The Golden Age of Pulp Fiction Megapack, Volume 1, page 119
Thus we must leave him, for a while. For now the thread of our narration, like the silken cord in the Labyrinth of Crete, leads us back to the Country Club at Longmeadow, the scene, that very afternoon, of the sudden and violent rupture between the financier and Catherine Flint.
Catherine, her first indignation somewhat abated, and now vastly relieved at the realization that she indeed was free from her loveless and long-since irksome alliance with Waldron, calmly enough returned to the club-house. Head well up, and eyes defiant, she walked up the broad steps and into the office. Little cared she whether the piazza gossips—The Hammer and Anvil Club, in local slang—divined the quarrel or not. The girl felt herself immeasurably indifferent to such pettinesses as prying small talk and innuendo. Let people know, or not, as might be, she cared not a whit. Her business was her own. No wagging of tongues could one hair’s breadth disturb that splendid calm of hers.
The clerk, behind the desk, smiled and nodded at her approach.
“Please have my car brought round to the porte-cochère, at once?” she asked. “And tell Herrick to be sure there’s plenty of gas for a long run. I’m going through to New York.”
“So soon?” queried the clerk. “I’m sure your father will be disappointed, Miss Flint. He’s just wired that he’s coming out tomorrow, to spend Sunday here. He particularly asks to have you remain. See here?”
He handed her a telegram. She glanced it over, then crumpled it and tossed it into the office fire-place.
“I’m sorry,” she answered. “But I can’t stay. I must get back, to-night. I’ll telegraph father not to come. A blank, please?”
The clerk handed her one. She pondered a second, then wrote:
Dear Father:
A change of plans makes me return home at once. Please wait and see me there. I’ve something important to talk over with you.
Affectionately,
Kate.
Ordinarily people try to squeeze their message to ten words, and count and prune and count again; but not so, Catherine. For her, a telegram had never contained any space limit. It meant less to her than a post-card to you or me. Not that the girl was consciously extravagant. No, had you asked her, she would have claimed rigid economy—she rarely, for instance, paid more than a hundred dollars for a morning gown, or more than a thousand for a ball-dress. It was simply that the idea of counting words had never yet occurred to her. And so now, she complacently handed this verbose message to the clerk, who—thoroughly well-trained—understood it was to be charged on her father’s perfectly staggering monthly bill.
“Very well, Miss Flint,” said he. “I’ll send this at once. And your car will be ready for you in ten minutes—or five, if you like?”
“Ten will do, thank you,” she answered. Then she crossed to the elevator and went up to her own suite of rooms on the second floor, for her motor-coat and veils.
“Free, thank heaven!” she breathed, with infinite relief, as she stood before the tall mirror, adjusting these for the long trip. “Free from that man forever. What a narrow escape! If things hadn’t happened just as they did, and if I hadn’t had that precious insight into Wally’s character—good Lord!—catastrophe! Oh, I haven’t been so happy since I—since—why, I’ve never been so happy in all my life!
“Wally, dear boy,” she added, turning toward the window as though apostrophizing him in reality, “now we can be good friends. Now all the sham and pretense are at an end, forever. As a friend, you may be splendid. As a husband—oh, impossible!”
Lighter of heart than she had been for years, was she, with the added zest of the long spin through the beauty of the June country before her—down among the hills and cliffs, among the forests and broad valleys—down to New York again, back to the father and the home she loved better than all else in the world.
In this happy frame of mind she presently entered the low-hung, swift-motored car, settled herself on the luxurious cushions and said “Home, at once!” to Herrick.
He nodded, but did not speak. He felt, in truth, somewhat incapable of quite incoherent speech. Not having expected any service till next day, he had foregathered with others of his ilk in the servants’ bar, below-stairs, and had with wassail and good cheer very effectively put himself out of commission.
But, somewhat sobered by this quick summons, he had managed to pull together. Now, drunk though he was, he sat there at the wheel, steady enough—so long as he held on to it—and only by the redness of his face and a certain glassy look in his eye, betrayed the fact of his intoxication. The girl, busy with her farewells as the car drew up for her, had not observed him. At the last moment Van Slyke waved a foppish hand at her, and smirked adieux. She acknowledged his good-bye with a smile, so happy was she at the outcome of her golf-game; then cast a quick glance up at the club windows, fearing to see the harsh face of Wally peeping down at her in anger.
