As the boat pulled cautiously alongside the wharf, they noticed that a post at the end of it had been broken off short very recently, for the splinters were bright yellow.
They landed and hurried across the tracks. Chips of dark-blue paint clung to the broken wires of the fence.
One of the men in the boat called to them and pointed. In the eddy downstream floated a black leather cushion.
“Out of control!” rasped McCoy. “They’re drowned!”
“Drowned nothing!” Morgan snapped at him. “Here went McHenry’s incriminating dark-blue car, with nobody in her. The house is somewhere above!”
“They went past the next town with Mrs. Evans.”
“And doubled back. McHenry’s clever. But he’s not far away, nor Evans and his mother and Dorothy Hearn!”
“Would he leave such a clew so close to home?”
“He figured we’d come by road and never see it.”
Morgan did not trouble to add that, even by water, McCoy had missed the clew until it was pointed out to him.
“Worth having a look, anyhow,” McCoy agreed.
He called an order. The boat was made fast. All except two of the men on her came ashore to join him.
McCoy led them up the road to the top. Seeing no house, he sent his men into the woods on either side, in a widening circle. He and Morgan stayed on the road.
Presently a man came trotting back to them.
“Empty car farther along, sir,” he reported.
Another policeman burst out of the bushes to their right, ran up and saluted.
“Big house off there near the cliff, sir. Looks old and deserted. But I saw a light—”
“Got him!” cried McCoy. “Wait here for us, you two. Tell the others to wait when they come back.”
He strode along the road with Morgan until a bend showed them the car. Morgan stared at it and whistled softly.
“Bottis! That’s young Evans’s car. Bottis smelled a rat and trailed ’em! They’ve got him, too, or he would have phoned us for help long before this. The house, Ross!”
The men from the boat had collected again on the road. The man who had found it led the way to the house. Presently it showed through the trees, an old-fashioned wooden structure with cupolas and wooden lacework.
The men spread out to surround it. Morgan spotted the light, low down in a cellar window.
Suddenly they heard the muffled report of a revolver.
“Blow the charge and be damned!” roared Morgan. “I’m for the front door—”
McCoy drew his whistle and blew it. His men closed in about the house. He raced after Morgan, arriving in time to see the big column writer burst through the aged front door with a crash. They both heard the alarm bell that rang somewhere below. Three men crowded in after them.
Somewhere beneath them came an agonized screaming in a girl’s voice. It turned Morgan cold.
He thundered down the hall. Luckily, the cellar stairs were exactly where he hoped to find them. He plunged down, McCoy and the others at his heels.
Dorothy’s cell was near these stairs, Hal’s beyond. When the warning bell rang, Wallace and the sailor had been pounding on her door, which Hal had bolted on the inside.
At the first alarm, Wallace thrust the sailor along the passage toward the front of the house and followed him.
The two were at the far end of the corridor when Morgan came clattering down the stairs. McCoy saw them and yelled an order to halt. Wallace opened a door at the far end, thrust the sailor through, and started to follow him just as McCoy drew his revolver and opened fire.
But it was a long shot. McCoy’s bullets went wide. Wallace vanished and slammed the door. McCoy and his three men raced in pursuit.
Intent on the frantic screams from close at hand, Morgan had no attention for anything else. He located their source and hurled himself at the door of Dorothy’s cell.
For all his reckless weight it would not yield. The screams continued. Cursing McCoy, he ran into the next cell in search of another door.
Dan lay writhing on the floor there, struggling to drag himself toward the bed, his face a mask of agony.
When Morgan entered he turned with a snarl, then waved toward the barred opening and held out the revolver he had taken from Wallace.
“That sailor shot me from the door!” he groaned. “Get the black! Take this and get him through the bars! Quick, before he—”
Morgan jumped on the bed and glared through into the cell where Dorothy lay screaming and tugging at Nimbo’s hair. Hal was just losing consciousness. The girl’s writhing little person was directly in line with Nimbo’s figure as he crouched over Hal. Morgan roared at her to roll to one side, but she was too frantic to hear him.
Taking a chance, he fired at the Nubian’s bent leg, at a point below and in line with his body. Though no great marksman, he had the luck to send his bullet home.
Nimbo howled with pain and shambled to his feet, sweeping Dorothy aside. Still, in his animal fury, he saw Morgan and started toward the bars.
Morgan took careful aim and fired.
The heavy bullet struck the black between the eyes and crashed through his brain. He reeled backward and down across Hal’s body, dead before he struck the floor. But the tremendous vitality in his squat frame kept him jerking and twitching for many seconds after.
Dorothy lay in a limp heap where she had fallen, dangling by her bound ankles. A glimpse of Hal’s face sent Morgan into the corridor again.
McCoy and his men were still trying to break down the door through which Wallace had escaped.
“Ross!” bellowed Morgan. “Come back here and break down this door! It’s touch and go with Evans—”
Against all his instincts, McCoy abandoned the chase and came pounding back with his men.
Without orders these three hurled themselves as one against the door. The bolt snapped and they tumbled into the cell in a heap. Morgan scrambled over them.
“First aid! Quick!” he ordered. “The boy’s been strangled. The black’s dead. I’ll see to the girl—”
He waited until the men had begun to work over Hal. Then he turned to Dorothy. He cut away the ropes from her chafed ankles, picked her up in his arms, and laid her on the bed.
She would be all right, despite the pink welts on the soles of her feet. Black with anger, he turned to see what hope there was for Hal. And at that moment Hal opened his eyes, drew a long painful breath, felt of his throat and sat up weakly, stung thereto by a deep, subconscious memory of danger.
Morgan turned suddenly. A long, lean figure had crept to the door, dragging a broken leg, its tortured face seeking Hal. Dan saw his friend sit up, knew that all was well, and dropped senseless in his tracks.
In the meantime, McCoy’s whistle and his yell for an ax had brought more men pounding down the stairs. One of them had found an ax somewhere back of the house.
McCoy led them racing along the corridor. Two or three blows knocked out a panel in the door at the end. He reached through to the bolt and the door swung open.
They found themselves in a long tunnel roofed with heavy planks. It led downward and straight for the cliff.
When they had covered about forty yards, stumbling through darkness, the tunnel swerved sharply to reveal an inclosure lighted by electricity about fifty feet farther on.
Suddenly this was flooded with daylight. Now they could make out the side of a plane.
They heard a tremendous, swelling-roar. The plane stirred and shot out of sight.
With an oath, McCoy ran on and burst into a great cave in the cliff looking over the Hudson. He was just in time to see an amphibian plane swoop across the waiter toward the police boat. The men on the boat scrambled to unlimber the gun in the bow.