THE ADVENTURES OF AN HEIRESS.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVI, Issue 280, 24 November 1915, Page 10

THE ADVENTURES OF AN HEIRESS.

A Series of Startling Confessions - py MUKIEL HAMWORTH. CHAPTER X. BATED BY THE SKIN OF HIS TEETH. For an instant I staggered against tha _-aval-l, overmastered afresh by fear. I -knew there was n<y bell in the room; tbe primitive inn provided none. I knew, too, that my room was in a _corner of the house, and not coinXmunicating with any -other room. For -"that one moment erf overmastering ter- • Tor, a despair I could not control settled down upon mc. ; But, thank God, it was -cjnly for a moSnent that I allowed myself to be daunted by despair. I pulled myself - together, rallied all my forces, and, ".dashing to the window, flung it open. If Brian were really in danger—and some inward voice seemed to tell mc that he .-Twas—l would not allow -anything, anything in the world, to hinder mc from going to -his assistance. His room, I • knew, was the third from mine round '< the corner of the house; I remembered that fact, 'because, just before we went to bed, he had been laughing, and pronosing to serenade mc. I leaned far out into the clear, cold night, and tried to see what it was possible to do. There was a touch of frost in the air; against the snow on the mountain tops the stars shone brilliantly but the stillness was unbroken, excepting for the sound of falling water, which is the very essence of Swiss sound, and the distant murmur of wind in the pine forests on the mountain side. The ledge outside my window was a wide one; it might conceivably be possible to crawl along it, and round the corner of the house toward Brian's room, ■which I knew had a small balcony. Then I shrank back, not liking to venture upon taking such a strange step, re- , imemberihg that I might, after all, be ..' alarming myself unnecessarily over a mere dream, and, supposing nothing was ■wrong, after all, excepting a nightmare -due to overwrought nerves or a badlyeooked dinner; supposing I had wrought , myself to this pitch of nervousness for • nothing, it would be worse than ridicu- ■ lous to crawl along my window ledge to Brian's room. "Help! Help! Help!" I That strange, muffled, half-suffocated 7 cry rang out again, and this time I was "certain it was not the product of my The last word of the cry --.-was not even finished, but ended in a r.feind of inarticulate gurgling, -which '..aroused all my terrors to frenzy. 7 To wake tbe house by rattling at my ; door-handle might involve long delay. - Even if I screamed, I did not know how anyone might hear mc, for Kitty's -room did not communicate with mine. If ~lC_hdu"ted for. assistance out into the *.'stillness of the night, I had no idea bow Hlorig.itwould be before my shout would jjjjg heard. For my window looked out ~ajross meadows leading to the mountain - slopes. — - giving myself time to consider or Kt'Bdraw back, I determined to take the "affair" into my own hands, and. with an _ inward prayer, I crawled out on to the ledge, and pulled myself upright. -The Toom -was only on the second floor, but the height, though not a dizzy one, was sufficiently unpleasant to make mc keep my eyes fixed steadfastly before mc. " I crawled along the ledge to the corner of the bouse, and, clinging to the stone of which it was built, tried to peer round it. Just on the other side of the corner were the closed green shutters of the empty room beyond, and, letting go my hold of my friendly stone, I seized the projecting iron ..hook to whicb the shutter was fastened back when open. Theu, with an effort I can only recall with a shudder, I swung myself round the projecting.corner of the house and on to the window ledge beyond. Theie, for a second. I paused, breathless, trembling and scarcely daring to advance, but the remembrance of that gurgling, inarticulate cry armed mc with fresh courage, and. creeping on from one iron shutter hook to another, I found myself at length on the last window ledge, with Brian's balcony just beyond mc. . To stretch out my hand from that last ledge and grasp the rail of the balcony ' was no very difficult feat, even though, for a moment, I hung down from it over the street below in a perilous position. But Brian's safety was all that I could think of; my own danger was nothing, and less than nothing, compared with what he might be going througli, and by -this time I was perfectly certain that he was in some great danger, and I pulled myself up by the balcony railings, and climbed over them in less time than it takes to write. But, even though I had reached the balcony, my difficulties were by no means , at an end. Brian's shutters were tightly shut, and fastened on the inside, and ' their slats were fast closed also. It was was impossible to see anything of what iwa s passing in the room, besides which, as no chink of light penetrated through the shutters, I concluded that the room arnist be in darkness. I caught at the shutters and shook them violently, but they yielded not the fraction of an inch to my frantic shakings; and no sound was audible from within the room. Again I felt doubtful as to the wisdom of my impulsive action. I stood back from the shutters, and leaned breathlessly against the balcony. Suppose I had, after all, made a mistake? Suppose Brian was sleeping peacefully inside, undisturbed by the noise I had made without, bow foolish—how A sound struck on my ear. It was the sound of a low, stifled groan, followed by awful gasping, and it came from the other side of those fastclosed shutters. Rendered desperate by the ominous sounds, I hurled myself once more against the shutters, but again my efforts were in vain; pull and push as I would, I could not open them. Then I cried aloud to Brian in frantic, trembling accents, but no response came to mc. I could not even hear now either the groans or the gasping breath; there was ominous silence within the room, and an equally ominous silence lay all around mc. My despairing gaze wandered round the wide pastures over which the balcony looked; -wandered to the dark forests and the still mountains, that were so big and empty of human help, and I cried out in a vain appeal for help . that was not to be found • N ° anßW «'ng voice came back from pasture or wood, 0 r mountain side. Only the night wind) BWeopi j from the pines, answered my cry, and the brilliant star* eceilled k - agony. '

