Even Bemis's constitutional aversion to haste was overridden. He sped into the hall, calling to the valet, as Harry picked up a telephone.
"Hello, this is H. B. Marvin. I want our private car attached to the
Chicago flyer," he said. "No matter if it holds up the flyer, I'll
have President Grigsby's authorization in your hands in five minutes.
Thank you. Goodbye."
As he reached the door of the machine, a messenger boy turned up the steps. Harry called to him, took the telegram and read Mrs. Haines' message: "Pauline kidnapped; come at once."
With a muffled ejaculation, he dropped the slip of paper and sprang into the car, which in ten minutes pulled up to the station just as the disgruntled, but curious trainmen were coupling the luxurious Marvinia to the eighteen-hour express.
Owen coming quietly down the steps of the Marvin house, picked up the telegram which Harry had let fall. Reading it, he smiled, and he was still smiling when another messenger boy followed him to the door. Owen took the second message and the smile broadened into an ugly grin as he read:
"Raymond Owen Fifth avenue, New York. All's well.
Hicks."
Five days after the disappearance of Pauline, the express stopped again at Rockvale station. As Harry swung from the rear step to the dingy platform, there were many curious eyes to observe his arrival, but the watchers were mostly women and children. The men of Rockvale were still out on the long hunt for Pauline.
Harry hurried first to the station telephone. Sikes had got Mrs. Haines on the wire as soon as the smoke of the express had been sighted ten miles away. But all she could tell Harry was that there was nothing to tell. His lips were set in a hard line as he hung up the receiver. He asked a few hasty questions of Sikes, hurried across to the little hotel, paid for a room and hired a horse. Blankets and provisions strapped behind, he was out and away up the road to the mountains within an hour.
And while he urged his sturdy little mount to better speed on his uncharted journey, Pauline, not twenty miles away, was preparing for the last journey she might ever make.
The blow had fallen. Her royal place, her immortal power had vanished.