"VENGEANCE"

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 52, 2 March 1929, Page 12 (Supplement)

"VENGEANCE"

By S. ANDREW WOOD

SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS, j REUBEN GREENWOOD. tile master of Greenwoods Mills, in Mossgiel Town, lias been seriously ill, and with his daughter returns to the mills, when the workpeople ■how their love for the Greenwoods manage me in. JOHN" LYNDON. a millionaire, and man of strong character, is waiting to see hiin. ami is accused by the old man of trying to wreck the Greenwoods. RK'HAHD LYNDON, son of John Lyndon, is in love with Joan. JOAN* GREENWOOD listens to the conversation between her father and John Lyndon. and quarrels with Kichard. The girl Is later saved from drowning by MAX BROMLEY, who declares a passion for her. She does not like him. The scene changes to Strydal Chase, the home of the Lyndons. There is an impassioned inter- | lude between the young millionaire and Joan. Later the Lyndon management is j seen to be unpopular. There is discontent among the hands and much' clashing of authority. The friendly faction informs ndon of the dangers.

CHAPTER X. Shadows in the Night. The fog thickened steadily as the night wore on. The yellow clock face of Mossgiel Parish Church hung like a clull moon above the narrow streets. Its hands pointed to nine o'clock when Joan Greenwood passed by the corner of Newman's Row. Something seemed to hold her to the damp and mist-filled streets of the little town. The thought of the empty loneliness of Mossgiel Manor repelled her. Deep in her heart there was an affection I for the rough and intimate atmosphere of the place, with its steep, stony streets and cheerful little houses and roughtongued, warm-hearted people. The streets were almost deserted From the darkness of Newman's Row the sound of the mill-stream cani< faintly. Joan stood for a moment in th< dark angle of the wall and listened t( it half fascinated. As she did so, foot steps sounded, and two men came fortl into the dim radiance of the gas lam( that flickered in the wind at the corner The taller of them was muffled in i jrrcat coat, his soft hat drawn low ovc his face. But Joan, with a leap of he pulse, recognised him. It was Ma; Bromley. She stood as though frozen, not dating to move. He seemed to look straigli' at her an instant as she shrank agains' the wall,"and she tensed her body to flee Then Bromley turned to his com panion, and she knew that he had no' seen her. "Vou are not playing double, Top ping?" Bromley's voice was low. hall threatening, alt" fearful, it seemed. His companion gave a husky laugh He spoke smoothly and respectfully, yel there seemed a note of mockery beliinc his words. "It wouldn't pay me to play double Mr. Bromley. I'm too old. I want the sure money. The old man never woke from his sleep. I'm telling you tin truth. He went out like a candle-end He's off the map now. There's only tin other —old Rick —to deal with. lie • \anished for the time being. But he'l turn up some day soon, as good as gnlc —and as rich." The rattle of a pair of clogs cairn down the silent street. Max Bromlej Hung a word of quick farewell and strodt into the dimness. He passed so neai to Joan that he almost touched he:. His companion remained beneath the gas lamp. He waited until the ownei of the clogs passed. Then he seemed tc raise his head, like one who enjoys a secret and excellent joke. Joan had s * quick glimpse of the smooth, cleanshaven face, with the broken teeth showing in a deep and inscrutable smile It was as if he threw a silent laugh after the man who had just partec from him.

Then Mr. Slim Topping turned and walked slowly bark into the cavern of Newman's Row. Joan moved blindly along the dark street. She felt as if the mist ab-T.t her had penetrated to her soul and lay there, hiding many mysterious things from her. Slim Topping's words had reached her, blurred and unmeaning. Yet, in some way, she was terrified at them, and felt herself shivering violently. What secret was it that Max Bromley shared with that strange, furtive man? Joan gave a gulping little laugh. " I had better go home," she whispered. "'I am getting frightened." Her way lav past the dark and slumbering pile of Greenwood's big mills. The studded gates of the mi'.l yard she saw, in a. half-startled way, were slightly open. With an unaccountable fear the thought of Joe Bude's wild promise of destruction returned to her. She crept to the narrow opening of the gates and peered through. The small door which gave access to the metal back staircase was open. In a flash Joan remembered that Joe Bude had said that he had the key to it. Softly she crept across the dark stones of the mill yard to the open doorway. Inside a dim oil lamp guttered at the wall. There was the print of a newfootmark upon the stone threshold, wot and muddy. With her senses sharpened bv the dread which filled her, Joan saw that it was a left foot that only touched the ground with the ball and toe. It was thus, in his left foot, that Joe Bude was lame. A deep coolness descended upon her all at once. She was running noiselessly up the narrow stairs. On the third storey, where the Greenwood jennies stood, she paused for breath.

