CHAPTER XIX

AN OUTLAW IN FACT

Now at this particular moment John Ryder wished to be detained less than ever before in his life. He had but half an hour in the clear to reach the Barr railroad station in any case. White and Ruth had already got a good start of him. As far as he knew there might not be another train to New York over the main line until night; and surely not on the branch from Pinewood until nine o'clock.

Sheriff or no sheriff, he made a break for the door of the hotel. The officer ran with him and there was a squabble right in the foyer.

"You can't do this, Mr. Ryder!" exclaimed the deputy sheriff. "You're arrested!"

"I'll show you what I can do!" declared John Ryder with emphasis, and swung for the officer's jaw. The blow landed and it did him good. Not the sheriff, but Ryder himself.

This quarrel took his mind for the moment off the thoughts that had nearly crazed him. He burst through the door, banged it in the sheriff's face, and ran for the inlet.

Before he reached the waterside he heard the hue and cry behind him. But there was at least one boatman alert.

"Dodging a board bill, Mister?" exclaimed this individual. "Well! I wouldn't wonder if they'll all be doing that. They tell me they shut off the heat and lights on you all last night. Gimme two dollars and I'll put you across."

Here was a fellow just as crooked as John Ryder needed at that moment, and the latter leaped into the boat which was thrust out into the tide. Down to the shore plowed the deputy sheriff bawling for them to come back.

"I'm deafer than an adder," said the boatman, grinning up into John Ryder's face. "What does he say?"

"He seems anxious about the weather," said John Ryder grimly. "He's got another boat. Two men in it. They'll beat you."

"Huh! Tom Crane and Andy Meyers. That old punt of theirs is like punk. If we should run into it, Mister, my prow would cut her right down to the water-line."

"An extra five dollars for you if you do it," the passenger snapped, his jaw set and ugly. "But don't pick 'em up. The tide isn't dangerous here, is it?"

"They kin near wade ashore," agreed the boatman and began to hold back that the pursuing boat would be sure to overtake them.

"Sit tight and keep your mouth shut," said the boatman. "The less said the better, as the old woman remarked when she married the deaf and dumb husban'."

The deputy sheriff, holding a handkerchief to his jaw, was shouting commands that Ryder's boatman did not in the least heed. But the latter let the other boat come right up on them.

"I'll get ye!" shouted the angry officer. "I'll jail you for this! Hi! look out, you numbskull!"

Ryder's man swerved his heavy boat around suddenly. It was aimed directly for the leaky punt. Crash! The collision half drove the officer's craft under water and she began to settle at once.

"Hi! You'll drown us!" yelled one of the other boatmen.

"Sho, you ain't nowheres near to the channel," said Ryder's man. "It ain't neck deep to shore--from where you came. You fellers kin both swim, and if the sheriff can't, let him sink. I ain't got no use for him, anyway."

Later he explained that this officer had come the week before and searched his house for liquor.

"Thought I kept a blind pig, he said," chuckled the boatman. "But I don't. Jest the same, if he'd looked down our well---- Well! if you ever come back here and want a good drink of licker, look me up. I always have enough for my friends."

Ryder took the extra pair of oars at this point and aided in rowing the boat to the other side of the inlet. He paid his helper and started for the station in a rattling old car. There was no other vehicle to be obtained. Just before they sighted the railroad he heard the train whistle.

Although he knew he could not make the train, he went on down into the town and to the station.

The two-thirteen had pulled out some time before he stepped upon the platform. John Ryder went directly to the ticket window and asked the clerk:

"You sold tickets for this last train to New York?"

"Yes, sir."

Coolly and carefully Ryder described White's appearance and that of his own wife. "I want to catch up with these people," he explained, "and I do not know whether they went on this train, or on one in the other direction."

In secret his heart was lacerated by the very words he used in describing Ruth. Yet he must learn if she had actually gone with White.

The clerk seemed to remember White clearly. The man had paced the platform constantly until the train arrived.

