Корнелл Вулрич - Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 50, No. 5, October 10, 1936

After three or four minutes the battle was won. Three of the enemy were unconscious and one was dead. And Bill Bridgeman had a bullet in his left arm.

I suppose twenty shots were fired during the battle and enough noise was made to wake the dead.

”Disarm these yeggs and leave them,” commanded Dick. “Ah!” He turned as man rushed into the room gun in hand.

“If it ain’t Jake!” exclaimed Dick. “Stick ’em up, Jake.”

Jake, true to the gunman code, fired, but my right foot had got into action. I kicked the revolver out of his hand and Dick floored him by bringing his fist with the automatic in it against his temple.

“Can you travel, Bill?” he demanded.

“This ain’t anything,” replied Bill, but he grimaced with pain.

Dick was plunging down the garage stairs. We followed. We raced across the grounds and up to the front door of the house. The ground floor was all lighted up.

Dick was thumping on the front door with the pistol. “Open up,” he roared. The door did not open. Dick fired a shot through the glass panel beside the door. The glass made a horrid jangling sound.

“Open up or I’ll burn the house down,” he bellowed. We heard a chain being dropped and the big door flew open. In the hallway stood two men, fully dressed, an old man and a middle-aged one. A butler was there. On the stairs were two half-dressed women servants.

“What’s the meaning of this outrage?” cried the middle-aged man furiously. “How dare you break in here? Who are you?”

I thrust my gun against his middle. “Where’s Steve Steele?” I demanded savagely.

“He’s dead, you fool. Put up that weapon. What do you want — money?”

Dick had the old man by one arm. “You’re coming with us,” he shouted.

“I’ll be gosh blamed jiggered if I am,” cried the old fellow. “Leggo me. If I had my rifle—”

Dick was dragging him, protesting, toward the door.

“Dick,” I pleaded, “we have to find Steve.”

“We’ve no time to search the house,” he shouted back. “We’ve our ace right here. They’ll have to release Steve.”

“Up those stairs,” Jim Bridgeman commanded of the butler, who scampered up in great haste.

“You, too,” I growled to the secretary, for that, obviously, was who he was.

“I tell you, you’re mad. That’s Jonathan Steele. Kidnaping is a capital offense in this State.” He had the nerve to make a grab for my gun, so I swung my left to his jaw and dropped him. I was the last out of the house. Bill Bridgeman, with his good hand, had a grip on Jonathan’s left arm while Dick was dragging him along by his right arm.

“I’m eighty-two years old. I can’t run so fast,” he protested.

“ You’re lying by ten years,” retorted Dick. “Step on it.”

We made the lodge without interference. Dick turned Jonathan over to Bill Bridgeman, rushed into the lodge, and in a moment the great gate swung open, operated by mechanism from the house.

I’d had a good look at the old man in the lighted hall of the residence. He was a frail old man with snow white hair, clean shaven, with high cheekbones, a small, thin-lipped mouth and a pointed chin. He looked pretty much as I remembered Jonathan upon the occasion when he had visited the school ten years back. I grew weak around the gills to think what would happen to us if it was really Jonathan.

Dick rushed out of the lodge and our flight was resumed. We already heard shouting from the vicinity of the house.

Jim Bridgeman was half carrying Jonathan because he couldn’t run as fast as the rest of us.

“Farrell thinks it’s kidnaping,” called Dick with a laugh.

“What in tarnation is it, if it isn’t kidnaping?” quavered Jonathan.

“You’ll be surprised, old top,” Dick retorted. “Damn it, we have to run a couple of hundred yards up the road. No, we don’t.”

For, as we emerged into the highroad, there stood the big car with Clarice at the wheel. She had heard the shots, backed the car down to the entrance to the private road, and our getaway was fixed. She sprang out of the car.

“Hello, Tommy Donnegan,” she exclaimed.

“You made a mistake, I never heard of him,” he cried shrilly.

Jim was boosting him into the car; we scrambled in. We heard the sound of a motor up the private road, but Clarice was under way.

“Clarice,” called Dick, “stop at a hospital at Santa Barbara and let Bill Bridgeman off. He’s wounded in the arm. How do you feel, Bill?”

“I’m not going to any hospital,” he growled. “I’m all right.”

“But he’ll be arrested,” protested Clarice.

“He’ll be all right. We’ve won,” exclaimed Dick. “Say nothing, Bill. Tell them to fix your arm and go find out how you got shot. By tomorrow we’ll all be on top of the world.”

Dick and I had Jonathan between us. I could feel the old fellow shaking with fright. I was almost sorry for him until I thought of Steve.

We tore along the boulevard into Santa Barbara. Clarice slowed as we hit the main streets of the brightly lighted city; she began swinging into the side streets and back to the main streets and she suddenly stopped before a brightly lighted hospital building.

“Make it yourself, Bill?” asked Dick.

“You bet,” said that doughty invalid as he opened the door of the car with the good arm and stepped out.

“Keep mum. You’ll hear from us tomorrow.”

We were off and turned into the highroad to San Francisco. It’s a long straight road which finally reminds you of a roller coaster because there are so many short steep hills to climb and descend. Clarice took it at breakneck speed. We had gone fifteen miles when she gave an angry exclamation.

“I’m out of gas,” she said. “Why didn’t some of you think to get gas?”

“Why didn’t you? You were driving!” retorted Dick furiously.

“Can I think of everything, you big boob?”

“Stop at the next station and fill up the tank. We’ll take the chance of their catching up with us.”

A couple of miles along we ran into a big gas station and I saw a Pay Station sign, and I had about the smartest idea of my life, though the others didn’t think so at the time. I rushed into the shack, called Los Angeles and the Ambassador Hotel, and asked for Rhoda.

She answered almost immediately. At that hour all lines were clear.

“We’re got what we went after, Rhoda,” I said.

“Steve?” she cried joyfully. My heart sank. I’d forgotten Steve for the moment.

“ No, the other one. With him in our hands we’ll have Steve free in twenty-four hours. We’re going to a cottage in Tiger Cañon owned by a friend of Clarice’s named Stella Grey. Tell Reynolds it’s all over but the shouting.”

Dick was roaring for me from the car, so I hung up.

“Who were you talking to?” he demanded angrily. “You held us up.”

“ Rhoda,” I said. “I had to tell her.”

Clarice looked back at me. She was glaring. “Oh, you did!” she cried. “So you’re crazy about her. Well, she loves Steve, Mr. Timothy Cody.”

“Step on it,” shouted Dick. “They’re probably right on our heels.”

“Let ’em come,” growled Jim Bridgeman.

Six miles farther along we entered the mountains. At the end of a couple of miles Clarice turned up a dirt road and began to climb a steep grade. She turned into a driveway a short distance after that and stopped before a large one-story establishment which was dark.

“Here we are,” she said triumphantly. “I don’t think they can trace us to this place.”

We dragged Jonathan out. He hadn’t spoken a word for a long time. In fact, if he had been eighty-two years of age he would have died from heart failure on account of Clarice’s driving.