CHAPTER XXII

RANSOM MONEY

"Behold, your house is left unto you desolate."--Matt. xxiii, 38

All through the night just passed a haggard man paced the floor of an empty nursery in his lonely home, awaiting for a message that did not come.

Whether or not he would have been cheered by the knowledge that his baby daughter was being prepared to start at daybreak on the back of a young girl, little more than a child herself, through the swamps and quagmires that lay between the Grimes farm and the river road, it is difficult to say.

It might, at least, have reassured him regarding her welfare for the moment and dispelled the haunting fear that the little one was in the hands of a fiend.

But Harris Wayne did not know. And uncertainty as to the safety and whereabouts of a loved one is always torture.

He was not rendered more tranquil by what had been learned at the hotel. The man, Grimes, had actually been seen leaving the Mansion House several days prior to the kidnapping. It was not known with whom he had visited there. Yet the script of the letter demanding ransom corresponded in part with the handwriting of the man who had registered at the hotel as Bailey.

Were the two acquainted, Wayne wondered. Were they in league together! Had his child really been turned over to the hog farmer for shelter while arrangements for ransom were pending?

Again and again he asked himself the questions. He blamed himself for not having paid the ransom at once, thus saving himself from torment and Doris from danger. He might have had her back in his arms again by now! What a fool he had been to listen to the Chief. Naturally, all the police thought about was apprehending criminals. They could not be expected to understand his feelings and emotions!

He did not know that the Chief had six children and the detectives were each fathers of families numbering from two to seven. He did not realize that it was their very love of children and their desire to protect other fathers and other children from such suffering that made them concentrate their energies upon running down the criminals.

People in great trouble are apt to be selfish. They think no trouble can possibly equal theirs and that no one can properly understand their sorrow or anxiety.

So Harris Wayne paced the floor, nursing his grief and listening, ever listening for a sound--a step on the gravel, a tap on the window, a knock at the door, a ring at the telephone--heralding a message that his child had been recovered.

His nerves were exhausted, his hands trembling, his hair disheveled. The Chief had told him that he would telephone the very instant anything new developed. Evidently nothing new had developed, for the Chief was depending upon information he hoped to gain from a sick child, unconscious and apparently at the point of death. It was nonsense from Wayne's point of view--sheer nonsense!

Morning dawned. Food was brought him but he could not eat. Still no word from the Chief. Time had gone slowly during the night. Now, the minutes seemed flying. And the time limit would expire at noon! Wayne grew desperate. He looked at his watch. Six o'clock. The Chief had said he would sleep in his office that night. All right, Wayne would see him at once and arrange to pay that ransom. He would brook no argument against it.

He ordered his car. Five minutes later it was tearing at high speed along the road to town. A few minutes more and Wayne burst in upon the Chief as he was eating his breakfast, brought in from a near-by restaurant.

"I can't stand this suspense any longer, Chief," Wayne exclaimed. "I'm going to pay that ransom. I'm on my way to the Herald office now, to insert the notice as they requested. I'll just have time to get it in before the city edition goes to press. By nine o'clock the paper will be out--perhaps a little before."

The Chief knitted his brows. For a few seconds he sat considering the matter from all angles.

"It might not prove a bad idea," he said at length. "The time is short, now; and if the boy up at Craddock's rallies enough to talk and says anything worth while we'd be able to round up the whole bunch just as they're getting ready to make the transfer and receive the ransom."

[Illustration: _Scene from Mary Pickford's Photoplay_. _Sparrow_. "WE SHALL GA-A-THER AT THE RIV-VER."]

He reached for the telephone.

"Herald office," he said, shortly. "Mr. Gavin."

When the connection was given he wasted no words nor time. "Hello, Jimmie," he exclaimed, in greeting the editor. "This is Adams, over at Headquarters. Paper gone to press yet?--Well, hold it a minute. I've got to get a notice in.--No, don't change your make-up. Just run a big head across the front page. It'll sell the paper. Here it is: 'Wayne agrees to meet kidnapper's terms.' That's all, now. Not another word or you'll queer the whole deal. As soon as the story is ready I'll give it to you and you can get out an extra. Make a display of that, now, and rush the paper onto the streets, will you? All right. Thanks. Good-by."

He hung up the receiver and turned to Wayne. "Now, that's done," he said. "As soon as the bank's open you can go over and draw the money. Meanwhile, pull up a chair and have a cup of coffee. There's plenty here, and it's good."

He got another cup out of a locker and poured some of the coffee for Wayne who, now that the agreement to pay the ransom was made, found himself able to relax sufficiently to drink it. Had he known that his little daughter was at that moment perched on the limb of a tree, in the depth of a swamp, absorbed in the enjoyment of a drink of milk, served in a bottle that had once contained corn liquor while her companions breakfasted on raw potatoes, his own enjoyment of the coffee would have been sadly marred.

