THE PHANTOM

HIGHWAYMAN

RON GOULART

The first time they attempted to assassinate him, he had no idea why.

That was in London a few days before Halloween in October of 1899 at what had begun as a very sedate literary tea in the heart of Bloomsbury. Certainly not a place where you’d expect to be set upon by a trio of large, hooded men in formal attire and armed with sabers.

Before the case was over Harry Challenge would also have to contend with the ghost of a notorious 18th Century highwayman, a ruthless gang of espionage agents, the second cleverest criminal mastermind in all of Europe and a female equestrian with advanced ideas.

Harry was a man of middle height, lean, clean-shaven and a shade weather-beaten. He had recently turned thirty two and had little use for teas, literary or otherwise. But two days after he’d arrived in London, having successfully concluded an investigation into an outbreak of lycanthropy in a suburb of Paris, he’d received a cablegram from New York at the overpriced hotel on the Strand where his father always insisted he should stay.

Dear Son: Quit lolling around decadent London clubs with ninnies and swells and get back to work. Attend literary tea at Lady Hammersmith’s in Bloomsbury, Sat. 28 Oct., 5 PM. Client’s daughter Elizabeth Beecher will contact you there. He’s filthy rich and has the halfwit notion his country estate is haunted. I smell more big money for us. Your devoted father, the Challenge International Detective Agency.

So there was Harry holding the same cup of weak tea he’d been holding for nearly a half hour and declining to avail himself of a chocolate napoleon from a passing tray. His client’s daughter had yet to make an appearance at the crowded gathering and he was standing in a shadowy corner of the cluttered parlour of Lady Hammersmith’s large townhouse.

A small poet in a nubby Norfolk suit was saying, “This bloody war is exactly what we Britons need to strengthen us, old man. I’m so taken up with fervour that I’ve already completed three stanzas of a patriotic ode I callTake Up The Sword, Gird Up Thy Loins! ”

“I wouldn’t keep that sword too close to my loins,” said Harry. “What war?”

“Haven’t you heard that Britain’s at war with those benighted Boers in South Africa? The blighters declared war on us nearly a fortnight ago.”

“Not on me,” corrected Harry. “I’m from America.”

“Ah, yes, you chaps are having your own little war with those benighted Spaniards in Cuba.”

“Actually I’m sitting that one out, too.”

The poet, wiping scone crumbs from his ample beard, eyed Harry a bit suspiciously. “You’re not one of those blooming pacifists?”

“On the contrary, I’m almost insanely aggressive. Only yesterday I socked a bellicose poet for practically no reason at all.”

Backing away a few steps, the poet said, “Well, old man, I’ve enjoyed our little—”

“Would a Mr. Harry Challenge be among those present?” inquired the thin bearded man who’d appeared in the parlour doorway.

“I’m Harry Challenge.” He set his full tea cup on a small claw-footed marble-topped table.

Smiling, the thin man thrust two fingers into his mouth to produce a shrill, piercing whistle. “Here he is, my lads,” he shouted. “Dispatch the bloke.”

Harry was already reaching for the .38 revolver in his concealed shoulder holster. He’d decided to do that when he noticed a large portion of the man’s beard falling off as he whistled.

Now he dived, gun in hand, to the Persian carpet and rolled swiftly to his left, knocking over a heavyset woman who’d earlier been introduced to him as a duchess. She went toppling onto an ottoman as Harry came up seated on the floor with his back pressing against the ornately carved leg of a candy stripe love seat.

A broad-shouldered man wearing evening clothes and a scarlet hood was pushing his way through the startled guests, brandishing a polished saber above his head. “It’s all up with you, Challenge me lad,” announced the man, the silken mask muffling his throaty voice some.

Harry merely grinned and shot the man in the thigh.

“I say, fellow,” observed a heavyset gentleman with a substantial set of whiskers, “that’s hardly sporting. I mean to say, this chap is only armed with a blade.”

“He’s an American,” mentioned the poet to explain Harry’s obvious lack of sportsmanship.

While the first hooded would-be assassin howled with pain and executed a ragged rigadoon on the stately carpet, Harry was vaulting a flowered divan.

He dodged to his right as two more similarly attired swordsmen came pushing into the now chaotic gathering.

“Oh, I say, you chaps,” said the gentleman with the whiskers. “Now, I must point out, it’s your side that’s being far from sporting, don’t you know? I mean to say, two against one is hardly cricket.”

