“That fool detective is at the telegraph office wiring all the police in creation to look out for Arabella. You’d better not let him see you. Gadsby is a brave man by daylight!”
“If Arabella didn’t spend last night at her father’s house I know nothing about her,” said Farrington eagerly. “I have reason to assume that she did.”
She eyed him with frank distrust.
“Don’t try to bluff me! You’re mixed up in this row some way; and if you’re not careful you’ll spend the rest of your life in a large, uncomfortable penitentiary. If that man at the telegraph office wasn’t such a fool——”
“You’re not in earnest when you say Miss Banning wasn’t at home last night!” he exclaimed.
“Decidedly I am! Do you suppose we’d all be chasing over the country this morning looking for my niece and offering rewards if we knew where she is? I live on a schooner to keep away from trouble, and this is what that girl has got me into! What’s your name anyhow?”
He quickly decided against telling his name. At that moment Gadsby’s burly frame became visible across Main Street, and Farrington shot out a side door and sprinted up an alley at his best speed. He struck the railroad track at a point beyond the station where it curved through the hills, and followed it for a mile before stopping to breathe.
As he approached a highway he heard a motor and flung himself down in the grass at the side of the track. The driver of the car checked its speed and one of his companions stood up and surveyed the long stretch of track. The blue glint of gun barrels caught Farrington’s eye.
There were three men in the machine and he guiltily surmised that they were deputy sheriffs or constables looking for him. He stuck his nose into the ground and did not lift his head again until the sounds of the motor faded away in the distance. Probably no roads were safe, and even in following the railroad he might walk into an ambush.
He abandoned the ties for flight over a wooded hill. It was hard going and the underbrush slapped him savagely in the face. A higher hill tempted him and a still higher one, and he came presently to the top of a young mountain. He sat for a time on a fallen tree and considered matters. In his perturbed state of mind it seemed to him that the faint clouds of dust he saw rising in the roads below were all evidences of pursuit. He picked out familiar landmarks and judged that his flight over the hills had brought him within four miles of his home.