Within an hour the Herald's big headline was being shouted on the streets by the newsboys. And within half an hour thereafter the same car that had waited near the Help-U Gas Station on the night of the kidnapping was dashing along the old pike in the direction of the private thoroughfare which led to the Grimes estate. Bill Swazey was at the wheel. Bailey sat beside him.

"Boat ready?" asked the latter.

"Fine shape," returned Swazey.

"If Grimes fetches the kid quick we'll be able to get there and have the engine going nicely before Wayne's due at the pier," said Bailey.

"I got word to Louis. He's already there," Swazey announced.

"So far, so good," declared Bailey. "Now what we want to do, is this. After Wayne has paid over the money and sits down on the bench on the pier, we get into the automobile, see, where this fellow Grimes and Louis will already be, and we reach out and put the kid down on the ground where Wayne can see her, but he'll not dare make a move toward her until our car gets out of sight. But we don't go with the car, see? We step right out the other door and through the bushes onto the boat. If Wayne has any police following him, they'll take after this car. When they overhaul it,--which they won't, for Louis knows his business--there won't be anyone in it that Wayne can identify. This fellow Grimes won't talk--I've got his grand all ready to slip him as we duck through the car--and Louis, when he does talk, will have a story that will pull him through anything. Now all we have to do is get the child and step on the gas on the way back."

But even then Swazey was stepping on the gas in a manner that made their progress over the Grimes' private roadway decidedly precarious. As they neared the formidable gate they slowed down and honked fiercely for admittance. There was no response. Bailey muttered oaths and cursed Grimes for a fool. Swazey sent forth another powerful blast of the horn. Finally Bailey sprang out and rang the bell which swung above the gate. It clattered and clanged with a fury that told Grimes it would be dangerous to ignore its summons.

"Hit's th' police," he told Maria, "but they won't find nawthin'. I've cleaned out th' loft. Now you'all keep yore mouths shet or yo' know whut'll happen. Reach me thet ax."

Maria handed him the ax. Then he strode off, across the yard, and chopped open the gate.

Bailey, annoyed by the delay and the necessity of making such a noise to announce their arrival was in no mood for listening to apologies or explanations even if Grimes had attempted to make any. But the latter's surprise upon seeing Bailey instead of the police so paralyzed his tongue that he could not have spoken had he tried.

"The child--where is it?" demanded Bailey, after he had cursed Grimes roundly and called him all the unpleasant names he could think of at the moment. "Come on, speak up. We can't lose time. Where's the child?"

Then Peter regained his voice. He smiled ingratiatingly. "Hit's all right," he drawled. "Thar hain't a mite o' evidence. I heered how things was a-goin', an' I 'lowed ter git hit outen th' way ter day but thet danged gal, Mollie, lit out airly this mornin' takin' th' Wayne young-un with her."

He did not mention that she had also taken a dozen other children beyond his reach. What he said, however, was sufficiently startling. Bailey fairly shouted. His former oaths were as nothing.

"Gone!" he exclaimed. "Where? When?"

"Inter th' bog. This mornin' 'fore sun-up. They're prob'ly mired by now."

Bailey knew nothing of the death gripping tendencies of the bog that lay so close to the farmer's house. He started toward it. "Then we must get them out," he shouted. "Is that them, out there," pointing to what seemed to be moving figures far in the distance.

Grimes chuckled.

"Thar hain't nawthin' on earth thet kin git 'em out," he drawled, as if the statement were a most delectable morsel.

"Then I'll raise hell and get them out," thundered Bailey, "and you'll go after them, yourself. We've got to get back to the crossroads ahead of Wayne and we've got to have the child. He's coming to pay the ransom!"

It was Peter's turn to rave. He did so, handsomely. Then he explained and demonstrated the impossibility of crossing the bog after the fleeing children.

"How en hell they ever got acrost, beats me," he told Bailey. "Thet thar Mollie's plumb bewitched er sumpin'. She doan know nawthin' 'bout whar she's a-headin', but ef she keeps on a-goin' th' way she is now, she's bound ter come out some'eres aroun th' river road, not fur frum th' cross-roads. Hit's one chanst in a million."

"That'll suit us," exclaimed Bailey, making flying leaps toward the automobile, which Swazey had already headed in the opposite direction. "Step on her, Bill."

But they had forgotten Grimes.

"Hey, whut erbout my thousand dollars?" he cried, springing upon the running board, with an agility never before attained by his twisted limbs. Bailey not replying, and the car going too fast for the door to be unfastened to permit him to enter, the farmer continued to cling to the running board from which, by way of retaliation upon Bailey, he roared back to where Maria and Ambrose stood in the open gateway:

"Hyar, you-uns, don't stand thar a-gawpin. run--Sic th' dawg on them young-uns--Let 'im chaw 'em up!"