The leading assassin took a choppy swing at Harry with his saber.

He avoided that, delivering a solid punch to the man’s ribs in passing. He followed that with a well-placed kick to the man’s groin.

“A deucedly obvious foul,” pointed out the gentleman. “Really, young sir, you must make more of an effort to fight fairly.”

While the second man with a saber hopped in pain, Harry took aim at the third.

“Not bloody worth it,” this one decided, spinning on his heel and shoving through the guests and into the hallway.

“Excuse me,” said Harry, easing around a substantially built lady author of three-decker novels. He elbowed in the wake of the third assassin. “I really am curious to find out exactly what I did to annoy these louts.”

The heavy oaken door was yanked open by the fleeing man. He went galloping down the brick steps and into the afternoon fog.

Still clutching his revolver, Harry went sprinting after him.

He was loping by a parked and driverless Hansom cab when the voice of a young woman cried out from inside it. “Please, won’t someone help me?”

The thick midday fog parted and swirled as the train sped along the tracks toward Barsetshire. Elizabeth Beecher said, “I can assure you, Mr. Challenge, that my dear father will also be forever grateful to you for your actions of yesterday afternoon.”

“So you mentioned.” Harry was sitting across from her in the First Class compartment they were sharing. Taking a thin cigar from his case, he lit it.

“I know I tend to repeat myself,” said Elizabeth. “But that is quite simply because I’m so very much aware that had you not come along when you did, those scoundrels would have carried me off.”

“You have no idea why they’d tie you up and tossed you in that cab?”

She was a slender blonde young woman of twenty four, wearing a tweed traveling suit and matching hat. Shaking her head, Elizabeth answered, “Perhaps to prevent me from consulting with you, Mr. Challenge. Or perhaps, the thought did occur to me while I lay trussed up in that vile Hansom cab and struggled desperately to loose my gag, that they might have intended to hold me for ransom. My father, as you may know, is a very wealthy man.”

“My father told me, yes.” Harry blew out smoke. “I think it’s more likely, Miss Beecher, that this all has to do with the case your father’s hired us to look into.” More smoke. “They wanted to make sure you didn’t talk to me and they also wanted to make absolutely certain that I’d never reach the village of Slumberleigh in Barsetshire to nose around.”

The pretty young woman sighed, gloved hand idly drumming on the wicker basket that shared her seat with her. “Why, though, would a gang of masked ruffians care a fig for our ghost?”

“That’s what I’ll have to find out.” He puffed on his stogie. “How many times did you say you’ve seen this phantom highwayman?”

“Possibly once.” The train lurched as it rounded a bend, their compartment swayed and a bunch of fat purple grapes at the top of the basket nearly jumped free. “I’ve never seen the pumpkin, nor has my dear father.”

Harry sat up. “Which pumpkin would that be, Miss Beecher?”

“As I say, I have never seen it myself but some of the villagers swear they have.”

“Your ghost carries a pumpkin on his nocturnal rides?”

“He wears it.”

Harry nodded. “Why? Some sort of Halloween prank?”

Elizabeth detached a few purple grapes. “The local legend, which absolutely no one informed us about when my father first journeyed here from Chicago and was negotiating to purchase Thorncliffe Manor, has it that a fabled highway robber who called himself the Jack-O’-Lantern plied his trade on the highway which runs from Barset to Slumberleigh and through the forest at the rear of our hundred and twenty acre estate. For some reason, possibly to frighten his victims, he wore a mask fashioned from a hollowed out pumpkin. This dashing daredevil flourished from 1705 to 1733. Then he was captured and hanged from the gibbet that used to stand near Druid’s Hill.”

“Don’t tell me why it’s known as Druid’s Hill.”

“Very well, Mr. Challenge, although it’s merely because there’s a small scale version of Stonehenge standing there.”

“We have, then, a spectral highwayman who, in his hey-day, chose to wear a pumpkin as a disguise,” Harry said, tapping ashes off his stogie. “On top of which there’s an ancient cairn where they probably used to stage human sacrifices. For good measure we also have a spot where they used to hang folks.” He shook his head, grinning. “Colourful.”

“This is, after all, England.”

“True,” he admitted.

“At any rate, Mr. Challenge, all my father wishes you to accomplish is to rid him of this ghost.”

