Chapter XIV: Helen's Ordeal

Inside of half an hour after Matt and Ferral had left Carl with the Hawk, they had the air ship back in her old moorings.

Carl had hurried through the woods and watched proceedings from the ground as well as he could. When he saw the Hawk returning to her old berth, he followed her back, bursting into sight from the timber just as Matt and Ferral had finished securing the mooring ropes.

"Shake hants mit me!" bellowed Carl, rushing to grip Matt's hand, then passing to Ferral, and then to Helen Brady. "Dot vas der pootiest t'ing vat I efer saw done, yah, so helup me! Air ships can do t'ings vat nodding else vas aple, und der strangeness oof it fills me mit vonder and surbrises. Miss Prady, you vas a lucky girl! Und Matt vas lucky, und so vas Verral. I'm der only unlucky feller in der punch, pecause I don'd vas along to helup in der rescue. Matt cut me oudt oof der game. Anyvay, I'm glad dot everyt'ing come oudt like vat it dit. Dell us aboudt vat habbened mit you, Miss Prady."

Helen, seated in Matt's chair in the car, was leaning back, her eyes on the faces of the three lads. Ferral climbed up on the fence and sat down on the top board, and Matt leaned against the telephone pole. Carl sat down on the ground near the car.

"That's a good notion our Dutch raggie has just overhauled, Miss Brady," seconded Ferral. "We'd all like to hear that yarn. There's nothing better we can do, just now, as we haven't any guns and can't help Harris and the officers."

"Go on, Helen," said Matt. "We know something about what happened to you, but not all."

"Where did you find out anything?" queried the girl. "I was never more surprised in my life than when I saw you with the officers near the house."

"We'll tell you that later," answered Matt. "Your experiences first."

"Well," began the girl, "after I went to visit my friends in Archer Avenue, a letter came for my brother. I have been worried about my brother for a long time, for he would be honest if it was not for my father's evil influence." The girl's lip quivered, but she fought down her rising emotion and went on. "I opened the letter. It was from my father and asked Hector to go to the house at Lake Station, where I lived for a while, and get a paper which he would find under a loosened brick in the basement wall. The brick was marked with a cross.

"Hector, as I knew, had left the city, so I concluded to go to Lake Station and get the paper myself. I was wondering what it was all about. I found the paper, and it gave the location of a spot in Willoughby's swamp where some of the goods stolen by my father had been concealed. Father wanted the plunder turned into cash so that the best lawyers could be hired to keep him out of the penitentiary. I decided at once that I would turn the paper over the chief of police in South Chicago, and I had left my friends' house to start for there when a man stopped me on the street.

"The man's name was Hooligan, and he told me that my brother had not gone to New York at all, but had given it out that he was going merely as a 'blind' for the police. My brother, Hooligan told me, was lying very ill in a house in River Forest, and wanted to see me. I concluded to put off going to South Chicago until next day, and to go and see Hector.

"Hooligan took me to that house, from which you just rescued me, and there I was made a captive by Pete and Whipple, and turned over to the care of Mrs. Hooligan. I surmised, at once, why I had been spirited away. Pete and Whipple had found out about the paper I had secured, and they wanted to get the stolen property for themselves. And there I was with the paper! You see, I had started for South Chicago with it, and had it in my pocket. I remembered the instructions, and I tore the paper into little bits, when Mrs. Hooligan wasn't looking, and threw the pieces down a register into one of the furnace pipes.

"When Whipple and Pete came and demanded the paper, I told them truthfully that I didn't have it. They said that, even if I didn't have the paper, they knew I could remember the instructions for finding the buried spoil, and ordered me to repeat them. I refused, and for two days they gave me nothing to eat, and only a little water to drink. Whipple said he would starve me to death if I didn't tell."

"The scoundrel!" muttered Matt darkly.

"Vorse as dot!" wheezed Carl wrathfully, "ach, mooch vorse!"

"The whole lot ought to be lashed to a grating and flogged with the cat," growled Ferral.

"I was at Mrs. Hooligan's house in La Grange at that time," continued Helen. "Pete and Whipple had taken Mrs. Hooligan and me to La Grange on the night of the day I was captured. We went in a closed carriage.

"Mrs. Hooligan was with me all the time, and there never was a moment when she wasn't watching. Sometimes she treated me kindly, and sometimes she was cross and violent. She drank a good deal, and whenever she was under the influence of liquor she was always quarrelsome and hard to get along with.

