SOUTH FROM MAYFAIR

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 61, Issue 25, 9 November 1940, Page 7

SOUTH FROM MAYFAIR

By PEARL BELLAIRS. ::

(Copyright).

A Serial Story of Spies, Adventure and Love.

CHAPTER XVIII. WHO IS THE SNIPER? Among the echoes came the sound oi footsteps crashing hastily away among the bushes beyond the creek. Automatic in hand, Hawksford plunged down the slope, leapt the bed ot the stream, and dashed into the thicket in pursuit. Lorna uttered a wild cry of terror, and stood paralysed by the stream. The automatic barked twice among the trees; and then she heard Hawksford come crashing back. Sho ran across the stream, stumbling into the water, to meet him. “Missed him!” he said, tersely. “He ran out into the open and I nearly got him, and then he dashed back into cover. Ho’s in here somewhere still.” “What shall we do?”

“If he’s decided to hunt us like this, there’s only one thing to do—l’ll have to hunt him!” t She was terrified for him*. “But.you might be killed!” “We might as easily both be killed standing here!” He led her hurriedly along the stream to a place where the banks narrowed and the rock made an overhanging ledge; underneath was a space deep enough for her to creep into; sufficiently screened by ferns to hide her from a casual glance. “In there with you!” he said. “And if I don’t come back, wait until it’s quite dark, and then make for the Kaikoura track. Don’t risk trying to get to Kaikoura, though. Strike across the paddocks through the first gate you come to on the right, and there’s a homestead over the hill. If he gets me, and get away, he might lie in wait for you on the way to Kaikoura!” Lorna tried to steel herself to the horror of Hawksford’s going. She succeeded, and managed to ask: “You saw him? Who was he?”

For an instant Hawksford did not reply; then quietly took from his pocket a man’s grey cloth cap, and put it into her hands as she crouched trembling in the ferns.

“That’s what I picked up by the boat down on the shore. I expect you can recognise it.” Lorna turned the cap over. It , was one such as Allen had ivorn when he came from Christchurch. She started, then stared up at Hawksford with eyes dark with horror. “Allen 1” she whispered.

He nodded, clasped her hand a moment reassuringly, then turned from her swiftly, and crept hurriedly along the stream, lifting his head warily to look from left to right. In a moment he had gone, leaving her to turn the cap over and over, to look inside, and see the name of the maker, “Brummer and Sons, Albemarle Street, London,” and the initials, “A.E.R.” inked on the lining. Allen Richards, her fiance. Attached to her father’s staff, the son of a fine old family of unimpeachable honour. It seemed so incredible, it was like a horrible dream. It was Allen, then, who had left the slip in the typewriter! •Allen it was to whom the lefter was addressed that Hawksford had steamed open. Tliat was why Allen had come to Kaikoura to settle the date of tneir wedding, to give himself an excuse for being in the district and meeting the Japanese boat at Gulliver’s Bay. And Allen, Allen who had been so near to her, her fiance, was to have been her husband, had been mercilessly firing those shots with the intention of killing them both, so that they could not tell what they knewl Terror for Hawksford came rushing back to dispel the daze in Lorna’s mind. Scratched and torn and muddy, her feet wet from her fall in the stream, she crouched in her hiding-place under the rock, and listened in an agony of bated breath.

“Oh, Allen—'Allen!”

(To be continued).

There was not a sound, only a dripping in the stagnant creek, a hum of hies, a whisper of leaves. With lifted head, she listened. Was that a footstep among the trees? . Thump!—thump!—thump! went her heart in her straining body. Leaves stirred to the sigh of the wind above. , No, the sound had only been the cracking of a twig or the rustle of a bird. She relaxed with something like a sob, only to lift her head in tense anxiety again. She had never known that the wild was so full of so many incomprehensible little sounds. What dark, sepulchred woods they were, the brown litter of leaves, and black twisted lianas underfoot, the dark blackish-green of all the foliage, stirring in the sinister movement to the neverresting wind above.