“Why exactly? I’d bet a good reliable spectre—one who’s been manifesting himself as frequently as this lad has of late, according to what you’ve told me—would be an appealing tourist attraction. Add to the value of your property.”

She smiled at him. “I quite agree with you,” Elizabeth said. “Yet my father is much more conservative and, keep in mind, we’re transplanted Americans and one of his major desires is to fit into the community. He feels one doesn’t do that by standing out in any way.” She paused to eat a few fat grapes. “Of more immediate concern is the fact that we’re having a gala Halloween masquerade ball this coming Tuesday. Father is fearful that some of our two hundred invited guests will be frightened off if they hear the area is haunted. We’ve also been having a devil of a time hiring extra servants for the evening. The locals are a superstitious lot.”

“You want this ghost exorcised no later that Tuesday, huh?”

“That would be ideal, yes. Can you do it?”

He grinned. “How many witnesses have seen your galloping highwayman thus far?” ”

“He apparently didn’t recur until something like three weeks ago,” she answered. “In that time, as far as we know, a half dozen. Of course, the accounts of the sighting have spread throughout Slumberleigh.”

“Give me some details.”

“The Jack-O’-Lantern usually appears near midnight on the high road, riding like fury. His steed is a powerful black stallion. Its eyes glow red and give off sparks and it exhales great clouds of smoke. At least according to those who claim to have seen it.”

“Yep, that’s one impressive horse.”

Slightly perplexed, she watched his face for a few silent seconds. “Am I correct in assuming that you are adopting a somewhat flippant attitude toward the situation?”

“At this point I don’t even know if this horse and rider are supernatural or not,” he told her. “Therefore, Miss Beecher, I’m going to have to find out what exactly folks are seeing. Then I’ll adopt a fitting attitude and let you know what it is.”

She made a sound that came close to being a sigh. “Your agency comes highly recommended.”

“With good reason,” he assured her. Lowering the window on the outside door a few inches, he flipped his cigar butt out into the thick grey fog. “Who lives near you?”

“No one really,” she answered. “Except the tenants who inhabit cottages on our farming land. Beyond that there’s a substantial forest and then the village of Slumberleigh.”

“Who’s been doing all the noticing of the Jack-O’-Lantern, then?”

“Our gardener, some of the tenants and a traveling parson who was on his way to visit his sister in Slumberleigh,” Elizabeth said, plucking a few more grapes. “Except for Parson Estling, who’s back home in Barset again, you’ll be able to question all of the witnesses. I’m sure you’ll have some pertinent queries for them.”

Harry leaned back in his seat. “And you have no other neighbours?”

“Well, I suppose we could count Professor Garroway and his daughter. Emily Garroway, I must say, is a very strange girl and I suspect that she’s what they call a New Woman.”

“Meaning what?”

“She has very advanced ideas, so I hear, and was actually seen in the village once smoking a cigarette. I’ve never had a conversation with her, but the rumour is that she advocates suffrage for women.” Emily shook her head. “An idea such as that borders on the radical, in my opinion.”

“Where do this radical and her father live?”

“In a place known as the Spectral Horseman Inn just off the high road to the village. A ramshackle, sprawling place, it was converted to a private residence in ’87 I believe,” she said. “Professor Garroway is said to be working on perfecting a horseless carriage. He has a small crew of workmen and the stables and out buildings have been converted to workshops. His daughter, who is an artist of some sort, also aids him in his work.”

“This professor wouldn’t beAlbert Garroway, would he?”

“Yes, I believe that is his first name. Are you acquainted with—”

“He’s the man who invented the Garroway Machine Gun,” said Harry. “It was used by the British in the Zulu Wars. I doubt he’s working on something as harmless as an automobile.”

“Then what do you suspect the professor and his daughter are actually up to, Mr. Challenge?”

Harry shrugged his left shoulder. “That’s one more thing I’ll have to find out.”

The magician appeared while the train was still more than an hour away from the Slumberleigh station. He tapped on the corridor door and, not waiting for an invitation, stepped into their compartment. He was a portly fellow, wrapped in a dark cloak and sporting an impressive top hat. “Ah, Harry, I had a strong hunch I’d find you here,” he said. “I’ve come to warn you that—”

“Why, it’s Mr. Lorenzo,” exclaimed Elizabeth. “I had no notion that you were traveling on this selfsame train.”

