“Motorcycle!” he called over the stair-rail.
“Just in time to be too late!” the leader said. “Quick! Out the same way we came in!”
It had to be quick. Already the great knocker at the front of the house was thundering a heavy-fisted demand for entrance.
Chapter VII
Hands Off!
On the run from Little Moose Lake to High Acres, Bradley beat the twenty minutes he had allowed himself by two minutes and a fraction. At this time of year there was little or no night traffic on local roads and once he had hit the concrete he had it to himself. When he arrived at the High Acres lodge he had covered the sixteen-mile stretch of it without passing or meeting a single car.
The estate gate stood open, a circumstance which he marked at once as unusual. He had passed the High Acres entrance times without number, and the gate had always been closed except when automobiles were entering the estate or leaving it.
Turning in, he slapped on his brakes, jerked the motorcycle back on its stand and ran up on the porch of the lodge to find out just what visitors might have come to High Acres within the last hour or so. Scudder and his tommy-gun artists were of course no longer traveling in the red roadster. His guess was that Dutch Gompert, who always had two or three suspiciously fancy automobiles around, had lent them a replacement car. On that car, assuming that they had come to High Acres and already had gone on their way, he wanted to get a line.
His first knock at the lodge door brought no response. He knocked again and harder, and that evoked a sound within that sent a chill through him — a heavy groan. The door yielded when he tried it and in the dark hall he played his pocket flash along the walls until he had located the light switch. The groan was repeated as the hall lamp came on, and he traced it to a room at the rear of the cottage.
Mylan, the gate-keeper, lay on the floor there, his head a welter of blood, his wrists and his ankles bound with wire and a handkerchief stuffed into his mouth as a gag.
Swiftly on his knees beside him, Bradley relieved him of the gag.
“What happened? Quick!” he asked as he went to work on the wire.
Mylan’s eyes were open and had showed a flicker of recognition.
“Big sedan,” he whispered. “Something — something hit me.”
Bradley knew that questioning would bring nothing more. Also, there was nothing much he could do for the old man after freeing him, and there was a possibility that he still might be in time to walk in on something at the manor house.
“You’ll be all right, Mylan,” he said, “so I’m going to push on. Lock that front door and keep it locked until I get back. That ought to be soon.”
He raced out, made his saddle with a flying jump and went scooting up the broad poplar-lined road. One minute later he was staring at the dark façade of the mansion. All seemed to be peaceful within. If there had been a burglary, the household evidently had slept right through it and by now the burglars had gone with their loot — gone out through that open gate.
He had no indecision, though, concerning his present course. Without question, there had been a robbery, and Thorne Duncan had better learn about it at once. Making the stone loggia at a jump, Bradley snatched at the bronze knocker and began a lusty thumping.
He had only a short wait. A lock clicked and the door opened. Thorne Duncan himself stood there, his face as white as his starched shirt front. Somewhere remotely behind him a door- slammed. Pistol instantly out, Bradley started forward.
Duncan blocked him with outspread arms.
“Don’t — go back there! I beg you not to!”
And that presented to Trooper Bradley both the weirdest mystery of his experience and the knottiest problem of conduct. As he hesitated over the problem, the answer to the mystery was taking wing. Outside the house an automobile that he had failed to see was thundering away with the cut-out open. He started back to the door to give chase — and Thorne Duncan, springing ahead of him, shot a bolt.
“You can’t pass!” he panted. “I… I forbid it!”
Bradley squared his shoulders and his teeth clicked together hard. “Do you think you can, Mr. Duncan?” he asked. “I’m a police officer with a duty to perform — don’t forget that.”
Duncan still stood with his back to the door.
“You have no duty here,” he said. “Not here.”
“Wherever there has been crime, I have,” said Bradley; “and to my certain knowledge a crime has been committed at High Acres tonight. You are interfering, Mr. Duncan, though I don’t know why — interfering when the people going away in that car are the criminals, to my best present knowledge and belief.”
“You’re wrong, trooper,” Thorne Duncan said. “There has been no crime at High Acres — no crime so far as you’re concerned. You may consider anything that has happened here my own personal and private affair.”
Bradley shook his head. “Afraid I can’t. You’ve made it impossible, now, Mr. Duncan, for me to overhaul men who were already due for arrest and certain conviction to a long imprisonment before they came here. That puts you in a mighty bad position, if you will look at it squarely. And when you say there has been no crime tonight on this estate — well, I know different. Or wouldn’t you call felonious assault a crime?”
Duncan stared. “What’s this?”
“I’m talking about Mylan, down at your lodge. He was slugged — might have been killed. I found him tied up, just coming to his senses.”
“Great God! Mylan’s been hurt?”
“Go take a look at him, Mr. Duncan, and then tell me what you think of the men you’re protecting.”
The millionaire’s eyes were desperate, his voice strained. “God, if I could only tell you! If I could—” He broke off, wheeling.
A startling, blood chilling-interruption had come from above. Somewhere upstairs a woman suddenly was screaming. Then bare feet, or slippered feet, were racing along the upper hall, and the voice that had screamed was calling shrilly down the stairway.
“Mr. Duncan! Mr. Duncan! Lord have mercy on the baby — they’ve taken her away!”
Thorne Duncan caught Bradley by an arm. “Now you know, trooper,” he whispered. “Your men were kidnapers. I couldn’t let you go after them — start shooting — when they had my daughter with them. Does it all come clear to you?”
The shrill voice rose again.
“Do you hear me, Mr. Duncan? The baby’s been stolen! The men tied me up and I just got free.”
“Letty’s nurse,” the father said. “She sleeps in a room off the nursery.” He raised his voice. “Go back, Anna!” he commanded sharply. “I know. I know everything that’s necessary to know right now.”
Bradley, looking about for a telephone, had discovered one on a hall table and was moving toward it. Thorne Duncan, still a persistent obstacle, snatched it from his hand as he was raising the receiver.
“What are you trying to do?” he demanded, in panic.
“What’s most necessary to do right now,” Bradley told him. “Shoot out an alarm.”
“You mustn’t!”
Bradley stared. “Do you really mean that, Mr. Duncan? Why not?”
“I’ve told you that this is my private affair. I must be left free to handle it in my own way. I don’t want any police action taken — nor even a police report made. You must forget everything you have heard here.”
Bradley straightened. Rich and powerful as he was, Thorne Duncan was still a civilian. Whole-heartedly sympathizing with him was one thing; taking orders from him to suppress a criminal report quite another. That would have gone against the grain of any seasoned trooper with a decent respect for his service.