Part 20 (1/2)

”I'll start at once,” he a.s.sured her. ”If you leave the house in fifteen minutes we shall arrive about the same time. Try to avoid being followed. Good-by.”

He listened to hear her answer, but it did not come. He heard the distant receiver clink against its hook, and then the connection was broken.

He was happy, in a wild, lawless manner, as he left the place and hastened to the Elevated station. The prospect of meeting Dorothy once more, in the warm, fragrant night, at a tryst like that of lovers, made his pulses surge and his heart beat quicken with excitement. All thought of her possible connection with the Branchville crime had fled.

The train could not run fast enough to satisfy his hot impatience. He wished to be there beneath the trees when she should presently come.

He alighted at last at the Ninety-third Street station, and hastened to the park.

When he came to the appointed place, he found an entrance to the greenery near by. Within were people on every bench in sight--New York's unhoused lovers, whose wooing is accomplished in the all but sylvan glades which the park affords.

Here and there a bit of animated flame made a tiny meteor streak against the blackness of the foliage--where a firefly quested for its mate, switching on its marvelous little searchlight. Beyond, on the smooth, broad roadways, four-eyed chariots of power shot silently through the avenues of trees--the autos, like living dragons, half tamed to man's control.

It was all thrilling and exciting to Garrison, with the expectation of meeting Dorothy now possessing all his nature. Then--a few great drops of rain began to fall. The effect was almost instantaneous. A dozen pairs of sweethearts, together with as many more unmated stragglers, came scuttling forth from unseen places, making a lively run for the nearest shelter.

Garrison could not retreat. He did not mind the rain, except in so far as it might discourage Dorothy. But, thinking she might have gone inside the park, he walked there briskly, looking for some solitary figure that should by this time be in waiting. He seemed to be entirely alone. He thought she had not come--and perhaps in the rain she might not arrive at all.

Back towards the entrance he loitered. A lull in the traffic of the street had made the place singularly still. He could hear the raindrops beating on the leaves. Then they ceased as abruptly as they had commenced.

He turned once more down the dimly lighted path. His heart gave a quick, joyous leap. Near a bench was a figure--the figure of a woman whose grace, he fancied, was familiar.

Her back was apparently turned as he drew near. He was about to whistle, if only to warn her of his coming, when the shrubbery just ahead and beside the path was abruptly parted and a man with a short, wrapped club in his hand sprang forth and struck him viciously over the head.

He was falling, dimly conscious of a horrible blur of lights in his eyes, as helplessly as if he had been made of paper. A second blow, before he crumpled on the pavement, blotted out the last remaining vestige of emotion. He lay there in a limp, awkward heap.

The female figure had turned, and now came striding to the place with a step too long for a woman. There was no word spoken. Together the two lifted Garrison's unconscious form, carried it quickly to the shrubbery, fumbled about it for a minute or two, struck a match that was s.h.i.+elded from the view of any possible pa.s.ser-by, and then, still in silence, hastily quitted the park and vanished in one of the glistening side streets, where the rain was reflecting the lamps.

CHAPTER XIV

A PACKAGE OF DEATH

A low, distant rumble of thunder denoted a new gathering of storm.

Five minutes pa.s.sed, and then the lightning flashed across the firmament directly overhead. A crash like the splitting of the heavens followed, and the rain came down as if it poured through the slit.

The violence lasted hardly more than five minutes, after which the downpour abated a little of its fury. But a steadier, quieter precipitation continued, with the swiftly moving center of disturbance already far across the sky.

The rain in his face, and the brisk puff of newly washed ozone in his heavily moving lungs, aroused Garrison's struggling consciousness by slow degrees. Strange, fantastic images, old memories, weird phantoms, and wholly impossible fancies played through his brain with the dull, torturing persistency of nightmares for a time that seemed to him endless.

It was fully half an hour before he was sufficiently aroused to roll to an upright position and pa.s.s his hand before his eyes.

He was sick and weak. He could not recall what had happened. He did not know where he was.

He was all but soaked by the rain, despite the fact that a tree with dense foliage was spread above him, and he had lain beneath protecting shrubberies. Slowly the numbness seemed to pa.s.s from his brain, like the mist from the surface of a lake. He remembered things, as it were, in patches.

Dorothy--that was it--and something had happened.

He was stupidly aware that he was sitting on something uncomfortable--a lump, perhaps a stone--but he did not move. He was waiting for his brain to clear. When at length he hoisted his heavy weight upon his knees, and then staggered drunkenly to his feet, to blunder toward a tree and support himself by its trunk, his normal circulation began to be restored, and pain a.s.sailed his skull, arousing him further to his senses.