MAN FROM THE AIRPORT

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 58, Issue 195, 31 May 1938, Page 7

MAN FROM THE AIRPORT

By LESLIE BERESFORD.

CHAPTER VII (Continued)

Peters smiled again as he refolded .this old and time-soiled document. It had been a card long held up his sleeve, although he had never intended playing it till now. It had been up his sleeve that night at the Otterbridge airport in Canada, when that fold little wisp of an ex-solicitor’s clerk had tried to extract money from him for information which already he possessed. It accounted largely for his refusal to have any interest in the proposal. On the other hand, at the time, his lack of interest had been quite sincere. His father’s last words to him had uttered an injunction not—unless he was driven to it—to collect the evidence of his rights and claim them. “You’ve only to go to the church and compare this duplicate with the original in an old register there,” he had said. “My mother told me that, but she was proud. What had been denied her in her life, she did not want to claim even for me, while I could stand on my own feet and owe nothing to that rotten family. And you, my son. The living you make for yourself will bring .you more happiness than all the Accrington millions made by somebody else.”

That, in fact, had been John Peters’s opinion too. It was still that. His business arrangement with Sir Oscar promised a wealthy future, the product of his own' brain and energy. All the same, he no longer proposed to leave matters just where they had lain till the present. The original of this certificate had to be found.

He put the duplicate away in a poc-ket-wallet; then returned the other papers in the hold-all to the safety of his leather trunk, and came away from the room. As he descended the stairs, a pretty voice challenged him from the dark of the hall. It belonged to Pamela, Sir Oscar’s niece. “You’re not at all nice to know, Mr Peters, I’m beginning to think,” she said, though quite laughingly. “Leaving me all alone for the last hour, while you sat there talking shop to Mr Wallingford ’’ “But—wo weren’t talking shop,” Peters said in some surprise. “Anyhow, if you’d joined us'out there on the lawn we’d only have been too pleased.”

“And how do you look when you feel really pleased?” she -laughed, her gay eyes provoking. “I don’t think you’ve ever looked positively pleased since you’ve been here. You’re rather a serious person, aren’t you?” “I didn’t know it,” he laughed. “And I certainly didn’t know you were alone. I left you with Sir Oscar ” “Oh, uncle’s been more than an hour tied up with some person in his study, talking high finance,” she answered. “Even on Sunday. ' Money never stops talking, does it?” GIRL OF THE AERODROME. Then, with a. little impetuous touch of pretty fingers on his coat-sleeve, she said: “There’s a lot of money in our library at the present moment, talking to Mr Wallingford. Your lady of the aerodrome—Miss Accrington. ’ ’ “Here—talking to Mr Wallingford?” Peters asked, in some surprise, but remembering now the mumbled message of the man-servant a quarter of an hour since/ and old Mr Wallingford’s hurried excuse on leaving. Strange that, so soon after they had been discussing her, Paula Accrington should have turned up here. Peters was puzzled over it, though dismissing. the matter from his mind as no business of his. But, a moment later, the library door opened, and Paula Accrington came out, with old Mr Wallingford following her. “Then I can leave it to you?” she asked, not as yet seeing the others in the dim background. “I’ll do everything I can, my dear. Just keep that Luttner person guessing,” Mr Wallingford answered, and might have said more only he caught sight of Pamela Baring and Peters, by then moving towards them. “Oh, how d’you do, Miss Accrington?” Pamela’s fresh young voice addressed the other girl with a little laugh: “It is strange to see you here— ’’ “I know. I do hope you don’t mind, but I knew Mr Wallingford was here, and I just had to see him at once on some particularly urgent business.” She looked, Peters could sfee, in a state of nervous excitement, as if something distressed her. Mention of Luttner’s name, which had reached Peters’s ears, had a certain significance. He knew Luttner ‘to be the man behind the trouble at “The- OneEyed Moon.” She was evidently still having trouble with the man himself. Meantime, Pamela Baring was introducing Paula to him. ■>< ' “Mr Peters . . Miss Accrington . . .” Peters was amusedly wondering how Paula would acknowledge the introduction. She left him in no doubt. Her clear, frank eyes regarded him without the slightest flicker of recognition, and really with just as little interest.

