As the train regained momentum, presumably under the urge of Hepburn, a group of men armed with machine guns became clearly visible beside the tracks.
The special was whirling through the night again when Hepburn came back. He was smiling his low smile. Federal Agent 56 turned and stood up.
“This train won’t stop,” said Hepburn, “until we make Cleveland.”
Chapter 6
AT WEAVER’S FARM
“What’s this?” muttered Nayland Smith hoarsely.
The car was pulled up. They were in sight of the woods skirting Weaver’s Farm. Night had fallen, and although the violence of the storm had abated there was a great eerie darkness over the snow-covered landscape.
Parties of men carrying torches and hurricane lanterns moved like shadows through the trees!
Smith sprang out on to a faintly discernible track, Mark Hepburn close behind him. They began to run towards the woods, and presently a man who peered about among the silvered bushes turned.
“What has happened?” Smith demanded breathlessly.
The man, whose bearing suggested military training, hesitated, holding a hurricane lamp aloft and staring hard at the speaker. But something in Smith’s authoritative manner brought a change of expression.
“We are federal agents,” said Mark Hepburn. “What’s going on here?”
“Dr. Orwin Prescott has disappeared!”
Nayland Smith clutched Hepburn’s shoulder: Mark could feel how his fingers quivered.
“My God, Hepburn,” he whispered, “we are too late!”
Clenching his fists, he turned and began to race back to the car. Mark Hepburn exchanged a few words with the man to whom they had spoken and then doubled after Nayland Smith.
They had been compelled by the violence of the blizzard to proceed by rail to Buffalo; the military plane had been forced down by heavy snow twenty miles from the landing place selected. At Buffalo they had had further bad news from Liuetenant Johsnon.
Crowning the daring getaway of Mrs. Adair, James Richet, whose arrest had been ordered by Mark Hepburn, had vanished. . . .
And now they were ploughing a way along the drive which led up to Weaver’s Farm, a white frame house with green shutters, sitting far back from the road. A survival of Colonial New England, it had stood there , outpost of the white man’s progress in days when the red man still hunted the woods and lakes, trading beads for venison and maple sugar. Successive generations had modernized it so that to-day it was a twentieth-century home equipped from cellar to garret with every possible domestic convenience.
The door was wide open; and in the vestibule, with its old prints and atmosphere of culture, a tall, singularly thin man stood on the mat talking to a little white-haired old lady. He held a very wide-brimmed hat in his hand and constantly stamped snow from his boots. His face was gloomily officious. Members of the domestic staff might dimly be seen peering down from an upper landing. Unrest, fear, reigned in this normally peaceful household.
The white-haired lady started nervously as Mark Hepburn stepped forward.
“I am Captain Hepburn,” he said. “I think you are expecting me. Is this Miss Lakin?”
“I am glad you are here, Captain Hepburn,” said the little lady, with a frightened smile. She held out a small, plump, but delicate hand. “I am Elsie Frayne, Sarah Lakin’s friend and companion.”
“I am afraid,” Hepburn replied, “we come too late. This is Federal Officer Smith. We have met with every kind of obstacle on our way.”
“Miss Frayne,” rapped Smith in his staccato fashion, “I must put a call through immediately. Where is the telephone?”
Miss Frayne, suddenly quite at ease with these strange invaders out of the night, smiled wanly.
“I regret to say, Mr. Smith, that our telephone was cut off some hours ago.”
“Ah!” murmured Smith, and began tugging at the lobe of left ear, a habit which Hepburn had come to recognize as evidence of intense concentration. “That explains a lot.” He stared about him, his disturbing glance finally focusing upon the face of the thin man.
“Who are you?” he snapped abruptly.
“I’m Deputy Sheriff Black,” was the prompt but gloomy answer. “I have had orders to protect Weaver’s Farm.”
“I know it. They were my orders—and a pretty mess you’ve made of it.”
The local officer bristled indignantly. He resented the irritable, peremptory manners of this “G” man; in fact Deputy Sheriff Black had never been in favour of Federal interference with county matters.
“A man can only do his duty, Mr. Smith,” he answered angrily, “and I have done mine. Dr. Prescott slipped out some time after dusk this evening. Nobody saw him go. Nobody knows why he went or where he went. I may add that although I may be responsible, there are federal men on this job as well, and not one of them knows any more than I know.”
“Where is Miss Lakin?”
“Out with a search party down at the lake.”
“Sarah has such courage,” murmured Miss Frayne. “I wouldn’t go outside the house to-night for anything in the world.”