"Brian! Brian, are you hurt?" I cried again, beating upon the shutters.: but no voice replied. The awful silence was more than I could bear. ! Grown desperate at last, I was 1 meditating climbing over the balcony and leaping to the ground to run for , help, when I suddenty saw that one of the slats of the shutters near the top had slipped a little and an atom of window was visible. Without an instant's hesitation, I raised my hand and dashed it through the pane. There was a great crash of falling glass, and at the same time a most appalling odour filled the air round mc; its stencli nearly suffocated mc, so that I gasped for breath, and clung to the railing for support. Rallying myself after a moment, the awful thought smote my dazed brain that if such a fearful odour issuing from a broken pane could have this effect upon mc, standing outside in the fresh, open air, what must be tbe effect of these fumes upon the person inside the room, and that thought rendered mc more frantic than before. Tn my agony I battered again and again on all the glass within my reach, never heeding my cut and bleeding hands, thinking only that Brian was inside, in the midst of the fumes whose exit had nearly stifled mc out there on the balcony. T tore at the slat of the shutter that had slipped till I wrenched it from its place, and by its help I went on batter- . ing on the window till every scrap of glass within my reacli must have been broken to splinters, and some fresh air must have found its way into the room. During the whole time that I was employed In shattering the window, I uttered cries piercing enough to awaken the whole neighbourhood; my anguish about Brian making mc conscious of nothing but the necessity for help, immediate help—help from anywhere—from anywhere, only help. All at once I heard an astonished, sleepy voice from somewhere over my head, asking mc, in a queer patois half French, half Italian, what was the matter, and what I was doing. "Come at once!" I answered back. "Something has happened to the gentleman in this room. Come down and open bis door: he is dying!" I do not know what made mc say this. unless it was that ominous silence from within the room—a 6ilence which not even my terrible cries nor the crashing of the glass and hammering on the shutters had been able to break. In any case, the words were sufficient to alarm , the person who had spoken to mc. There was great movement, and scam- , pering in the room from which the head I had been thrust; presently lights began to appear in other windows, and I heard hurried feet tearing down the staircase inside the building, followed by stupendous thumps, evidently upon the door of Brian's room. Still the silence within remained unbroken, and still the fumes, with their horrible, overpowering stench, poured out of the panes I had shattered. The thumpings on the door were accompanied by shouts and calls, but no answer came to them, and the hammering on the woodwork was continued with renewed vigour until, after what seemed to mc, waiting, out on the balcony, like a century of time, the door evidently gave way ...with a crash, for I could hear the Tffoise first of breaking woodwork and then of people falling and stumbling into the room. As they entered there were sounds of jasping and choking, then it was plain that, for a moment, those who had entered the room had been obliged to withdraw into the passage again. After this, some one bolder than the rest must have crossed the room, for I heard a tread on the wooden floor, and next I heard a hand fumbling with the handle of the window. The person, whoever it was. choked and panted terribly. I heard him mutter: "Good God! What has happened?" And thou I realised that it was Mr Begbie. and T called out to him to be quick —be quick! At that instant a light appeared in the room, and through the broken slats of the shutter I could 3ee that the whole apartment was filled with a sort of impalpable mist, in which the moving, choking figures looked like strange ghosts. I could not see Brian