"Watching to see if I was following them," thought Ryder. Then aloud: "And the woman?"

"She wore a veil--one o' those auto veils. I didn't see her face. But she was the only woman who left by that train."

"Not with the man?"

"They did not appear to be together."

Ryder nodded. He had gained complete control of himself now. He wrote a long telegram to the supervisor of this division of the railroad, and the answer came so quickly that those about the railroad office were startled. A special train was ordered started from the Junction for Mr. John Ryder and would arrive about three o'clock. It would have right of way going north.

Ryder paced the platform and chewed his cigar. John B. White had paced this platform, too. Whatever White's thoughts had been, John Ryder's were as black and as terrible as ever man had meditated upon.

He knew what he would do to White if he caught him. No matter what the guilt of his wife--or the woman who had posed as his wife for a few hours--Ryder was very sure that White was the more guilty. He was as ruthless an outlaw at this moment as ever a twentieth century business man could be.

The special backed in. It stopped about ten seconds, for Ryder was the only person to board it. Then on toward the city for which the two guilty creatures he was following had bought tickets. They might have bought them for New York as a blind; but Ruth's trunks were plainly marked for that city.

A baggage car and smoker and some official's private car made up the special train. John Ryder's name was a power with the officials of this road if he cared to use it. And it was of his name that he thought, sitting shrugged down in the leather covered lounge and watching the autumn landscape fly past.

He remembered what he had tried to make his name stand for during the years he had been working up to his present business pinnacle. He came of unblemished stock. His father had been an honest man. His mother, the memory of whom had ever been an inspiration to him, had been a beautiful woman both in person and character.

He had given her ring--her wedding ring, hallowed by being worn on the finger of a pure and gentle wife--into the keeping of one who, he now believed, did not value the sacred character of the emblem.

His wife---- Well! she _was_ his wife! He had married her legally! He tried to push any other thought down.

Yet, suppose she had no right to marry him? That was the awful thought that rankled like a barbed arrow in his heart.

"Mrs. John B. White," written under the erased "Ruth Mont" on the trunk tags seemed to clinch Ryder's suspicions first aroused by White's actions and words.

Was Ruth a bigamist without having intended the crime? Had she been married in England and, for some reason, supposed her husband dead? Was there something shameful connected with this White and her association with him that had spurred her to try to hide her former marriage from Ryder.

What manner of woman was she? Was her sweetness and innocence all assumed? She had seemed to John Ryder until this terrible thing had arisen, to be good and pure--in every way a desirable character.

Of course, she might be vain. Her consideration of the offer of Sam Marks to put her on the stage might prove that frailty. An actress! Was there an explanation in that thought? Had she been acting all along? Had the story she told him on shipboard been a tissue of falsehoods? Was her apparent fondness for him born of her ability to simulate emotions and feelings that she did not really possess?

Good heavens! was it all a part of a plot, perhaps, to link his name--the name of John Ryder--with the stage career of a vaudeville actress? Was this the explanation of it all?

And what of John B. White? What of Ruth's apparent fear of him? Could any woman so assume the attitude and look of terror? On the other hand, could her appearance of loving Ryder be likewise assumed?

Suddenly there flashed into his mind the memory of how Ruth looked--what she had said, indeed--when she thought he had been taken ill in the hotel office late the previous night. He saw her again as she came madly down the hotel corridor and flung herself into his arms.

"She thought it was I who had been taken sick. That I know. My God! What mystery is here? The girl loves me--deeply, sincerely, truly. I cannot doubt it. Whether she has a right to do so or not, she _does_ love me.

"Then, why has she gone away with that man? What dreadful hold does he have upon her? Is she beside herself? Her words suggest an aberrant mind. I should be with her now. That White is a villain. And whatever his right, even if it is backed by law, shall I give up the woman I love and who loves me to any other man on earth?"

And as though in answer to this question a repetition of Miss Solomons' last observation to him flashed into John Ryder's mind:

"You're just a particular blamed fool. That's what _you_ are!"