“I’m known as the Great Lorenzo,” he corrected, smiling as he plucked a bouquet of yellow roses out of the air and handed them to the young women. “Now then, Harry my lad, as I was about to say, I’ve come to warn you that—”

“We’ve hired the Great Lorenzo to stage his famous magic show at our masked ball on Tuesday,” Elizabeth explained to Harry.

“World famousmagic show,” the Great Lorenzo corrected. “Harry, as you know, while I make no claim to possessing true magical powers, I have on past occasions, when our paths have crossed in many of the glittering capitals of Europe, had visions and premonitions that have helped you pull your chestnuts out of the fire on more than one occasion.”

“That you have, Lorenzo.” Harry half stood, shaking hands with the plump magician. “Sit down and tell me about your latest premonition. Judging from the pained expression, it must be a real doozie.”

Bowing toward Elizabeth, the Great Lorenzo placed her basket on the compartment floor and sat opposite Harry. “These portents of the future, as you well know, Harry, do not always reach me in crystal clear form. This afternoon, whilst I was sharing a magnum of rather inferior Ruritanian champagne with a slightly overweight ballerina who’s traveling to Barsetshire to—”

“The premonition, Lorenzo.”

“To be sure, although I always think colourful details add to the impact of a narrative.” The magician fluffed his substantial greying sideburns. “In the vision I was suddenly visited with, I saw two men clad in tailcoats and crimson hoods attacking you with—”

“Only two?”

“It seems to me, my boy, that even two huge masked blackguards waving sabers constitute a sufficient threat.” The Great Lorenzo sounded a bit miffed.

Grinning, Harry held up his left hand in a placating gesture. “Sounds to me like you’re going to have to fine tune your premonitions,” he said. “Those hooded louts attacked me yesterday afternoon in London. And there were three of them, not two. I appreciate your warning, Lorenzo, but it’s about a day late.”

“Those same men also attempted to abduct me,” added the young woman. “Had not Mr. Challenge routed them and noticed me in the Hansom cab where they—”

“Hush, my child,” advised the magician.

“I’m not accustomed to being hushed by a person whom we’ve hired to—”

“Someone’s walking on the roof of this car,” amplified Lorenzo, pointing a gloved thumb at the ceiling.

Harry heard the thumping now. He stood, reaching toward his shoulder holster.

Outside their compartment and from above, a large man in a tailcoat and scarlet hood came swinging. His booted feet hit the door, slamming it open. He came stumbling into the compartment. He clutched a saber in his right fist. “Death has caught up with you, Challenge,” he cried, lunging.

Harry shot him in the thigh. “Not just yet.”

The unsuccessful assassin staggered back, teetered on the threshold, then fell out through the open doorway. He yelled as he went sailing through the swirling afternoon mist and then slammed onto the slanting hillside beyond the tracks.

Still clutching his revolver, Harry eyed the flapping door. “Two, you said, Lorenzo?”

The magician held up two fingers. “A pair, yes.”

There was a skittering from above, thunking and then a second man appeared. This one was upside down, however, dangling from a thick strand of greasy rope that was tangled around his ankle. There was no sign of his saber.

“Where’s your weapon?” inquired Harry, watching the big masked man swing to and fro.

“I’m terribly chagrined, governor,” admitted the dangling man. “The blasted thing went flying when I took a header off the bloody roof. I’ve never been all that fond of rail travel.”

“I could pull you inside,” suggested Harry.

“I’d be much obliged.”

“Thing is, I’d first have to know what all this foolishness is about,” Harry explained. “Who hired you lads and why?”

“That’s a bit rum of you, sir,” said the swaying assassin. “Granted that mine isn’t an especially noble profession, still it has a certain code attached. Even though I’m not a gentleman, still I have ethics and. . . . Yow!”

The rope that had held him suddenly uncoiled, releasing the man.

He plummeted down, fell away from the train and was lost in the surrounding fog.

“Damn it,” said Harry. “That’s five of these bastards I haven’t been able to question.”

“I feel partially responsible for your inability to question the initial three,” apologized Elizabeth. “Had you not stopped to untie me and—”

“Do you sense any more of these guys?” he asked the Great Lorenzo.

Lorenzo stroked his plump chin. “No, Harry, that’s the last of them,” he said. “However, my boy, I have a feeling that worse things are coming.”

As the brougham that met them at the station and traveled along a narrow back lane neared the high stone walls that surrounded Thorncliffe Manor, Elizabeth said, her voice taking on a slightly apologetic tone, “It would be most thoughtful if neither of you mentioned pigs in my father’s presence during your stay.”

