DUSKIN

by Grace Livingston Hill

  The food was brought and placed before them but she did not look at it. Liquor was poured for her, but she refused it. She was afraid even to sip the coffee which he had ordered. And suddenly as she stared blindly across the room trying to think what she could do, trying to find a face she thought she could trust—someone to whom she might appeal for assistance—she became aware of Schlessinger’s fox face smiling at her above the crowd. Schlessinger, the only man she knew in the assemblage and he a fox! Oh, what a fool she had been!

  She saw it now—a scheme to take her unawares and perhaps try to bribe her to help them in their devilment, force her to give up information, turn her against Duskin again! Oh, why had she not told Duskin about that conversation she had heard in New York between Schlessinger and Blintz and used the evidence she had against them before it was too late? Could it be possible that they knew she had heard them? Oh, was she crazy to think such things? Perhaps Paisley Arthwait and his mother were just a couple of fools who really meant to give her a pleasant evening and chose this kind of thing because they liked it. Doubtless she was all upset over nothing. And yet, Schlessinger had known she was dining with the Arthwaits, and he was here himself!

  As if to confirm her thought, Paisley, at that moment, babbled out, “Why, there’s Uncle Schless, now! Hello, old boy!” for Paisley had drunk several glasses of liquid already, and he had chosen some that took quick effect. She noticed with horror that his tongue was already thick and his eyes wore an unholy glitter. “Shess! Shess! Ole boy! Comme meer! Come see little Carol!”

  And to her horror, Schlessinger, smiling and licking his fox-like lips, came quickly toward their table.

  Carol rose up involuntarily and looked this way and that in desperation. There seemed nowhere to flee, and Paisley rose and called out to her, “Come, Caro. Come Caro corn syrup le’s dance! Le’s everybody dance.”

  At that instant, as she swayed away from Paisley, there came a crash just behind her, and the lights went out in utter blackness. A strange, low whistle went around the room, and people seemed silently scuttling in the dark, crawling away over broken glass.

  There was cold air rushing in behind her and a voice low-spoken, “Come, Carol!”

  Someone had caught her around the waist and drawn her out of the way into the cold air, but it was too late. There was no moon anymore, and it was cold and dark and everything was gone in terror.

  Chapter 13

  When Duskin came down to the office a little after seven he stopped with an exclamation of contentment and looked at his cleared-up desk. It was empty, absolutely empty, of the clutter that had been there for weeks.

  A typewriter neatly covered with its rubber hood sat straight in the middle of the desk, and a mahogany letter tray occupied the right-hand corner.

  He opened the right-hand top drawer and found an array of stationery and pencils and erasers and the like. He investigated the other drawers and found the neat bundles of sorted letters, each with its label, the top one bearing the admonition IMPORTANT. Immediate.

  He glanced at them and frowned to think he had forgotten them. She was a clever girl. She was going to be a great help. She had shown sense.

  Then the city clock struck half past seven and he turned away, remembering that he had an important engagement to meet a man at eight and he must snatch some dinner and dress. He hurried over to the garage where he kept a cheap second-hand car, which he had purchased when he first came to town, and drove as rapidly up the street as the traffic would allow.

  His way led him past the hotel where Carol was staying, and as he turned down the side street, he noticed just ahead at the side entrance of the hotel a young man helping a girl into a big car. The girl looked like Miss Berkley. It must be about time for her to be going out. He wondered what her friends were like. He spurred up his faithful flivver to catch a glimpse if he could, and looking in the backseat, found it empty. Could that be Miss Berkley in the front? The light did not shine on her face as he passed. Where had he seen that young man with the weak chin? Something unpleasant was connected with him. What was it?

  The limousine lurched ahead and passed him, and again he failed to see the girl’s face, yet something in the contour of shoulders and head reminded him of the girl from New York.

  Caught in traffic almost together, he again was where he could not see her face, nor identify her companion. His hands were so full steering his car out of the tangle that he could do very little looking.

