SOUTH FROM MAYFAIR

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 61, Issue 17, 31 October 1940, Page 7

SOUTH FROM MAYFAIR

CHAPTER X. She came dizzily out ot the darkness to see tali stems .of flax far overhead, waving against the sunny sky; hands under Her arms were drawing her backwards out of the harsh, rustling leaves. “Hurt anywhere?” said Hawksford s voice, as he put ins arms under her and lifted her out' of the ilax bush into which she had been thrown. She found herself looking up into his face, and uttered a cry. She attempted to struggle, but could only lie in leaden helplessness in his arms. A dull fright penetrated tne iiaze in her mind and sbo remembered what had happened. He lifted her as if she had been as light as a child, carried her a few paces, and laid her down on the grass, j “No bones broken?” Be lifted each hand in turn, hexed her ankles gently. “I’m not hurt!” Lorn a sat up dizzily. Hex - hat had gone, and liei hair was shaken loose round her face. it was plain to-see who she was now. “Good thing that flax bush was there to receive you so gently!” said Hawksford in a cheerfully matter-of-fact tone, as if robberies, pursuits and car smashes were everyday affairs. She saw her car lying on its side against a willow tree at the bottom of the bank. in which Hawksford had chased her was drawn up on the road above. She drew a shuddering breath. It came into her head as not beyond possibility, that this big, handsome man, who had picked her out, of the bush, who had once held her in his arms, who had written her name in his diary “Lorna”—with two underlinings —might decide to murder her. “Do you always drive like that?” he was saying, with a sort of jibe in his voice. “It’s just as well to give way to the trains on the crossings. What were you in such a liurry for? You’ve been hogging it all the way from town.” Lorna, her head clearer, looked him in the eyes’boldly, and asked:

“What do you want?” “My pocket book,” he replied promptly. , “I haven’t got your pocket book!” “Then where is it?” “I don’t know what you’re talking about! ’ ’

“Oh, yes you do! That disguise of yours was simple, but it was quite effective, and I admit it deceived me at a distance; but you use some kind of perfume that’s very distinctive. I suppose you get it in Paris or somewhere—women like you go in for that kind of thing don’t they? Anyhow, after you raided my room last night, I recognised it and I knew who you were!” Her -head was splitting, specks still danced before her eyes, and it seemed a fair enough hid for time, to put her face down in her hands and say nothing. He bent toward her with a change of tone. “Feeling ill?”

“Head, aches,” muttered Lorna. She felt his hand on her shoulder, lie made her lie down flat on the grass. He went down to the creek below to wet a clean handkerchief with water.

Lorna lifted her head and .peeped along the road. They were in the midst of -wide, lonely paddocks. Far in the distance on the flat horizon, she conld see a little white, box-like homestead. But there was no nearer help at hand. What frightened her most was Hawksford’s aggressive manner. For ;a man who must know in the wrong, it was he who should have been evasive and scared. What did he mean to do with, her ? He would never allow her to get away to tell what .she knew.

Her only chance was to make him think she knew no more than her father knew already. Slua would tell him about the slip in the typewriter. Let him think that was the source of all her suspicions. Then he Would let h|er go —and perhaps lie would clear out himself.

She hear dhis footsteps coming back He knelt beside her and wiped her face and forehead with the cold dripping handkerchief; she half lifted her eyelids and saw his face bent over her, frowning puzzled, intent. He smoothed the wet red hair hack from her brow, smoothed the fine arch of the perfect, dark brown eyebrows; a faint smile appeared round his grim mouth, and a kind of anger in his eyes.

It struck such a thrill of terror through Lorna that she sat up hastily: “Thanks —I’m better now. Please don’t .bother about me!” “No. I don’t think there’s much wrong with you.” Ho handed her her handbag, which he-had picked up on the bank. “If you don’t mind, I’ll have my pocket-book!” “It isn’t there. It’s at the hotel.” “At the, hotel?” » She looked 1 along the deserted road. Not a car, net a human being in sight. What an appallingly empty country it was!

“I left it in a clothes basket in the bathroom on the second floor,” she informed him, and burst out emotionally “I suppose you must think I’m quite mad, trailing you to town and then breaking into your room and stealing a notebook! I should have put it to you quite openly at once, but I. was trying to find out more about you. My father found something in "the typewriter lid which made him think somieone was collecting military information ; I suspected you, of course!” Except for a slight narrowing of his eyes as he fixed them on her, Hawksford’s expression did) not change. “Found something in the typewriter did he?”

“A slip with some notes typed on it. I suspected you at once, I admit!” “And what do you think now?” His tone was a. jeer again.

“I didn’t find anything to on,lighten' m.e in your diary!” “Aren’t you being very honest about all this? (Don’t you think if Pm a spy I might do something drastic to close your mouth and keep' it shut ” He smiled oddly. She turned, to him, driven to sincerity by a thrill of nightmarish apprehension.

“Are you?” slip demanded, her eyes very wide and dark in hen: white face. “.Are you a spy? Are you selling the information you’ve picked vp whip you’via been with my father?”

He gazed back at her steadily seareliingly, then looked away.

“You think it would be a, very tqrrihle thing for anyone to ,bc?” Ire asked.

“I think it would lie horrible” she said, her voice throbbing on a deep

By PEARL BELLAIRS. ::

A Serial Story of Spies. Adventure and Love.

