When Titans Drive/Chapter 15

OB BAINBRIDGE came down to Lancaster that same evening. He had made arrangements with Tweedy to be there at a certain hour to receive the wire his partner planned to send regarding a loan necessary to cover that second note.

Arriving in town about a quarter to six, Bob went straight to the telegraph office. The operator, a dapper youth of almost tender years, promptly handed him an envelope.

“Came in just in time, Mr. Bainbridge,” he announced. “We close at six, you know.”

Bob nodded absently without speaking, and departed at once for the hotel he usually patronized. There would be plenty of time in the morning to send his partner an answer, and he was anxious to have a chance to think the matter over quietly.

Reaching the hotel, he registered, and went at once to the room assigned him. Here he opened the message, and read it through with a perfectly blank expression:

“Well, I’ll be hanged!” Bainbridge exclaimed aloud. “What the deuce does that mean? ‘Have cover removed on tank house. Can’t use other timber.’ Blamed if I think it means anything. Sounds like gibberish to me.”

Puzzled, and decidedly ill-tempered, he sat down and scanned the message closely. He could not believe it had been sent him as a joke. Tweedy was not the sort to perpetrate that kind of a pleasantry, especially at present. But what else could it be?

For twenty minutes or more he sat staring at the sheet before he made a curious discovery. The telegram was not addressed to him at all, but to one William Kollock.

“The genial Bill,” he muttered, his eyes sparkling with a new interest. “Jove! The plot thickens!”

A glance at the envelope showed his own name written plainly thereon. Evidently the boy had carelessly transposed the messages, giving Bainbridge the one intended for the tool of his bitterest enemy. To Bob the annoyance of realizing that, in all probability, Kollock was in possession of Tweedy’s wire about the loan was swallowed up in the interest of those ten words before him.

That they were written in a secret code Bainbridge had not a doubt. There was a superficial coherency about them, but when one studied the message, the impossibility of a careless operator being responsible for those errors became plain. Just what that code might be Bob did not know, but he meant to find out if such a thing were possible. A cryptogram addressed to Bill Kollock must, almost certainly, be of vital importance to himself.

The reading of the cipher—if such it could be called—proved ever simpler than he had expected. Taking the first letters of each word from left to right made no sense at all. Reversing the process, however, produced this cryptic phrase:

“Touch torch.”

“About as dotty as the other.” grumbled Bob, crumpling the message into a pocket. “I’m hanged if I’ll bother with the thing any longer.”

He could not help thinking about it, however, and after a futile walk to the telegraph office, and equally futile attempt to locate the operator, he went back to the hotel and turned in.

But even here his mind refused to respond to the urgings of his tired body. Though he did best to forget those two tantalizing words, he found it impossible. What did they mean? What could they mean? Perhaps, after all, they meant nothing in themselves, but were simply a cryptic sort of signal which the recipient alone would understand.

“Touch torch,” he murmured drowsily, as he stretched his weary body luxuriously on the first real bed he had known in months. “What the deuce! Touch torch Great guns! The mill!”

With a single bound he cleared the space between bed and bureau. In a second the lamp was lighted, and he was flinging on his clothes in mad haste. What a thick-headed fool he had been! That was it, of course! Thwarted in those other cowardly attacks, it was the most natural thing in the world for Elihu Crane to make use of this means of crippling his competitor. He who had not hesitated at attempted assassination was not likely to stop at arson.

Within five minutes Bainbridge had left the hotel, and was tearing down the road in the direction of his property. The sky was still dark and placid, and for a little while he thought he would be in time. But as he reached the fence surrounding the mill, and ran along it toward the nearest gates, a sudden reddish glow flashed up through the blackness beyond the high board structure, followed by a little shower of sparks like a feathery rocket.

Without pausing an instant in his rush, Bainbridge drew his revolver and fired twice in the air. Then he broke the stillness with a cry of fire from his powerful lungs—a cry which might almost have raised the dead.

The gates were wide open, and, as he raced through into the inclosure, he almost collided with a shadowy figure, bent over, and running with long, agile strides. The pistol was still in Bob’s hand, and, without a moment of hesitation, he sent it crashing square in the middle of the unknown’s forehead, dropping the fellow like a log.

“One good thing done, anyhow,” muttered Bainbridge, with a fierce kind of satisfaction.

He hesitated an instant, wondering whether to pause and make the fellow secure, or hurry on toward the burning building. Brief as had been the space since it first showed, the fire was beginning to break forth, illumining the sky, and making the mill seem almost like a flaming furnace within. There was little chance of accomplishing any good there, while it would be a pity if one of the undoubted criminals escaped.

He had made up his mind, and was searching through his pockets for something to bind the fellow with, when a scream rang out, so wild and full of agonized appeal that it chilled his blood. It came from the burning building, and in an instant Bob was running toward it with all his might.

He raced around a corner, peering through windows as he ran. The front half of the building was one glare of flaming crimson, in which no human being could live a minute. The man—it was the watchman, of course—must be in the rear.

He kept on around. Reaching another window, he smashed it with a piece of “edging” caught up from the ground, letting out a volume of smoke. With a bound he was inside, facing the glare which came from the billowing mass of fire.

“Tom!” he cried, shielding his face with one crooked arm. “Tom! Where are you?”

There was no answer. Crouching low and holding his breath, he hurried toward a portion of the mill which overlooked the river. Behind him the flames closed in with chuckling crackles like sentient things of murderous intent bent on cutting off his retreat.

“Tom!” he cried again. “Where are”

The words died in his throat. Sprawled across the log carrier near one of the huge circular saws was the inert body of a man. The fire had almost reached it, but Bainbridge plunged forward without faltering. Through heat that singed hair and eyebrows, and seemed to sear his lungs with the breath of death he plunged. Stooping, he grasped the unconscious man by the shoulders, and dragged him across the floor. He could not retreat as he had come. He did not try. He was making for the opening to the runway or chute over which logs were yanked up from the river. This was rather steep and slippery, and he was forced to change his grip on the man. An instant later he gave a cry of amazement as he recognized the blackened, bloody features of his own riverman.

But there was not a second to lose in speculation as to what Curly was doing here. The glare of the burning building lit up the whole river, and already from the other side came cries of arriving villagers. He could see them running; doubtless many of them saw him as he paused in the fire-lit arch of the chute with the unconscious youth in his arms.

“It’s a swim for it,” he muttered, glancing at Kollock. “Not much of a one, but mighty cold. Reckon we’ll be on our way.”

Hoisting Kollock over his shoulder, he stepped into the log-polished trough. For a fraction of a second he seemed to stand motionless, straight as a dart, a striking figure against that background of lurid crimson. Then, still remaining upright, he shot downward at an angle like a person sliding on ice, to plunge with a great splash into the icy water.