He remembered kicking viciously, and that his foot struck against something hard and resisting. A suppressed screech of pain and rage rewarded the final conscious effort on his part. Very hazily he realised that he was being dragged swiftly over the ground, for miles it seemed to him, then came what appeared to be a fall from a great height, after which his senses left him. The automobile leaped forward, swerved perilously at the sharp curve below the club gate and rushed off into the very teeth of the storm, guided by the firm, resolute hands of the woman at the wheel. Once, when they had traversed a mile or more of the now drenched and slippery road, the woman who drove the car in its mad flight--unmistakably the master-mind in this enterprise--called back over her shoulder to the twain who held watch over the captive in the tonneau: "Is he regaining consciousness? Don't let him go too long." "He's all right, ma'am," said the taller of the two ruffians, bending her ear to the captive's breast. "Fit as a fiddle." "Say, we'll get twenty years for this if we're nabbed," growled the burly one called Brown. "Kidnapping is a serious business--" "Hold your tongue!" cried the woman at the wheel. "Well, I'm only telling you," grumbled Brown, nervously straightening her black sailor. "It isn't necessary to tell me," said the driver. Her voice, high and shrill in battle with the storm, was that of a person of breeding and refinement, in marked contrast to the rough, coarse tones of her companions. Mile after mile the big machine raced along the rain-swept highway, back from the Hudson and into the hills. Not once did the firm hand on the wheel relax, not once did the heart of the leader in this daring plot lose courage. Few are the men who would have undertaken this hazardous trip through the storm, few men with the courage or the recklessness. At last, the car whirled into a narrow, almost unseen lane, and, going more cautiously over the treacherous ruts and stones, made its way through the forest for the matter of a mile or two, coming to a stop finally in front of a low, rambling house in which lights gleamed from two windows on the ground floor. The two strong-armed hirelings dragged their still inert prisoner from the car, and, without a word, carried him up the walk to the house, following close upon the heels of their mistress. A gaunt old woman opened the door to admit the party, then closed it behind them. Two days passed before Cuthbert Reynolds, one of the most popular and one of the wealthiest young men in New York, was missed from his usual haunts, and then the city rang with the news that he had disappeared as completely as if the earth had opened to swallow him in a hungry, capacious maw.