"VENGEANCE"

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 63, 15 March 1929, Page 14

"VENGEANCE"

By S. ANDREW WOOD.

SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS. RE I REN GREENWOOD, tjje master of < Jrrrnwoods Mills, in Mossgiel Town is missed from hi* home after losing his mills through tlic machinations o£ JOHN I.VMiIiN, a millionaire who nurses a crucial" ngiiiusf the Greenwciods over .i long ago love affair. RICHARD LYNDON, sun of .lohn Lyndon. is in Invo with Joan GREENWOOD, who, believing th..shock of losing his property has killed her father, vows vengeance against the Lyndons. Sin: loves Kieliard Lyndon, but rejects him owing to the elder Lyndon's enmity to her own family. MAX 11HOMLKV it, in love with Joan Greenwood. She does not like him, hut. lets Richard believe she does in a moment of pique. JOE BIDE. an old enemy of the Lyndons. succeeds in damaging some of the mill machinery. Richard finds Joan in the mill and thinks she is responsible. Reins still in love with her he facilitates her escape. In Strydal Chase Richard meets CYNTHIA BRADLEY and her Brother. The former, who is In love with Richard," pledges herself to find out who Richard's enemies are. Greenwood Manor i« put up for sale, hut RICK QUARMRY, uncle to Joan, opportunely arrives and purchases the old manor and presents it as a gift to Joan. Being a multi-millionaire he finances Joan in her scheme tJ bring about the downfall <>L' the Lyndons. The tight to obtaiu a monopoly of the cotten trade in Mossgiel js further complicated by a mysterious Japanese syndicate which induces Bromley to act as its figurehead. Joan saves Lyndon's mills from being burned by the mob. The engagement of Cynthia Bradley and Richard is announced as an offset by Richard to Joan pledging herself to .Max Bromley. Joe Bude meanwhile lias rescued Reuben Greenwood from the Ttippings. and keeps him hidden in a place known as Clough's Cave, while he plans to cause further trouble at th" Lyndon's mills.

CHAPTER XXVII. After the Smash. The cold splash of the rain and the icy touch of a runnel of water, which trickled across the muddy road where he lay, brought Dick back to consciousness. He rose to his kneels, with every joint aching and every bone in his body bruised. Joo Bude's assumption that he was badly hurt had been wrong. Splendidly lit as Dick always kept his big frame, he had fallen with all his muscleo slack, through tho sheer instinct of an at hlete, when the stretched wire lifted him from the car. Thus he had escaped serious injury. He stood upright, muddy and bleeding •I'ghtly. He judged that he had lost consciousness only for a brief while, for the radiator of the wrecked car was still hot when he found it in the hedge. By some miracle the machine had not taken fire. But it was reduced to scrap. Of the wire which had spilled him there was no trace.

Lyndon began to trudge doggedly along the bridle path which led to •St.yal Chase. Had the attempt to cripple and perhaps kill him anything to do with Max Bromley's Japanese syndicate, and the crucial hour of four o'clock at Mr. Ezra Crawley's office next day? He wondered with an odd coolness. If he thought of Joe Bude, he dismissed him from his mind immediately. He entered Styal Chase, unseen by any ot' the servants, an hour later, and changed his torn and wet clothing. To the chauffeur whom he sent in the big Mispano-Suiza with three other men to attend to the wrecked car he explained that a bad skid had been the cause of the accident. For the present, he decided, he would keep the real cause a secret. Beyond a bruise or so, the marks of his adventure had died away by the time lie had bathed and breakfasted next morning. He looked up from his morning's pile of letters to see Cynthia Bradley, alone in her big car, loom out of the rain-mist that enveloped the dripping carriage-drive. She came running half shyly into the room. There were fear and relief in her big clear eyes. "I heard about the accident an hour "go, Dick," she said. She stood close to him almost timidly, her flushed face a little wistful, though Lyndon did not see it. "Someone saw the wreck by the roadside, and knew it was your car. I t bought perhaps you were hurt." Her words came a little falteringly. It was almost as if she was a little fl ightened of him now in her worship. Dick caught her hands and pulled her to him, touching her wind-blown hair with his lips, acutely conscious of his own coldness. A sudden wave of tenderness passed over him. He told himself he was a fool not to take the fresh and loyal sweetness of Cynthia Bradley arid crush everything else. Yet he could not. "'lt was nothing, dear," he said lightly. ' The road was simply hideous, and I came to grief. I was badly scratched, that's all."

