MASTERS OF THE PARACHUTE MAIL

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 60, Issue 35, 21 November 1939, Page 7

MASTERS OF THE PARACHUTE MAIL

(Copyright).

CHAPTER 111. (Continued.)

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

fashioned chapel. It lay low, and it was already exceedingly warm; and what it would be by midday was anyone’s guess. A long-legged 14-year-old-boy, debarred by what his mother considered his delicacy of constitution from undertaking steady and heavy work, came regularly to help Peggy with her loads, and to lend a hand at the stall if he was needed. He was standing with his back against the red-brick frame of the main entrance, his hands in his pockets and his eyes blandly contemplating the activity within, when Peggy drove up. Between them they began the work of unloading, each of them staggering along between the aisles of brown planking rapidly clothing itself in colour and substance, with an erection of baskets and boxes before them. With the eggs Bernard was definitely not to be trusted. Peggy took those herself. When they had transferred everything, Sunny was taken away to stable at the nearest inn, and the real work of setting opt the wares began.'

PEGGY REMEMBERS THE GUN.

“Well, of course,” said Peggy, rather astonished that so deprecating a preamble should have ushered in a request so small. Most people would have put their heads round the door, said: “Just drop this for us, Peg. Thanks, awfully!” left whatever the request involved upon the nearest chair and departed. But, of course, this was a. stranger . and a townswoman. “Whereabout in town is the place? Far from the market?” “I don’t know,” said the girl, with a smile and a shake of her head. “Yon sec, I’ve never been there myself. But here’s the address.”

Sho handed oyer the packet she nursed in her hands. It was b note inasmuch as it was contained in an envelope, and probably included a letter; but there was something fat and heavy for its bulk inside. The address was: Mrs .1. Standon, 3 Church Fold, Cavendish Road, „ Abbott’s Ferry.

Foggy’S blood always warmed to this one day in the week. The queerness of it, tlje raucous loudness, the glorious vulgarity, the colour, and glow, and variety. Under the lofty uncovered steel girders and the green glass roof which seemed so infinitely high, all sounds merged into one symphony of noise, trying to outdo itself, not in beauty, but in penetrating quality.

Peggy knew the locality well enough, but not the Fold ; still, it was sure to lie between the church and Cavendish Road, and that was good enough. “It’s a longish way from the market,” sho said reflectively. “I shall hardly have time to deliver it before I open; but I could get the boy to take it over for me in the slack hour at lunch-time, and go in then.” It was what she had planned, in any case, and Church Fold would bo conveniently on her way to the Police Station. “Would it do if she had it by half-past one?” “Oh, yes] thank you, any time today.” “Righto!” said Peggy. “FI) look after it.”She was effusively thanked for what seemed to her a very ordinary act of courtesy. She was not sure that she really liked Miss Crosby; not, of course, that Miss Crosby was supposed to care whether Peggy Calder liked her or not. The visitor departed, still grateful. She had wasted quite five minutes more than was necessary in such an errand, and five minutes were not to be despised when she thought of the labour of dressing her stall. So Peggy hurried to make' up the loss; but when she had struggled into her businesslike fawn overall and rushed out into the yard with her beret in her hand, sho found the crates and baskets already. loaded into the float, Sunny placidly between the shafts, and nothing left to do but to set out, which she did without another second of delay. The envelope to be delivered at lunch-time she pushed deep into the pocket of her overall. As Peggy climbed into the float, and smoothed the reins through her hands, she looked back oyer her shoulder past the corner of Hie house, and saw Miss Crosby walking back across the moor. She walked like a townswoman, too, precise and short-stepping upon hei high heels, putting her feet down too flatly for the hard walking of the country uplands, very definitely a stray from the pavements and buses. Peggy did not envy her. The town made’ singularly little appeal, even to her spirit of adventure. In town, strange men could hardly liido .then cars and their persons in your gardenshed, and threaten you with a revolver when you blundered in upon them. At the returning vigour of the memory she shivered, feeling again the pressure of the gun in her side. And yet she would not have washed it out if she could, that queer morning excitement. She shook herself impatiently, clicked her tongue at Sunny, and drove out of the yard into the dust of the road, the road by which her antagonist had retreated yesterday. - The journey into Abbott’s Ferry took her the greater part of forty minutes, for if’ there were long level stretches whore she could give the mare her head and clatter along at a hearty speed, there were also uncomfortable hills which it paid handsomely, t° dawdle up, also at Sunny’s pace. The three miles which officially constituted the distance, were three good long country miles, and in winter —which, thank heaven, was still a long way off—sometimes completely blocked in three places. Most people along the road know the speckled creamy mare and the girl who drove her. They were by way of being popular, the pair of them. At Hie level crossing just on the moor side of town they were held up for a few minutes to let the eight q/ clock train go by. Most of the office people who lived out here and worked at Abbotsbridge, travelled on this train, and it was always a long one. t “Yo,u’re late,” said the loyel-erossing keeper, unhitching the gate as the last coaches passed.' Sunny followed him inch by inch across the metals, and waited for the second gate to be opened. “I shall bo ready when your wife comes marketing,” said Peggy. “Tell her I’ve got some apples—the very f ivs t —thoso streaky summer ones that she likes.” ‘ ‘Any samples?” asked the keeper, holding out his hand. “There would bo if I thought she’d ever see ’em.” But sho gave him an apple. They had exchanged too many morning pleasantries for the gift even to bo regarded as a business sweetener. “Don’t bite it until you’ve opened the other gate, or I lose another three minutes.”

