CHAPTER XXI
THE SIEGE OF THE BANDITS
As we watched from the top of the hill, I wondered what Garrick's nextmove was to be. Surely he would not attempt to investigate the placeyet. In fact, there seemed to be nothing that could be done now, aslong as it was day-light, for any movement in this half-open countrywould have been viewed with suspicion by the occupants of the littlehouse in the valley, whoever they might be.
We could not help viewing the place with a sort of awe. What secretsdid the cottage hide, nestled down there in the valley among thesegreen hills? Often I had heard that the gunmen of New York, when hardpressed, sought refuge in the country districts and mountains within afew miles of the city. There was something incongruous about it. Natureseemed so perfectly peaceful here that it was the very antithesis ofthose sections of the city in which he had found the gunman, whoever hewas, indulging in practically every crime and vice of decadentcivilization.
"So--the one they call the Boss has led up to the refuge of the Chief,the scientific gunman, at last," Garrick exclaimed, with markedsatisfaction, as we turned and walked slowly back again to our car.
"Yes," I assented, "and now that we have found them--what are we to dowith them?"
"It is still early in the day," Garrick remarked, looking at his watch."They suspect no trouble up here. Here they evidently feel safe. Nodoubt they think we are still hunting for them fruitlessly in New York.I think we can afford to leave them here for a few hours. At any rate,I feel that I must return to the city. I must see Dillon, and then dropinto my office, if we are to accomplish anything against them."
He had turned the car around and we made our way back to the main road,and then southward again, taking up in earnest the long return trip tothe city and covering the distance in Warrington's racer in a muchshorter time, now that we had not to follow another car and keep undercover. It was late in the afternoon, however, when we arrived andGarrick went directly to police headquarters where he held a hastyconference with Dillon.
Dillon was even more excited than we were when he learned how far wehad gone in tracing out the scant clews that we had uncovered. AsGarrick unfolded his plan, the commissioner immediately began to makearrangements to accompany us out into the country that night.
I did not hear all that was said, as Garrick and Dillon laid out theirplans, but I could see that they were in perfect accord.
"Very well," I overheard Garrick, as we parted. "I shall go out in thecar again. You will be up on the train?"
"Yes--on the seven-fifty," returned Dillon. "You needn't worry about myend of it. I'll be there with the goods--just the thing that you want.I have it."
"Fine," exclaimed Garrick, "I have to make a call at the office. I'llstart as soon as I can, and try to beat you out."
They parted in good humour, for Dillon's passion for adventure was nowthoroughly aroused and I doubt if we could have driven him off with aclub, figuratively speaking.
At the office Garrick tarried only long enough to load the car withsome paraphernalia which he had there, much of which, I knew, he hadbrought back with him after his study of police methods abroad. Therewere three coats of a peculiar texture, which he took from a wardrobe,a huge arrangement which looked like a reflector, a little thing thatlooked merely like the mouthpiece of a telephone transmitter, and alarge heavy package which might have been anything from a field gun toa battering ram.
It was twilight when we arrived at the nearest railroad station to thelittle cottage in the valley, after another run up into the country inthe car. Dillon who had come up by train to meet us, according to thearrangement with Garrick, was already waiting, and with him was one ofthe most trustworthy and experienced of the police departmentchauffeurs. Garrick looked about at the few loungers curiously, butthere did not seem to be any of them who took any suspicious interestin new arrivals.
We four managed to crowd into a car built only for two, and Garrickstarted off. A few minutes later we arrived at the top of the hill fromwhich we had already viewed the mysterious house earlier in the day. Itwas now quite dark. We had met no one since turning off into thecrossroad, and could hear no sound except the continuous music of thenight insects.
Just before crossing the brow of the last hill, we halted and Garrickturned out all the lights on the car. He was risking nothing that mightlead to discovery yet. With the engine muffled down, we coasted slowlydown the other side of the hill into the shadowy valley. There was nomoon yet and we had to move cautiously, for there was only the faintlight of the sky and stars to guide us.
What was the secret of that unpretentious little house below us? Wepeered out in the gathering blackness eagerly in the direction where weknew it must be, nestled among the trees. Whoever it sheltered wasstill there, and we could locate the place by a single gleam that camefrom an upper window. Whether there were lights below, we could nottell. If there were they must have been effectively concealed by blindsand shades.