Listening, listening ... Minutes passed, dragging in an eterinity of suspense. •

Suddenly a shot rang out, away on the right, quite distant among the trees. There was no answering report. "Hawksford is shot!” Lorna thought. "Hawksford is killed!” And she relaxed in a kind of stunned despair. No idea of escape came to her. Let Allen come, let him kill her. What did it matter?

But a moment later she was hoping again, tense, straining her ears . . . Footsteps came running softly on the other side of the stream. Her heart pounded against her throat, she peered through the ferns. Hawksford camo through the bushes, gun in hand, and looked over at her, evidently to ascertain that slio was safe. There was blood running down his sleeve, on to his left hand. He made a sign to iier to be quiet, and moved away again quickly into tho trees.

Relief flooded through her in a strengthening wave, but tho sight of the blood on his arm had increased her dread. He had been hit in the arm! That last shot had come so near!

"Oh God,” she thought. "How long will this go on? How long? If only she could have gone with Hawksford, but she could not defend herself and being with him would only increase his peril. There was nothing to do but to lie there, enduring that torture of suspense! When the sunrays began to slant in the tree-tops and take a reddish tint, she was still waiting, still listening. She had heard two moro shots, one, she thought, from the rifle, and one from the automatic. Perhaps they were both hit, perhaps they wore both dead or

wounded . . . and there she must lie on a rack of terror and uncertainty! She could bear it no longer. One thing she could do. Richards would be too occupied trying to stalk Hawksford to bother about her, and she could make, a dash up the hill to the Kaikoura track; then she could run to the homestead Hawksford had mentioned, and get help. At least they would have a telephone; she could ’phono tho police or bring men with guns to surround the bush.

, she listened. All was still. Somewhere in the thickets they were creeping after one another, and surely she could get away. She wormed her way out of her hiding place, scrambled up tho bank, and with her heart in her mouth, ran through the trees, pushing and tearing her way through the undergrowth. In a moment she saw tho sunlight on the open hillside between the branches. She plunged out into it, and even as she did so she heard someone crashing through the bush behind her. Terror spurred her, and she dashed ahead up the steep, stony slope. Realisation that it might be Hawksford made her'check her speed and glance back.

There stood Allen Richards on the margin of the trees lifting liis rifle to take aim at her as she ran. “Allen!”

1 She screamed, wildly. He was only some twenty yards from her, she could see the mad savagery in his face, his usually smooth dark hair dishevelled and falling over his brow. He sighted her deliberately along the gun. She dodged frantically. “Allen, Allen!” It was a despairing plea to tho Allen she had known, to the recollection of all that had been between them. Tho barrel of the gun followed her inexorably. She ran, tripped, fell; a double report, so nearly in unison as to be almost one, rang out and thundered an echo from the hills. For an instant her shocked brain fancied she was hit;. but as she-lifted her shaken head to look, she saw Richards stagger, throw his rifle wide, and fall. Hawksford stepped out of the trees behind him, gun in hand. Lorna scrambled up and staggered down the hill to him. Hawksford bent, and taking Richards by the shoulder, turned him over. The glazed eyes widened, fixed on the sky, the lips, below the little moustache, drawn hack from the white even teeth, relaxed; with a spasmodic movement the bent limbs straightened and were still. Hawksford said hoarsely: “I had to shoot him in the hack!” Lorna sobbed:

The last of her strength ebbed from her, her spent limbs sagged and she fell senseless on the grass by Richards’ body.

Half an hour later as dusk began to fall, the dogs at the homestead two miles away over the hill barked frantically at a stranger who came staggering through tho gate. Hawksford, carrying the half-conscious, bedraggled body of Lorna in his arms, walked into the yard, and was met by two surprised men who were rubbing down their horses.

“Have you a telephone?” said Hawksford. “This lady has had a shock and she’s ill. Her fianco tripped over his gun in the bush and shot himself. He’s lying out there now.”

The characters ini this story are efttirely imaginary. No reference is intended to any living person or to any oublic or private company.