The Loveless Isle

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 5, 7 January 1929, Page 19

The Loveless Isle

By NORMAN PENLEY.

SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS. RUSSELL NAIRN, a tall, good-looking, but somewhat austere bachelor, has achieved considerable success as a company financier, in spite of the fact that he is but thirty-six. His intense devotion to liis business has resulted in his circle of trends being very limited, but he is still a welcome guest of the Langtrey family, whenever he condescends to visit their suburban home. The younger Langtrey Sirl, PAMELA, a vivacious student of music, is one of the few people who are not overawed by Nairn. Calling at his office, she Sives him a good-natured "whigging" for his neglect of his friends. He accepted an invitation to dine with the Langtreys, but cancels It at the last moment by telegram. Instead of dining with them he is investigating a scientific discovery of SIR FREDERICK FISKE, by which Fiske claims to be able to reduce human fatigue in industry,, increasing output prodigiously, and assuring great national prosperity, Sir Frederick, once a fashionable surgeon, has a wife considerably his junior, who, having lost interest in her husband, is much attracted by OSCAE BREGG, a young ne'er-do-well, who "dances divinely." Nalrn'h engagement to dine with the Langtrers Jβ renewed after Pamela hat told him. In her characteristic manner, what she thinks of him. After dinner a geriee of unexpected happenings causes Pamela and Nairn t6 be left alone for a time in the drawingroom. Pamela plays and sings to him. but a situation which is rapidly becoming interesting is interrupted and never resumed. Following this episode Nairn is obsessed by thoughts of Pamela. He makes efforts to meet her "accidentally," but nothing comes of them. Presently he realises that this obsession is having an adverse effect upon his business affair*, and, with a grent mental effort, he decides to put Pamela completely out of his mind.

CHAPTER Vni. Fiske Starts the Great Experiment. Sir Frederick Fiske was in a mood of deep reflection as he stood on the boat deck of the Canadian liner Messina, apparently contemplating a lonely wireless station on the Labrador coast, in the fading twilight of an evening early in June. He was contrasting the lot of the men in that lonely station, seemingly far remote from any considerable centre of civilisation, with the lot of his fellow passengers. On the deck below, a dance had just begun and to the gay syncopated melodies of the small but effective ship's orchestra, about a hundred passengers, mostly in evening dress, were dancing beneath multi-coloured lights, while storm sheets protected them from any whisper of a breeze and kept the sight ©f water from reminding the dancers that, really, they were not in a London palais de danse.

The Messina was not the type of ship on which Fieke had travelled on his two previous visits to the Dominion. But on those occasions he travelled as Sir Frederick Fiske, one of the world's greatest surgeons, to address conferences of medical men, who had travelled from all parts of Canada and the United States to hear him. This time he had deliberately avoided that mode of travel.

The Messina was a "two-class" vessel of some 18,000 tons, which took ten days to make the journey from Southampton to Montreal. Most of his fellow passengers were middle-class people, business men and a few tourists and some young students. Though Fieke joined in most of the games and pastimes of the ship, none of the passengers took him to be anpone very different from themselves. Only the European manager of the shipping company and the commander of the ship were aware of his identity. In the passenger list he appeared merely as "Fiske, F. G., London."

It wae essential to the success of his mission that he should not be met by a crowd of journalists, who, even though he declined to be interviewed, would broadcast the news of his arrival, and thus put on his track other not only journalists, but various types of sycophants who abound in countries where titles are officially held in contempt, but where, in point of fact, even the least worthy of knights-bachelor is assured of a regal welcome.

Thus, when the ship docked at Montreal, the little group of journalists who were early aboard, divided their attention between the secretary of an immigration society and a heavy-weight boxer, while Fiske, on surely one of the strangest missions with which any man visited the Dominion, walked ashore unquestioned by any save the Government officials, who, at the request of the commander, had given him the earliest and most perfunctory examination.

It was either a very courageous or 'very reckless etep on Nairn's part to allow Fisk* to go to Canada alone. Brilliant man though he was, Fiske was by training a doctor. He was not a business man, and it would require business acumen and a considerable degree of organising skill to get the almost derelict paper mill in working order. Nairn was well aware of these considerations, but he did not even suggest to Fieke that he should take a business associate with him. For one thing, secrecy was vital to success, and, what was more, Nairn had small faith in partnerships. He held that, in most instances, if you give two men a job to share, aU you do is to double the chances of failure, by introducing all that is necessary to a quarrel. Further, he knew that with Fiske, the experiment he was about to make was an overmastering passion. With such abounding faith, with such enthusiasm, Fieke would not risk failure by relying upon himself in matters in which he felt his own knowledge would be inadequate. Nairn believed in autocracy as the greatest, surest producer of success, and he would not impair Fiske'e complete control of the scheme by sending anyone with him, even in a purely consultative capacity.

