THE GREGSON CASE.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 53, 4 March 1925, Page 18

THE GREGSON CASE.

By G. HERBERT TEAGUE.

CHAPTER XVn.

Denis Warrick was too bewildered to act or think clearly. The succession of shocks and the strain of the journey, added to his final dramatic surprise, liacl left him in a condition bordering on hysteria.

Ignorant of any rocogniticn of the occupants—indeed, totally unaware that there had been a witness of the tragedy —the car had gone like the wind in the direction of Liphook.

The dust had gradually settled. The blue smoke from the exhaust-pipe had slowly dispersed, but the hum of the car could still 'be heard growing fainter and fainter in the distance on the still air.

Then a malignant silence—a sinister, creeping, sepulchral hush—and from the stygian gloom of the hollow came slowly tortuous convolutions of pale, enshrouding mist.

The boy—lie was little more—lay ter-ror-stricken and inert. He dared not move — some viewless abomination seemed to hold him in thrall —he lay agonised in a world of grey—a world silent, remote, yet crowded with intangible forms, who gibbered and mocked him as they floated back and forth around his recumbent body. Faintly from a distant farm came the bark of a dog—so faint that but for the deathly quiet it could not have been heard over the intervening space. It was enough—it brought back sanity to the bewildered brain of Denis Warrick. He sat up and gazed into the grey void—the actuality of his position gwept over him like a flood.

With benumbed frigidity forgotten and his throbbing head in his hands, he sat on the edge of the crater and tried to think.

His faith in his old friend and mentor had collapsed like a house of cards. That "old Peter Sherborne" should be a murderer was unthinkable- —and yet — he could not feel sorry for Croft. When a man goes out of his way to hound down a fellow-creature —particularly when the unfortunate fugitive is an infinitely better man than the pursuer.

Warrick shivered and stood up. The cold was penetrating. He gazed into the hollow where he knew that awful thing ■was lying, but the trailing mist, like the -wraiths of other departed spirits, had spread its clammy hande over the whole of the Punchbowl and blotted out everything.

What should he do? Like one in a dream he followed mechanically the direction of the motor-car. The impression of the studded tyres on the soft ground "was the only tangible link with the world of men. All else was greyness and glimmer.

.. He had a vague notion of finding: the police station and telling what he knew. Yes; he could do that. No man had a right to take another man's life —no matter who it was; even if it incriminated his friend. What was that standing on the edge of the road?

The distraught wanderer stopped in hie aimless ambling and regarded with horror a nebulous shape a few yards ahead. Gradually it resolved itself into an upright stone. Curiosity conquered apprehension, and he looked closely at the inscription. He read that it was erected "in detestation of a "barbarous murder." He saw no more. ... f

The next moment Denis Warrick -was running like a madman 'back along the road he had come.

Fear lent him wings. With a strange sense of guilt he ran down the steep elope till he could run no more. The surrounding country seemed to shriek murder. Misty shapes pointed at him, ran in front of him, twined round him, and came up from that dreadful hollow to meet him. His throat pricked, and his breath came pain-fully, but the shadowy phantoms still pursued.

Not daring to look back, and afraid to stop, his. pace diminished from sheer exhaustion into a walk. As his breathing came easier he noticed that he had left the Devil's Punchbowl, and the sight of the first pale streakß of dawn over the distant hills on his right dispelled his panic and enabled him to tliink with more or less clearness.

he lit a cigarette and discovered that he was hungry. Lower down the slope he passed a milestone which informed him in the increasing lightthat he was three miles from Godalming. There were many wheel-tracks visible, but it was questionable wnich were' those of the car he had so recently and tragically left. ' • As he walked slowly through the village of Milford a cock crew lustily, and Denis felt a sense of relief that the last signs of his recent journey were left behind. He was grateful for the distance that lay between him and Godalming; it gave him time to think over his position.

On one thing he was quite determined. He would not give away his old friend. Croft had asked "for trouble. And yet —supposing he told the police, how could he face Mrs. Sherborne and Madeline? —What would they think of his friendship? And if he did not, what about his own position, if it was discovered? An accessory after the fact. That would be the verdict. A cold shiver ran down his spine at the thought of his guilt. Xo; he would say nothing. There was nothing to connect him'with the crime,—if he kept quiet about it.

The body would certainly be found soon, and then it would be the tmsiness of the police to discover the murderer. But what an awful prospect. Peter Sherborne—thief and assassin! It was a comfort and a terrible responsibility to know that he held the only clues to both crimes.

A neighbouring clock was chiming half-past seven as Denis Warrick reached the bottom of the valley, and walked slowly along Godalming High Street. It wa-s hardly daylight, and the absence of life and movement in the general greyness increased his bewildered impressipn of walking in a dream. however, soon proved the reality of his surroundings. Realising the folly of attempting to elucidate on an empty stomach problems which inquired all the concentration of which he was capable, he stopped when he reached the Market House.

On the opposite corner a girl was cleaning the steps at the door of the Red Lion.

"Do you think I could have breakfast here?" he asked.

The girl looked up. "I think so, sir," she answered, making way for him, and noticing gratefully how he carefully avoided the clean steps with his rather dirty boots.

"A perfect gentleman," I call 'im," murmiired the maid, "but a bit wild I daresay by the looks of 'im."

