SCORPION’S REALM

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 66, Issue 271, 28 August 1946, Page 7

SCORPION’S REALM

3 Serial Story: E

1 BY L. C. DOUTHWAITS 1 3 E

S (Copyright) |

CHAPTER XXI. THE “MESSENGER” The voice, soft and ingratiating as no American voice could be soft and ingratiating, came from the man who, except for the automatic registration that he was a wop or dago of some kind, had come up to him without noticing. But now, as he stood deferentially touching his peaked cap a few feet away, the figure forced itself definitely upon his attention. “Mister Denston(e?” the man repeated, in respectful inquiry. Calvin B. decided that it must be the thicker English atmosphere and the not-too-well lighted wharf that had deceived him. This bimbo was neither wop or dago. If you came down to to brass tacks, it was blame hard to decide precisely what he was. Quarter Chink, he wouldn’t wonder, with another twenty-five per cent Portuguese, and the remaining half Levantine Jew. By nationality, that was; by inclination, of course, the feller was a crook, potential if not actual. To as exact a reader of the human character as Calvin B. Denstone, it needed only one glance at those obliquely set, nebu-lously-coloured, depth-lacking eyes, and narrow, prehensile jaw to provide that guy’s moral health sheet. < A con man, probably, defying his own face in his choice of profession. He didn’t look to have the sand to be a hold-up specialist, anyway. “Wassat?” Calvin B. jerked unamiably in reply ta the solicitously-voiced

query. “Mister Calvin Bartholomew Denstone?” the man questioned again, creasing liis lips to an additional inch of smile that did not still quite succeed in establishing any direct connection with their eyes. , “‘Senator’ to you,” grunted Calvin 8., who, in general, didn’t give a hoot anyway. “Pardon!” the soft slurr of the voice was even more insinuating than before, as was the little bow that accompanied the apology, “I not understan’ the titles Americane. On'y the titles Engleesh; those I learn from my master, Lord Stone’ouse—who sen’ me *ere.” « Calvin B. started slightly. Then very keenly indeed, he fixed the man with the same penetrating far-seeing-gaze that in the sixteenth century had enabled the Kentish-born mariner, Bartholomew Denstone, to be the first in the squadron to distinguish the tiny dark thread stretched across the horizon, the Promised ‘Land of Virginia. And now, with every instant, the Senator’s surprise intensified that one customarily so shrewd as liis brother-in-law should choose for his chaffeur a hybrid pork an’ beaner such as this. If this feller was straight goods, Calvin B. told himself, then a spiral staircase was a flag pole, i “You come from Lord Stonehouse?” he barked ungenially at alst. “Yes, sir. Lord Stonehouse ’e wait you now,” the man said. Yet though he spoke in the. same deferential fashion as before, in .’his manner was something of hesitation, almost of commiseration, that struck the Senator with sudden uneasiness. “My daughter? Miss Denstone? Why isn’t she here?” he rapped out, and with a readiness of sympathy that, but for an increased apprehension the stout Senator would have resented as he resented all else about him, the man spread his hands. “Miss Denstone, she be taken seek,” he explained in those soft slurring syllables of solicitude. “Just,” he added reassuringly, “malaise of the slightest, but my master say, when she would ’ave come anyway: ‘No, you stay ’ere an’ rest, I send the good ‘Enrique to meet. . Peremptorily, some of the ruddy open-air colour gone from his face, Calvin B. stopped the flow. “Take me to the car right now,” he ordered, and as if welcoming such promptitude, the man picked up the valise and led the way from the quay. The car, powerful and luxurious, of the egg-shell blue of th'e appropriate-ly-entitled Luxury Company, was drawn up to the kerb immediately opposite to the wharf entrance. Deferentially the man held open the door, and as the now thoroughly worried Senator’s foot was still on the step, leaned forward to remove a folded rug from the seat that presumably his passenger would occupy. In the relative positions of the two as the man stepped back, it was inevitable that he should brush against his charge. It was a brilliantly executed manoeuvre; had Calvin B. been an Englishman the odds were ten thousand to one he would not even have begun to recognise it for what, actually, it was. But in his younger days Calvin B. had covered ground that, in more senses than one, to the average Englishman is unknown country. Thus, as with his foot still on the step, Calvin B. paused, there was in his eyes the light that to those who knew him best would have foretold trouble. „ PARROT MEETS AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE “Now, why did that pork-an’-beaner want to frisk me for a gun?” he asked himself, for in the dexterous movement of those lemon-saffron fingers lie had recognised a swift quest to ascertain if, in his hip-pocket, was a revolver. And as, grim-faced, he hesitated, the nebulous suspicions that from the first instant of liis approach by the “pork-an’-beaner” had seized him, stabilised to a definite conviction. “Pardon!” As lie skipped lithely aside to swing the door wider open, the “pork-an’-beaner’s” voice was brightly apologetic. “Pardon nothing!” said Calvin B„ and swung about to face him. Then: “Where’s my daughter?” lie rasped, and in his voice, as in his expression, was some overflow of liis ice-cold fear for her, and an anger still more dangerous that must have conveyed their own warning. As quickly as a scared rat t.o its hole 111© “pork-an’-beaner’s” hand parted from the door-handle and went immediately below liis left arm—a movement that to one of the Southerner’s experience was as eloquent as it was unmistakable. ' In the mining camps that, years previously, had proved the foundation of his fortune, .it had been said of Calvin B. that he possessed the softest heart, the longest' head, and the hardest fist in all Nebraska, and now he proved that in the last-named, at least, the old virtue remained. For if in the matter of speed the polygot chauffeur’s

