Chapter 2

In the hand of Dopey Charlie gleamed a bit of shiny steel
and in his heart were fear and greed. The fear was engendered by the
belief that the youth might be an amateur detective. Dopey Charlie had
had one experience of such and he knew that it was easily possible for
them to blunder upon evidence which the most experienced of operatives
might pass over unnoticed, and the loot bulging pockets furnished a
sufficient greed motive in themselves.

Beside the boy kneeled the man with the knife. He did not raise his
hand and strike a sudden, haphazard blow. Instead he placed the point
carefully, though lightly, above the victim's heart, and then, suddenly,
bore his weight upon the blade.

Abigail Prim always had been a thorn in the flesh of her stepmother--a
well-meaning, unimaginative, ambitious, and rather common woman. Coming
into the Prim home as house-keeper shortly after the death of Abigail's
mother, the second Mrs. Prim had from the first looked upon Abigail
principally as an obstacle to be overcome. She had tried to 'do right by
her'; but she had never given the child what a child most needs and most
craves--love and understanding. Not loving Abigail, the house-keeper
could, naturally, not give her love; and as for understanding her one
might as reasonably have expected an adding machine to understand higher
mathematics.

Jonas Prim loved his daughter. There was nothing, within reason, that
money could buy which he would not have given her for the asking; but
Jonas Prim's love, as his life, was expressed in dollar signs, while the
love which Abigail craved is better expressed by any other means at the
command of man.

Being misunderstood and, to all outward appearances of sentiment and
affection, unloved had not in any way embittered Abigail's remarkably
joyous temperament. She made up for it in some measure by getting all the
fun and excitement out of life which she could discover therein, or
invent through the medium of her own resourceful imagination.

But recently the first real sorrow had been thrust into her young life
since the half-forgotten mother had been taken from her. The second
Mrs. Prim had decided that it was her 'duty' to see that Abigail, having
finished school and college, was properly married. As a matchmaker
the second Mrs. Prim was as a Texas steer in a ten cent store. It was
nothing to her that Abigail did not wish to marry anyone, or that the
man of Mrs. Prim's choice, had he been the sole surviving male in the
Universe, would have still been as far from Abigail's choice as though
he had been an inhabitant of one of Orion's most distant planets.

As a matter of fact Abigail Prim detested Samuel Benham because he
represented to her everything in life which she shrank from--age,
avoirdupois, infirmity, baldness, stupidity, and matrimony. He was a
prosaic old bachelor who had amassed a fortune by the simple means of
inheriting three farms upon which an industrial city subsequently had
been built. Necessity rather than foresight had compelled him to hold on
to his property; and six weeks of typhoid, arriving and departing, had
saved him from selling out at a low figure. The first time he found
himself able to be out and attend to business he likewise found himself
a wealthy man, and ever since he had been growing wealthier without
personal effort.

All of which is to render evident just how impossible a matrimonial
proposition was Samuel Benham to a bright, a beautiful, a gay, an
imaginative, young, and a witty girl such as Abigail Prim, who cared
less for money than for almost any other desirable thing in the world.

Nagged, scolded, reproached, pestered, threatened, Abigail had at last
given a seeming assent to her stepmother's ambition; and had forthwith
been packed off on a two weeks visit to the sister of the bride-groom
elect. After which Mr. Benham was to visit Oakdale as a guest of the
Prims, and at a dinner for which cards already had been issued--so sure
was Mrs. Jonas Prim of her position of dictator of the Prim menage--the
engagement was to be announced.

