"Spent a week—lost a week! Good God, Dick, they ought to be held responsible. Where is she? Not one of them knows—not an effort made. She's gone, lost, been stolen, spirited away, while they've been sitting in their office, turning their d——d detectives loose on me."
"Look here, Chapman, I'm not saying you're not right, but the milk's spilled and it's no good trying to pick it up. If you'll sit down and listen to me—"
Price cut him off, leaving his post by the door to begin a distracted striding about the room:
"I couldn't stand it—when I'd got it through me I left. Then I tried to get hold of Suzanne—telephoned her, here somewhere in this place. She's half crazy, I think—I don't wonder, she's fonder of Bébita than anything in the world. She wouldn't see me, crying and moaning out that she couldn't, that she couldn't bear any more. And when I begged—I thought that she and I might arrange some combined effort, that whatever we had been we were partners now in this—she told me to come to you, that you could tell me more, that you could help." He swerved round on Ferguson, the hard passion of his glance softened to a despairing urgency, "For God's sake, do. I'm penniless, I know almost nothing except that I've got to act now, at once, before any more time is lost. Give me a hand, help me to find her."
Ferguson's voice had an element of endurance in its level tones:
"That's just what I want to do. And if you'll stop talking and let me explain, you'll see I'm on the way to do it. But it's not my help that you want, it's the other way round—I want yours."
It was almost dark and Ferguson turned on the lights. Under their thin, white radiance, the two men sat, drawn close to the open window, and Ferguson told his story. The other listened, the storm of his anger gone, his dark face growing keen and hard as he heard the plan unfolded. An hour later they parted, Price to go to Council Oaks and lie low there until the following night when he would command the fleet of motors in the chase along the Cresson Turnpike.
[CHAPTER XXVII—NIGHT ON THE CRESSON PIKE]
The night fell stifling and airless, unfortunately favorable for the kidnapers, as the sky was covered with clouds and the country wrapped in a thick darkness.
At half-past eight the roadster, with Ferguson driving, glided into the little village of North Cresson and swung out into the Cresson Turnpike. Ten minutes behind him was his touring car with Saunders, his chauffeur, at the wheel. Twenty minutes later a limousine was to strike into the pike from a road just beyond the village, and a runabout, emerging from an opposite direction, complete the chain. At the other end of the ten-mile limit Chapman Price in the black racer, was running up from the shore drive, with two satellites, one his own motor, one a hired Ford, strung out behind him.