The luminous reflection of the mist outside tilled the long, low room, glinting on the silent rows of steel machinery with their fluffy white ring frames, and the dark iron gangways that stretched like shallow trenches. She could see a dim figure in one of the alleys. Then came a dull, metallic crash. She saw that the frame of the jenny nearest to her was twisted and broken. So was every one of the Greenwood machines she could see. Joan sprang forward. "Oh, stop," she whispered. •Too Bude swung round crouchingly. Joan caught the iron bar that hum* in his right hand and wrenched it from him. The light shone upon his thin, dead-white face and deep, sunken eyes.' Tie swayed slightly as though he had lieen drinking. The laugh that he gave was like something that broke in hLs throat. "The job's done!" lie said exultinglv. He thrust Joan aside so roughly'that she staggered against the" nearest machine, and ran with the stealth and silence of a cat along the gangway. At th«- end of if, he serine.; to vanish. Joan leaned against one of the wrecked machines weakly. She felt suddenly overwhelmed by the night's

happenings. She closed her eyes for a moment, the misty room swaying before her vision. When she opened them again the light of a lamp was swinging towards lier down the gangway, and she heard the confused voices of men. An impulse to run seized her, but her limbs would not answer the will of her brain. "Joan—you!" She leaned forward, dazzled by the uplifted lamp, with the iron bar which she had plucked from Joe Bude still in her hand. Dick Lyndon stood looking down at her. His voice seemed to come from afar, as did the voices of the knot of men who followed him in the distance. "So this is your vengeance!" he said, slowly and bitterly, with a contemptuous note that stung her to the very depths of her soul. The words left Dick Lyndon's lips slowly and sternly. He stood before Joan, looking down at her, with his arms hanging by his sides. Joan was overwhelmed with a desire to llee from his burning contempt, yet could not move. Only very slowly, standing there in the steely dimness of the glinting chamber into which she had followed Joe Bude, did she realise that he thought —nay, »a< convinced —that it was she who had wrecked the Greenwood jennies. "Joan!"

She shrank as at a blow at the inflection of pain, and bitterness in Lyndon's tone. Over his big shoulder she eaw the other men approaching down the gangway. '•You had better arrest me, then," she whispered recklessly, "if you think it is me'." The iron bar which fshe still grasped in her lingers, wrenched from Joe Bade, dropped with a rattle. She stood very straight, with her head uplifted cie- j liantly. One moment she saw Lyndon's big-boned face and close-cropped temples. The next he had swung the lantern which he carried against the nearest machine, as if by accident. It went out with a tinkle of glass and a reek of oily smoke. "Quick!" Dick Lyndon said. "This way, Joan!" Before she knew it he had caught her, in his arm about her shoulder, and was hurrying her along the dark gangway, with the crisp ring of his companions' footsteps following behind them. She stumbled and he caught lier, all but lifting her from her feet. The pause \tas sufficient to allow of the men behind overtaking them, and he drew her into some dark recess, where they crouched close together as the men hurried past. A loose tendril of Joan's hair touched Lyndon's face, thrilling him like an electric current, and the girl could feel all the man's big, puking strength as he held her. Then abruptly they fell apart. Next, moment Lyndon was pulling her by her wrist towards a grated door. "It opens out on to the lire-escape," he Hung out quickly. "If you go down quietly, no one will hear you, and the fog will hide you. You had better hurry out of the mill-yard. They may search. Believe me, you need not worry. You have smashed the machines completely."