“Pigs?” Harry was sitting next to her.

“Does the old boy have some porcine bugaboo?” inquired the Great Lorenzo from his side of the carriage.

“Father is trying very hard to fit into British society,” she explained, “and has an unreasoning, in my view, dread that the way he amassed his vast wealth is not quite… well, gentlemanly.”

Harry said, “Then your father is the Pork King? The man behind Beecher’s Southern-Baked Ham, Beecher’s Country Pork Sausage and Beecher’s Bottled Pickled Pigs’ Feet?”

A bit forlornly, she nodded. “I fear he is,” she answered. “I, in all the American yellow journals, am known as the Pork Heiress. That has been, I assure you, a considerable burden.”

“One can well imagine, my dear.” Lorenzo plucked a single daffodil out of the air and passed it to the girl. “You have our solemn promise that such words as pig, pork, pork chop, ham, ham hock and related terms shall not pass our lips while we dwell under your roof or—”

“Actually, Mr. Lorenzo, you won’t be dwelling under our roof,” Elizabeth corrected. “Father is putting the entertainers up in the old carriage house.”

“Other entertainers? I was given to believe that the Great Lorenzo’s International Magical Show would be the only entertainment offered at your gala costume extravaganza this—”

“Father decided to add the Costermongers’ Music Hall Brass Band and a fellow who juggles,” she told him. “Then, of course, your assistants will also be sharing those quarters.”

“I see.”

The carriage turned in at the open gateway and the roan horse went trotting along a wide, white gravel drive that led to a vast Tudor style mansion a quarter of a mile away and blurred by mist. On each side of the drive rose rows of stately pines and to the rear of the house showed part of a terraced formal garden.

A middle-aged couple materialized out of the mist on the roadway ahead. They were dressed in servants’ livery, each carrying a fat suitcase.

“Oh, dear, it’s the Folletts,” said Elizabeth. Leaning out the window, she called to the carriage driver. “Emerson, will you halt the brougham for a moment, please.”

“Yes, miss.” The horse was reigned up and the carriage rattled to a stop.

“I’ll just step out, Mr. Challenge, and see if I can persuade them to stay on—at least until after the masquerade.”

“What’s the problem?” Harry asked, following her out into the misty twilight.

“I imagine they’ve got the wind up about the ghost rider.” She gathered up her long skirt and ran toward the resigning couple. “Mr. and Mrs. Follett, I do hope you don’t intend to desert us in our hour of need. We depend on you as head cook and first butler to—”

“It’s no go, miss,” said Follett, a lean pale man. “The missus has made up her mind.”

“Begging your pardon, miss,” said the plump Mrs. Follett, “but we can’t stay on at Thorncliffe Manor.”

“The rumours of a ghost in the vicinity are greatly—”

“That’s just it,” the cook said. “A hauntedhouse we can abide and have on prior jobs, but the fact that this particular spectre is in thevicinity and nobody can tell where he’s likely to pop up is simply too much to bear. He might attack Alf while he was strolling to the pub of an evening or assault me when I was sunning myself in the garden.”

“I sympathize with you, Mrs. Follett, yet—”

“Come along, Edwin,” said the plump cook, “we’ve got a train to—”

“I’ll give you two pounds a month more,” called a deep, chesty voice.

A wide, heavyset man had come running up from the direction of the mansion. He was in his fifties, dressed in a tweedy jacket and knickerbockers. His face was flushed, he was wheezing slightly.

“It’s no use, sir,” said Follett, touching the peak of his cap. “She’s fair made up her mind.”

“And so have you, Edwin.” His wife took hold of his arm with her free hand and tugged him off along the drive.

“Damn it all,” said Beecher, watching them disappear into the mist. “We’ve already got fifty guests staying with us, with more to come, and no darned cook.”

The Great Lorenzo stepped out of the brougham. “Let me point out, sir, that besides being a magician and illusionist of world renown, I am also a cordon bleu chef.”

Beecher smiled. “Would you be willing to help out in this crisis?”

“Most gladly,” said the magician. “Although I’m afraid it will be difficult to do from the carriage house.”

“We’ll put you up in the main house,” promised Beecher, eyeing him hopefully.

The great Lorenzo bowed toward him. “Then I accept the offer,” he said. “You’ll hardly notice the additional fee.”

