A reward of 100,000 francs for the arrest of the abductors or the return of Miss Garrison was offered at once by the stony-faced woman in the Avenue Louise, and detectives flew about like bees. Every city in the land was warned to be on the lookout, every village was watched, every train and station was guarded. Nine in every ten detectives maintained that she was still in Brussels, and house after house, mansion after mansion was searched.
Three days after the abduction word came from London that four men and a young woman, apparently insane, all roughly attired, had come to that city from Ostend, and had disappeared before the officials were fully cognizant of their arrival. The woman, according to the statements of men who saw her on the train, was beautiful and pale as with the sickness that promised death.
XXI. THE HOME OF THE BRIGANDS
It was past midnight, after a wild ride through the storm, when an old gentleman and his wife, with their sick daughter, boarded a fast eastbound train at Namur. Had the officers of the law known of the abduction at that hour it would have been an easy matter to discover that the loose-flowing gown which enveloped the almost unconscious, partially veiled daughter, hid a garment of silk so fine that the whole world had read columns concerning its beauty. The gray beard of the rather distinguished old man could have been removed: at a single grasp, while the wife, also veiled, wore the clothing of a man underneath the skirts. The father and mother were all attention to their unfortunate child, who looked into their faces with wide, hopeless eyes and uttered no word of complaint, no sound of pain.
At a small station some miles from the border line of the grand duchy of Luxemburg, the party left the coach and were met by a carriage in which they whirled away in the darkness that comes just before dawn. The horses flew swiftly toward the line that separates Belgium from the grand duchy, and the sun was barely above the bank of trees on the highlands in the east when the carriage of the impetuous travelers drew up in front of a picturesque roadside inn just across the boundary. The sweat-flecked horses were quickly stabled and the occupants of the vehicle were comfortably and safely quartered in a darkened room overlooking the highway.
So ill was the daughter, explained the father, that she was not to be disturbed on any account or pretext. Fatigued by the long ride from their home in the north, she was unable to continue the journey to Luxemburg until she had had a day of rest. At the big city she was to be placed in the care of the most noted of surgeons. Full of compassion, the keeper of the inn and his good wife did all in their power to carry out the wishes of the distressed father, particularly as he was free with his purse. It did not strike them as peculiar that the coachman remained at the stable closely, and that early in the day his horses were attached to the mud-covered carriage, as if ready for a start on the notice of a moment. The good man and his wife and the few peasants who were told of the suffering guest, in order that they might talk in lowered voices and refrain from disturbing noises, did not know that the “mother” of the girl sat behind the curtains of an upstairs window watching the road in both directions, a revolver on the sill.
The fact that the strange party decided to depart for Luxemburg just before nightfall did not create surprise in their simple breasts, for had not the anxious father said they would start as soon as his daughter felt equal to the journey? So eager were they to deliver her over to the great doctor who alone could save her life. With a crack of the whip and a gruff shout of farewell to the gaping stableboy who had been his companion for a day, the driver of the early morning coach whirled into the road and off toward the city of precipices. No one about the inn knew who the brief sojourners were, nor did they know whence they came. The stableboy noted the letter S blazoned on the blinds of the horses' bridles, but there were no letters on the carriage. There had been, but there was evidence that they had been unskillfully removed.
Late in the night the coachman pulled rein and a man on horseback rode up, opened the door and softly inquired after the welfare of the occupants. With a command to follow, he rode away through a narrow, uncertain wagon path. When the way became rough and dangerous, he dismounted and climbed to the boot of the cab, the coachman going to the empty saddle. Half an hour later the new coachman stopped the puffing horses in front of a great, black shadow from which, here and there, lights beamed cheerfully. From the back of the vehicle the two men unstrapped the heavy steamer trunk which had come all the way from Brussels with the party, and then the doors of the big shadow opened and closed behind Dorothy Garrison and her captors. So skillfully and so audaciously were the plans of the abductors carried out that when Miss Garrison entered a room set apart for her in the great house, after passing through long, grotesque and ill-lighted corridors, she found an open trunk full of garments she had expected to wear on her wedding journey!
A trim and pretty English maid entered the room the instant it was vacated by the gray-bearded man and the tall person who had posed as his wife. While Dorothy sat like a statue, gazing upon her, the young woman lighted other candles in the apartment and then came to the side of the mute, wretched newcomer.