The colours were loud, too, from the orange and magenta and black of the shawl wjhich invariably swathed the shoulders of the fat Jewess opposite, to the crate of tomatoes on the end stall; from the synthetic gilt on the figures of saints peddled by the old Irishman, to the covers of the lurid American magazines un the book stall; and from the ginger cats which courted the fish sellers to the new tans of the silk stockings dangling from the rail above the Jewess’ shining black head. There was no end to the variety of wares or of customers; it was a free entertainment, a robust sport, a game of skill and a living, all in one, and Peggy frankly loved and thrived on it. Before she could reasonably expect trade to begin in earnest, she made a point of fishing out her parcel from under the lettuces, and hiding it under the laced cover of the little basket which held her lunch, and which she kept under the stall, close to her, as she worked.

CHAPTER IV. SILENCE AT NO. 3. At one o’clock Peggy left her stall, not without misgivings, to the tender mercies of Bernard, and set off in search of Church Fold. She had figured that the whole thing, allowing for a good deal of questioning and crossquestioning at the Police Station, would not take much more than half an hour. But Church Fold proved unexpectedly elusive. She expected it, of course, to be no more than small. No. 3 was probably almost as far as it went; she saw it as one of those very brief junctures between street and "street, which are hardly deserving of the name street, or even lane, themselves, and therefore become embroidered with all kinds of more ambitious titles, eager apparently to do them more than justice. This one was all the harder to find, because the part of Abbott’s Ferry which surrounded the church was extremely old, and honeycombed with these narrow runways; and the only satisfactory way of finding out which of the many was Church Fold was to go down every one until you found the name inscribed upon it’. “Church” occurred in almost every one of them, to make the search still more complicated. At last, howevev, she found it. Cavendish Road might be its postal address, but it was nowhere near it. Still, there was the neat, faded little nameboard upon the corner of the end house. “Church Fold.” Peggy did not know quite what to make of that very discreet type which advertises by its retirement that it belongs to the profession classes. Genteel, horrible word though it is, was the word for them, and there was no other, unless you prefixed “shabby.” • They boasted that they had seen better days, as no doubt they had, if that was anything to boast about. But to her they looked mean, and dark, and lonely in their shrinking, fastidious retreat from the noisier stretches of the town. Three-storey buildings, all of one face; what she believed was known as the uniform mask; all with three steps up to a broad front door, a shoe-scraper on the lowest for visitors at night to fall over windows Venetian-blinded and ‘blue-curtained tight against what little sun fell into that narrow place. There were four of them on her left hand, and on her right a high wall. Peggy did not know whether Miss Crosby would like Church Fold, but she knew that she didn’t. She stood in front of No. 3, and looked at it long and ,strangely. She did not know why, but some instinct in her quarrelled with the natural resolve to knock at the door and deliver the note. It seemed such a little thing to do, and yet for a moment she was —no, not afraid, that was the wrong word—but wary of doing it. It must be the influence of that affair yesterday; she was inclined to suspect every person, and every action of every person, whom she did not know. And yet how could the note be anything very terrible ?

“As irresistible as that?” he asked, with his teeth an inch from the gold and russet skin. “Wo have every confidence in the quality of our apples,” said Peggy austerely., “Moreover, there’s a. car approaching' from the other direction, and lie might like to get through, too.” The gate was flung wide with a gesture. “Drive on, Bon-Hur!” said the cross-ing-keeper, and she passed him with a whirl of dust under her wheels, and disappeared in the direction of Abbott’s Ferry. INCIDENTS AT TH,E MARKET. It was not a. large town, but the market lay conveniently on the hither side of it, a big red-brick building adorned with archways reminiscent of an old-

True, she did not know the first thing about Lorna Crosby, excoirt that she was staying at. Mrs Henshaw’s. Lots of people did it in summer; Lancashire mill people usually, but a London school teacher was nothing out of the ordinary. And when Mrs Henshaw was consulted on the subject of how to get a letter into town without carrying it, she had naturally thought of Peggy. That was automatic. It rang true

enough; and if it was not true, how did this girl know even so much as Mrs Henshaw’s name? No, of course there was nothing wrong with the story < of the packet. She mounted the steps of No. 3 and rang the bell. She could hear, behind the heavy door, the burr of it echoing in the hall. It sounded curiously empty. She guessed at a big and pretentious space, a wido stairway, and an air of impenetrable gloom. In the interval, while she waited for the door to be opened, Peggy let her mind dwell idly on the speculation of what period had been responsible for the building of these houses. They were certainly not new. Queen Anne was associated in her thoughts with big, flat-set, wholly delightful windows, so these could not be Queen Anne. Nor did they suggest the Georges, for they had no pretensions to classicism. She assigned the blame to Victoria, and let it go at that. But the door did not open. Peggy pressed the bell again, with no more result; a third time, and kept her finger on it for a full minute, but no one answered; and she could hear none of those subtle movements within, which usually occupy the hush after u ring or a knock. !She became impatient. She had still to go on to the police, and if she wasted any more time Bernard would almost certainly have broken the eggs or sold them all below price before she got back to keep an eye on him. She tried the door. i

The handle was one of the church type, into which the whole hand slips. It turned, heavily,'but easily; she had expected that, because they always do turn, locked or no. "What she had not expected was for the gentle push she gave at the end of the turn to swing the door open before her.

(To be Continued.)