After dinner, forty of Wallace Beecher’s earliest-arriving guests gathered in the conservatory to listen to Elizabeth play the spinet piano and sing.

While she was rendering a sad ballad about an orphan lost in the snow, the Great Lorenzo made his way over to where Harry was standing, arms folded, near a potted banana palm.

“Do you have a magical cure for heartburn?” Harry asked him.

“The meal was excellent and any internal problems you happen to be experiencing are due to your devil-may-care manner of living,” the magician assured him in a lowered voice. “What I want to ask you, my boy, is if you’re involved in more that simply ghost hunting on this particular assignment.”

“I think I must be,” he answered. “Especially since Albert Garroway seems to be connected somehow.”

Nodding, Lorenzo said, “That accounts for the person who was introduced to us as Lady Beresford.”

Harry grinned. “Yep, that’s Rowland Fleetway of the British Secret Service,” he confirmed. “The man fancies himself a master of disguise.”

“Three of the other guests strike me as somewhat less than legitimate,” continued Lorenzo. “Guy Chumley is one. I doubt that anyone can really be as much a silly ass as he pretends.”

“Chumley can,” said Harry. “I met him in Antwerp a couple years ago. He’s the heir to the Chumley’s Excellent Elixir fortune and an authentic ninny. You can write him off.”

“What’s your opinion of Gabriel Litwin, supposed poet?”

“I’m not sure, Lorenzo. He’s the same poet I met at Lady Hammersmith’s tea party.”

“The one where you were set upon by saber wavers?”

“That very same tea party, yeah.”

Lorenzo tugged at his left sideburn. “I also sense that there may be something amiss about Sebastian Tree, alleged painter and member of the Royal Academy.”

“Sebastian Tree is a respected landscape painter with a rising reputation,” said Harry. “This fellow, however, isn’t really Sebastian Tree.”

When the ancient grandfather clock in the second floor corridor of the left wing of the mansion struck a quarter past eleven, Harry very carefully eased open the door of his bedroom. The guests had all long since turned in and the house was quiet. A single gas bracket lamp burned dimly, pushing back the night shadows a bit.

Harry was wearing dark trousers, a dark sweater and a dark knit cap. He carried a bull’s eye lantern, unlit, and his revolver was tucked into his waistband.

Cautiously he moved along the thickly carpeted hall toward the back stairs.

Earlier he’d talked to the gardener and collected a somewhat vague account of his brief nocturnal account with the ghostly horseman. Harry also obtained a detailed hand-drawn map of the exact location where the gardener had sighted the spectre a few nights earlier.

The mist was gone and a quarter moon showed in the clear, black sky.

Harry made his way up through the hedges, flower beds and marble statues of the large formal garden, then entered the thick woodlands that climbed to the roadway where the highwayman had been appearing.

His pocket watch showed him it was fifteen minutes shy of midnight when he reached the edge of the woods and saw the wide dirt road beyond.

He took a deep breath, set the unlit lantern on the ground and leaned back against a tree trunk.

Night birds called in the branches above, small unseen animals skittered over dry leaves.

A faint thumping commenced to his right.

The sound grew gradually louder, became a pounding gallop sound.

There was also now chugging and chuffing.

Edging nearer to the road, crouching behind a spiky cluster of brush, he looked in the direction of the growing noise.

He saw red sparks first, then billows of white steam. Out of that came galloping a large black stallion. On its back sat a slim figure wearing a billowing cape and some sort of mask.

“That’s made of cloth,” Harry concluded, “and not a true and authentic pumpkin.”

The great horse and the rider were now about a hundred yards from where he was crouching.

Suddenly came a rasping twang. The huge steam-spouting horse tripped. Clanking and sputtering, it fell toward the moonlit road. The rider, who wasn’t using a saddle, was thrown free.

The horse slammed into the road, legs going out from under it, producing a loud metallic clang.

The cloaked rider, meantime, had fallen into the brush on the other side of the roadway and remained sprawled there, moaning, not moving.

Quickly lighting the lantern with a wax match, Harry grabbed it up and sprinted over to the fallen figure.

Steaming water and glowing machine oil was spilling out of the toppled mechanical horse. He saw now that what had felled animal was a wire stretched across the road.

Harry dodged around the equine automaton and reached the side of the fallen rider.

He knelt. “You conscious?” he inquired.