But he was nowhere to be seen; and now, with a sudden acceleration of the powerful six-cylinder engine, the big gray car moved smoothly forward. Growling in its might, it swung in a wide circle round the sweep of the drive, gathered speed and shot away down the grade toward the stone gates of the entrance, a quarter mile distant.
Presently it swerved through these, to southward. Club-house, waving handkerchiefs and all vanished from Kate’s view.
“Faster, Herrick,” she commanded, leaning forward, “I must be home by half past five.”
Again he nodded, and notched spark and throttle down. The car, leaping like a wild creature, began to hum at a swift clip along the smooth, white road toward Newburgh on the Hudson.
Thirty miles an hour the speedometer showed, then thirty-five and forty. Again the drunken chauffeur, still master of his machine despite the poison pulsing in his dazed brain, snicked the little levers further down. Forty-five, fifty, fifty-five, the figures on the dial showed.
Now the exhaust ripped in a crackling staccato, like a machine gun, as the chauffeur threw out the muffler. Behind, a long trail of dust rose, whirling in the air. Catherine, a sportswoman born, leaned back and smiled with keen pleasure, while her yellow veil, whipping sharply on the wind, let stray locks of that wonderful red-gold hair stream about her flushed face.
Thus she sped homeward, driven at a mad race by a man whose every sense was numbed and stultified by alcohol—homeward, along a road up which, far, far away, another man, keen, sober and alert, was trudging with a knapsack on his broad back, swinging a stick and whistling cheerily as he went.
Fate, that strange moulder of human destinies, what had it in store for these two, this woman and this man? This daughter of a billionaire, and this young proletarian?
Who could foresee, or, foreseeing, could believe what even now stood written on the Book of Destiny?
CHAPTER XIII.
CATASTROPHE!
For a time no danger seemed to threaten. Kate was not only fearless as a passenger, but equally intrepid at the wheel. Many a time and oft she had driven her father’s highest-powered car at dizzying speeds along worse roads than the one her machine was now following. Velocity was to her a kind of stimulant, wonderfully pleasurable; and now, realizing nothing of the truth that Herrick was badly the worse for liquor, she leaned back in the tonneau, breathed the keen slashing air with delight, and let her eyes wander over the swiftly-changing panorama of forest, valley, lake and hill that, in ever new and more radiant beauty, sped away, away, as the huge car leaped down the smooth and rushing road.
Dust and pebbles flew in the wake of the machine, as it gathered velocity. Beneath it, the highway sped like an endless white ribbon, whirling back and away with smooth rapidity. No common road, this, but one which the State authorities had very obligingly built especially for the use of millionaires’ motor cars, all through the region of country-clubs, parks, bungalows and summer-resorts dotting the west shore region of the Hudson. Let the farmer truck his produce through mud and ruts, if he would. Let the country folk drive their ramshackle buggies over rocks and stumps, if they so chose. Nothing of that sort for millionaires! No, they must have macadam and smooth, long curves, easy grades and—where the road swung high above the gleaming river—retaining walls to guard them from plunging into the palisaded abyss below.
At just such a place it was, where the road made a sharper turn than any the drunken chauffeur had reckoned on, that catastrophe leaped out to shatter the rushing car.
Only a minute before, Kate—a little uneasy now, at the truly reckless speeding of the driver, and at the daredevil way in which he was taking curves without either sounding his siren or reducing speed—had touched him on the shoulder, with a command: “Not quite so fast, Herrick! Be careful!”
His only answer had been a drunken laugh.
“Careful nothing!” he slobbered, to himself. “You wanted speed—an’ now—hc!—b’Jesus, you get—hc!—speed! I ain’t ‘fraid—are—hc!—you?”
She had not heard the words, but had divined their meaning.
“Herrick!” she commanded sharply, leaning forward. “What’s the matter with you? Obey me, do you hear? Not so fast!”