His voice was hard and level, and con - tein]»tuous!y fool. He had silently opened the prated door and thrust her forth upon the thin-railed platform of the fire-escape. The fog rolled about them in grey vapour; the yard below was utterly invisible. It was if they stood together ever some steaming cauldron. Joan turned a white face to Lyndon. '"[ am not running away because I'm frightened,'' she said, steadily. "I am going because you make me." Lyndon bowed his head. "Because I make you," he repeated, stiffly. '"I understand. It would be as well to go quickly. The men will come and find us any moment." Something in Lyndon's cold, almost mocking voice terrified .loan. The la>t barrier of ice between them seemed to freeze over as he spoke, sundering them for good. Until then, because >he was a woman with a woman's undying hope, it had seemed to her that if her hatred faltered and stie broke the vow of vengeance she had made to her dead father, Dick Lyndon would come to her. On her side only-had the hatred been until then. . . . But now there was contempt and loathing on his side. "T am going now," Joan said. "Thanks for being such a generous enemy. Good night!" The gently ironic adieu reached Lyndon from the mist below him as she vanished slowly down the metal steps. He stood for a moment motionless. Then, noiselessly, he passed into the mill again. He was barely in time. As the grated door closed softly to his touch, a bright glow of clectric light ran along the length of the Hat as one of the searchers found the switch. Dick stood gazing bitterly at the cunningly-broken jennies. It had been cleverly done. He supposed Joan had carefully studied the plans of Reuben Greenwood's invention which were in her possession. The act had been cool and premeditated. He felt suddenly sick and weary, and older than he had ever been. There was pity in him, too, fierce pity, that yet left him relentless and hard in his judgment. He remembered the warm touch of Joan's lips in that first and only kiss at Clough's Cave. . . . Fool that he was to remember, since she had no forgiveness and could hate so ewiftly. Three men came quickly and clumsily along the gangway towards him. Dawson, the under-manager, spoke eagerly. "Where is she?" Dick lifted his head. "Who?" lie asked. He was aware that the little knot of men regarded him curiously. Perhaps he w;as paler and more haggard than he thought Dick Lyndon did not know that his eyes were diamond-bright and his big jaw set hard. "Of course," he said, quickly yet laboriously, "it was a woman. 1 saw that much. I n-early caught her once, but she escaped. She was probably one of the women who work in the mill, and knew the door to the fire-escape. She's gone, I'm afraid. It is useless to look for her in this fog." Dawson ran his glance over the damaged machines. He was a big, stolid man, with the shoulders of a gorilla and an awkward manner. "She's done her work well," he said slowly. "It'll take a clever mechanic to repair that mess, Mr. Lyndon. I doubt whether you would get a man in Mossgiel to make the attempt. There's a bad feeling against Greenwood's mills in the town just now." He laughed dryly. Dick moved I abruptly away. It was no great thing! that Greeuwood's jennies had been

smashed. But that Joan Greenwood had done it with her own slender hands hurt liini- He thrust back the recurring pain as he moved into his private office. He recognised the truth of the under-manager's blunt words. The antagonism to the Lyndon Syndicate had grown like a rising tide in Mossgiel. In that corner of the misty Pennies the feudal spirit between workpeople and employer still lingered strong. It had been Mossgiel's boast that not a single syndicate mill was in its midst, yet at a single swoop the oldest mills in the district had come into the possession of the Lyndon Syndicate, and Mossgiel's most revered family tumbled into ruin. Dick laughed bitterly at the picture of himself, the youngest millionaire in the North. Not all his wealth could buy that simple devotion which the people of Mossgiel had given to Reuben Greenwood for so many years. Instead, the men and women of Greenwood's mills now worked sullenly and indifferently. A guard had had to be posted because of whispered threats to tire the mill. Styal Chase, the Lyndon's home, was rapidly becoming like a beleaguered castle, with the men servants and sentries that his father, with grim efficiency, had set. A shadow fell upon the glazed glass of the door. It opened gently and Ginger Tubb stood wringing his cap nervously in his hand and grinning as was his fashion. "Car's waiting, Mr. Dick," he said, in his growling staccato. "Fog's lifted. Time's nearly ten o'clock." Lyndon nodded and rose. He felt suddenly weary of the silent soul of Greenwood's Mills, which stretched empty and menacing all about him. At Styal Chase there were at least lights and wine and the soft anodyne of life. Lyndon's glance rested on Ginger Tubb. The rough-cut young boxer was scratching his close-shaven head with a hollow sound and shuffling uneasily.

''I see'd that 6kunk Joe Bude a bit since, guv'nor," he said, awkwardly. "He wa-s hanging about the mill dam. He was speaking to—to—" Ginger Tubb's prominent Adam's apple rose in bis throat as he gulped. Lyndon waited. — to Miss Greenwood, boggin' your pardon," Ginger Tubb ended, desperately. "I thought he was coming the nasty over her. But—but she said he was a friend of hers. Id've chucked him into the dam, but he tried to make out that they were very thick together." Lyndon gave vent to a harsh sound that made Ginger Tubb jump. He strode across to the dazed young man. "You'll forget that," he said, curtly. ''You understand?"

There was a cold and almost desperate vehemence in Lyndon's words that sent Ginger Tubb, with blinking eyes, against the mahogany panels of the room. It seemed to Dick Lyndon all at once that Greenwood's Mills had become nothing more than a torture chamber to him. He passed out of the room and down the dim-lit stairs to where the car awaited. He felt a man tleeing from himself. (To be continued daily.)