine took the first turn gracefully. But Wrentz had not counted on a second shorter turn to the opposite direction. And he worked the wheel madly for a second swerve; the huge car skidded, spun round, and, reeling on two wheels for an instant, turned over in the ditch.
It was several moments before Pauline opened her eyes. She shut them quickly and staggered to her feet shuddering--she had been lying across Rocco's dead body which had broken her fall and saved her life.
Two other men lay motionless in the road. But from under the overturned car there came a sound, and Pauline realized, with quick alarm, that Wrentz was still alive. She ran across the road and into the parked woods that hid the railroad from the drive.
Wrentz struggled out from beneath the car. His eyes swept swiftly from the bodies of his dead comrades to the form of Pauline just vanishing in the thicket. He was bruised and bleeding, but with the instinct of a beast of prey he followed his quarry.
"Dead or alive was right," said Burgess, jumping from his wheel and examining the bodies in the road. "I wonder what that fellow was up to. And where is the girl?"
"I saw her and one of the men make into the park there," said Blount. "You take charge here and I'll go after them."
As he moved into the thicket in the direction Pauline had taken young Blount's attention was attracted by a new commotion. The park was on the crest of a steep cliff overlooking the railroad tracks and from the tracks came a riot of voices. Blount forced his way through the wood to a viewpoint from the cliff. Below him a score of men were moving rapidly along the tracks in wide, open order, evidently bent on some sort of a hunt.
"The circus men," said Blount to himself. "An animal must have got out. This is certainly some day for business."
He turned back to the work in hand.
Pauline, spurred by terror as she realized that Wrentz was again upon her trail, had sped like a wild thing through the park paths. She could hear the heavy footsteps of her pursuer close behind. She could hear also a shouting from afar off. She made toward the shouting-- the sound of any voice but the voices of the inhuman men who had planned her death was welcome to her ears.
She came out upon the cliff where it sloped steeply to the railroad yards, but not too steeply to prevent her descending. From her position, the lines of freight cars cut off from her vision the strange group of hunters who were shouting. Running, stumbling, creeping, clutching at small bushes, she scrambled down the cliff.
"Stop and come back!" she heard a menacing voice behind her. She sped on the faster.
A line of high bushes fringed the bottom of the cliff. Between the bushes and the first rails ran a ditch. Sheltered from all view from above, Pauline dragged herself along this ditch, seeking a hiding place. She knew her strength was almost gone. She was in terror of fainting. If she could hide somewhere and rest--
A single empty freight car stood on the outer track a hundred yards away. Its open door offered the only means of concealment that she had. She believed that the bushes were high enough still to shield her while she climbed into the car.
In this she was wrong. Wrentz, watching from above--for he was afraid of the voices on the tracks, below and had not followed Pauline --watched with pleasure as she crawled to the side of the car, and, after two failures, managed to drag herself through the high door. She sank exhausted. Gradually, however, her strength returned. Her mind recovered from the dazing experiences of the last few hours. She began to gain courage and to plan her further flight.
As she moved toward the car door to reconnoiter, the sense of an invisible presence suddenly possessed her. Instinctively she turned.
One glance behind her and every fiber of her body seemed to turn to stone. Fear she had known, but never terror such as this. She stood paralyzed, unable to close her eyes, unable to move. For there beside her, towering above her in horrible strength, with wildly grinning face and cruelly outreaching claws, stood the thing that gave explanation to the hunt outside and the shouting. Pauline was in the clutches of a gorilla. She fainted as she felt herself gripped in the hairy arms.
Wrentz was gloating as he stood on watch over Pauline's hiding place. In a little while the men, would be out of the railroad yard and he would go down and finish the work. But his rejoicings were turned into amazement by the sight which now presented itself at the door of the car.
With Pauline, carried over one arm as if she had been a wisp of straw, the gorilla was crawling down to the trackside. Wrentz saw it crawl along the ditch and heard the crunch of broken bushes as the huge creature clambered up the cliff.
Wondering, scarcely able to believe his eyes, Wrentz followed at a safe distance.
Young Policeman Blount, searching for the fugitive chauffeur of the wrecked automobile and the mysterious young woman who had escaped from it, paused at the sound of heavy foot-falls. A low, guttural, snarling sound--a sound hardly human--accompanied the footsteps. He had reached the bottom of the cliff a half mile from where Pauline had found her perilous shelter. Peering up through the bushes, his astonishment and horror were a match for the astonishment and joy of Wrentz. The gorilla, with Pauline still clutched in the mighty paw, had reached almost the top of the cliff at its steepest point.
Blount blew his whistle, blast after blast. He started up the cliff, but came back at the sound of hurrying footsteps and calls; the hunters from the railroad yards had heard the signal.
"Hello! Have you seen anything of the gorilla?" yelled the first man to come up.
Blount pointed up the cliff side to where the hideous beast was just dragging Pauline over the topmost ledge.
The men stood spell-bound with pity.
"A girl!" gasped one of them. "She's as good as dead, if she isn't dead now. He just killed our foreman back in the yards."
