Publisher's Synopsis
In the dull hot dusk of a summer's day a green touring-car, swinging out of the East Drive, pulled up smartly, trembling, at the edge of the Fifty-ninth Street car-tracks, then more sedately, under the dispassionate but watchful eye of a mounted member of the Traffic Squad, lurched across the Plaza and merged itself in the press of vehicles south-bound on the Avenue. Its tonneau held four young men, all more or less disguised in dust, dusters and goggles; forward, by the side of the grimy and anxious-eyed mechanic, sat a fifth, in all visible respects the counterpart of his companions. Beneath his mask, and by this I do not mean his goggles, but the mask of modern manner which the worldly wear, he was, and is, different. He was Daniel Maitland, Esquire; for whom no further introduction should be required, after mention of the fact that he was, and remains, the identical gentleman of means and position in the social and financial worlds, whose somewhat sober but sincere and wholehearted participation in the wildest of conceivable escapades had earned him the affectionate regard of the younger set, together with the sobriquet of "Mad Maitland." Breaking suddenly upon the steady drumming of the trucks, the prolonged and husky roar of a locomotive whistle saluted an immediate grade-crossing. Roused by this sound from his solitary musings in the parlour-car of which he happened temporarily to be the sole occupant, Mr. David Amber put aside the magazine over which he had been dreaming, and looked out of the window, catching a glimpse of woodland road shining white between sombre walls of stunted pine. Lazily he consulted his watch. "It's not for nothing," he observed pensively, "that this railroad wears its reputation: we are consistently late." His gaze, again diverted to the flying countryside, noted that it had changed character, pine yielding to scrub-oak and second-growth-the ragged vestments of an area some years since denuded by fire. This, too, presently swung away, giving place to cleared land-arable acres golden with the stubble of garnered harvests or sentinelled with unkempt shocks of corn. In the south a shimmer of laughing gold and blue edged the faded horizon. Eagerly the young man leaned forward, dark eyes the functions of waiting-room and ticket and telegraph offices. From its eaves depended a weather-worn board bearing the legend: "Nokomis." The train, pausing only long enough to disgorge from the baggage-car a trunk or two and from the day-coaches a thin trickle of passengers, flung on into the wilderness, cracked bell clanking somewhat disdainfully. By degrees the platform cleared, the erstwhile patrons of the road and the station loafers- for the most part hall-marked natives of the region-straggling off upon their several ways, some afoot, a majority in dilapidated surreys and buckboards. Amber watched them go with unassumed indifference; their type interested him little. But in their company he presently discovered one, a figure so thoroughly foreign and aloof in attitude, that it caught his eye, and, having caught, held it clouded with perplexity.