“Go away.” It was a young woman’s voice.

“Not just yet, Miss Garroway.” Placing the lantern on the road, he lifted the jack-o’-lantern mask from her face.

She was slim and dark-haired, not more than twenty five. “How the devil do you know my name?”

“Here’s a more important question. Are you hurt?”

“No, I’m perfectly fine.” Ignoring his proffered hand, Emily Garroway sat up. “Now answer my question.”

“Anyone testing a mechanical horse in the vicinity of the Garroway homestead,” he told her, “I figure must be a Garroway.”

“You know my father?” She rubbed at her right ankle, wincing.

“Only by reputation. By unsavoury reputation, that is.”

“He’s not responsible for what mean-minded people do with his inventions. Although I have succeeded in persuading him to work on no more inventions that can be converted to bellicose uses.”

“And yonder horse isn’t intended to end up serving in the Boer War.”

“Of course not, that’s ridiculous.” She made an attempt to rise, winced again. “It goes against my principles, but I’m going to have to ask you to help me to stand.”

“Ankle sprained?”

“Merely twisted I believe.”

Bending, he slipped an arm around her waist and aided her in rising. “Will somebody from home come looking for you eventually?”

“Yes.” Hobbling slightly, she walked over to the defunct mechanical horse. “I hope Dobbin III is not seriously damaged. He’s the most advanced model my father’s come up with thus far.” She shook her head. “I don’t understand what caused him to malfunction and fall.”

“There’s a metal wire stretched across the road.”

She inhaled sharply. “That must mean someone was lying in wait for us.”

“It does, which is a good reason to get you away from here as soon as—”

“We’ll see to that.” A tall, dapper man emerged from the woods nearby, holding a hunting rifle cradled in his arms.

It was the man who wasn’t Sebastian Tree.

Beyond the clearing at Druids’ Hill rose steeply slanting hills, thick with brush and trees. The clearing itself had once held a circle of huge standing stones, but long centuries ago several had fallen and the circle was broken. The tallest of the nine megaliths still standing rose a good fifteen feet above the scrubby ground.

As Harry and Emily were urged across the moonlit clearing, he noticed writing in what he assumed was runic script had been cut into the bases of several of the huge and heavy sandstone pillars.

The fellow who wasn’t Sebastian Tree was behind them, rifle in hand. He had two burly men with him, both clad in peacoats and dungarees and armed with pistols.

Looking back over his shoulder, Harry asked, “You planning to sacrifice us to a few pagan gods?”

“Nothing so picturesque, old man,” answered the man with the rifle. “Being a humane sort at heart, I intend merely to detain you until we haul the working model of the Garroway Steam Combat Horse away and sell it to a certain foreign power.”

“Weren’t those humane louts who made two tries to kill me in your employ?”

“When I learned that you were heading here I decided you must be prevented from getting in my way,” he admitted. “So perhaps I’m not as humane as I was just pretending to be. Keep that in mind.”

“My father intends his steam horse for peaceful, basically agricultural purposes,” insisted the girl. “Warmongers such as you are always trying to convert technological innovations to bellicose ends.”

“Not I, Miss Garroway, but rather my client,” he replied. “They intend to use the Dobbinses, each mounted with a Garroway Machine Gun, on the field of battle, that’s true.”

“But my father intended them for—”

“He intends the British to use them against the Boers, dear lady.”

“That’s complete and utter nonsense. He’s come around to my way of thinking about—”

“The old boy has hoodwinked you.” Their captor laughed. “I’ve seen copies of the original communications between him and the British government.” He laughed his nasal laugh once again.

Harry halted, turned to face him. “That laugh,” he said, frowning. “Yeah, I heard it a year ago in Vienna when I was investigating the theft of the Rasmussen Torpedo plans. You were disguised then, but I later learned I’d been up against none other than Dr. Grimshaw, the second cleverest criminal mastermind in Europe.”

Grimshaw sighed and smiled ruefully. “If it weren’t for that blasted Professor Moriarty, I’d be right at the top of the list,” he said. “Move along now, Challenge, I intend to lock you and the naïve Miss Garroway in the cave that we’ve renovated yonder. My colleagues and I will then transport the—”

“Woe betide thee!” boomed a deep and unearthly voice all at once. “Who dares desecrate the sacred temple of the mystical Druidic order?”

