The Mysterious Masquerade

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 259, 1 November 1932, Page 15

The Mysterious Masquerade

by . • • J. R. WILMOT

CHAPTER XII. Cut! Never before had Molly Carstairs experienced such mental agony as ehe endured for thfe succeeding twenty-four houre after Paul Silver's bombshell. There were moments when she thought of making a last desperate effort to escape from, the house as she had done a day or two previously.

But there was another side to it, which, if her eurmises were correct, had to foe considered. That was Major Carstairs' side. Here was a man coming home in the fond belief that he was, after a long absence, to be reunited to his daughter— °a daughter he had not seen eince she was a baby. One could rule out altogether the matter of recognition. The Major must accept the person presented to him as hie daughter, and that he would do so in all good faith was all too obvious to Molly.

■It wae thie sentimental side to her nature that would persist in obtruding sometimes to the exclusion of commonsense and logical reasoning, and as she thought things over she felt that ehe could not ignore it now. After all, it was Major Carstairs' affair just ae much as it wae hers. And Molly did not like to think that the eoldier would be coming home to find that his daughter was missing.

This thought gave Molly a great comfort. She felt suddenly animated with much the same flaming fire as must have possessed the early Christian martyrs. If the worst came to the worst, and Major Aldous Carstairs was" the man she believed him to be, Molly felt that he would do his best to understand that her deception was, to eome small extent at least, inspired by kindly motives. In the meantime—if and when the vigilance on her freedom was removed, as she fancied it must be removed, when her "father" returned — she would do her utmost to trace the lost Molly -Caretairs and restore her to her father.;

It was this, more than anything else, that persuaded Molly ultimately to come to the decision that she eventually did, but she felt that to achieve her end she muet rigidly subscribe, no matter how difficult it might be, to the theory of that lost memory.

The following day Flora Silver suggested a drive in the car. Molly welcomed the diversion. She was becoming thoroughly bored with staying at home.

So they went down to Windsor and made a detour northwards to Aylesbury. It was a bright and glorious day for mid-October. The sun shone in a crisp, cloudless eky, and there was a pleasant nip in the air. Molly would have enjoyed that drive at any time, and even Flora Silver's pretended efforts to revive her lost memory were not nearly so oppressive as they would have been had they been recited in front of the fire in Paul Silver's sanctum at Hampstead.

"I do hope, my dear," Mrs. Silver intoned, "that your father won't be too distressed to discover that you can't remember very much of what has passed. I'm afraid it is going to be rather difficult at first," she went on, "but I expect he will make allowances."

"I wish I could remember, too," sighed Molly, realistically, entering into the spirit of the deception with genuine delight. "I'm eure I must have had a very happy childhood, and yet I can't remember a thing. Have I always lived at Hampetead?"

Flora Silver experienced a curious tingling of the ecalp as she heard the girl's words. She felt that the girl beside her in the back of the luxurious motor car was politely "pulling her leg," and, not, having been particularly generously endowed with, a sense of humour, she confessed to herself that sl/e did not know quite what to make of it. She had not wanted thie task of telling Molly Carstairs all about herself, but Paul had insisted that "it will come much better from you than it possibly could from me." "Don't you remember the time when we lived at Maidenhead ?" she countered. "How you enjoyed our week-end trips on the crowded river with the striped awning over the boat, and you sitting there trailing your little pale hands in the water?"

"Of course, I do—at least I think so," amended Molly, with a little frown. "I'm sure I remember eomething like that."

Mora Silver wanted to scream. The girl was making game of her and, what wae more, she knew it.

"There now, dear, 1 told Paul before we left that X was sure you'd recall things soon, and that will be a great help, my dear. You can't realise how I'm dreading meeting your father and having to tell him that his little girl can't remember."

Molly smiled, but Mrs. Silver did not know it. She was trying desperately to placate her own conscience; trying to make herself believe that this girl did not see behind the veil of intrigue. So they talked on and in that ingenuous way of hers Mrs. Silver recalled little essential incidents, not in the hope that Molly would recall them, but to pass on the information so that the gi 1 might play her part without creating any doubt in the mind of the "father" ■ whom she was shortly to meet.

