CHAPTER XIV

THE KIDNAPPING

"If the goodman of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched and would not have suffered his home to be broken up."--Matt. xxiv, 43

Bill Swazey, the gentleman who wore a plaid suit, brilliant stick pin and sneakers was not a detective. Had anyone mistaken him for one he would have considered himself insulted. In fact, he loathed the word, detective. Yet the report which Mr. Swazey submitted to his superior, registered at the Mansion House as "W. J. Bailey, Phila.," might easily have been mistaken for the report of an operative to his chief. It read:

"Re: Wayne. (Harris A.)--BZ. reports:

"House about four miles out. Large. White. Pillared entrance. Yard. Trees. Shrubbery. French Windows. Good get-a-way. Nursery, second floor, over library, east side. Fruit tree near with convenient ladder. Classy servants. Child three years old. Name, Doris. Mother dead. Nurse in charge.

"Housemaid recently married chauffeur. Received check from Wayne for wedding present. Servants plan private blow-out to-night to celebrate the affair. Wayne will address War Veterans at regimental rally in town. After child's abed nurse will go down stairs to attend wedding banquet. Zero hour, 9 P.M. Little Billie on the job. Park car, engine running, cedar clump, east side. Don't fail. If it rains, all the better."

Bailey found the "memo" waiting for him when he asked for his mail at the hotel. It was in a sealed envelope. The clerk said a small colored boy had brought it. Bailey thanked the clerk and withdrew to the privacy of his room to read the missive. After doing so he leaned back in his chair and puffed vigorously at his cigar.

At last, he was about to even up his score with Harris Wayne. The thought pleased him. It made his lip draw back from his teeth, and brought his mustache down over it with an expression so sinister and revengeful that if Harris Wayne, formerly of the United States Marine Corps, had seen it, he would have been tempted to kick Mr. Bailey a good deal harder than he had kicked him the day he found him appropriating another marine's wallet in a Y.M.C.A. hut in France.

"I told Wayne then I'd make him pay for it, and now he's going to do it," exclaimed Bailey aloud, bringing the legs of his chair down to the floor with an emphatic thud. "He made me lose money that day, damn him! That leatherneck was bumped off two hours afterward and somebody else got the dough. I've waited years for this chance. Wayne didn't hesitate to turn me over to the M.P.'s. Now it's my turn."

He paced the floor a few times then put on his hat and went out to a public telephone booth. The number he called was located in a city some little distance away. When given the connection he spoke briefly.

"Hello, Louis. This is Jim. Is the car ready?--All right, send her down right away. Don't bring her into town. Hold her at the edge of the woods just beyond the tobacco patch north of the Help-U Gas Station. I'll meet you there around seven o'clock. Watch out, now. If anything goes blooey you'll be out of luck."

The day that little Stephen made his forlorn exit from Peter Grimes' farm was also the day of the regimental reunion of war veterans at the county seat.

Harris Wayne was not a member of that regiment but he had a brilliant over seas' record and, moreover, was the wealthiest and most influential land owner in that section of the country. As a matter of courtesy and also because of his personal popularity he had been invited to address the assembly after their banquet that evening.

The veterans who extended the invitation were unaware that for Wayne the day was fraught with sad and bitter memories that made his participation in any gala occasion painful and his interest forced. On that day, only two short years before, his wife, the beautiful young mother of his little Doris, had sacrificed her life to save another's child from drowning. She had loved little children. It had been her dream to rear a large family. She had proved how great was her love but she had left behind her only one child--a little girl, less than a year old.

The bereft father idolized the child but his heart ached with grief and loneliness. The loss of his bride and the shattering of all their bright dreams of the future was to the young veteran a more terrible wound than any he had endured in France. Except for little Doris he would have given way to complete despair. She, too, mourned for the lovely lady whose caresses were so tender and who murmured such loving words.

But little Doris' mother would never come to her again. She would have to be happy now in the nurse's arms. Choking back his own sobs Harris Wayne told this to the child again and again. Doris could not understand. She did not want the nurse. She wanted her mother.

No one but Wayne, himself, could comfort her. He was compelled, therefore, to devote himself to her childish moods. As a result there had grown up between the two such a bond of sympathy and affection that now, when Doris was nearly three years old, he lived solely for her and was uneasy every minute she was out of his sight.

"She is all alone there in that great house," he would say when chided about his nervousness. "It is not as if she had brothers and sisters to play with and grow up among. It is unnatural for a child to thrive in solitude, cared for only by servants. She must have the companionship of someone not a hireling; one who is actuated by love, not gold."

But the thought of marrying again and supplying his darling with a step-mother was repugnant. The memory of his shattered romance and lost bride was too keen and poignant, for one thing, and for another he was afraid, for Doris' sake. The woman he chose might not possess those deep maternal instincts that would make Doris happy and transform the solitude of that great mansion into a children's paradise. So Harris Wayne did not re-marry, and the nurse said little Doris was spoiled.

"Oh, the child is safe enough," the nurse remarked in reply to the butler's question when she appeared in the servant's dining room that evening to partake of the wedding feast. "She was just falling asleep. She thinks I've gone to fetch her a glass of milk."

"There's a storm coming," announced the chauffeur-bridegroom. "I hope that banquet keeps up so late Mr. Wayne will 'phone me not to come for him. I don't like driving in a thunder storm."