"We'll stop here," announced Garrick at last when we had reached apoint on the road a few hundred yards from the house.
He ran the car carefully off the road and into a little clearing in aclump of dark trees. We got out and pushed stealthily forward throughthe underbrush to the edge of the woods. There, on the slope, just alittle way below us, stood the house of mystery.
Garrick and Dillon were busily conferring in an undertone, as I helpedthem bring the packages one after another from the car to the edge ofthe woods. Garrick had slipped the little telephone mouthpiece into hispocket, and was carrying the huge reflector carefully, so that it mightnot be injured in the darkness. I had the heavy coats of the peculiartexture over my arm, while Dillon and his man struggled along over theuncertain pathway, carrying between them the heavy, long, cylindricalpackage, which must have weighed some sixty pounds or so.
Garrick had selected as the site of our operations a corner of thegrove where a very large tree raised itself as a landmark, silhouettedin black against a dark sky. We deposited the stuff there as hedirected.
"Now, Jim," ordered Dillon, walking back to the car with his man, "Iwant you to take the car and go back along this road until you reachthe top of the hill."
I could not hear the rest of the order, but it seemed that he was tomeet someone who had preceded us on foot from the railway station andwho must be about due to arrive. I did not know who or what it mightbe, but even the thought of someone else made me feel safer, for in soticklish a piece of business as this, in dealing with at least a pairof desperate men such as we knew them to be in the ominously quietlittle house, a second and even a third line of re-enforcements wasnot, I felt, amiss.
Garrick in the meantime had set to work putting into position the hugereflector. At first I thought it might be some method of throwing apowerful light on the house. But on closer examination I saw that itcould not be a light. The reflector seemed to have been constructed sothat in the focus was a peculiar coil of something, and to the ends ofthis coil, Garrick attached two wires which he fastened to aninstrument, cylindrical, with a broadened end, like a telephonereceiver.
Dillon, who had returned by this time, after sending his chauffeur backon his errand, appeared very much interested in what Garrick was doing.
"Now, Tom," said Garrick, "while I am fixing this thing, I wish youwould help me by undoing that large package carefully."
While I was thus engaged, he continued talking with Dillon in a lowvoice, evidently explaining to him the use to which he wished the largereflector put.
I was working quickly to undo the large package, and as the wrappingsfinally came off, I could see that it was some bulky instrument thatlooked like a huge gun, or almost a mortar. It had a sort of barrelthat might have been, say, forty inches in length, and where thebreechlock should have been on an ordinary gun was a greathemispherical cavity. There was also a peculiar arrangement of springsand wheels in the butt.
"The coats?" he asked, as he took from the wrappings of the packageseveral rather fragile lookin
g tubes.
I had laid them down near us and handed them over to him. They werequite heavy, and had a rough feel.
"So-called bullet-proof cloth," explained Garrick. "At close range,quite powerful lunges of a dagger or knife recoil from it, and at adistance ordinary bullets rebound from it, flattened. We'll try it,anyway. It will do no harm, and it may do good. Now we are ready,Dillon."
"Wait just a minute," cautioned Dillon. "Let me see first whether thatchauffeur has returned. He can run that engine so quietly that I myselfcan't hear it."
He had disappeared into the darkness toward the road, where he haddespatched the car a few minutes before. Evidently the chauffeur hadbeen successful in his mission, for Dillon was back directly with ahasty, "Yes, all right. He's backing the car around so that he can runit out on the road instantly in either direction. He'll be here in amoment."
Garrick had in the meantime been roughly sketching on the back of anold envelope taken from his pocket. Evidently he had been estimatingthe distance of the house from the tree back of which he stood, andworked with the light of a shaded pocket flashlight.
"Ready, then," he cried, jumping up and advancing to the peculiarinstrument which I had unwrapped. He was in his element now. After allthe weary hours of watching and preparation, here was action at last,and Garrick went to it like a starved man at food.