It was some time after dinner on the night of Abigail's departure that
Mrs. Prim, following a habit achieved by years of housekeeping, set
forth upon her rounds to see that doors and windows were properly
secured for the night. A French window and its screen opening upon the
verandah from the library she found open. “The house will be full of
mosquitoes!” she ejaculated mentally as she closed them both with a bang
and made them fast. “I should just like to know who left them open. Upon
my word, I don't know what would become of this place if it wasn't for
me. Of all the shiftlessness!” and she turned and flounced upstairs. In
Abigail's room she flashed on the center dome light from force of habit,
although she knew that the room had been left in proper condition after
the girl's departure earlier in the day. The first thing amiss that
her eagle eye noted was the candlestick lying on the floor beside the
dressing table. As she stooped to pick it up she saw the open drawer
from which the small automatic had been removed, and then, suspicions,
suddenly aroused, as suddenly became fear; and Mrs. Prim almost dove
across the room to the hidden wall safe. A moment's investigation
revealed the startling fact that the safe was unlocked and practically
empty. It was then that Mrs. Jonas Prim screamed.

Her scream brought Jonas and several servants upon the scene. A careful
inspection of the room disclosed the fact that while much of value had
been ignored the burglar had taken the easily concealed contents of the
wall safe which represented fully ninety percentum of the value of the
personal property in Abigail Prim's apartments.

Mrs. Prim scowled suspiciously upon the servants. Who else, indeed,
could have possessed the intimate knowledge which the thief had
displayed. Mrs. Prim saw it all. The open library window had been but a
clever blind to hide the fact that the thief had worked from the inside
and was now doubtless in the house at that very moment.

“Jonas,” she directed, “call the police at once, and see that no one,
absolutely no one, leaves this house until they have been here and made
a full investigation.”

“Shucks, Pudgy!” exclaimed Mr. Prim. “You don't think the thief is
waiting around here for the police, do you?”

“I think that if you get the police here at once, Jonas, we shall find
both the thief and the loot under our very roof,” she replied, not
without asperity.

“You don't mean--” he hesitated. “Why, Pudgy, you don't mean you suspect
one of the servants?”

“Who else could have known?” asked Mrs. Prim. The servants present
looked uncomfortable and cast sheepish eyes of suspicion at one another.

“It's all tommy rot!” ejaculated Mr. Prim; “but I'll call the police,
because I got to report the theft. It's some slick outsider, that's
who it is,” and he started down stairs toward the telephone. Before he
reached it the bell rang, and when he had hung up the receiver after the
conversation the theft seemed a trivial matter. In fact he had almost
forgotten it, for the message had been from the local telegraph office
relaying a wire they had just received from Mr. Samuel Benham.

“I say, Pudgy,” he cried, as he took the steps two at a time for the
second floor, “here's a wire from Benham saying Gail didn't come on that
train and asking when he's to expect her.”

“Impossible!” ejaculated Mrs. Prim. “I certainly saw her aboard the
train myself. Impossible!”

Jonas Prim was a man of action. Within half an hour he had set in motion
such wheels as money and influence may cause to revolve in search of
some clew to the whereabouts of the missing Abigail, and at the same
time had reported the theft of jewels and money from his home; but in
doing this he had learned that other happenings no less remarkable in
their way had taken place in Oakdale that very night.

The following morning all Oakdale was thrilled as its fascinated eyes
devoured the front page of Oakdale's ordinarily dull daily. Never had
Oakdale experienced a plethora of home-grown thrills; but it came as
near to it that morning, doubtless, as it ever had or ever will. Not
since the cashier of The Merchants and Farmers Bank committed suicide
three years past had Oakdale been so wrought up, and now that historic
and classical event paled into insignificance in the glaring brilliancy
of a series of crimes and mysteries of a single night such as not even
the most sanguine of Oakdale's thrill lovers could have hoped for.

There was, first, the mysterious disappearance of Abigail Prim, the
only daughter of Oakdale's wealthiest citizen; there was the equally
mysterious robbery of the Prim home. Either one of these would have been
sufficient to have set Oakdale's multitudinous tongues wagging for days;
but they were not all. Old John Baggs, the city's best known miser, had
suffered a murderous assault in his little cottage upon the outskirts
of town, and was even now lying at the point of death in The Samaritan
Hospital. That robbery had been the motive was amply indicated by the
topsy-turvy condition of the contents of the three rooms which Baggs
called home. As the victim still was unconscious no details of the crime
were obtainable. Yet even this atrocious deed had been capped by one yet
more hideous.