(Copyright).

“But then if I’m not a spy I’m a thief, aren’t I?” he countered. “It must bet because you saw me with Richards’s notecase. ’ ’ FORCING THE TRUTH. “You are a spy, then?” she said desperately. She wanted to force the truth from him. His face, with its fine rugged lines, the whole handsome strength of him as he sat there, wrung her heart.

“No,” he said, not looking at her, smiling slightly. “Of course, I’m not!”

She didn’t believe him. Her heart sank. The queer emotional hold he had on her sometimes seemed to wither and fall away. Fine he might look, and sometimes sound, hut he was beyond saving. She was hack with the necessities of the situation again, putting up a pretence. “What a fool I’ve been! I shouldn’t have thought that of you, should I?” “No,” he said. “Not that. You’ve been on the wrong trail!” She tried to laugli naturally. “You must think me a perfect idiot, xvitli my detective work! Stealing your pocket hook and smashing a car up! But I thought it might he you, and I wanted to he sure before I told my father about your looking at Allen’s notecase.”

“Did you? Why?” He shot the question abruptly.

“Because—because I gave you my word!”

She looked away. He gazed at her, with a smile half wry, half puzzled on his lips as she knelt there beside him, her shoulders drooping, her long white fingers trailing in the grass.

“Are you going to tell your father and Richards about all this when they come back?”

- She groped hastily for the best answer: “T don’t know —I mean no, I don’t think so. I’ve made myself look rather a fool, I think, with my wild efforts at being clever!”

“I didn’t know you had it in you,” said Hawksford, with an admiring amusement, which was more galling to her than an insult would have been. “Ithought you were only fit for sitting in the back seat of a car —or the front seat on occasion—and looking lovely!” What effrontery he had! He could recover in an instant! She held herself desperately in check. She was sure he believed that her suspicions were allayed. He did not know she knew that he had plans for the 28th of the month. The more she soothed his fears the nearer she would be to escape, and perhaps to solving the whole mystery . . “And I found nothing to tell me anything about you in your pocket book!” she went on, half laughing, reddening as she remembered the references to herself in it.

He kept his gaze fixed disconcertingly on her face. “Did your father tell anyone besides you about the notes in the typewriter?”

“No,” said Lorna, and then wondered distractedly if it would have been safer to say “Yes.” “I suppose I thought it would be fun to follow you and see if I could track down the spy!” she added. The thing to do was to appear as silly, and - consequently as harmless as possible.

“Anything for a new sensation!” said Hawksford, with a slight edge to his tone.

“I was mad!” she said, feigning repentance. i

“And you don’t intend to do anything more about it now?” “I feel rather ashamed,” said Lorna. “You don’t treat the poor chauffeur with much consideration, do you?” he said, with a smile, and rose to his feet. But there was a queer secretive look in his face. “‘I suppose the next thing to do is to get that car out of the ditch!”

“Thanks!” she said, as she walked down the bank to it. She drew a breath of relief. Suddenly he seemed quite pitiable to her. Was it a kind of stupidity which’ made men become criminals? A cretinous optimism which made them think they could get away with things? He seemed so easily persuaded that all was well, and that she had forgotten her suspicions! She got dizzily to her feet and went down to the car, where he was trying to see what damage had been done.

“You seem to have had more than ignition trouble!” he remarked, straightening up.

She smiled at the witticism. “The front mudguards are considerably knocked about, the windscreen is smashed and the door is bent. Can t see what damage has been clone otherwise, though, until we haul her clear of the tree. We’ll hfive to get a breakdown car from Christchurch to get her back on to the road,” he said. “It’s a hired car, too!”

Lorna went over to the front of it and peered over the side to get a glimpse of the steering wheel and the dashboard. Suddenly a shadow fell on her. She turned and saw Hawksford standing behind her, a spanner grasped in his hand. All her frayed nerves tensed in a spasm of fear, gripped by an awful fancy that lie had been about to hit her on the head!

She dodged back, stumbling against the wheel of the. upturned car, a kind of gasp breaking from her stiff lips.

“What’s the matter? Don’t look so frightened!” He spoke in a tone of easy surprise, then uttered a sudden shout of laughter. “Holj r smoke!” he cried. “I believe you thought I was going to murder you!”

Ho dropped the spanner, still laughing, and drawing her towards him, crushed her gently in his arms and patted her on the back:

“No Lorna,” he said. “Whatever I’ve done, or whatever I may do, I shan’t murder you. I have wanted to murder you, rather, once or twice, I. admit. But not because of anything concerned with espionage!”

She wrenched herself away, her face

(To be continued).

on fire, and turning her back on bin walked hastily up the bank to the othei car. — 1

"He knows that he has an attraction for me,” she thought, •fighting for calm. "Ho knows he has a hold on me! But it isn’t that kind of hold —it won’t stop me from finding out as much as I can and telling the truth about him!”

He followed her in'a moment or two. bringing her suitcase from the wrecked

"We’ll drive back to Christchurch and send out a breakdown car,’’ he said, with a sidelong glance at her to see how she was feeling.

She got in beside him, and he turned the car. They .started back for Christchurch. He said nothing, but kept his eyes on the road ahead, with a queer kind of smile—was it a smile of triumph?—at the corners of his mouth. With sombre weariness Lorna reflected that she had him utterly deceived.