First he elevated the clumsy looking instrument pointed in the generaldirection of the house. He had fixed the angle at approximately thatwhich he had hastily figured out on the envelope. Then he took acylinder about twelve inches long, and almost half as much in diameter,a huge thing, constructed, it seemed, of a substance that was almost asbrittle as an eggshell. Into the large hemispherical cavity in thebreech of the gun he shoved it. He took another quick look at the lightgleaming from the house in the darkness ahead of us.
"What is it?" I asked, indicating the "gun."
"This is what is known as the Mathiot gun," he explained as he broughtit into action, "invented by a French scientist for the purpose,expressly, of giving the police a weapon to use against the automobilebandits who entrench themselves, when cornered, in houses and garages,as they have done in the outskirts of Paris, and as some anarchists didonce in a house in London."
"What does it do?" asked Dillon, who had taken a great interest in thething.
"It throws a bomb which emits suffocating gases without risking thelives of the police," answered Garrick. "In spite of the fragility ofthe bombs that I have here, it has been found that they will penetratea wooden door or even a thin brick partition before the fuse explodesthem. One bomb will render a room three hundred feet off uninhabitablein thirty seconds. Now--watch!"
He had exploded the gun by hand, striking the flat head of a hammeragainst the fulminating cap. The gun gave a bark. A low, whistlingnoise and a crash followed.
"Too short," muttered Garrick, elevating the angle of the gun a trifle.
Quite evidently someone was moving in the house. There was a shadow, asof someone passing between the light in the upper story and the windowon our side of the house.
Again the gun barked, and another bomb went hurtling through the air.This time it hit the house squarely. Another followed in rapidsuccession, and the crash of glass told that it had struck a window.Garrick was sending them now as fast as he could. They had takeneffect, too, for the light was out, whether extinguished by gases or bythe hand of someone who realized that it afforded an excellent mark toshoot at. Still, it made no difference, now, for we had the range.
"The house must be full of the stifling gases," panted Garrick, as hestopped to wipe the perspiration from his face, after his rapid work,clad in the heavy coat. "No man could stand up against that. I wonderhow our friend of the garage likes it, Tom? It is some of his ownmedicine--the Chief, I mean. He tried it on us on a small scale verysuccessfully that night with his stupefying gun."
"I hope one of them hit him," ground out Dillon, who had no relish evenfor the recollection of that night. "What next? Do you have to waituntil the gases clear away before we can make a break and go in there?"
Garrick had anticipated the question. Already he was buttoning up hislong coat. We did the same, mechanically.
"No, Dillon. You and Jim stay here," ordered Garrick. "You will get thesignal from us what to do next. Tom, come on."
He had already dashed ahead into the darkness, and I followed blindly,stumbling over a ploughed field, then a fence over which we climbedquickly, and found ourselves in the enclosure where was the house. Ihad no idea what we were running up against, but a dog which had beenchained in the rear broke away from his fastening at sight of us, andran at us with a lusty and savage growl. Garrick planted a shotsquarely in his head.
Without wasting time on any formalities, such as ringing the bell, wekicked and battered in the back door. We paused a moment, not from fearbut because the odor inside was terrific. No one could have stayed inthat house and retained his senses. One by one, Garrick flung open thewindows, and we were forced to stick our heads out every few minutes inorder to keep our own breath.
From one room to another we proceeded, without finding anyone. Then wemounted to the second floor. The odour was worse there, but still wefound no one.
The light on the third floor had been extinguished, as I have said. Wemade our way toward the corner where it had been. Room after room weentered, but still found no one. At last we came to a door that waslocked. Together we wrenched it open.
There was surely nothing for us to fear in this room, for a bomb hadpenetrated it, and had filled it completely. As we rushed in, Garricksaw a figure sprawled on the floor, near the bed, in the corner.
"Quick, Tom!" he shouted, "Open that other window. I'll attend to thisman. He's groggy, anyhow."
Garrick had dropped down on his knees and had deftly slipped a pair ofhandcuffs on the unresisting wrists of the man. Then he staggered to myside at the open window, for air.
"Heavens--this is awful!" he gasped and sputtered. "I wonder where theyall went?"
"Who is this fellow?" I asked.
"I don't know yet. I couldn't see."