anywhere. "Air!" someone cried. "Let in more air!" And just then Mr. Begbie's fumblings with the window catch were successful; he pushed the window open first, next he unfastened the shutters, and then I dashed into the room, pushing past the astonished lawyer without any answer to his amazed questioning as to my presence on the balcony. The smell and the taste of the fumes nearly drove mc into the open air again, but the thought of Brian inside the apartment drove mc on, and, choking and panting myself, I pressed forward to a corner not far from the window—a corner round which a group of servants whispered and pointed. I pushed througli the group, to find, huddled upon the floor close to the far side of the window, the form of my poor Brian. As Hiad peeped through the shutters he had been just out of my line of vision, but it was evident that he had struggled across the room to try and , get to the air, when the unconsciousness supervening on the inhalation of those awful fumes, must have overtaken him. j He was quite unconscious, and his' white, drawn face looked so terribly like death that, for one horror-stricken moment, I thought he was dead. But we dragged him out on to the balcony, restoratives were procured, and, after an interval of agony which I shall never forget, he slowly opened his eyes and looked at mc. "You—came!" he murmured. " — knew—you—would—come!" Then he sank again into deep unconsciousness, from which it was hours before we could rouse him afresh; and not until the next I day was he able to give any account of the cause of the disaster. When he was well enough to explain what had happened, he told us that, on the night previous, he had been sitting up late in an armchair, reading, and thinking of various things and unobservant of the passage of time. Suddenly he became aware that an extraordinary and overpowering smell began to penetrate the apartment, accompanied by a curious white film-like mist. Puzzled to account for the smell or the mist, he had staggered to the door; . but, ou attempting to open it, he found, to his great surprise, that it was locked on the outside. Growing every moment more dizzy and faint with the increasing power of the fumes, which bewildered his brain and confused his senses, he next tried to reach the window, all the while remembering that my room was not far away, and that, if he called loudly enough perhaps I should be able to hear him. Before, however, lie could reach the window, he was entirely overcome by the deathly fumes, and sank to the ground, to know no more until he woke to see my face and the ring of the curious, anxious faces bending- over him.

Investigation of his room and of those adjoining it led to a curious and ominous discovery. In the room next to Brian's there was found a huge empty cylinder shaped like one of those that are used for oxygen, but marked with the name of a most deadly and poisonous gas. The unscrewed mouth of the cylinder was just pushed through a hole carefully bored in the wall of my lover's room."

On inquiry, we learned that the room where the cylinder was found had been occupied by the German commercial traveller, who, when morning came, had mysteriously vanished, leaving no sign of his going. It was sufficiently plain to us that in reality, he was no German traveller at all, but one of those terrible enemies of ours, who, on this occasion, had attacked Brian instead of mc.

Who could doubt that this was a deliberate attempt on the part of the Stranges to murder my lover? Who can doubt that the attempt would have been successful, and that Brian would have been suffocated by the deadly fumes had I not heard his voice calling to mc, first in dreams, then in reality? He says that, by breaking" the glass of the window, I saved his life; and I believe that what he says is true. And I feel that I can never be thankful enough for having heeded the warning of my strange dream which led to the saving of my lover from an awful death, savin™ him literally by the skin of his teeth" (To be continued daily.)