  Whoever the chinless young man was he was a rotten driver and was taking terrible risks. He watched the big car go lurching on through traffic until it whirled sharply away down another street, and then because he had a strong impression that the girl was his new secretary, he turned his car and followed. After all it was going in the general direction he meant to take, and a minute or two wouldn’t matter with him. He could still make his appointment.

  The crazy driver ahead was holding his interest. Perhaps the man was drunk.

  But when the big car turned sharply onto the turnpike and took to the country, Duskin followed only a mile or two farther and then turned back. He had decided that he was on a wild goose chase, and he couldn’t take time to keep it up any longer. He would scarcely have time to dress now. Dinner must wait until midnight perhaps. He had to meet his man.

  He had gone perhaps half a mile back toward the city, pondering who that young man without a chin reminded him of, when he saw the lights of a big car coming toward him. It was a lonely road and the single big car with its arrogant lights was the more noticeable for it. As it drew nearer its lights were fairly blinding, but as it shot by, a glimpse of a fox face and a long nose gleamed against the blackness of the backseat. Ah! That was the mayor’s car! He had seen it many times! Schlessinger! Where was he going? Wait! It was with Schlessinger he had seen that young man! Wasn’t he some relation to Schlessinger? Nephew? Where were they going? The girl!

  Duskin turned his car so quickly he nearly flipped, and took off in pursuit of the mayor. Not close on his heels. Oh, no! He kept too far behind to be studied by even the most detective of chauffeurs. He was only another car, jogging along the highway, getting out of sight as often as possible, yet keeping the mayor’s taillight always in view.

  Where were they going? And was he a fool? He was missing a most important appointment, one he had worked hard to get. It might mean a delay in tomorrow’s work. It might mean he would have to work hard to make up for the loss some other way. The man he was to meet had power with railroads and could but command and a freight car would come through in a night. There were materials that had not yet arrived and would be needed in two more days. Yet Duskin kept his car’s nose turned toward the taillight of the mayor.

  And where was he going? A lonely road, and that sharp turn they were making ahead, up through the woods? Wasn’t there a roadhouse off here somewhere? Perhaps. He didn’t pay much attention to things of that sort, but he had overheard talk. Well, he was not surprised at the mayor, but—who was that girl? He must find out!

  He didn’t know he was such a blamed fool. But he had to find out.

  He almost halted at the wooded road. Suppose the car should go on all night? He could not follow indefinitely. Just then came the clear gleam of colored lights, and Duskin heard the cessation of the big car’s engine and drove his own into the bushes at the side of the road out of the way.

  Stealthily he came up on foot. Yes, that last car was the mayor’s, parked with its nose to the fence with the rest. He briefly swept the flashlight he always carried over the car’s door and read the initials “W.W.S.” There was no further doubt. He went on to the next and identified it as the big car he had followed first from the hotel. He swept its door, too, with a bug of light, and there were the same initials. He was right; the young fellow must be a relative. It was one of Schlessinger’s cars. From then on, his course was plain. He had to find out who that girl was! If Carol Berkley was not in that close-shuttered, blighted house he might go on his wa
y content and make the best he could of his time back, calling himself a fool all the way. But if she was—well—if she was!

  But it is no easy task to see into a room that has been purposely made safe from prying eyes, and Duskin crept twice around that building, carefully avoiding the back, where the servants were handling freezers and clattering dishes, before he discovered the one little spot where a drunken scuffle the night before had badly damaged the windowshade. And that, as it happened, was across the room from the table where Carol and Paisley sat.

  It was some time before he got his eye properly adjusted to survey the room and several minutes before he found what he was searching for. Yes, there she was—her delicate face and slim little black satin figure standing out like a flower among all those coarse, bedizened people. He caught his breath when he saw her and watched, his brows lowering, his hands clenched.