Reginald Paynter had for years been looked upon half askance and yet
with a certain secret pride by Oakdale. He was her sole bon vivant in
the true sense of the word, whatever that may be. He was always
spoken of in the columns of The Oakdale Tribune as 'that well known
man-about-town,' or 'one of Oakdale's most prominent clubmen.' Reginald
Paynter had been, if not the only, at all events the best dressed man
in town. His clothes were made in New York. This in itself had been
sufficient to have set him apart from all the other males of Oakdale.
He was widely travelled, had an independent fortune, and was far from
unhandsome. For years he had been the hope and despair of every Oakdale
mother with marriageable daughters. The Oakdale fathers, however, had
not been so keen about Reginald. Men usually know more about the morals
of men than do women. There were those who, if pressed, would have
conceded that Reginald had no morals.

But what place has an obituary in a truthful tale of adventure and
mystery! Reginald Paynter was dead. His body had been found beside
the road just outside the city limits at mid-night by a party of
automobilists returning from a fishing trip. The skull was crushed back
of the left ear. The position of the body as well as the marks in the
road beside it indicated that the man had been hurled from a rapidly
moving automobile. The fact that his pockets had been rifled led to the
assumption that he had been killed and robbed before being dumped upon
the road.

Now there were those in Oakdale, and they were many, who endeavored to
connect in some way these several events of horror, mystery, and crime.
In the first place it seemed quite evident that the robbery at the Prim
home, the assault upon Old Baggs, and the murder of Paynter had been
the work of the same man; but how could such a series of frightful
happenings be in any way connected with the disappearance of Abigail
Prim? Of course there were many who knew that Abigail and Reginald were
old friends; and that the former had, on frequent occasions, ridden
abroad in Reginald's French roadster, that he had escorted her to
parties and been, at various times, a caller at her home; but no less
had been true of a dozen other perfectly respectable young ladies
of Oakdale. Possibly it was only Abigail's added misfortune to have
disappeared upon the eve of the night of Reginald's murder.

But later in the day when word came from a nearby town that Reginald had
been seen in a strange touring car with two unknown men and a girl,
the gossips commenced to wag their heads. It was mentioned, casually of
course, that this town was a few stations along the very road upon which
Abigail had departed the previous afternoon for that destination which
she had not reached. It was likewise remarked that Reginald, the two
strange men and the GIRL had been first noticed after the time of
arrival of the Oakdale train! What more was needed? Absolutely
nothing more. The tongues ceased wagging in order that they might turn
hand-springs.

Find Abigail Prim, whispered some, and the mystery will be solved. There
were others charitable enough to assume that Abigail had been kidnapped
by the same men who had murdered Paynter and wrought the other lesser
deeds of crime in peaceful Oakdale. The Oakdale Tribune got out an extra
that afternoon giving a resume of such evidence as had appeared in the
regular edition and hinting at all the numerous possibilities suggested
by such matter as had come to hand since. Even fear of old Jonas Prim
and his millions had not been enough to entirely squelch the newspaper
instinct of the Tribune's editor. Never before had he had such an
opportunity and he made the best of it, even repeating the vague
surmises which had linked the name of Abigail to the murder of Reginald
Paynter.

Jonas Prim was too busy and too worried to pay any attention to the
Tribune or its editor. He already had the best operative that the best
detective agency in the nearest metropolis could furnish. The man had
come to Oakdale, learned all that was to be learned there, and forthwith
departed.

This, then, will be about all concerning Oakdale for the present. We
must leave her to bury her own dead.

The sudden pressure of the knife point against the breast of the
Oskaloosa Kid awakened the youth with a startling suddenness which
brought him to his feet before a second vicious thrust reached him. For
a time he did not realize how close he had been to death or that he had
been saved by the chance location of the automatic pistol in his breast
pocket--the very pistol he had taken from the dressing table of Abigail
Prim's boudoir.