dive for his automatic was rapid, Calvin B.’s punch would have stood as object lesson to a striking snake. Landing flush beneath the angle of the cheek-bone that, in the case of the “pork-an’-beaner” lay immediately beneath the ear, it lifted that unfortunate’s heels six inches from the ground, to where, following upon a parabolic curve through space, he crashed. And there, spread-eagled, lay. Striding over, Calvin B. regarded the prostrate figure rather anxiously. In view of his clamorous anxiety for Beth a fool thing to have let loose a wallop hard enough to have completely put out of action the only source of information available, it struck him regretfully. He was eo engrossed in speculation as to what, now, was his best line of action, that the pulling-up of the power-fully-engined car passed almost unnoticed; it was not until the four figures who hurried out of it actually were within distance that he realised the interruption. When he looked up it was to recognise in the eldest of the quartette his brother-in-law, Lord Stonehouse, whose first words caused the Senator’s heart to sink trcpidously into his throat.

“Beth?” the F.O. official cried, “is she here?”

Calvin B. took a quick step forward. “Why, no,” he said. His keen but apprehensive gaze travelled rapidly from one to the other of those three strangers. Then, at the stark anxiety of his brother-in-law’s face: — “Anything wrong?” Bleakly the Foreign Office official nodded. “As wrong as possibly could be, I’m afraid,” he said, his vqice uncertain. With a gesture almost of savagery he indicated the still senseless chauffeur. “And that, I suspect, is the trouble,” he supplemented. “Or, at any rate, some part of it.” He brought the others within the scope of his glance. “Doctor Valentine Gage; Chief Constable Parrot, of Scotland Yard; and Sir Colin Riversleigh,” he said, in curt introduction.

“And now,” Calvin B. said quietly, following the perfunctory exchange of greeting, “I guess you’re going to tel) me what all the trouble is.” It was not until the conclusion of the concise outline of what, to then, had transpired, that their attention was drawn to a movement from the “pork-an’-beaner.” They discovered that dazed but enterprising criminal, his head raised a few inches from the cobblestones, regarding them with a dismayed incomprehension that, as his glance travelled to Parrot, changed instantaneously to a scowl in which hatred struggled unsuccessfully for dominance with stark and uncompromising fear.

The Scotland Yard man, on the contrary, was full of welcome. “Well! Well! Well!” he cried in mildly surprised greeting. “If it isn’t Arthur from Aden!” Already those deceptively indolent eyes had observed that the countenance of the • heavily defeated “pork-an’-beaner” was beginning to assume a shape that was distinctly unsymmetrical. “Were you going to bed, Arthur, or have you just been trod on by an elephant?” he inquired solicitously. Momentarily, in the face of the prostrate crook the fear gave ground to a scowl. Of the seven million odd inhabiitants of London it was apparent that to Arthur from Aden the Chief Constable of Scotland Yord was the one with whom, at that moment, he was least desirous of an interview. Then, watching closely, Colin saw gradually steal into the obliquely-set eyes a look that, with his long understanding of Eastern mentality, told him that behind all Arthur from Aden’s fear a fleet and subtle brain was searching feverishly for the way out; saw, too, the cunning replaced by the peculiar blankness of expression that, to his type, comes only when solution is reached.

“Now for- the funny business!” lie thought, and watched still more close-

As if overcome by a renewal of unconsciousness, the crook’s body sagged sideways toward the arm that supported it—the fingers inch by furtive inch creeping ever closer to below his other arm.

Quickly as he started forward, Colin found himself forestalled. Indeed, for a man of such ungainly build, Parrot’s swiftness was breath-taking; one moment the lank detective had been looking down with only negligent Interest at the cornered man; a split second later about those sinewy yellow-brown wrists gleamed the polished steel of hand-cuffs.

“You’ve no permit to carry firearms. Arthur,” Parrot said chidingly, and hauling the mouthing prisoner to his feet, explored the region below the arms. “Careless feller, you,” he remarked at last, displaying an empty holster, “to come out without the principal instrument of your profession. Where did you leave it? On the planner or somewhere?”

As his large ferro-concrete hand travelled to the neighbourhood of his hip, for the first time since setting foot on English soil, Calvin 8., was seen, however momentarily, to smile.

“The only thing that poor fish forgot to remember,” he said grimly, displaying a wicked-looking, heavy-calibre automatic, “was that the man, he was up against had taken a post-graduate course in rough-housin’ before he was promoted from swipin’ his baby sister’s milk ration. And I don’t catch snakes without removing their poison fangs, either . . . What’re we to do with him, anyway?” “Put .him where the dogs won’t bite,” said Parrot, and hustled their sweating captive toward the police lender. That vehicle reached, retaining a firm police grip of his collar, Parrot thrust his prisoner inside. If by that hypothetical “perfect murder,” concerning which from time to time there is so much discussion, is meant that after a swiftly-executed killing the murderer disappears without trace, then the one that within a split-second of that enforced entry into the vehicle took place, was the Nth. degree of perfection. “Hold up,” growled Parrot, for without warning Aden Arthur had become a limp dead weight in his grasp. “Ar-r-r,” muttered Aden in a long whistling exhalation of breath, and like a half-emptied sack slumped slowly sideways across the seat.

(To he Continued.)

The characters in this story are entirely imaginary. No reference is intended to any living person or to any public or private company.