When they returned to Hampstead, Molly felt that she had learned a great many things about the real Molly Carstairs. She had learned that she had been to a "finishing school" in Paris, and that slie had only returned to London two months ago. Asked about letters to her father, Molly had been told that of course she had written to him often—at least twice a month. This letter idea intrigued Molly orsiderably, and she wondered whether it would be possible for her to see one of the letters Major Carstairs was reputed to have written to his daughter. To that question Mrs. Silver looked thoroughly discomfited. They were having tea together in the lounge on a email wicker-work table with a circular glass top.

"But surely, my dear, you can remember what you did with the letters," exclaimed the woman, in surprise. "You used to keep them in the little top drawer in your dressing chest, unless you threw them' out when we had the clean-up a month ago." "I don't remember having done that," owned Molly, with equal seriousness. Flora Silver poured out a second cup of tea. She was telling herself that she wished this business was over; wished, too, that Paul hadn't bothered to see it through in this melodramatic fashion. She had been all for absconding while the going was good. She didn't believe in waiting for trouble; one ran into it quickly enough. Bat -when Paul Silver

set his mind on anything, his wife knew better than to attempt even in the least to thwart him. Paul was pig-headed, that's what he was. He didn't mind how much this girl laughed at her, and she had long ago convinced herself that Molly was laughing at her. "I think I'll go upstairs and see if I can find them," Molly said, rising from her chair.

Flora Silver watched her go without even a word.

But though Molly hunted all over hen room, there was no trace of any correspondence from Major Carstairs, and though she was disappointed she felt that she ought to have known that it would be so. If, as she suspected, the real Molly Carstairs had been gone from the Silvers' protection some time, it was obvious that all the letters had been destroyed and also that the answers had been, supplied either by SilveJS or his wife, .who, she was convinced, "were both equally capable of any amount of artistic deceit.

On her way downstairs to the lounge, however, a curious thing happened. From the direction of Paul Silver's "office" came the sound of men's voices, and the "office" being on the first landing Molly had to pass by the door on her way down to the hall. The voices that she heard were angry voices—at least one of them was, and at a few words she heard Molly paused, frozen with fear.

"I tell you, Silver, it was suicide," she heard a man's outraged voice exclaim. "I'm not interested in the verdict of the coroner, because he, fortunately for you, didn't knoy the facts. I'm telling you that Carruthers committed suicide; that he deliberately ran his car into that telegraph pole on the Brighton Road, and he did it because, to put it vulgarly, you'd cleaned him out. And, what's more, I hear you've got another partner into the business —a pretty girl'decoy. Well, I'd walk carefully if I were you, Silver. Another time some other young fool may leave a written explanation behind him before he. takes the final plunge, and that would be very awkward —for you." Molly was scarcely conscious that she was deliberately eavesdropping; and neither was. it merely what the speaker had said tliat rooted her bo. It was the man's voice. It had a curiously familiar ring about it, and she was trying desperately to remember where she had heard it before. Then she heard Paul Silver's voice.

"May I remind you that blackmail is an uglyj name for an ugly weapon, Mr. Barling 5" "Mr. Barling!" Molly felt her body tremble at hearing the name. In a flash she knew who "was behind the closed door of Paul Silver's "office." It was the young man—Roger Barling—whom she had met at the Cygnet Club; the young man whom she had persuaded herself had failed in his promise to her. A sudden new hope arose in her breast. It was like the rising of the sun after a terrifying night of storm.

"D'you think I'd blackmail a , swine like you, Silver?" she heard Barling retort. "Dammit, man, I'm giving you a straight warning. I'm not suggesting that everything's crooked, because I've played here myself, and I'm a' pretty shrewd observer; but I'd advise you to pick your pigeons with more discretion. There are plenty who have little objection to the plucking. It gives them a thrill. There are others—like Carruthers—to whom a plucking is a killing. So just think it over."

Before Molly had time to move, the door was flung hurriedly open, and she found herself gazing into the indignant eyes of Roger Barling.

The girl's frozen lips thawed into a smile, and she took a pace forward to greet him. For a split second Roger hesitated. The sight of Molly Carstairs standing there had shocked him. Then, his eyes still blazing with anger nnd with a little cynical curl to his lipa he swept past her down the staircase, never troubling to look back. Molly watched him go, and there was a stab in her heart. She had wanted to explain, but, Roger Barling had made it plain that he had forgotten her. Below in the hall she heard the front door slam, and then —and, only thenwas she aware of Paul Silver standing in the still open doorway of his "office," and there was a look on his face that made her feel suddenly afraid of him.

(To be continued daily.)