A moment later, together, we had dragged the unconscious man to thewindow with us, while I fanned him with my hat and Garrick was wettinghis face with water from a pitcher of ice on the table.
"Good Lord!" Garrick exclaimed suddenly, as in the fitful light he bentover the figure. "Do you see who it is?"
I bent down too and peered more closely.
It was Angus Forbes.
Strange to say, here was the young gambler whom we had seen at thegambling joint before it was raided, the long-lost and long-soughtForbes who had disappeared after the raid, and from whom no one had yetheard a word.
I did not know his story, but I knew enough to be sure that he had beenin love with Violet himself, and, although Warrington had once come tohis rescue and settled thousands of dollars of his gambling debts, wassore at Warrington for closing the gambling joint where he hopedultimately to recoup his losses. More than that, he was probablyequally sore at Warrington for winning the favour of the girl whosefortune might have settled his own debts, if he had had a free field tocourt her.
Why was Forbes here, I asked myself. The fumes of the bombs from theMathiot gun may have got into my head but, at least as far as I couldsee, they had not made my mind any the less active. I felt that hispresence here, apparently as one of the gang, explained many things.
Who, I reasoned, would have been more eager to "get" Warrington at anycost than he? I never had any love for the fellow, who had allowed hisfaults and his temptations so far to get the upper hand of him. I hadfelt a sort of pity at first, but the incident of the cancelled markersin the gambling joint and now the discovery of him here had changedthat original feeling into one that was purely of disgust.
These thoughts were coursing through my fevered brain while Garrick wasworking hard to bring him around.
Suddenly a mocking voice came from the hall.
"Yes,
it's Forbes, all right, and much good may it do you to have him!"
The door to the room, which opened outward, banged shut. The lock hadbeen broken by us in forcing an entrance. There must have been two ofthem out in the hall, for we heard the noise and scraping of feet, asthey piled up heavy furniture against the door, dragging it from thenext room before we could do anything. Piece after piece was wedged inbetween our door and the opposite wall.
We could hear them taunt us as they worked, and I thought I recognisedat once the voice of the stocky keeper of the garage, the Boss, whom Ihad heard so often before over our detectaphone. The other voice, whichseemed to me to be disguised, I found somewhat familiar, yet I couldnot place it. It must have been, I thought, that of the man whom we hadcome to know and fear under the appellation of the Chief.
We could hear them laugh, now, as they cursed us and wished us luckwith our capture. It was galling.
Evidently, too, they had not much use for Forbes, and, indeed, at sucha crisis I do not think he would have been much more than an additionalpiece of animated impedimenta. Dissipation had not added anything tothe physical prowess of Forbes.
With a parting volley of profanity, they stamped down the narrow stairsto the ground floor, and a few seconds afterward we could hear themback of the house, working over the machine which we had followed upfrom New York earlier in the day. Evidently there were several machinesin the barn which served them as garage, but this was the handiest.
They had cranked it up, and were debating which way they should go.
"The shots came from the direction of the main road," the Boss said."We had better go in the opposite direction. There may be more of themcoming. Hurry up!"
At least, it seemed, there had been only three of them in this refugewhich they had sought up in the hills and valleys of the Ramapos. Ofthat we could now be reasonably certain. One of them we hadcaptured--and had ourselves been captured into the bargain.
I stuck my head out of the window to look at the other two down below,only to feel myself dragged unceremoniously back by Garrick.
"What's the use of taking that risk, Tom?" he expostulated. "One shotfrom them and you would be a dead one."
Fortunately they had not seen me, so intent were they on getting away.They had now seated themselves in the car and, as Garrick hadsuspected, could not resist delivering a parting shot at us, emptyingthe contents of an automatic blindly up at our window. Garrick and Iwere, as it happened, busy on the opposite side of the room.
All thought of Forbes was dropped for the present. Garrick said not aword but continued at work in the corner of the room by the otherbroken window.
"Either they must have succeeded in getting out after the first shotand so escaped the fumes," muttered Garrick finally, "and hid in thestable, or, perhaps, they were out there at work anyhow. Still thatmakes little difference now. They must have seen us go in, havefollowed us quietly, and then caught us here."
With a hasty final imprecation, the car below started forward with ajerk and was swallowed up in the darkness.