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Page 26
The voice of their host rang through the empty house with a
laugh like that of an eager, happy child.
"Heavens!" said the owner of the car, "isn't she wonderful!"
But neither the prostrate burglars, nor the servants, intent
on strapping their wrists together, gave him any answer.
As they were finishing the supper filched from the ice-chest,
Fred was brought before them from the kitchen. The blow the
burglar had given him was covered with a piece of cold
beef-steak, and the water thrown on him to revive him was
thawing from his leather breeches. Mr. Carey expressed his
gratitude, and rewarded him beyond the avaricious dreams even
of a chauffeur.
As the three trespassers left the house, accompanied by many
pails of water, the girl turned to the lonely figure in the
doorway and waved her hand.
"May we come again?" she called.
But young Mr. Carey did not trust his voice to answer.
Standing erect, with folded arms, in dark silhouette in the
light of the hall, he bowed his head.
Deaf to alarm bells, to pistol shots, to cries for help, they
found her brother and Ernest Peabody sleeping soundly.
"Sam is a charming chaperon," said the owner of the car.
With the girl beside him, with Fred crouched, shivering, on
the step, he threw in the clutch; the servants from the house
waved the emptied buckets in salute, and the great car sprang
forward into the awakening day toward the golden dome over the
Boston Common. In the rear seat Peabody shivered and yawned,
and then sat erect.
"Did you get the water?" he demanded, anxiously.
There was a grim silence.
"Yes," said the owner of the car patiently. "You needn't
worry any longer. We got the water."
III
THE KIDNAPPERS
During the last two weeks of the "whirlwind" campaign,
automobiles had carried the rival candidates to every election
district in Greater New York.
During these two weeks, at the disposal of Ernest Peabody--on
the Reform Ticket, "the people's choice for
Lieutenant-Governor--" Winthrop had placed his Scarlet Car,
and, as its chauffeur, himself.
Not that Winthrop greatly cared for Reform, or Ernest Peabody.
The "whirlwind" part of the campaign was what attracted him;
the crowds, the bands, the fireworks, the rush by night from
hall to hall, from Fordham to Tompkinsville. And, while
inside the different Lyceums, Peabody lashed the Tammany
Tiger, outside in his car, Winthrop was making friends with
Tammany policemen, and his natural enemies, the bicycle cops.
To Winthrop, the day in which he did not increase his
acquaintance with the traffic squad, was a day lost.
But the real reason for his efforts in the cause of Reform,
was one he could not declare. And it was a reason that was
guessed perhaps by only one person. On some nights Beatrice
Forbes and her brother Sam accompanied Peabody. And while
Peabody sat in the rear of the car, mumbling the speech he
would next deliver, Winthrop was given the chance to talk with
her. These chances were growing cruelly few. In one month
after election day Miss Forbes and Peabody would be man and
wife. Once before the day of their marriage had been fixed,
but, when the Reform Party offered Peabody a high place on its
ticket, he asked, in order that he might bear his part in the
cause of reform, that the wedding be postponed. To the
postponement Miss Forbes made no objection. To one less
self-centred than Peabody, it might have appeared that she
almost too readily consented.
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