A whiff of alcoholic breath suddenly told her the truth. For a second she sat there, as though petrified, with fear now for the first time clutching at her heart.
“Stop at once!” she cried, gripping the man by the collar of his livery. “You—you’re drunk, Herrick! I—I’ll have you discharged, at once, when we get home. Stop, do you hear me? You’re not fit to drive. I’ll take the wheel myself!”
But Herrick, hopelessly under the influence of the poison, which had now produced its full effect, paid no heed.
“Y’—can’t dri’ thish car!” he muttered, in maudlin accents. “Too big—too heavy for—hc!—woman! I—I dri’ it all right, drunk or sober! Good chauffeur—good car—I know thish car! You won’t fire me—hc!—for takin’ drink or two, huh? I drive you all ri’—drive you to New York or to—hc!—Hell! Same thing, no difference, ha! ha!—I—”
A sudden blaze of rage crimsoned the girl’s face. In all her life she never had been thus spoken to. For a second she clenched her fist, as though to strike down this sodden brute there in the seat before her—a feat she would have been quite capable of. But second thought convinced her of the peril of such an act. Ahead of them a long down-grade stretched away, away, to a turn half-hidden under the arching greenery. As the car struck this slope, it leaped into ever greater speed; and now, under the erratic guidance of the lolling wretch at the wheel, it began to sway in long, unsteady curves, first toward one ditch, then the other.
Another woman would have screamed; might even have tried to jump out. But Kate was not of the hysteric sort. More practical, she.
“I’ve got to climb over into the front seat,” she realized in a flash, “and shut off the current—cut the power off—stop the car!”
On the instant, she acted. But as she arose in the tonneau, Herrick, sensing her purpose, turned toward her in the sudden rage of complete intoxication.
“Naw—naw y’ don’t!” he shouted, his face perfectly purple with fury and drink. “No woman—he!—runs this old boat while I’m aboard, see? Go on, fire me! I don’t give—damn! But you don’t run—car! Sit down! I run car—New York or Hell—no matter which! I—”
Hurtling down the slope like a runaway comet, now wholly out of control, the powerful gray car leaped madly at the turn.
Catherine, her heart sick at last with terror, caught a second’s glimpse of forest, on one hand; of a stone wall with tree-tops on some steep abyss below, just grazing it, on the other. Through these trees she saw a momentary flash of water, far beneath.
Then the leaping front wheels struck a cluster of loose pebbles, at the bend.
Wrenched from the drunkard’s grip, the steering wheel jerked sharply round.
A skidding—a crash—a cry!
Over the roadway, vacant now, floated a tenuous cloud of dust and gasoline-vapor, commingled.
In the retaining-wall at the left, a jagged gap appeared. Suddenly, far below, toward the river, a crashing detonation shattered harsh echoes from shore to shore.
Came a quick flash of light; then thick, black, greasy smoke arose, and, wafting through the treetops, drifted away on the warm wind of that late June afternoon.
A man, some quarter of a mile to southward, on the great highway, paused suddenly at sound of this explosion.
For a moment he stood there listening acutely, a knotted stick in hand, his flannel shirt, open at the throat, showing a brown and corded neck. The heavy knapsack on his shoulders seemed no burden to that rugged strength, as he stood, poised and eager, every sense centered in keen attention.
“Trouble ahead, there, by the Eternal!” he suddenly exclaimed. His eye had just caught sight of the first trailing wreaths of smoke, from up the cliff. “An auto’s gone to smash, down there, or I’m a plute!”
He needed no second thought to hurl him forward to the rescue. At a smart pace he ran, halloo’ing loudly, to tell the victims—should they still live—that help was at hand. At his right, extended the wall. At his left, a grove of sugar-maples, sparsely set, climbed a long slope, over the ridge of which the descending sun glowed warmly. Somewhat back from the road, a rough shack which served as a sugar-house for the spring sap-boiling, stood with gaping door, open to all the winds that blew. These things he noted subconsciously, as he ran.
Then, all at once, as he rounded a sharp turn, he drew up with a cry.
“Down the cliff!” he exclaimed. “Knocked the wall clean out, and plunged! Holy Mackinaw, what a smash!”