The commotion of the attack and escape brought the other sleepers to
heavy-eyed wakefulness. They saw Dopey Charlie advancing upon the Kid,
a knife in his hand. Behind him slunk The General, urging the other on.
The youth was backing toward the doorway. The tableau persisted but for
an instant. Then the would-be murderer rushed madly upon his victim, the
latter's hand leaped from beneath the breast of his torn coat--there was
a flash of flame, a staccato report and Dopey Charlie crumpled to the
ground, screaming. In the same instant The Oskaloosa Kid wheeled and
vanished into the night.

It had all happened so quickly that the other members of the gang,
awakened from deep slumber, had only time to stumble to their feet
before it was over. The Sky Pilot, ignoring the screaming Charlie,
thought only of the loot which had vanished with the Oskaloosa Kid.

“Come on! We gotta get him,” he cried, as he ran from the barn after
the fugitive. The others, all but Dopey Charlie, followed in the wake of
their leader. The wounded man, his audience departed, ceased screaming
and, sitting up, fell to examining himself. To his surprise he
discovered that he was not dead. A further and more minute examination
disclosed the additional fact that he was not even badly wounded. The
bullet of The Kid had merely creased the flesh over the ribs beneath his
right arm. With a grunt that might have been either disgust or relief he
stumbled to his feet and joined in the pursuit.

Down the road toward the south ran The Oskaloosa Kid with all the
fleetness of youth spurred on by terror. In five minutes he had so far
outdistanced his pursuers that The Sky Pilot leaped to the conclusion
that the quarry had left the road to hide in an adjoining field. The
resultant halt and search upon either side of the road delayed the chase
to a sufficient extent to award the fugitive a mile lead by the time the
band resumed the hunt along the main highway. The men were determined
to overhaul the youth not alone because of the loot upon his person but
through an abiding suspicion that he might indeed be what some of them
feared he was--an amateur detective--and there were at least two among
them who had reason to be especially fearful of any sort of detective
from Oakdale.

They no longer ran; but puffed arduously along the smooth road,
searching with troubled and angry eyes to right and left and ahead of
them as they went.

The Oskaloosa Kid puffed, too; but he puffed a mile away from the
searchers and he walked more rapidly than they, for his muscles were
younger and his wind unimpaired by dissipation. For a time he carried
the small automatic in his hand; but later, hearing no evidence of
pursuit, he returned it to the pocket in his coat where it had lain when
it had saved him from death beneath the blade of the degenerate Charlie.

For an hour he continued walking rapidly along the winding country road.
He was very tired; but he dared not pause to rest. Always behind him he
expected the sudden onslaught of the bearded, blear-eyed followers
of The Sky Pilot. Terror goaded him to supreme physical effort.
Recollection of the screaming man sinking to the earthen floor of the
hay barn haunted him. He was a murderer! He had slain a fellow man.
He winced and shuddered, increasing his gait until again he almost ran
--ran from the ghost pursuing him through the black night in greater
terror than he felt for the flesh and blood pursuers upon his heels.

And Nature drew upon her sinister forces to add to the fear which the
youth already felt. Black clouds obscured the moon blotting out the soft
kindliness of the greening fields and transforming the budding branches
of the trees to menacing and gloomy arms which appeared to hover with
clawlike talons above the dark and forbidding road. The wind soughed
with gloomy and increasing menace, a sudden light flared across the
southern sky followed by the reverberation of distant thunder.

Presently a great rain drop was blown against the youth's face; the
vividness of the lightning had increased; the rumbling of the thunder
had grown to the proportions of a titanic bombardment; but he dared not
pause to seek shelter.

Another flash of lightning revealed a fork in the road immediately
ahead--to the left ran the broad, smooth highway, to the right a dirt
road, overarched by trees, led away into the impenetrable dark.

The fugitive paused, undecided. Which way should he turn? The better
travelled highway seemed less mysterious and awesome, yet would his
pursuers not naturally assume that he had followed it? Then, of course,
the right hand road was the road for him. Yet still he hesitated, for
the right hand road was black and forbidding; suggesting the entrance to
a pit of unknown horrors.

As he stood there with the rain and the wind, the thunder and the
lightning, horror of the past and terror of the future his only
companions there broke suddenly through the storm the voice of a man
just ahead and evidently approaching along the highway.