"I got so weak and sick without food that Pete and Whipple must have become afraid I would die without telling them what they wanted to know. Anyhow, they began to give me something to eat, but kept me tied to a chair nearly all the time, coming to see me two or three times a day and threatening what they would do if I continued obstinate. But I made up my mind that I would let them kill me before I would say anything about where that plunder had been buried. That, I had decided, should go back to its rightful owners."

"You were a brave girl to hang out for your principles like that," put in Matt.

"It does take a little courage, sometimes, to do what is right," returned the girl, "but when your conscience approves, that makes it easy. I lost track of the time, while I was at Mrs. Hooligan's house, in La Grange, and it seemed as though months must have passed; then, suddenly, I heard an automobile stop in front of the place, last night, and Mrs. Hooligan and I were bundled into it and taken away.

"I was brought back here, and early this morning Whipple told me that they were tired of bothering with me, and that if I didn't tell them what they wanted to know before night I should never leave the house alive.

"Mrs. Hooligan had been keeping me in a room on the top floor. She had been drinking more or less all night, and she acted so savage toward me that I began to believe Pete and Whipple had told her to put me out of the way. Mrs. Hooligan, I imagined, was drinking to get up her courage. If that was the reason, though, she went too far, for she drank so much that she became stupefied and fell asleep with her head on a table.

"I was bound to a chair, but I succeeded in freeing myself of the cords. At about that time I heard a commotion downstairs, and a sound of shooting. Hope arose in me, and I made my way to the roof of the building, with the intention of letting those below know where I was. I can't tell you how surprised I was when I saw Motor Matt and Mr. Harris. I did not dare call out, for fear my voice would be heard by Whipple and Pete, but it was not long before I knew that Matt had seen me and had made his plans for a rescue. The rest, you know. I have had a terrible experience, but it is a satisfaction to think that the plans of Pete and Whipple failed, and that they did not find out what they wanted to know. Now, Matt," and Helen fixed her gaze on the young motorist, "you can tell me how you were able to discover where I was."

All the chums had a hand in the telling. Helen was amazed when she learned how her father had been instrumental in bringing Matt and his friends to her aid--amazed as well as overjoyed. To her, it indicated a change of heart in her father, as pleasant to her as it was unexpected.

Barely had the three boys finished their part of the explanation, when the pounding of a motor came to them from the direction of the road that followed the railway track.

"Vat's dot?" cried Carl, as all became suddenly attentive.

"Only an automobile," replied Matt, smiling. "You've heard them before, Carl."

"Vell, I bed you," answered Carl, "aber my nerfs vas on edge, schust now, und I peen imachining all sorts oof t'ings. Meppy dot vas---"

At that point, Carl was interrupted by Harris and Burton, bursting into sight from the edge of the timber.

"That air ship, Matt!" cried Harris, "we want to use her in a hurry."

"Eferyt'ing goes mit a rush, seems like," said Carl curiously. "Vat's oop, now, Harris?"

"Pete and Whipple have got away in the automobile, and we must follow them."

"The Hawk is fast for an air ship," said Matt, "but she's not fast enough to catch an automobile."

"She's the only thing we have to give chase with," spoke up Burton, "and we've got to do our best with her, or let Whipple and Pete get away."

"And we've got to get the automobile back," stormed Harris. "Hustle up, Matt! The automobile may break down, or something else may happen to give us a chance to overhaul her. We'll try, anyway. Miss Brady had better stay here--one of the boys can remain to look after her."

"That's your job, Dick," said Matt, busily unmooring. "We'll come back here for you after we see how the chase comes out."

"Hoop-a-la!" tuned up Carl, fluttering around the car. "Here's ver I ged a shance ad some oxcidement."

Helen got out of the car as soon as the ropes were cast off, and Matt, Carl, Harris, and Burton jumped in.

A twist of the right hand got the machinery to going, and a jerk of the left gave the steering rudder the proper angle.

Rising swiftly, the Hawk turned her nose toward the wagon road. From their high elevation, Harris, Burton, and Carl were able to see the automobile, far in the distance and making along the La Grange road.

"Turn her to the right, Matt!" cried Harris, "and we'll bear away in the direction of La Grange. It may be a hopeless chase, but we've got to do what we can."

"Tough luck if those scoundrels get away, after all the trouble they've caused," muttered Burton.

"And it will be tough on me," said Harris, "if I can't get back that automobile!"