"No, thank heaven!" cried Blount, "she's not dead. Look!"
At the top of the cliff they saw Pauline's form suddenly quicken into life. The gorilla had released its hold upon her to make sure of its footing on the perilous ledge. Now she stood, a frail, pitiful, hopeless thing, fighting--actually assailing the beast, more mighty than a dozen men.
Their hearts sick within them they watched the brief struggle. Wrentz, too, watched it, from his hiding place on the top of the cliff. But his heart was not sick. In a moment, he was sure, his work would be accomplished for him, and his employer would be rid of Pauline Marvin in a way that could reflect no blame on any one.
Blount started up the cliff. He took it for granted that the others would follow, but looking down after gaining half the distance, he saw the circus men still huddled together in fascinated awe.
"Look! Look!" they called to him. "He's taking her up the tree."
Blount looked and saw the gorilla climbing ponderously the trunk of a large tree, the branches of which overhung the precipice. Blount climbed on frantically. He stopped again. The gorilla was crawling out upon one of the overhanging branches! The strange beast-brain had conceived a death for Pauline more terrible than any Raymond Owen bad ever plotted. Wrentz himself might have envied the gorilla.
Blount drew his revolver. He was not more than a hundred feet below them now. "It's the chance of hitting her against the chance of saving her," he muttered. He fired. With a snarl of pain the gorilla turned and bit savagely at its shoulder. Blount rushed on. He stopped again and fired. He was at the verge of the cliff. He could blaze away now with no danger of hitting Pauline, for he was a sure marksman.
With a great throb of joy in his heart the gallant young fellow saw the beast turn, and, leaving Pauline with her arms around the limb, her eyes shut against the dizzy depths below, move back and scramble down.
Blount was on the cliff-top as the gorilla reached the ground. The beast charged. Blount fired again. Again the gorilla, snarling, bit at its wounded side, but it came an as if a dozen lives vitalized the gross body.
Blount backed away from the cliff, but the monster was upon him. It clutched him, hurled him to ground, dragged him back to the dizzy verge.
Slowly Blount was pressed over the precipice. The watchers below saw him in his last struggle writhe in the deathly grasp, twist his revolver and fire three shots into the heart of the gorilla.
Down the long fall to the jagged rocks went the beast.
Pauline was bending over the bleeding, battered form of the young officer when the circus crew reached them.
"Oh, you are brave, brave!" she cried.
He opened his eyes and grinned merrily. "If I'm brave, I'd like to know what you are."
"Oh, I'm not brave, I'm nothing but a selfish little pig," cried Pauline. "I've treated the dearest fellow in the world shamefully. He's forgiven me over and over, but he won't forgive me this time."
"He'll forgive you anything, Mim," Blount assured her, "for the sake of getting you safe back. But I shouldn't like to be the man who got you into this, when he hears of it."
"The man's safe enough," said Burgess, who had just up in time to hear Blount's last words.
"No, he didn't escape that way," as Blount uttered an ejaculation of disgust. "He ran full tilt into me and when I tried to arrest him he drew his revolver on me. By good luck I got him first--yes, Jo, he's dead."
"Dead," repeated Pauline in a low tone. "How horrible to go out of life a moment after you had tried to commit murder."
"It's not his first," Burgess said coolly. "We've been after him and his gang these six months. It was Wrentz, Jo, and I made a haul of papers that'll get somebody into trouble."
"Oh, don't hurt the young one," cried Pauline. "He tried to help me."
"Rocco? He was dead when they picked him up. And, now, Miss Marvin, hadn't I better get you a taxi?"
"Yes, thank you, but," with irrepressible curiosity, "how did you know me?"
Burgess smiled. "How did I know you? I beg your pardon, Miss, but for nearly a year your picture's been in every paper, more or less, in the United States. You're a big head-liner--it's an honor to meet you, face to face. But it's Blount has all the luck. He's saved you--he'll be a head-liner himself tomorrow."
The hot color rushed over Pauline's face. "A head-liner"--so that was what she meant to the public, to the man on the street.
"Please, Please, don't let this get into the Papers," she begged. "I'll do anything in the world for you if you'll just keep it out of the papers."
"Will you tell us about those other adventures?"
Burgess asked eagerly. "It's a sure thing that somebody's been pulling the wires, making you walk the tight rope, and somebody that knows everything you do. Any man on the force who could spot him would be made."
"No, no," Pauline insisted, an uneasy remembrance of Harry's suspicions lending emphasis to her denial. "Some of those things were done before anybody out of the house could know."
"Just as I said," Burgess agreed triumphantly.
"It's somebody in the house. Why he knew about your bull terrier, and the papers had it had just been given you the day before--darned clever little dog to give your folks the clue."
"Cyrus?" Pauline's face broke into smiles and dimples. "He's the cleverest, dearest, most beautiful dog in the world."
"Fine dog, yes Miss, if he's like the picture the reporters got."
Pauline's face clouded--for the moment she had forgotten the horrors of publicity.
"You won't put this in the papers?" she pleaded.