The youth turned to flee; but the thought of the men tracking him from
that direction brought him to a sudden halt. There was only the road to
the right, then, after all. Cautiously he moved toward it, and at the
same time the words of the voice came clearly through the night:

“'... as, swinging heel and toe,

'We tramped the road to Anywhere, the magic road

to Anywhere,

'The tragic road to Anywhere, such dear, dim years

ago.'”

The voice seemed reassuring--its quality and the annunciation of the
words bespoke for its owner considerable claim to refinement. The youth
had halted again, but he now crouched to one side fearing to reveal his
presence because of the bloody crime he thought he had committed; yet
how he yearned to throw himself upon the compassion of this fine voiced
stranger! How his every fibre cried out for companionship in this night
of his greatest terror; but he would have let the invisible minstrel
pass had not Fate ordained to light the scene at that particular instant
with a prolonged flare of sheet lightning, revealing the two wayfarers
to one another.

The youth saw a slight though well built man in ragged clothes and
disreputable soft hat. The image was photographed upon his brain for
life--the honest, laughing eyes, the well moulded features harmonizing
so well with the voice, and the impossible garments which marked the man
hobo and bum as plainly as though he wore a placard suspended from his
neck.

The stranger halted. Once more darkness enveloped them. “Lovely evening
for a stroll,” remarked the man. “Running out to your country place?
Isn't there danger of skidding on these wet roads at night? I told
James, just before we started, to be sure to see that the chains were on
all around; but he forgot them. James is very trying sometimes. Now he
never showed up this evening and I had to start out alone, and he knows
perfectly well that I detest driving after dark in the rain.”

The youth found himself smiling. His fear had suddenly vanished. No one
could harbor suspicion of the owner of that cheerful voice.

“I didn't know which road to take,” he ventured, in explanation of his
presence at the cross road.

“Oh,” exclaimed the man, “are there two roads here? I was looking for
this fork and came near passing it in the dark. It was a year ago since
I came this way; but I recall a deserted house about a mile up the dirt
road. It will shelter us from the inclemencies of the weather.”

“Oh!” cried the youth. “Now I know where I am. In the dark and the storm
and after all that has happened to me tonight nothing seemed natural.
It was just as though I was in some strange land; but I know now. Yes,
there is a deserted house a little less than a mile from here; but you
wouldn't want to stop there at night. They tell some frightful stories
about it. It hasn't been occupied for over twenty years--not since the
Squibbs were found murdered there--the father, mother, three sons, and
a daughter. They never discovered the murderer, and the house has stood
vacant and the farm unworked almost continuously since. A couple of men
tried working it; but they didn't stay long. A night or so was enough
for them and their families. I remember hearing as a little--er--child
stories of the frightful things that happened there in the house where
the Squibbs were murdered--things that happened after dark when the
lights were out. Oh, I wouldn't even pass that place on a night like
this.”

The man smiled. “I slept there alone one rainy night about a year
ago,” he said. “I didn't see or hear anything unusual. Such stories are
ridiculous; and even if there was a little truth in them, noises can't
harm you as much as sleeping out in the storm. I'm going to encroach
once more upon the ghostly hospitality of the Squibbs. Better come with
me.”

The youth shuddered and drew back. From far behind came faintly the
shout of a man.

“Yes, I'll go,” exclaimed the boy. “Let's hurry,” and he started off at
a half-run toward the dirt road.

The man followed more slowly. The darkness hid the quizzical expression
of his eyes. He, too, had heard the faint shout far to the rear. He
recalled the boy's “after all that has happened to me tonight,” and he
shrewdly guessed that the latter's sudden determination to brave the
horrors of the haunted house was closely connected with the hoarse voice
out of the distance.

When he had finally come abreast of the youth after the latter, his
first panic of flight subsided, had reduced his speed, he spoke to him
in his kindly tones.

“What was it that happened to you to-night?” he asked. “Is someone
following you? You needn't be afraid of me. I'll help you if you've been
on the square. If you haven't, you still needn't fear me, for I won't
peach on you. What is it? Tell me.”

