He thought of stationing men along the designated route but it would take an army, impossible to gather at such short notice and impossible to place without his opponent’s cognizance. Hundreds of men could not be picketed along a ten-mile stretch of highway without those who were the authors of so daring a scheme being aware. They would be on the watch; no move of such magnitude could be hidden from them. It would be the same if he called in the police. They would know it, and what could the police do that he could not do more secretly, more efficiently? A following car was also out of the question. There was no reason to suppose that they would not have several cars of their own, passing and repassing him, making sure that he was unescorted. The threats of injury to the child he had set down as efforts to reduce Suzanne to a paralyzed silence. But if they saw an attempt was on foot to trap them they might not show up at all—go as they had come, unknown and unsighted, their car lost among the procession of motors that passed along the Cresson Pike. Then taken fright, they might not dare another effort, might drop out of sight with their hostage unredeemed. A chill crept over the young man, he had a dread vision of the old people’s despair, of Suzanne distraught, crazed perhaps. It behooved him to run no risks; to make sure of the child was his first duty, to strike at her abductors his second. The course he finally decided on was the only one that made Bébita’s restoration certain and offered a possibility of routing his opponents. At the hour named he would place on the road six motors, driven by his own chauffeurs and garage men, and entering the turnpike at intervals of ten minutes. Three would start from its eastern end, meeting him en route, three from its western, strung out behind him, now and then speeding up, overhauling him and passing on. Of a summer’s Saturday night the Cresson Pike was full of vehicles, and the six, merged in the shifting stream, would suggest no connection with him or his mission. Where his hope of success lay was that one of these satellites, to whom the character and marking of his roadster would be visible at some distance, might be within sight when he was signaled and see him turn into the branch road. Its business would be to wait until another of the fleet came up, pass the word, and the two follow on his tracks. This halt would give the kidnapers time to complete the transaction, get the money, give up the child, and bind him. If they were interrupted the situation would be too perilous to permit of delay—he had thought of an attack on the child—and if they had finished and gone the rescuing cars could fly in pursuit.