"He shan't," Blount raised himself weakly on his elbow. "If the reporters haven't got it already, we'll keep you out of it anyhow, Miss."
"Keep a scoop like this out of the papers?" Burgess laughed aloud. "You're talking through your hat, Blount, it can't be done."
In one terrible flash Pauline saw her name in capitals, her photograph almost life-size, photographs of her trunk, the gorilla, Blount, in head-liners, too, and Harry, furious, too far away for moral suasion; stern, cold, unforgiving, worse still, disgusted. She realized as she had never realized before that Harry was what counted most, Harry was the one thing she could not live without. To the terrors of these hours was added the terror of losing him.
She burst into wild sobs.
"I want Harry, I don't want anything in the world but Harry! Oh, take me home, please take me home!"
Burgess got a taxi and went with her to the hotel, where She was put to bed, a doctor sent for, and where at last she fell asleep.
But it was not until noon the next day that she was able to take the train for New York. And then began, two hours and a half that Pauline remembered to the last hour of her life. Her photograph stared at her from the front page of every daily paper--even the glasses and thick veil she wore to conceal her identity could not soften the conspicuous pictures. Newsboys called her name, and the gorilla story, Wrentz, and Blount's names, together--every passenger in the car, it seemed to her, men, women, and children, were discussing her. There were silly jokes, contemptuous criticism, half-laughing suggestions that there was something "queer about Miss Marvin." just behind her, she heard one woman say to another, "But, then, my dear, what could you expect of any girl whose mother was an Egyptian" as if this equaled breaking the whole Decalogue.
Though she had wired Owen, the motor did not meet her, and feeling more than ever forlorn and forsaken, Pauline got into a taxi. Never had the old place looked so beautiful as today when she felt that it could never be her home again--she must tell Harry that her mother was an Egyptian and then even if he could forgive her this last adventure he would never marry her. Oh, how could she have been so silly, so conceited, so cruel to Harry! And what a fool she had been to go in search of experience in order to write. If she couldn't write with all this beauty spread out before her, if she couldn't write by living a real, human, everyday life, the sort of life that brings you close to normal people, how could she ever hope to write by living on excitement --on abnormal excitement and with abnormal people and situations?
She paid the driver and was walking slowly up the steps of the veranda, when, suddenly, she halted as if she had been struck. What was that? It couldn't be--yes, it was--funeral streamers hanging from the door-knob!
With a scream that rang through the closed door, Pauline fainted. When she recovered consciousness she was in the library. Bemis and Margaret were bending over her, and strong, tender arms were around her.
"Harry," she murmured instinctively.
"Don't try to talk, my darling, drink this. You go," to Bemis and Margaret.
"Oh, Harry, I thought you were dead."
"I'm very much alive," Harry said with a tremulous laugh.
"But Harry, what does all that black on the door mean?"
"It means," said Harry, savagely, "that though the mills of the gods grind slowly they grind surely--Owen's dead."
"Owen!" Her eyes large with terror, Blount's words ringing in her ears-- "I shouldn't like to be the man at the bottom of this when Mr. Marvin hears of it." "'Owen," she repeated in a breathless whisper.
"Harry, you didn't kill him?"
"He didn't give me the chance. He was dead when I got here--overdose of morphine Dr. Stevens said. Seems he was a drug fiend."
"Why that was the reason," Pauline said, her filling with tears. "He was crazy, he didn't know what he was doing. Poor Owen, poor Owen"-- then turned hastily to safer topics. "But I thought you went to Chicago for a week."
"I did, but, you'll laugh, Pauline--I know it sounds fool--the Mummy came to me just as she came to me in Montana. I took the first train home. I knew you were in danger--I knew it was a warning. I'll ever trust, you out of my sight again--you've got to marry me now."
Pauline shrank back from his kisses. "No, no, Harry I can't--I won't --there was a woman on the train said my mother was an Egyptian."
Harry broke into a peal of laughter and caught her in his arms.
"Is that the only reason you won't?"
"Harry, is it true?"
"I don't know and I don't care--what difference does it make who your mother was? You are you, that's all I care for." His voice shook. "I love you so, Pauline, that I can't stand this life any longer--another adventure--"
Pauline silenced him with a kiss.
"I'm all through with adventures," she declared. "Harry, I'm going to--"
"Marry me? Polly, do you mean it?"
"Yes, yes. Oh, my dearest, I've been a selfish, silly, conceited little pig, but I'm cured, I'm cured at last."
As he clasped her in his arms, the shutter swung violently to, and the case containing the Mummy fell with a clatter to the floor. Harry ran and lifted it as tenderly as if it had been a little child.
"I suppose we can hardly keep her here," he said regretfully, "but we'll give, no, I can't give her up entirely, we'll lend her to the Metropolitan Art Museum where she'll receive due honor. She's been a faithful friend to us, Polly."
"And here's another," exclaimed Pauline, as Cyrus ran frantically into the room, and leaping upon the couch with ecstatic barks of welcome, threatened again to take the place that belonged by right to Harry. But this time Harry joined in Pauline's caresses.
[THE END]
Charles Goddard's Novel: Perils of Pauline
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