The youth was on the point of unburdening his soul to this stranger
with the kindly voice and the honest eyes; but a sudden fear stayed his
tongue. If he told all it would be necessary to reveal certain details
that he could not bring himself to reveal to anyone, and so he commenced
with his introduction to the wayfarers in the deserted hay barn. Briefly
he told of the attack upon him, of his shooting of Dopey Charlie, of the
flight and pursuit. “And now,” he said in conclusion, “that you know I'm
a murderer I suppose you won't have any more to do with me, unless you
turn me over to the authorities to hang.” There was almost a sob in his
voice, so real was his terror.

The man threw an arm across his companion's shoulder. “Don't worry,
kid,” he said. “You're not a murderer even if you did kill Dopey
Charlie, which I hope you did. You're a benefactor of the human race.
I have known Charles for years. He should have been killed long since.
Furthermore, as you shot in self defence no jury would convict you.
I fear, however, that you didn't kill him. You say you could hear his
screams as long as you were within earshot of the barn--dead men don't
scream, you know.”

“How did you know my name?” asked the youth.

“I don't,” replied the man.

“But you called me 'Kid' and that's my name--I'm The Oskaloosa Kid.”

The man was glad that the darkness hid his smile of amusement. He knew
The Oskaloosa Kid well, and he knew him as an ex-pug with a pock marked
face, a bullet head, and a tin ear. The flash of lightning had revealed,
upon the contrary, a slender boy with smooth skin, an oval face, and
large dark eyes.

“Ah,” he said, “so you are The Oskaloosa Kid! I am delighted, sir,
to make your acquaintance. Permit me to introduce myself: my name is
Bridge. If James were here I should ask him to mix one of his famous
cocktails that we might drink to our mutual happiness and the longevity
of our friendship.”

“I am glad to know you, Mr. Bridge,” said the youth. “Oh, I can't tell
you how glad I am to know you. I was so lonely and so afraid,” and he
pressed closer to the older man whose arm still encircled his shoulder,
though at first he had been inclined to draw away in some confusion.

Talking together the two moved on along the dark road. The storm had
settled now into a steady rain with infrequent flashes of lightning and
peals of thunder. There had been no further indications of pursuit; but
Bridge argued that The Sky Pilot, being wise with the wisdom of the owl
and cunning with the cunning of the fox, would doubtless surmise that a
fugitive would take to the first road leading away from the main artery,
and that even though they heard nothing it would be safe to assume that
the gang was still upon the boy's trail. “And it's a bad bunch, too,”
he continued. “I've known them all for years. The Sky Pilot has the
reputation of never countenancing a murder; but that is because he is a
sly one. His gang kills; but when they kill under The Sky Pilot they
do it so cleverly that no trace of the crime remains. Their victim
disappears--that is all.”

The boy trembled. “You won't let them get me?” he pleaded, pressing
closer to the man. The only response was a pressure of the arm about the
shoulders of The Oskaloosa Kid.

Over a low hill they followed the muddy road and down into a dark and
gloomy ravine. In a little open space to the right of the road a flash
of lightning revealed the outlines of a building a hundred yards from
the rickety and decaying fence which bordered the Squibbs' farm and
separated it from the road.

“Here we are!” cried Bridge, “and spooks or no spooks we'll find a
dry spot in that old ruin. There was a stove there last year and it's
doubtless there yet. A good fire to dry our clothes and warm us up
will fit us for a bully good sleep, and I'll wager a silk hat that The
Oskaloosa Kid is a mighty sleepy kid, eh?”

The boy admitted the allegation and the two turned in through the
gateway, stepping over the fallen gate and moving through knee high
weeds toward the forbidding structure in the distance. A clump of trees
surrounded the house, their shade adding to the almost utter blackness
of the night.

The two had reached the verandah when Bridge, turning, saw a brilliant
light flaring through the night above the crest of the hill they had
just topped in their descent into the ravine, or, to be more explicit,
the small valley, where stood the crumbling house of Squibbs.