(To be continued)

“I’m afraid I shall have to leave you, Miss Baring,” she addressed Pamela after a curt nod in the direction of Peters. “If it hadn’t been most terribly urgent, I. shouldn’t have dreamed of crashing in on you on a Sunday.” “Oh, does it matter?” Pamela laugh ed. After, accompanied by old Mr Wallingford, she had passed out from the house, Pamela turned to Peters. “She pretended not to know you,” she said. “Ashamed of herself, no doubt.”

“J hope not,’’ he responded, laughing. “I should hate to think she imagined I had so much interest in her as to be worried over thht little incident. After all, an Mr Wallingford’s been explaining to me, it seems that she comes of a family not very easy to get on with. So—let’s forget about her.” All the same, he did not find that very easy. In fact, having it in Ins mind to teach her the fleeting quality of money, lie could not dismiss her from

(COPYRIGHT).

Flying; Adventure; Love and a Diverted Legacy.

his thoughts. He found himself thinking of her while, after dinner, Sir Oscar discussed with him the plans lie had laid for speeding up the trials of his invention. He was thinking of her, much more than of Pamela. Baring, while lie and Pamela sat out on the lawn in the moonlight till quite a late hour.

“Well, we don’t seem to he saying anything very interesting, do we,” Pamela ended by remarking rather cynically in the end, as she rose, her cheeks a delicious peach-colour, her eyes lash-shuttered. “Please —Miss Baring ” He, too, was on his feet and laid a hand on her arm—“have I really been so rude? I’m sorry.” “Why should you be?” she laughed. “You’re thinking about that invention of yours all the while, aren’t you?” ■ “I’m anxious naturally about its success,” lie said, accepting this escape from a, dilemma. “That has to he certain before I stop worrying.” “Why worry? Uncle thinks the world of it, and he isn’t a had judge, is he?”

“Not as I know men, Miss Baring,” he answered. She looked up at him from a pair of warmly appealing eyes. “You’re a man’s man,” she said under her breath. . “J appreciate that. Overseas men mostly are. But—don’t you think that women are worth a little of your great brain? I mean ” What she meant was not just then explained, anyhow, for Sir Oscar and Mr Wallingford joined them. Presently Pamela went upstairs to bed. Peters, the financier and the old lawyer remained, chatting over a final drink indoors. Finally, Mr Wallingford and Peters weiit upstairs together. Outside his room, Air Wallingford drew him in with' an inviting, hand. “I want a word with you, John,” he said, closing the door behind them. IN TROUBLE AGAIN. Peters, readily enough, began to discuss something which had been on his mind the whole evening. Without appearing too interested, he suggested: “That Accrington girl’s in trouble again, isn’t she?” He noticed that old Air Wallingford eyed him in a rather surprised way, looking a little embarrassed. “What makes you think that?” lie asked. “The way she looked this evening, when she came out of the library,” Peters answered. “Scared a hit. Anyhow, I guessed, it must he something pretty, vital to have her rolling in on vou on a Sunday, and at someone else’s house, where—as I understand, from Pamela —she knows she’s not exactly looked on with approval—” “Of course, that is so,” Air Wallingford murmured. “As I said before, I’m sorry for Paula. No doubt she’s much to blame for a good deal of what people think and say about her. Still—she came here with a very queer story this evening—a very queer story.” “1 was going to tell you about it, because —well, I know I could trust you not to Jet it go any farther, and—also, we’d been discussing her earlier,” he pursued, paused a moment >and then went on:

“That German fellow from the roadhouse has, as I expected, started to blackmail her, hut in a strange and unexpected way. It seems lie’s got hold of some story—through a solicitor’s clerk of sorts—that there is a flaw in Paula’s legal right to the Accrington money, and another claimant exists with a clear title from the other branch of the family.”

It ivas with the greatest difficulty that Peters kept countenance at this unexpected development. It did not take him a moment to realise the truth. Disappointed at being turned down so completely by him out in Otterbridge, that foul little man, Tucker, had come back to this country, and now was trying to make his money out of this girl.

The move ivas cunning. But now, because of it, Peters had hot only the right, but it was perhaps also his duty, to take his hand in the game with the papers in his possession.