In a moment he had reached the scene of the catastrophe. His quick eye took in, almost at a glance, the skidding mark of the wheels, the ragged rent in the wall, the broken limbs of trees below.
“Some wreck!” he ejaculated, dropping his stick and throwing off his knapsack. “Hello, Hello, down there!” he loudly hailed, scrambling through the gap.
From below, no answer.
A silence, as of death, broken only by the echo of his own voice, was all that greeted his wild cry.CHAPTER XIV.
THE RESCUE.
Gabriel Armstrong leaped, rather than clambered, through the gap in the wall, and, following the track of devastation through the trees, scrambled down the steep slope that led toward the Hudson.
The forest looked as though a car of Juggernaut had passed that way. Limbs and saplings lay in confusion, larger trees showed long wounds upon their bark, and here and there pieces of metal—a gray mud-guard, a car door, a wind-shield frame, with shattered plate glass still clinging to it—lay scattered on the precipitous declivity. Beside these, hanging to a branch, Gabriel saw a gaily-striped auto robe; and, further down, a heavy, fringed shawl.
Again he shouted, holding to a tree-trunk at the very edge of a cliff of limestone, and peering far down into the abyss where the car had taken its final plunge. Still no answer. But, from below, the heavy smoke still rose. And now, peering more keenly, Armstrong caught sight of the wreck itself.
“There it is, and burning like the pit of Hell!” he exclaimed. “And—what’s that, under it? A man?”
He could not distinctly make out, so thick the foliage was. But it seemed to him that, from under the jumbled wreckage of the blazing machine, something protruded, something that suggested a human form, horribly mangled.
“Here’s where I go down this cliff, whatever happens!” decided Gabriel. And, acting on the instant, he began swinging himself down from tree to bush, from shrub to tuft of grass, clinging wherever handhold or foothold offered, digging his stout boots into every cleft and cranny of the precipice.
The height could not have been less than a hundred and fifty feet. By dint of wonderful strength and agility, and at the momentary risk of falling, himself, to almost certain death, Gabriel descended in less than ten minutes. The last quarter of the distance he practically fell, sliding at a tremendous rate, with boulders and loose earth cascading all about him in a shower.
He landed close by the flaming ruin.
“Lucky this isn’t in the autumn, in the dry season!” thought he, as he approached. “If it were, this whole cliff-side, and the woods beyond, would be a roaring furnace. Some forest-fire, all right, if the woods weren’t wet and full of sap!”
Parting the brush, he made his way as close to the car as the intense heat would let him. The gasoline-tank, he understood, had burst with the shock, and, taking fire, had wrapped the car in an Inferno of unquenchable flame. Now, the woodwork was entirely gone; and of the wheels, as the long machine lay there on its back, only a few blazing spokes were left. The steel chassis and the engine were red-hot, twisted and broken as though a giant hammer had smitten them on some Vulcanic anvil.
“There’s a few thousand dollars gone to the devil!” thought he. But his mind did not dwell on this phase of the disaster. Still he was hoping, against hope, that human life had not been dashed and roasted out, in the wreck. And again he shouted, as he worked his way to the other side of the machine—to the side which, seen from the cliff above, had seemed to show him that inert and mangled body.
All at once he stopped short, shielding his face with his hands, against the blaze.
“Good God!” he exclaimed; and involuntarily took off his cap, there in the presence of death.
That the man was dead, admitted of no question. Pinned under the heavy, glowing mass of metal, his body must already have been roasted to a char. The head could not be seen; but part of one shoulder and one arm protruded, with the coat burned off and the flesh horribly crackled; while, nearer Gabriel, a leg showed, with a regulation chauffeur’s legging, also burned to a crisp.
“Nothing for me to do, here,” said Gabriel aloud. “He’s past all human help, poor chap. I don’t imagine there can be anybody else in this wreck. I haven’t seen anybody, and nobody has answered my shouts. What’s to be done next?”
He pondered a moment, then, looking at the license plate of the machine—its enamel now half cracked off, but the numbers still legible—drew out his note-book and pencil and made a memo of the figures.