"I came to wish you luck with the twenty-three mills." Cynthia said quickly. "Oh, Dick, you must buy them, whatever happens, and let people see t hat you are not what some of them think! It will be so splendid to show I hem all that you can use your power and yet keep straight and honest. T want to help you, Dick, and I'm troubled because I can't.. It's not because I'm a woman. It's because I'm a—kid. Joan Greenwood is a woman, and they are talking about her everywhere as the head of the Greenwood Syndicate. I suppose it is Joan whom you are fighting? You must win." A rebellious pang of jealousy, which she had long tried to stifle, shot through Cyntliia. That there had been something between Dick and Joan Greenwood file had realised all along, but had crushed the knowledge. Her generous young iu»ul revolted at herself. Blindly she knew that it was enough for her that she had Dick T.yndon now. Yet in a measure she was troubled at herself that she should be so easily and s"lfishly pleased. Impulsively, she leaned her warm face close to Dick, and pressed his closecropped head gently round until her own eyes looked deeply into his. "I love you so ;nuch that I would give you up, if you ever wanted to be free. Dink!" she wliispere<l. "ft would nearly kill nie, but I would do it, and still keep on praying for you as much as I do now. If you were suddenly poor and ill and all out, I should love it. I could do something for you then. If ever the Lyndons crash, promise me ♦ hat jrtHl will not be proud and throw rue oVISrl" The girl caught herself up swiftly. "I'm a little fool." she said soberly. I'm going now, Dick. 1 am taking liolt to I ernjierley Mere to shoot pheasants. He is waiting for rne in Mossgiel." flhe bnmhed hi* temple lightly with her lip and wan gone.

CHAPTER XXVIIf. The Lovers' Meeting. Greenwood's Mills did not start until after the dinner hour that day, for a brief wave of short time had recently set in in the Mossgiel Valley. Most of the original workpeople had gone to work at .loan's Riverhank Mills, but the Lyndons had brought others from more distant mills to till their places. As yet Mossgiel had received the newcoiners with nothing more than gibes and jeers. The quivering spindles had been singing their shrill song for an hour or so when Dick Lyndon drove into the mill yard. In the engine-house, as he passed, the big fly-wheel was pulsing steadily, and the gleaming machinery which made the power for all the great building worked smoothly and noiselessly. Lyndon stood with Dawson, the manager. in the steel corridor that ran the length of the enginehouse storey. Through the quivering glass partition the gangways crowded with men and girls, and the long line of clicking mules and jennies, were visible. Dawson stared through the glass with a faintlv-sour smile upon his big features. He nodded his black, close-cropped head.

"They're a hopeless lot," he said. He laughed shortly. "They can't produce a half of what the old workpeople did— Greenwood's people. There were generations behind those and blood counts in the cotton business from owner down to little-piecer, Mr. Lyndon. There's no more blood in this gang than there is in a pond of frogs. They'd throw us over if Joan Greenwood wagged her little finger and held a halfpenny out to them." Dawson spoke gloomily, stroking his heavy jaw. He was loyal to the Lyndon,*, but he did not mince his words. Presently he took a large claspknife from his pocket and showed it, with a curious glance, to Dick. "I found this among the wires of one of the machines that night the Greenwood jennies were broken," he said, abruptly. "It belongs to that waster, Joe Bude. It must have been him all the time who worked the trick. We thought it was a woman, didn't we?" "It was a woman," Dick said, a little sternly. Dawson shook his head doggedly. "It was Joe Bude," he said. "There are marks on the blade where he hacked the wires with it. A woman couldn't use a knife like that." "Then it was both Joe Bude and a woman," Dick Lyndon said, as he turned away. All at once he had remembered Ginger Tubb's story of his encounter with Joan and Joe Bude on the banks of the mill reservoir. He felt suddenly tired of the clash of emotions which the thought of Joan stirred within him. His glance went up to the clock. It was half-past three. He smiled with a grim anticipation that had its thrill. If Crawley had played false he still had him between finger and thumb, as he had Max Bromley—and Joan Greenwood. One word of the Japanese scheme and the Mossgiel Valley would be about the ears of the three. His thoughts went back to the mysterious note he had received. Who had sent it? He wondered for the hundredth time.

