MASTERS OF THE PARACHUTE MAIL

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 60, Issue 32, 17 November 1939, Page 7

MASTERS OF THE PARACHUTE MAIL

SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTER Peggy Calder got up one morning at four o’clock. Daughter of a retired army officer turned farmer, she was the business head of the family, and always the first to rise. But this morning, after a restless night, disturbed bythe drone of an aeroplane, and nagged'Ey- toothache, Peggy ■ had decided : thaf it was no rise staying longer in bed. She walked down the garden, and .the' adventure-began.- A young man 'and a ear were in 'tho usually** empty garage* And the man as threatening her with a revolver. All he wanted, Peggy discovered, was that she r should shield hint' from-the police, who" arrived on motor-cycles five min-. iVtes later:- . CHAPTER-F : (Continued.) THREATS BEFQR© LEAVING. •>Oh,- nothing you •need worry about. Just that we’d like a look at that grey car-P, He looked down significantly at the gravel under ,his feet. “Looks like you’ve had - one here-not so. long ago. ■Peggy was prodded; the gun was an excellent;prompter. She hurried to cov-e¥-‘hei ii 'bnef pause. “That’s from my uncle’s; he was here yesterday; lie only left about ten o’clock.” n I see'” said the sergeant, obviously satisfied/mud "hs obviously grimly disappointed! ' “And you.’ve seen- no, strange mail about? Nobody hanging about who doesn’t belong here?” - “No,” ‘said Peggy, '“.npbpdy.” .-'fee lopked. briefly at. both .of his satellities, anil, remarked, after an exchange of yiewsan the glances: “Well, it looks ms if. y°u .were, fight. He must have shaken ;iis at the Mill, Lane turning,'nr else : risked - cross-country runningon the short grass; We’ll double hack.” v And that was all. They had been almost within touch di their man; Peggy had felt him'tensing himself against the wall as they talked, to keep himself flattened out of their sight; and they' were going away without him. They had .reached the gate, and closed it' behind them, and were kicking their motor cycles into action again. The car ; purred and shot -away into the grass, to round upon its track, the cycles. -Slipping easily into -position on either..- side of it., before;., it had gone many yards. They were out. of sight in a minute, headed hack on their futile hunk for the stranger on the spaces of the moorland, wliero he was not. Peggy was dragged bach into the shed by her whilst. Her captor leaned against the closed door, laughing. ;“^ell? ?, ;;saua Peggy, in miserable anger. , “Are you satisfied ? ” ‘‘Eminently satisfied. I couldn’t have done, it better myself. Lucky for us both,! wasn’t it, that ..you didn’t happen-. tp .- hM ope pf the hysterical type?” He., tossed;. tfc.fi reyqlver in, his -handr and-her eyes -followed it in-stinctively-up and down* “Don’t be nervous,“ ho->said-pleasantly, “I’m quite expert with it.” ' Peggy did not doubt *tliat; the thrust of it into her side had, felt quite competent enough for her. “And now,” he went on, “I’ll relieve you !of. my coinpany, which for some reason doesn’t seem to make any great appeal to you. But listen to this! Don’t; go thinking you can open your mouth safely once I’m out of sight Don’t come over public-spirited, and start giving detoriptioris -of me to the police. Because if you do, I’ll make you wish you’d never set eyes on me.” : “P wish- that now, ’ ’ said Peggy furi-

ousl'y. - / He -laughed: f ‘You’ve learned nothing yet. If you go hack on me any time in this next twelve months—yes, or after—if you make just one little move against me—the most unpleasant thing you can think of will he honey and. roses compared to what will happen to you. You’ll keep your mouth tight shut, and forget this ever happened, or take the consequences. But don’t say you haven’t been warned.” “I won’t,” said Peggy, between her

teeth. He turned in the act of opening the door of his car, and gave her a long, appraising'look; 4nd the dangerous expression came back to his face for a moment. He raised hand at her. '“‘‘You’re thinking you can shake me safe enough -when I’m gone. I can tell it by your eyes. You’re thinking it will be easy; enough to ring upythe police, or send a; message through another person as a go-between. Don’t think It! ‘ Take my tip, and leave it alone. Listen, girl, \vhile you* take no action against me,’l’ve no grudge-against you. But if you ever open your mouth to a single person, I shall hud it out; and then • heaven Kelp you. That’s all. about it. Just so long as you know what you’re taking on.” He prilled his dark goggles down over his eyes, and got into the car.' “Now open the doors.” She opened them. He still had the revolver in his hand. “And the gates on to the road.” . She opened those, too; by the time she had swung them wide the grey car was already ‘creeping silently down the slope of the path behind her. She stepped out of its way, here eyes feverishly .busy with the body of it, and the built, and. the number, though this last would almost certainly be a different combination, if ever , she did . see the car again, and she could not rely on iti The car crept to the road with engine still shut off, and swung suddenly and sleekly into gear as it turned. She recorded mentally • that it : was a car which had cost a great- deal of money; no small-time crook was this. Also she tried to get a fuller glimpse of his face, but it was hidden except for the toofiill mouth which grinned at her impudently as lie flashed by. Ho shouted: “So long I” and waved his hand to her. She did not respond, unless the narrowing of her angry eyes against the sun’s slant could he reckoned as a response. She wanted a mental picture of him, any which would conveniently stay in her mind. He had

(To he Continued.)

