SOUTH FROM MAYFAIR

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 61, Issue 24, 8 November 1940, Page 7

SOUTH FROM MAYFAIR

CHAPTER XYII

“IF HE SHOULD GET ME ’’

Death in the afternoon. Menace lurking in the primal peace of son and shadow in the woods!

“Will they come after us?” Lorna whispered. “If it’s ‘they,’ they may try to surround us and hunt us out. But I think that was only one rifle potting us ironi the ridge; so if it’s one sniper alone he’ll wait until we leave cover and try to make a dash for it.’’

“Surely no Japanese wo I'd come ashore and do this?’’ Lorna said. “What could they gain? It would he nothing more or less than a raid on New /leak nd.”

Hawks ford was silent a moment, brofvs knitted and lip compressed. - “You’re right, it’s not logical!’’ he said abruptly. “There’s only one person after us, and he knows the game is up unless he can prevent our getting away to toll the story. The boat will have gone for its life and left him to get out of his own difficulty!” “Who is he?” asked Lorna, urgently. “The man who came with tho information for the Japs in the boat.

“You know who he is?” But Hawksford seemed curiously obstinate.

“Hush—not so loud! Leave it—there’ll be time for all that when we’re out of this!”

She was too agitated to^ press t the point; and he rose and measured the height of the bank behind them, and the trees growing on top.

“From up there I could see the ridge. I wish this gun had a longer range!” “Don’t put your head into the open and have him shoot you!” “I’ll be careful.’’

He climbed the bank, but could not see over ,thc surrounding tree tops; a bough of a twisted broadleaf enabled him to climb higher, but ho had hardly put enough weight on it to shake the upper branches, when a bullet whacked through the leaves a lew feet to the left, and the report of the rifle on the ridge rang out again. Hawksford dropped down to her side again. “Oh, wait, wait !” she implored him. “If we wait until it’s dark we can cross to the top of the lull without being seen, and get away 1” '“We’ll see! Come, we’d better shift; it won’t do to let him be too sure where we are.”

(Copyright).

(To be continued)

She rose, and-with his gun ready, on the alert for anyone moving among the undergrowth, he led her a little way along tho stream, and they found another place with their backs to a rock. Hawksford was grave, a heavy line between his brows.

“Look here,’’ he said. “If he should get me and you be left !” Lorna made a frightened movement of dissent.

“We won’t say ‘die’ yet, but it’s possible!” he continued, smiling" so as not to scare her too much. “If anything should happen take my gun, and get out of sight if you can. If you can’t then you’ll have to do the best for yourself aijd try to make a dash for Kaikoura!”

As they crouched in the shadows against the rock Lorna. looked at him, with her dark eyes, very large in her white face.

Strange—strange tiling to confront the appalling possibility of the end of their world, in which they had hoped to live for many a long year! He looked back at her, and his face was suddenly grey as with a kind of pain:

“I’ll do every earthly thing I can to get you out of this!” he said.

“I don’t see why you should—after all that has happened!” burst from her lips. “Why? Because, mug that I am, you’re- everything,to me! You got me going "the first instant I set eyes on you. Alight as well tell the truth; we may never get out of here. For all the good it may do me, you .can know it!” She sat, gazing hack, transfixed, in silence.

“I said some awful things to you this afternoon,” he went on. “Some were true, perhaps. In a way. But you managed to hurt me like the deuce with some of the things you did! You can t help it, it’s just the way you are, the way you were brought up . . . But one wants to get one’s own back; even for things that can’t be helped!”

He glanced at her ruefully as she gazed at him, breathless with, the tumult of her thoughts. “This is a- nice way to be talking to you in your last hour!” he added, with a kind of effort, suddenly rising from under the shelter of the bank. “But at a time like this one sees things plainly; one wants to say what wild horses wouldn’t drag from one ordinarily. I’ll see if I can see that blighter through this way!’’

Turning a shamed face from her, he plunged away up the slope from the stream towards the further margin of the bush. She ran after him instantly. “Oh, be careful! Bo careful!” “I am being careful, blit we’ve got to do something to get out of here, and I do nothing but waste time.”

She put her hands on his arm; there were tears running down her cheeks. “Don’t he frightened!” She drew herself up, shook her head with a. movement of pride. “Jt isn’t that I’m frightened. I just —don’t want you to be killed.” “Don’t you?”

There was a wild question in his eyes. She swayed a little, and he put his hands on her shoulders to steady her; her head went down, and the red curls wore brushing his coat as she spoke. “I -couldn’t hear it! After what you’ve said. I know now, too, that I—!” Her voice failed. “You what?” His grip tightened painfully on her shoulders.

“I love you!” He slippedhis arms round her, while

By PEARL BELLAIRS. ::

A Serial Story of Spies, Adventure and Love.

she clung to him, and they stood there for a moment, in the stillness of the wood, with its whisper of leaves and flies dancing in the broken sun rays. “Isn’t it just the situation?” Hawksford asked, hoarsely. “Isn’t it just that you found out I’m not so bad as you thought—and you’re carried away? '“l’ve never felt about anyone as I felt about you from the very 'first! She raised her* head: “But I wouldn’t admit it! And then I thought you were a thief, and everything was distorted! “Lorna! And I thought you hated me!’’ “I thought you knew I was too much attracted to you!” “Perhaps I did, too! But I thought with your other, cynical, proud little self you despised me for a backwoodsman.”

He held her closer, then let her go; “1 thought you were laughing at me.” And they stood for a helpless, half-embarrassed instant, dazed by the new discovered glory in their lives. Then fear rushed in quickly like a darkening shadow, terror of losing what they had just found. He gripped her wrist. ‘lf wo ever get out of this, will firmarry me?”

She nodded. “Lorna! Do you mean that?” “Yes. But I’ve just remembered.” A iittle groan of misery broke from her lips. “I arranged to marry Allen this morning! Oh, what a beast, I am! I’m as bad, every bit as bad as you said. But he doesn’t feel as we feel, and if I lovo you I couldn’t—could I? I didn’t know love was like this.”

“So you don’t understand?” Hawksford said. There was compassion in his face. “You’re still in the dark?” “In the dark about what?”

But Hawksford had lifted his head. He was looking away to the left at the shadows of the thicket listening intently. She whispered breathlessly. “What is it?”

“Someone is moving through there!”

They listened, and she could hear her heart hammering heavily in the ghastly cpiiet. “Come along down hero!”

. Ho pulled her hastily down the slope towards tho protecting bank of the stream. The movement was only jiist in time. A bullet whined through the air where . Hawksford’s head had been an instant before, and the report of the rifle hidden among tho trees blew the silence into ten thousand echoing fragments.