But Harris Wayne also disliked motoring during a thunder storm. When he mentioned to the chairman of the program that he would like to get home, if possible, before the storm broke, a change in the order of speeches was immediately made to suit his convenience and a motor car placed at his disposal.

Thus it happened that Harris Wayne was being driven rapidly in the direction of his home when the terrific thunder storm that had been brewing all day broke in its full intensity.

Ever since leaving his home that evening after kissing Doris good night he had been haunted by a strange foreboding, a sense of impending disaster. There were moments when he seemed to hear a voice warning him to watch for something. What it was he must watch for he could not determine. No sooner had he arrived at the banquet and dismissed his chauffeur, telling the latter he would telephone him when to return, than he had again been conscious of the voice, or influence or whatever it was, this time urging him to go home--home--hurry home.

It was this mysterious warning and not mere dislike of a thunder storm that had impelled him to make his request of the committee chairman. And now, as he rode on through the black night with the thunder crashing about him and the lightning blinding his eyes, even with the curtains of the car drawn, he could hear, it seemed, but one word:

"Hurry--Hurry--Hurry!"

Wayne felt as if he were again on the battlefield, struggling to save a wounded comrade's life. He clinched his fists and, for a moment, closed his eyes.

"Oh, God," he groaned, "whatever it is, let me get there in time!"

The car tore up the driveway like a mad thing and stopped at the great, porticoed entrance of the old, colonial house where several generations of Wayne's had lived.

The servants, laughing and dancing to radio music heard it above their own din.

"Mr. Wayne has come," said the butler, and vanished swiftly in the direction of the entrance hall to meet his master.

"Thank the Lord, I don't have to go out again to-night!" exclaimed the chauffeur kissing his bride.

"Oh, my heavens!" cried the nurse, disappearing like a flash up the rear stairway.

The cook chuckled. "If Mr. Wayne gets to the nursery before she does, there'll be hell to pay."

"Rufus will delay him in the hall. That'll give her time," answered the bride. Rufus was the butler.

Then they heard the nurse shriek.

It was a penetrating, hysterical shriek such as a woman utters when she comes face to face with a burglar or finds the house afire. It was not repeated. Just that one, wild, amazed outcry that echoed through every room in the house and into the grounds beyond.

Harris Wayne heard it as he was handing his hat to Rufus and asking if everything was all right at the house. The chauffeur who had driven Wayne home and who had been told to drive on around to the garage and wait until the storm was over, heard it and wondered what calamity had occurred. Then, thinking discretion the better part of valor, decided not to wait but quickly turned his car and started back toward town. As he left the driveway he thought he saw a low, dark racing car scud silently out from behind a group of cedars and off into the night in an easterly direction. He, himself, was going north.

Almost as the shriek sounded, Wayne mounted the stairs in two bounds, the butler following. The nursery door stood wide and the nurse, speechless for the moment, was gesticulating frantically from the baby's empty crib to the open window through which the rain was beating and the ends of a ladder extended.

"What is it? Did she fall?" cried the alarmed father, passing the bewildered nurse and striving to peer out the window. "Who put this ladder up here? Where's Doris--the baby?"

Then the nurse got her breath. With a trembling finger she pointed toward the bed.

"Gone!" she gasped. "She was there--sleeping--when I left--" She commenced to sob.

"When you left?" repeated Wayne, questioningly, with difficulty restraining himself from taking hold of the nurse and shaking some information out of her. "Where were you? Weren't you here? Where's the baby, I say?"

Unable, unwilling to sense the fact that the child had been stolen, he looked from the nurse to the butler for an answer.

"I only went to get her a drink of milk," faltered the nurse.

"But you said she was asleep," interrupted Wayne. "There's something wrong here. You're not telling me the truth." Like a flash came a recollection of the permission he had given for the chauffeur's wedding feast. "Were you down in the dining room?" he thundered. "Was the baby left here alone?"

The nurse burst into tears.

Wayne turned to the butler.

"What about it, Wilkins? Was she down there? Tell me the truth or I'll choke it out of you."

The butler knew better than to refuse.

"Yes sir," he said, "for just a short time, sir."

"That will do. That's all I want to know. The baby was here alone. Anna ran in when she heard me come. She found the baby gone--stolen. You don't know whether it was done before the storm or afterward. Am I right?"

The words came like a rain of bullets.

They both nodded, helplessly.

"Yes sir. It couldn't have been very long ago, sir," commenced the butler, "for Anna only came--"

He caught a glimpse of the cold fire in his employer's eyes and paused, trembling, lest he, himself, be cast bodily out of the open window, through which the baby had been taken.

"Get out of the room--Get out of my sight before I kill you," shouted Wayne as he sprang toward the telephone. "Call James--get the gardners--everybody--search the grounds. Never mind the rain--turn on the lights--raise the devil--but find the man who's got my baby or I'll break every one of your necks." Then, getting an answer to his violent rattling of the hook on the telephone, he shouted to the operator:

"Call the chief of police--Send men and detectives to Harris Wayne's and drive like hell. Baby kidnapped. Five thousand dollars reward--"

The receiver dropped limply from his hand, his body lurched heavily to one side and his head drooped forward upon the table. For the first time in his life Harris Wayne had fainted.