“But we can’t have her seeing us!”
“We can’t help that. It is dark; she won’t see your face. Let us be gone. We must have been watched, or how could that man have found us out? Ralph! Don’t you understand? You must do something.”
“Where’s this spy you gab of? I’ll—”
“This is not the Mexican border. You can’t shoot here. The man is not the point, but the girl. She must be gotten away at once.”
“Nothing easier. Off, now to the hotel, and be ready in half an hour. I’ll bring the car around.”
Rachel Craik wanted no further discussion. She reached the Maples Inn in a flurry of little runs. Before the door she saw two glaring lights, the lamps of Carshaw’s automobile. It was not far from eleven. Even as she approached the hotel, Carshaw got in and drove down the street. He drew up on a patch of grass by the roadside at the end of the lane behind the church. Soon after this he heard a clock strike eleven.
His eyes peered down the darkness of the lane to see Winifred coming, as she had promised. It was still drizzling slightly—the night was heavy, stagnant and silent. Winifred did not come, and Carshaw’s brows puckered with care and foreboding. A quarter of an hour passed, but no light tread gladdened his ear. Fairfield lay fast asleep.
Carshaw could no longer sit still. He paced restlessly about the wet grass to ease his anxious heart. And so another quarter of an hour wore slowly. Then the sound of a fast-moving car broke the silence. Down the road a pair of dragon-eyes blazed. The car came like the chariots of Sennacherib, in reckless flight. Soon it was upon him. He drew back out of the road toward his own racer.
Though rather surprised at this urgent flight he had no suspicion that Winifred might be the cause of it. As the car dashed past he clearly saw on the front seat two men, and in the tonneau he made out the forms of two women. The faces of any of the quartet were wholly merged in speed and the night, but some white object fluttered in the swirl of air and fell forlornly in the road, dropping swiftly in its final plunge, like a stricken bird. He darted forward and picked up a lady’s handkerchief. Then he knew! Winifred was being reft from him again. He leaped to his own car, started the engine, turned with reckless haste, and in a few seconds was hot in chase.