By PETER BENEDICT A Gripping Romantic Story of Modern Methods in an ancient Smuggling Trade.

(Copyright).

defeated her, and she was not used to taking defeat lying down. She stood there rigid by the gate, her hand holding it open behind her, looking on the valley road into Abbott’s Ferry, in the opposite direction to that taken by his pursuers.

, She did not know when she had disliked anyone so much. All his independence smarted at such usage. She had been the very convenient fly walking into his parlour just in time to he of use to him. Keep her mouth shut! Yes, she thought she would do that. After all, quite apart from unnecessarily worrying her parents, confidence in that quarter could hardly bo expected to produce any useful co-operation. But forget it! Forget that she had let loose a dangerous criminal upon the world when she had practically had him. in her hands! Above all, forgot that she owed him a grudge for making use of her! No, that was not likely. CHAPTER 11. PEGGY’S PRIVATE PLANS. It was too late to dp anything about it. Her precious extra time had been used up already, and she had work to do. Soon her parents would he getting up and if everything was not as usual, they would begin to ask questions; not, of course, because they, in the nature of things, preferred everything to run in routine, but because she had accustomed them getting things that way.

So, for the present, she must postppne investigations of the mysterious car and its equally mysterious driver. She kept the most likely threads in her mind as she fed the chickens and the pigs, and lit the fire in the broad kitchen grate. The tracks of the wheels might give her a lead; and there she was on safe ground, for there would be no other car over them this morning. It was not the breadman’s day for delivering, and there was nothing else immediately due. And it was not going to rain. The sky was cloudless. For what they should prove to 'be worth, the tracks would keep.

She was curiously unconscious of anything melodramatic in Hie business. She knew that she w r as more than ordinarily excited and touchy that morning, and that things, were happening to her which had never happened before. But that, in its way, was a stroke of luck. After * all, she had been on the brink of finding life at this moorland Cottage in the backwoods boring, and it was anything but boring now. In the afternoon Peggy shook her duties off her shoulders hurriedly, and escaped to the waiting car tracks in the gravel. It was typical of her father not to see them, even when he had gone into the shed for his tools. True, they were not very deep or-clear, and perhaps it needed the eye of knowledge to discover them at all

Peggy sat on her heels in the path and studied them. She knew not the first thing about makes of tyres, and could not for her life have called the arrowhead pattern of them by its name; but she could memorise a design as well as anyone, and had this one by heart .in a few moments, down to the indentations of the edge, seen more clearly where the gravel merged into the dust of the moorland road. For once fervent thanks was due to those moorland roads, usually the recipients of nothing better than maledictions. They were not “made” roads; they had never been surfaced with tarmacadam, or any of the new compounds which make driving easy; they were simply levelled in the hard clay of the moors, and trodden down, by centuries of use into their present state of near-rock. But there was plenty of dust on them—a heavy clay dust which did not blow about unless the wind was high, but lay where it was pressed; and it bad retained most graciously, though here and there stony patches broke the sequence, the print of those arrow-head tyres. If she had not known beforehand what to look for, she would never have found half that trail, and probably would not have traced it for more than a hundred yards from her own gate, where it was lost for a long stretch in a long outcrop of genuine rock, polished and shining in the dry weather. The grass fell hack here, as it did in many places, and the road swelled to the of the crop of rock; and on either side the grass was short, so that a car could easily leave the road proper, and take to the sort of cross-country run which was a commonplace up here. But Peggy Calder thought she would know the place where he had left it. There had been a heavy dew that morning, and the grass, too, would he on her side in the matter of retaining prints. Several times she lost the trail completely for a while, but each time she found it again. It led her well out into the desolate stretches, where occasional copses broke the monotony, hut no houses. There were a few ugly breaks in the ground where clay had been excavated until the quality of the deposit gave out; one of two shafts sunk for coal, with as little result; long stretches of heather and furze; clumps of birch saplings only breast-high to her, waving their shimmering leaves in the ghost of a hot wind. A fascinating place, in its way, but very lonely.