  It did not take him long to understand the situation. Indeed Carol’s attitude was plainly panic-stricken, as any man might read, and though he could not hear what the man at the next table was saying, he knew by the significant looks in that direction and by the fright on the girl’s face and the way she turned her eyes away piteously that it was nothing good.

  He was about to spring away and try to force the door when he saw that look of horror come into her eyes anew, and his gaze followed hers and saw Schlessinger!

  He waited only to count the windows that he might make no mistake, and then he crept stealthily around the house, pausing behind some shrubbery while some new arrivals came up on the porch. He tried to enter with them, but found the door shut in his face and went on to the window which he knew was just behind Carol’s table.

  One moment he stood outside, calculating, looking back to count the windows again and make sure he had made no mistake, then he lifted the big whitewashed stone he had picked up from the edge of the drive and smashed it through the glass, tearing away the dark-lined curtain and getting one glimpse of the room and its people before everything went black.

  Blindly he groped for her where he had seen her, touched the softness of her gown, flashed his light on her face faintly and out again, and caught her in his arms.

  There was blood on his hands where he had cut them climbing through the window and blood on his face. He felt it trickle down and tossed his head to get it out of his eyes. The night was pitch black, for the moon had gone behind clouds and the air was still. All the red and yellow lights along the rim of the house had gone dead, too. There was nothing stirring anywhere in the universe but himself, and he hardly dared to breathe. The girl in his arms hung limp. He gathered her closer and stumbled across the drive and down into the woods to his car.

  When he had put her in and started the car he reached out to touch her—fearful she had ceased to breathe, she lay so still—but she quivered away from his touch.

  He pondered this as he hurried his car through the woods and back onto the highway again. He must make the best of his time. They might pursue him. At first perhaps they thought they were being raided, but they would find out—they would come after him—he must get the girl away.

  When he had passed the woods and come a mile down the highway he took out his flashlight and turned it into the girl’s face. He could not bear her stillness any longer. But when he looked he saw her eyes were wide open and full of fear.

  She had not known who he was! Of course! He ought to have remembered that.

  “Miss Berkley,” he said very gently, “I thought you were in trouble back there. Did I do right to bring you away?”

  “Oh, is it you, Mr. Duskin? Oh, I am so glad,” and he felt she was crying softly as she spoke. “I have been—so—frightened!”

  “Are you hurt?” he asked anxiously. “I’m afraid I was rather rough!”

  “Oh, no, but I wouldn’t mind if I was, I’m so thankful to be out of that terrible place! But I thought—you were Mr. Schlessinger!”

  “You poor child!” said Duskin as he might have talked to a little girl of five, and his voice held a caress that she did not seem to mind.

  Duskin forgot that he had had one fearful moment when he thought that perhaps this girl who had seemed so true and honorable had been one of the league against him, too. How could he have harbored such a thought? But then, he had been through so much and borne so many setbacks from this unscrupulous gang!

  “It was all my fault!” she said earnestly. “But I didn’t want to go with them. I tried to get word to Mrs. Arthwait that I couldn’t go, but I could not get my message to her till it got so late I was ashamed to back out. And then her son came alone!”

  “The sucker! The dirty sucker!” said Duskin under his breath.

  “He got me into the car before he told me his mother was sick and couldn’t go, and I couldn’t make him take me back and wait until she could go. I tried by best.”

  “Look here!” said Duskin savagely. “Don’t you suppose I know it wasn’t your fault? Don’t you suppose I can see with a glance that you’re not their kind? Oh, the dirty crooks! But I’ve got something on the mayor now that will make him clear out and let us alone for a while, I’m thinking. He won’t want it known that he went to a place like that. Perhaps we can work in peace for a little while till he thinks up a new way to torment us.”

  “Oh!” she said suddenly, her voice full of eagerness. “We’ve got more than that on him. I ought to have told you long ago! What a fool I have been not to trust you!”

