window of the pantry.
The garage was directly in his line of vision.
His jaw sagged as he saw a familiar figure skulking close to the garage entrance. The figure was inserting a key in the locked door. The door swung open swiftly. The man appeared to be hasty, anxious to avoid being seen. But Charles recognized the pale profile that was turned momentarily toward him.
It was Bruce Dixon! The young man who had left his father's house nearly an hour and a half earlier on the pretext that he was going to town!
Charles dropped the ornate knife he was cleaning. He ran instantly toward a side door that was concealed by a wing of the house from a direct view of the
garage. He slipped through the protecting bushes that lined the gravel drive.
A
moment later, he had reached the flank of the garage and was up on a box, trying to peer into the high side window above the level of his eyes.
By straining upward on his toes, Charles was able to look through the glass pane. He saw Bruce working busily with a shining steel instrument. The automobile he was working on was the small car that Arnold Dixon always used when he drove alone. And Bruce was deliberately tampering with the steering mechanism!
The sight unnerved the faithful butler. He gasped, rose higher on his toes
to see better and the box under his feet shifted and collapsed with a noisy crash as it broke under the butler's weight.
CHAPTER XIV
THE QUARRY ROAD
INSTANTLY, Charles turned to flee. He dived headlong for the protection of
the circling bushes, hoping to slide out of sight before Bruce could rush from the garage and intercept him.
But his hope was in vain. Charles was too old to compete in speed with the
long legs of the younger man. He had taken barely three steps when Bruce came racing from the garage and sprang in front of him.
The cry that bubbled on the butler's lips was cut short by a blow from Bruce. Dazed, barely conscious, he was lifted in a strong embrace and carried swiftly back into the garage.
There was no sound from the silent mansion. Bruce waited a second to make sure that his attack on the butler had been unobserved. Then he closed the heavy garage door and the sound of his laughter was ugly. He kicked Charles brutally in the ribs until the slumped servant stirred and groaned.
'You dog!' he snarled. 'You cheap snooping rascal! Thought you'd do a little spying, eh? Well, you've just sealed your death warrant!'
Charles was staring in terror. A new car that he had never seen before was
parked in the front space of the garage. Directly opposite it was Arnold Dixon's
personal car, whose mechanism Bruce had just finished tampering with.
'Where - where did that new car come from?' Charles gasped.
'I drove it in here, you fool! It's going to carry both of us, when we leave here presently.'
'You're kidnapping me?' Charles whispered.
'I'm doing better than that. I'm killing you!'
It was hard to believe that this was the same young man who had left the mansion by the front door only an hour and a half before. His good-looking face
was stiff with rage. His lips were a thin murderous line.
'You're not Dixon's real son!' Charles cried. 'I was right! I warned Mr.
Timothy! Help! Murder!'
Bruce covered the cry with the pressure of his palm. A blow on the head ended all chance for the butler warning the old man in the silent mansion a few
hundred yards away.
DAZED, Charles saw his captor lift the garage telephone from its hook. He tried to shout, but his vocal cords were paralyzed. He heard the young man call
his father's phone number - the private one in his father's room.
'Hello, dad!' He was deliberately making his voice urgent, almost terrified. 'This is Bruce. Dad, you've got to come to me - at once! I'm in New York!' His voice dropped to a purring whisper. 'I've found out who stole the Cup of Confucius!'
There was a pause, thinly filled by the squeak of his father's voice on the wire. Then again Bruce was speaking racing words, lying words, into the instrument. He gave an address in lower New York.
'There are two of them in the apartment. The crook in the brown beard and a henchman of his. I'm calling from a drug store across the street. And they've
got the cup with them, dad - I saw them carry it in!'
'What shall I do?' Arnold Dixon's voice shrilled in far-away excitement.
'Get your car. The small one. Drive as fast as you can to New York. I'll meet you in the drug store on the corner, opposite the address I've mentioned.
And dad - don't take the regular road. It's too crowded with traffic; the thieves may get away from me before you arrive.'
His eyes were cold slits.
'Take the winding road - the shortcut that runs past the stone quarries.
You can make faster time, that way. I - I can't talk any longer. I'll be waiting!'
Bruce hung up the receiver with a click. He heaved the fainting butler into the new car that was waiting with its motor purring softly. A moment later, the garage door opened and the car emerged.
Bruce backed up and made a quick turn. With his eyes alertly on the rear of the mansion, he drove off along a weedy lane that traversed the back of the sprawling estate. It led to a wooden gate that opened on a back road.
The road was unpaved, but Bruce stepped recklessly on the gas and sent the
car hurtling along at a furious pace. Presently, he came to an intersection and
took the left turn.
The only vehicle that used this dangerous, winding road were the trucks that formerly ran to and from the quarry pits a mile or two onward. Now the pits were deserted, because of the business failure of the contractor who had owned them.
Bruce slowed his reckless speed. He had to or risk the plunge of his car and himself down the steep chasm of a deserted quarry pit. The road made a sharp S at this point as it wound past the enormous excavation in the earth.
THE sweating son of Arnold Dixon drove around the first sharp swing of the
S. He brought his car to a halt in the shadow of scraggly scrub oak and pine that lined the steep hillside opposite the quarry excavation.
On the inner side of the curve was frail wooden guard-rail painted white.
It was the only protection against a dizzy plunge to death. Bruce laughed as he
saw it.
He roped Charles's ankles and wrists and tossed the moaning butler into the weeds behind the shadow of his halted car.
Charles made no outcry. His head lolled like a dead man's. He had fainted.
That suited Bruce perfectly. Seizing a large tin of oil he ran back along the deserted road to the point where the concealed curve commenced. He spread a
thick, wavering line of oil along the hard surface of the highway. Bruce's plan
was simple.
A car, racing along at high speed, would be forced to brake for the sharp turn. The oil under the wheels would cause an instant skid. The car, swerving toward the low wooden railing, would be doomed unless the driver,