He and Dawson moved into the long mule room. There the throb of the enginehouse came in a deep and tremendous pulse. It was as if the beating heart of the whole mill was there. "The engines are shaking the building to pieces by degrees," Dawson, in a somewhat saturnine mood, said. "A stone building like this, which has been hammered for years, won't last for ever. That's why, if I Was the head of a syndicate, I'd put up brand-new mills with electric power instead of buying a lot of old ones, Mr. Lyndon." He stopped for a moment. Then—"What's that!" he exclaimed. Dawson sprang forward with whispered words of dread and apprehension. He began to run with short, ungainly strides along the gangway, shouldering aside the startled women who stood at their machines. Suddenly there was a loud, breaking crash. One of the overlookers, a lean, elderly man, barefooted and half naked, gripped Dick's shoulder. "Th' flywheel's burst!" he gasped. Dick mechanically watched the man cringe. At the same moment the whole wall of the room seemed to open with a roar of a bursting shell. In a second that seemed an age, Dick saw through a mist of dry mortar and falling bricks the great fly-wheel spring from its holdings like a toy from a child's nand. It seemed to hang poised for a space. Then it came bounding forward, crashing through machinery like a stone through tissue paper. Against a large steel pillar it broke, its fragments flying through the room of screaming women and white-faced men.

Dick Lyndon sprang blindly at a wideeyed girl who stood in the path of a hurtling mass of steel that came sliding along the gangway. He wrenched her aside. It was the last thing he remembered. Something struck him a stunning blow upon the forehead that sent him sprawling and unconscious . . . A deadly and dangerous panic prevailed. The huge projectile, besides wrecking one storey, had shaken the whole building to its foundations and spread consternation among the workers above and below. But it was in the /nule room where the devil of fear reigned. In a moment the exits were gorged with fighting men and women. Shaken nerves and swift, blind terror threatened a catastrophe. It was Dawson's voice that restored some measure J of coolness. "It's all over," he shouted, above the din. "Keep back, I tell you. There's the injured to look after!" He stood oyer Dick Lyndon's bleeding body, using his fists like flails, and keeping back the men and women by main strength. "Some hound has worked this business!" Dawson's face was distorted with fury. "Make way there!" He swung Dick bodily across his shoulder and staggered to the nearest lire escape. One glance at Lyndon told the manager that he was badly injured. The fragment of flying metal had cut an artery, and, in spite of Dawson's rough bandaging, the young man was bleeding profusely. Dawson realised that at any cost he must reach hospital as soon as possible. The mill yard was crowded with excited people. Then Dawson learned that Lyndon's chauffeur had just taken the car back to -Styal Chase. "Here's a car!" someone called. Dawson stood outside the mill gates with his burden. A small grey car, dimly familiar, was moving swiftly down the road. Dawson stared.

"Miss Greenwood!" he called quickly. For it was Joan Greenwood who was in the car. She sprang forward with an utterly colourless face. For a moment she seemed to sway. "I heard the crash a minute ago," shewhispered. "I knew that something had happened —an accident. Who is it, Mr. Dawson—oh, Dick!" The name left her lips in a whispered cry. For the first time she saw it was Dick Lyndon who, pale, bleeding and unconscious, lay limply against Daweon's broad shoulder. She felt a sudden pang in her heart. "1 suppose he Is dying," she said slowly. To, herself the words seemed to be spoken by another person. Dawson, the gathering people, even the great bulk of Greenwood's Mills that towered above, seemed to loom about her in some vast mockery. Ever afterwards the soft hiss of escaping steam brought back that nioni'.'nt of futile anguish. "Dying fast," Dawson said brusquely, "unless he's taken to hospital now." Joan awoke. She spoke almost fiercely. "I am taking him," she said. "No one else can come!"

She watched Dawson lift Lyndon upon the cushioned seat, and followed swiftly upon the car herself. A sudden, deep joy that hurt had fallen upon Joan. She flung a word to the driver and the car started, swinging like a rocket along the narrow lane. Joan leaned close to Lyndon. His blood was upon her fingers as -he tightened his bandages, and it seemed that for that wild moment, dying or living, he belonged to her. Nothing on. earth mattered but that —neither Cynthia Bradley, nor the Lyndon Syndicate, :.or her own vow. He was dying, perhaps, even as he had made her own father die, yet blindly she told herself that if Reuben Greenwood's spirit saw he could understand. Her eyes swam and shone, and she dropped her brown head, touching Lyndon's lips with her own. His eyelids fluttered, as if there had been magic in the gentle kiss. "Dick, dear!" she breathed. She was trembling, yet wholly reckless of anything but the sweet second. (To be continued daily.)