A white robed, hooded figure, fully seven feet tall, had stepped forth from behind the tallest stone column. His gloved hands were raised high and he was muttering now in what sounded like an ancient tongue.

Sudden blue lightning began crackling around the ancient stones. Thunder boomed and pungent yellow smoke commenced spewing up from a dozen spots.

“What the devil is this?” said Dr. Grimshaw, turning to stare at the robed Druid.

Harry dropped toward the sward, turning in midair and booting Grimshaw.

He connected with the mastermind’s knee. The doctor cried out, went staggering back into his two associates.

Harry hit the ground, bounced up and tackled Dr. Grimshaw. He levered the rifle out of his grasp, jumped upright and pointed the weapon at the fallen mastermind.

Emily meantime had slugged one of the armed men, wrested his gun away from him and had it aimed at the other man’s midsection.

“The ancient gods find themselves satisfied,” announced the robed figure, swaying and then tipping over. “Drat it, I have never quite mastered the fine art of stilt-walking.”

From out of the tangle of white cloth, the Great Lorenzo emerged. After dusting himself off, he bowed in their direction.

Harry grinned at him. “Another vision?”

“Nothing so arcane, my boy. I simply followed you when you went skulking away from Thorncliffe Manor.”

“What about the fire and brimstone?” asked Emily.

“It is actually, my child, a modification of my Famous Egyptian Mystery Illusion, which has delighted and entertained the crowned heads of Europe, and a great number of uncrowned groundlings. I thought it might be useful in causing a diversion.”

Harry said, “Then you must have had at least a small premonition.”

Lorenzo admitted, “I did see you and a fetching young lady being sacrificed at a location much like this one.”

“You’re a very clever gentleman,” said Emily.

“I am indeed,” he agreed. “You have no doubt heard of me. I am the Great Lorenzo.”

She shook her head. “Never, no,” she answered. “I have no interest in the world of entertainment.”

Harry asked, “Did you bring any rope in your bag of tricks, Lorenzo?”

“I did, yes.”

“We’ll tie these fellows up, escort them back to the manor house and turn them over to Rowland Fleetway of Her Majesty’s Secret Service.”

The young woman asked, “Why is there a Secret Service agent at Thorncliffe?”

“Because, as Dr. Grimshaw suggested, your father’s steam horse is actually considered a weapon of war and the British Empire is keeping an eye on him,” answered Harry. “Although he didn’t do a very good job, Fleetway was supposed to prevent the likes of Dr. Grimshaw from swiping the horse or the plans for it.”

Grimshaw laughed yet again. “Eventually, Challenge, I’ll succeed. I usually do.”

“Not often enough to cinch the number one position, though.”

Emily gave a sad shake of her pretty head. “I’m terribly disillusioned. It seems evident that once again my father has fallen back on his word to me.”

While he and Lorenzo trussed up the doctor and his henchmen, Harry asked her, “Why exactly did you wear that pumpkin mask?”

“We wanted to test the Dobbins automatons on a stretch of open road, rather than just on our compound grounds,” she replied. “It was my idea that if I appeared as the ghostly Jack-O’-Lantern of local legend, any of the country people who might chance to see us would take me for a spirit and not someone testing a secret invention.”

“Such a simpleminded ruse would hardly fool me,” said the now rope-wrapped Dr. Grimshaw.

Moving closer to Harry, the young woman said, “I believe I’ll return to London tomorrow and resume my life there, leaving my duplicitous father to fend for himself. Perhaps we can travel together, Mr. Challenge.”

“Oh, you know who I am.”

“This scoundrel’s been dropping your name. Besides, I’ve read several accounts of your detective activities in the press in recent years,” she said. “You seem, for all your rough edges, a man of principle.”

“I am, relatively speaking,” he admitted. “I wasn’t planning to take my leave until after the masquerade ball. Although I’m not especially fond of such festivities, I want to attend Lorenzo’s magic show.”

“A pity, since I was hoping you’d be on my train tomorrow,” Emily told him. “I realize this is not a conventional thing to say, Mr. Challenge, but I find you a very interesting man.”

Lorenzo said, “Harry my lad, your devotion to my humble efforts is laudable. Keep in mind, however, that you’ve seen all the illusions I have planned for the Halloween gala performance before. Twice in some instances.”

“You wouldn’t be eternally chagrined if I accompany Miss Garroway to London tomorrow?”

“Not at all,” the magician assured him. “Magic is important, but no substitute for romance.”

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