  And then she began at the beginning and told him all about the conversation she had overheard between Schlessinger and Blintz back in the New York office.

  “And you say you have the full notes of all that?” he asked eagerly.

  “Every word.”

  “Then we’ll fix the old fox for a fact! But we’ll finish the building first and wait for Fawcett if possible. Say, you are great! You’ve pulled off the biggest thing you could have done when you took down that conversation! That certainly was clever of you. I’ve had a hunch all along that we were going to have trouble with those two birds at the end. They’ll have something else up their sleeves to spring on us at the last minute or I’ll miss my guess. But this finishes that. They can’t pull anything in the face of that evidence! I could shout for joy! But say—are you all right?”

  He turned the flashlight full on her face once more, and by its reflection she saw his face.

  “Yes, but you are not!” she cried. “Why, there’s blood on your face, Mr. Duskin, and on your hands. It’s running down. Let me tie it up.”

  “No, I’m quite all right,” said Duskin with a sudden light of delirious joy in his eyes. To have her speak to him in that voice went quite to his head. What was the matter with him? He ought to have eaten his dinner. He never before had a girl’s sympathy affect him like that!

  “It’s just a little cut in my hand—from the glass,” he explained and felt as if he were shouting it from the hilltops. Why did he feel so glad? It was all out of proportion.

  “I’m going to tie it up!” said Carol firmly, bringing out a soft handkerchief and dabbing at his hurt hand.

  He stopped the car and allowed her to tie up his hand.

  “You’re very kind,” he said in a tone that was almost embarrassed. “That’s the way my mother used to do when I was a little kid.”

  “Kind?” said Carol. “When you saved my life!”

  “Oh, no, I don’t anticipate they would have gone as far as that,” he said. “But I do think they intended to detain you awhile to get what information they could out of you. Very likely their plan was to force you to fire me.”

  “Oh, do you really think that?” she said appalled. “Do you think it really was intentional?”

  “I should say I did,” he answered vehemently. “Didn’t you know you were riding in one of Schlessinger’s cars? I made sure of that before I went to look in the place.”

  “Oh mercy!” said Carol, pausing in her bandaging to look up in horror. “How terrible! I was frightened enough as it
was, but if I had known that I certainly would have jumped out!”

  “Well, that’s not so good either.” He smiled down at her. “But come, that’s enough. I must get you out of this. They might track us down even now. If they thought they could, they would, you know. It would be lovely for them if they could take me, too; it would be so much velvet. If they could just get me back to that roadhouse and then spread a story that I had been out there, and broadcast it back to Fawcett. Don’t you see what we’d have been up against?”

  “Oh, and to think I did it! What a fool I have been! You must have thought—well—all sorts of things about me.”

  “Well, to tell you the truth, I didn’t know what to think at first. When I saw you in that car, or thought I did, I wasn’t positive it was you with that fool of an Arthwait. No woman around either. You had led me to suppose it was a woman who had invited you. That troubled me some, although I realized you might have changed your plans afterward. You were not obliged to tell me everything of course. Still, it was an ugly thought. I followed you to prove to myself that it wasn’t you, and then when I found it was, I knew I must get you out somehow, if only to find out what it was all about.”

  “You have been wonderful,” she said humbly. “I feel as if I can never thank you and never apologize sufficiently.”

  “For what?” he asked.

  She was still a minute.

  “Well, for distrusting you in the first place and then for getting you into all this and wasting more of your time. Didn’t I hear you making an appointment over the phone this afternoon to meet a man at eight o’clock? You’ve missed that, haven’t you? And I heard you say it was very important.”

  “You were more important,” he said quickly. “Suppose I had succeeded in getting all the freight cars through I wanted and then had found you were gone, kidnapped, and I had to spend the rest of my time hunting you?”

  “I’m beginning to be convinced that you would be much better off without me,” said Carol, still more humbly. “I have been an awful fool, and you have been marvelous!”