They had gone a mile or so, when the car turned into a little used path through the woods. Another man was driving the car, and her captor sat in the back with Iris. He still held her and kept the cloth, which smelled faintly of chloroform, over her mouth.
At last, when well into the woods, the car stopped, and the man got out, and ordered Iris to get out, too.
Her mind was made up now; she meant secretly to draw the pin from her belt, and drop it on the ground. It was running a risk of losing it, but it was a worse risk to have this man take it from her, and, too, after Fibsy's successful search of the coal bin, she felt pretty sure the boy could find the pin in the woods. She was carefully noting the trees and stones about, when the low voice of her tormentor said, "You will hand that pin over at once, if you please."
"I'll do no such thing," Iris retorted with spirit. "I am not afraid of you."
"Nor have you reason to be, if you give up the pin quietly; otherwise, you will find yourself in a sorry predicament."
"I haven't the pin with me," declared Iris, feeling the falsehood justifiable in the circumstances.
"I regret to contradict a lady, but I don't believe you."
The man was masked, but Iris recognized his voice and form and she well knew it was the man who had intruded upon her in her aunt's room that night, and she was sure it was the man who had instigated the kidnapping and search by Flossie. Moreover, she realized it was the man she had seen in Chicago.
She felt an anxiety to detain him and somehow to get him in the grip of the law, but she could think of no way to do that.
She dared not take the pin from her belt, for his eyes were upon her, and the dusk, though deepening, left sufficient light for him to observe her movements.
"Now, look here," he said, speaking more roughly, "there's no Flossie here. You don't want me to take all the pins you have in your clothing, do you?"
This suggestion, and the threatening tone of the man, frightened Iris more than all that had gone before. She was not afraid of physical violence, something in the man's manner precluded that, but she sensed his desperate determination to secure the pin, and she knew he would search her clothing for it, if she refused to hand it over.