Clytie’s voice rang out loud and clear above the din, followed by the crash of glass as somebody smashed against the wind-shield. This was what Maxwell heard as he stole noiselessly upon the dark car, running down a slight grade with his engine shut off. He stopped his car a rod away, and dropped silently to the ground while Harry, like a smaller shadow, dropped from the back, stole around the other side of the car, and hid in the shadows next the fence.
“What was that?” warned Clytie suddenly. “Grace, didn’t you hear something? Say, boys, we oughtta be gettin’ on. Somebody ’ll be onto our taking this car, and come after us; then it’ll be good-night for us. Don’t fool with that kid any longer. Give him a knockout, and stow him down in the bottom of the car. We can bring him to when we get to a safe place. Cheese it, there! Cheese it!”
Harry, watching alertly, saw Maxwell spring suddenly on the other side; and, stealing close with the velvet tread of a cat, he sprang to the running-board on his side, and, jumping, flung his arms tightly about the neck of the front-seat man next him, hanging back with his fingers locked around the fellow’s throat, and dragging his whole lusty young weight to the ground. There was nothing for his man to do but follow, struggling, spluttering, and trying to grasp something, till he sprawled at length upon the grass, unable, for the moment, in his bewilderment to determine just what had hold of him.
Maxwell on his side had gripped the driver, and pulled him out, not altogether sure but it might be Carey, but knowing that the best he could do was to get some one before the car started again. The unexpectedness of the attack from the outside wrought confusion and panic in the car, and gave Maxwell a moment’s vantage.
Carey was meanwhile fighting blindly like a wild man, his special antagonist being the man in the middle seat; and when he found himself suddenly relieved of the two in the front seat, he seemed to gain an almost superhuman power for the instant. Dragging and pushing, he succeeded in throwing his man out of the car upon the ground. Then before anyone knew what was happening, and amid the frightened screams of the three girls, Carey climbed over into the front seat, and, not knowing that a friend was at hand, threw in the clutch and started the car, whirling it recklessly round in the road, almost upsetting it, and shot away up the road toward the city at a terrible rate of speed, leaving Maxwell with three men on his hands and no knowledge of Harry’s presence.
The man that Carey had thrown out of the car lay crumpled in a heap, unconscious. He had broken his ankle, and would make no trouble for a while. Maxwell was not even conscious of his presence as he grappled with the driver, and finally succeeded in getting him down with hands pinioned and his knee on the man’s chest. Maxwell was an expert wrestler, and knew all the tricks, which was more than could be said of the boy who had been driving the car; but Maxwell was by no means in training, and he found himself badly winded and bruised. Lifting his head there in the darkness and wondering what he was to do with his man now he had him down, he discovered the silent form in the road but a step away. Startled, he looked about; and suddenly a gruff young voice came pluckily to him from across the ditch:
“All right, Max; I can hold this man awhile now. I’ve got the muzzle on the back of his neck.”
The form on the bank beside Harry suddenly ceased to struggle, and lay grimly still. Maxwell, astonished, but quick to take Harry’s lead, called back: “All right, sir. You haven’t got an extra rope about you, have you, man?”
“Use yer necktie, Max,” called back the boy nonchalantly. “That’s what I’m doing. There’s good strong straps under the seat in the car to make it sure. Saw ’em last week when you and I were fixing the car.”
And actually Harry, with the cold butt of his old jack-knife realistically placed at the base of his captive’s brain, was tying his man’s hands behind him with his best blue silk necktie that Cornelia had given him the day before. It seemed a terrible waste to him; but his handkerchief was in the other side-pocket, and he didn’t dare risk taking that knife in the other hand to get at it.