Fiske took with him, however, various letters of introduction to lawyers, accountants and business men in Montreal and Toronto, people who, regarding him as merely an sgent of Nairn's, sent out to set the derelict plant in motion again, would do all that was necessary to euable him to take possession of the mill, and who would give him. the assistance he would need in finding supervision and labour. Fiske soon put himsslf fn touch with these various men of affairs. Some of them gasped when they first saw the man who had been sent out to bring prosperity back to the Anacaoma plant. As one lawyer remarked to his partner, Fiske looked the right sort of man to plead before the Privy Council, but as much fitted for a paper plant, as a fanaber nan would be to plead before fh* Privy Council. Bat first impressidM •as xrnmßj mM**H\n§, and tinea attJL sssa* Msoasat sssetlßaß wfefc'MatttT MJB 3V MBSHBVi .IS* VJSJMJ

eoon discovered that here was a formidable personality, & shrewd bargainer and one with euch a, rare faculty for judging men that even if he did not know much about the technicalities of lumbering and paper making, he was certain to get hold of men who knew the game, and, what was more, men who would not let him down.

Thus it was that within three weeks of landing, Fieke had established himself on Anac&oma, a small island in the bifurcation of a Quebec river, a tributary of the mighty St. Lawrence, having dismissed the few idle caretakers of the plant and having engaged a new skeleton staff to put the mill in working order.

Further, in spite of the fact that he had to buy against the competition of other mills situated higher up the river, he had entered into a fair contract for a supply of timber. Five weeks after landing he was able to cable home to Nairn that the mill would begin to operate on the following Monday and that he was sanguine of complete success. To which message Nairn replied with restrained congratulations, and an intimation that he hoped to visit the island in the autumn. CHAPTER IX. ~^*W Nairn Receives a Surprise. Since the day on which Russell Nairn had "pulled himself together," as he would have described it, he had contrived, by the exercise of his unusual will-power, to exclude Pamela from his mind. At first it had not been easy, but the decision to launch Fiske on the great experiment had helped considerably. He had taken that decision, as he well knew, after less consideration than he had given to any project of similar magnitude. But, the strange fever which had possessed him after that evening at Pamela's home, was not sufficiently virulent to impair his instinct of self-direction. When, as* it seemed for a moment, his business reputation was about to crash about him, that instinct told him that drastic action, some kind of cold plunge, was necessary to sober his thoughts, and, by plunging into the Fisko scheme, he had recovered his normal temperament.

The Anacoma plant had already meant a considerable loas to him. True, it was his only loss worth mentioning, but it was a large one, and the further sum with which he had undertaken to "back" Fiske, might be good money thrown after bad.

Thus it was that, from the moment he gave his decision, he devoted himself to the scheme with meticulous thoroughness. Xo detail wae too small to engage his attention, and thus he kept himself occupied to the full right up to the time of Fiske'e sailing. And with no idle moments in which to muse or to indulge in sentimental reveries, Nairn was more or less secure against a return of those thoughts and impulses which, after the evening at Surbiton, brought chaos into his well-ordered life.

For a little while after Fiske had sailed, Xairn continued to study the plans, making small revisions here and there and communicating them to the surgeon, but there came a time when no more could be done but to await reports from Canada.

One evening during this period Nairn's fancy took him again to the Metropolitan for dinner. He was more placid, more settled in his mind this evening than he had been for some time, and he chatted with unusual friendliness to his favourite waiter in the grill room. But thonph the man seemed flattered by the amiability of his customer, he showed, nevertheless, that he must not spend too long in talking.

"You'll excuse me, sir," he said as he served the asparagus, "but we're a little short-handed to-night. There's a special dinner in the Prince of Wales' room; dancing, too, and some of the grill room staff are up there."

Nairn thought no more of it, but bowing always to considerations of efficiency, he resumed his usual taciturnity, and conversation gave way to reflectiveness.

Instead of taking his coffee in the grill room, he decided to assist his waiter by retiring to the lounge. So he paid his bill, and took a comfortable chair in the big lounge and picked up an evening paper. His coffee was a long time in making its appearance, and when it came he put aside his paper and looked about him, studying the people who drifted in and out.

The hotel was busy to-night. Obviously, there was something unusual in progress. Yes, the waiter had mentioned a special .dinner. Some of the people looked a little timid as they peeped into, or passed through the lounge. They were obviously unaccustomed to such places; a little suburban, too, some of them.

Presently, his attention centred upon a couple who bad just entered and who had taken seats on the side of the lounge farthest away from him. He had caught eight of the man's face, and thought he recognised it, hut the man eat down with his back to Nairn, thus frustrating any possibility of recognition and masking Nairn's view of the girl. Nairn resumed his reading of the paper, but an unidentified face is one of those petty problems that are apt to unsettle the mind, and presently he lowered the sheet and again looked across at the couple. Oreat heavens! The man had moved slightly, but Nairn immediately lost aU interest in him, for, in moving, he had revealed the girl, and it was Pamela Langtrey. (To be continued daily.)