“Why, sir,” the chauffeur went on, “a big car picked us up half a mile this side of the hangar and followed on down to within three blocks of this place. When I drove fast, they drove fast; when I slowed up, they slowed up, too. Very strange, sir.”
“Why didn’t you investigate?” asked Havens angrily.
“You see that marble column at the corner of the building,” declared the chauffeur, pointing. “Well, I stopped once to ask questions of the chauffeur in the other car, and that marble column I’m pointing out, sir, would be just as communicative as that other chauffeur was. He only grunted when I asked questions and kept right on as before.”
Havens thanked the man for the information and went on about the business which had brought him to the city. He was busy all day with lawyers and brokers and real estate managers, and was very tired and sleepy when night fell. It had been his intention to take an afternoon train for St. Louis, but his business had not permitted of so sudden a departure from the city.
He regretted extremely that he had not arranged with the boys to wire their address in the Missouri city. However, he thought, the boys would wait at least twenty-four hours at the point selected, and this delay would enable him to overtake them by train at Denver. He was positive that he could do so if he could catch the Overland Limited at Chicago.
Eight o’clock found him sound asleep in the stateroom of a Pullman car due to start for the west in an hour. He was so tired that the noises of the station; the arrival and departure of trains; the calls of the train starters; the rattling of the couplings under vestibules, soon died away into a dull blur, and then he passed into a dreamless sleep.
His last memory was of a powerful light shining through a slender crack in the drawn blind of a stateroom window. When he awoke again the slender finger of light had become a deep red glow the size of a pail, and the perfumed air of the stateroom had, somehow, taken on the close and unsavory smell of a riverside basement.
Havens made an effort to lift his hands to his head, but found that he was unable to do so. The great red light was staring viciously into his smarting eyes so he closed them, turned his head aside, and lay for a moment in silent thought.
He had no idea as to where he was, or how, or how long ago he had been transported to that villainous place. He knew that violence had been used, for there was a trickle of moisture on his forehead which could not be the result of heat or exertion. There was a smart there, too, and so the moisture must be blood.
The air was thick and damp, bearing the odor of long confinement in filthy quarters. Opening his eyes, directly, he saw that the walls were dark, but not with paint or paper. They were stained with the mold and unsavory accumulations of many years.