A Race With Ruin

Auckland Star, Volume XXXV, Issue 95, 21 April 1904, Page 6

A Race With Ruin

CHAPTER XXXIV. THE FIRING OF THE ROCKET. |« Nance quietly drew the casement in- j ° wards again, without quite closing it. g She hoped to hear the conversation that was <roing on below, bur the tones g of the speakers v.ere too warily sub- £ dued to reach her. jb Could she have looked through the floor, or have obtained a bird's-eye , view from some tree outside, her gsze irj would have fallen on a strange .sight, ij. It was Mother Fury v. ho v,?s talking .. to the pugilists, and she was dressed j for out of doors. A rather vaudy l.on- _ net covered her ebon locks, a black lace : mantiila enveloped her ample person. ' and in her hand she earn-;! a string i bag of the sort used in chopping. ;, In the same chair, close to the din-I inu-room window, in which three nights «' before he had waited the coming of his j ; '•dear old pals'' and ot" Nance herself, | sat Lord Hooligan, very drunk, and for |- all practical purposes quite incapable — i though, as he could ft ill :ix a glazing ;* *ye on the decaut-.r at his elbow and j; occasionally dutch it in a shaking hand to renlenish his glass, he would probably j* have been insulted by the description. ; As a factor in the situation his lord- * ship had ceased to count, and the others c had ceased to heed him as a listener, j* merely humouring him as they might, I a silly child. _ In "the background, up and down the j-dining-room floor, Moses Cohen was c trotting like a restless old panther, his jC dixtv gTev beard waving in the night 1 breeze that blew through the open |i French window, causing also the lamp ; t on Hooligan's spirit table to flicker and cast strange* shadows. |1 "So you've shifted 'er Fcy'le 'Ighness \t into the State Apartments'-" Ted the It Pounder was saying. "She ain't tried .1 to get out down the ivy yet." ,1 "Your ugly face'il stop her from that j game. I'd lay a dollar she's had a squint U at it already, aiui also shot the bolts U to keep that bold bad nobleman out. js Ha! ha:" laughed Mother Fury softly. :j AL their talk was conducteu softly, and not without furtive glances at the thick shrubbery that grew 1o witnln a few yards of the windows. But Btummagem Jem, who appeared to have be°n told off for the duty, chu-uy kept b:s gaze fixed on an alley in the hazel coppice, through which alone could a view of the sky to the southward be obtained. Whatever it was he was watching for, "he and his companion served the double purpose of guarding Nance. So long as the two pugilists stood under her window she would not be able to essay the descent of the creepers. "Wake up, Hooly. and tip us a song." ■said Mother jury present!;, surveying the helpless sot in the eaair with a critical eye. '"It's my belief you're shamming drunk." Hooligan's head had fallen forward on his chest, but at the invitation he i raised it and began to gurgle out a i droning chant that was almost, inaudible beyond the confines of the room. "I've wandered "boot a bit in my time, Of troablesh I've sheen a i r oo' few; j But I t'oun' it besht in every crime ; To paddle my own canoe." '"Clime, not crime, you silly," grinned the Pounder from tbe path outside. "Tell you isth crime. Always paddie my own crimes/ queruousiy insisted the ' noble peer; and his head fell forward again before his nerveless grasp had been able to close on the brandy. "No mistake about it. Mother, he's copped it fair this time," said Brumma- j gem Jem, who had turned from his vigil to watch the piteous effort of the hereditary legislator." "What's the time. Mother?" asked the other pugnlist, after a pause, and there was a touch of impatience in his | voice. "A quarter to nine: if that thing doesn't show, up soon I shall go and put j her ladyship back in her own little cell," was the reply. "Which '11 mean we'll all have to stay another night in this old barrack," the Birmingham prize-fighter grumbled. ''Of course, if there's no signal it will mean that nothing will happen to-night, ; We mustn't quit till we get the office, if we're to finger the pieces that's promised us," was the mulatto's reply. The group at the window started as a. high-pitched quavering voice from the interior of the room drew their attention to Moses Cohen, who had paused in his singular trot to and fro and was shaking a warning finger at them. "I shouldn't advise any .of you to quit till you earned your pay," he said. The two ruffians on the path exchanged glances with Mother Fury. It was the first time the old man had shown any signs of exercising the authority with which he had professed to be armed, except when he had joined his puny efforts with those of the pugilists to keep Hooligan out of Nance's room. His interference at this stage removed the last vestige of doubt from Mother Fury's mind. She accepted him as Tannadyee's reprettntativepcxfi ru ettrw ffih' abb nsty sentative, on a point that had vexed her. "All right, Mr. Cohen," she laughed. c "'Na fear but what we'll see it through. I've left the key in her door, on the outside, after locking it. Is that right, do you think—if we have to quit?" Moses Cohen pondered the question, with an air of deep wisdom before delivering himself of the following oracular reply— "If it is left in the lock it may be held hereafter that the lady was "detained under compulsion; if it is removed there will always remain the doubt whether the door was not locked on the inside." "Taght you nre . it - 3 the doubt we want," said Mother Fury decidedly. 'I'll run up and letch the key before — Ah. there it goes'." The interruption was caused by the majMfae rising of a rocket into the southern sky plainly visible down the alley m the hazel coppice

By HE A DON HALL, Author of " Guilty Gold," " Queen of the Night," tie.

7 PLUG < -mt,

a a» — Tbe great streak of fire soared slowly into the air and then burst in a cluster lof red and blue stars that sank amid a shower of golden rain and was lost to sight behind the tree-tops. "Gives one the creeps —now it's come. Seems almost as if there was eyes star- : ing at us. and waiting out in yonder ! bushes," said Ted the Pounder, rather white. But Mother Fury was all for action. 5 The sudden emergency bad driven the key of Nance's room out of her mind. "Don't stand gibbering there, you idiot! I've no patience with such nonsense," she hissed. '.'No noise now. Give mc a hand, both of you, to shift this chair closer to the window. Quietly does it." The two men obeyed, and together lifted Hooligan bodily in his chair and placed it so that his legs protruded on Ito the path. Mother Fury moved forjward the table with the lamp and the 1 spirit decanters, arranging it so that .the drunken peer formed the centre of a i shaft of light which shot past and round |him on to the garden path till it was [finally checked by the dense foliage of ithe shrubbery. : '"That'll do,'' the mulatto hoarsely whispered. "She won't try climbing down out. of window while bis feet show ! there and his shadow falls athwart the 'path. Now it's time for us to git." Two minutes later Mother Fury and : Moses Cohen, with the liveried pugilists on the box, were rumbling down the ; drive in the brougham which had 'brought Nance, and which had stood ready harnessed in the stable-yard for the "last hour. At the bend in the drive the coloured |hag put her head out of the carriage land looked back. Lord Hooligan's rej dining figure showed up plainly in the (band of yellow light diffused from -the j lamp behind him. "There's an end of him," she exclaimed as she resumed her seat with an un- ! canny laugh that made Moses Cohen 'shudder in every joint of his emadated frame. (To be continued daily.)

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