The staff of the Red Lion was not often called npon to provide breakfast for strangers at that time on a winter morning, and the advent of Denis caused some commotion and not a little surprise. But they rose to the occasion magnificently. While the young man was removing traces of his unpremeditated journey, ,» fire was made in the coffee-room, and

by the time he was ready an appetising breakfast was awaiting hie attention before a genial warmth that threw a hundred brilliant reflections on the shining crockery.

The landlord of the inn, while not confessing general inquisitiveness, felt he would like to see the young traveller who apparently had a fondness for rambling in the early dark of winter.

"Good morning, sir!" he said breezily, as he entered the room. "Very cold, this morning."

"Very," agreed Denis. "You believe in getting out early,"! laughed the landlord. "It isn't often i we have a gentleman at this time in : the winter." :

"Yes, I suppose it is rather early," I was the reply in rather a diffident tone. ! The fact was dawning upon the young man that his appearance at an inn in a country town at such an hour and at such a time of the year was an error ' of judgment. Although it "Lad nothing : to do with anyone else," the exceptional circumstances of his visit might be difficult to explain.

There was still that awful Thing in the Devil's Punchbowl!

"Of course, we get a lot of people here in the summer," pursued his loquacious host. "It's reckoned very beautiful country. There's Witley and Chiddington and Haslemere. But people mostly come to go up to Hindhead and see the Punchbowl. There was a murder committed there."

Denis turned cold—the landlord resumed reminiscently.—"ln seventeen hundred and something. A sailor, it was, going to Portsmouth."

"Yes, I've read about it," replied Warrick, rising ..to his feet hurriedly. "I must catch the next train to London.—l have an important engagement —If you'll give mc my bill "

"All right, sir. Don't let's keep you. You didn't bring any luggage of any kind, did you?"

As Denis hurried away in the direction of the station, the girl who had been cleaning the steps stood thoughtfully watching him. "My word!" she murmured. "He looks sprucer now than he did when he came in."

When Denis reached home he sent a .wire to the bank, Baying that he was too ill to appear that day.

CHAPTER XVIII. Old Sam Liss, farmer, shepherd, and "broom-squire," was trudging elowly across the bottom of the Devil's Punchbowl about ten o'clock the same morning when he saw a man lying at the foot of Rome low bushes.

Had it been summer time, the sight would have caused him no astonishment, for many wayfarers take their nocturnal repose under the etars in that delightful district.

He parted the tangle of brushwood and regarded the prostrate form. It was that of a well-dressed man, with the eyes were staring heavenward with the unmistakable fixity of death.

Old Sam gazed vagutly around for assistance —in fact, for someone to corroborate the evidence of his own eyes —but nobody was in sight.

There was no need to examine the body for signs of life. It was splashed ■with blood, blood was also on the grass in the immediate vicinity, and the limbs were sprawled as though the murderer had flung or rolled his victim down the steep slope. "There's nobody can; helgiihim now," muttered Sam, as he allowed the branches to spring back into their original position. "Will Igo back to the village, or will I go for the police!" he cogitated. He eventually decided to return to the village and summon two or three of his neighbours. The "news startled the hamlet from its usual calm. Those residents who were at home when Sam Liss returned quickly, found their way into the straggling street when the old man's message got round. "There's a dead man in the Punchbowl." called the blacksmith over his shoulder, as he hurried past the wheelwright's open door. "Dead man in the Punchbowl," shrilled the wife of the cottager whose garden bounded the wheelwright's yard. Soon everyone in the village had heard the tidings. They gathered in clusters before the smithy, and their numbers grew as every man and woman left their usual task to discuss the tragedy that had come amongst them. "Has anybody told the police?" aeked someone. "Not that I'm aware of," was the answer. "Xo; nobody' ain't told nobody yet!" cried the finder of the body, "Go an' fetch 'em, Jimmy boy. will yer?"

"Bring 'em straight down the old road," he called a>3 the young man thus addressed mounted a bicycle and sped away to ITaslemere.

Practically all the elderly male residents of the hamlet joined the party, formed under the guidance and leadership of Sam Lisa, to view the body of the man in the Punchbowl.

The younger men had work to do, and time would not allow them to accompany the band, much as they would have liked.

The blacksmith's son, however, found it most Tirgent that he should cycle.into Godalming to see one of his father's customers about some work they had in hand. That he looked with an admiring eye upon the pretty daughter of the landlord of the Red Lion was but a fortunate coincidence.

As he entered the town he dismounted from his machine at the hospitable door of the inn, and just looked in to see if Mary was anj r where about. As he rightly argued with himself, there's no sense in wasting a journey, if it can be helped.

Mary had not heard of the dead man in the Devil's Punchbowl, and she promptly communicated the news to her father.

The landlord was greatly impressed by the visitor's account of the finding of the body. He asked all manner of questions, which the young man was only too ready to answer. In fact, considering the sparseness of his own informtaion —simply the fact that a dead body had been found—his informative eloquence was a surprise to himself.

"Dead man in the Punchbowl," mused the landlord when the blacksmith's son had gone. "Dead—killed—foully murdered, no doubt." He took out his watch. and gazed at it thoughtfully, stroking his thumb over the dial as if to assist concentration.

"Let mc see—say half-past six—say seven—that would make it—yes, I'll bet that's it —certainly very peculiar." He wifit to the door and called one of the maids. "What time was it when that young man had breakfast here this morning?" he asked when she appeared. "About half-past seven, sir," was the reply. "Ah, I thought bo——" k A few minutes later the landlord of the Red Lion was mounted on hie bicycle, pedalling with much apparent exertion in the direction of Haslemere. (To be continued daily.)