The ARROW by NIGHT

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 290, 8 December 1932, Page 22

The ARROW by NIGHT

by LESLIE CARGILL

CHAPTER XV. Actually, I suppose, I faded out and came back to sensibility in the coursc of a few seconds, though it seemed a long spell. Helmuth was asking, "Foi pity's sake what is the matter with him?" when I gulped for breatli and sat up with a jerk. "Sorry, old pal. It was frightfully foolish of me," I muttered, rathei ashamed at the exhibition. After all the mummery-jummery of a handful of cranks couldn't really mean anything. ] must have allowed my imagination tc run right away with me. "I should not have let you go," Verenov said, with noticeable contriteness "Some men are more susceptible than others to supernatural influences." "Rot!" I retorted, struggling to my feet with an effort. "I'm all right now, It was i/he lack of sleep and the irregular meals I've been having lately that upset - me, and . . "But what happened ? What did you see?" Helmuth pressed. Despite my desire to pass off the experience lightly, even to myself, I could not repress the shudder that welled over me in a wave of revulsion. "Well," I answered, striving to speak normally, "there was the whole gang present, indulging in some sort of a ceremonial—and it was not a very pleasant one either." "But what actually did happen?" Helmuth was unpleasantly pertinacious with liis questioning. "It startled us when you came staggering down and stiffened out on the floor." "It startled me as well. All I can tell you is that I found a crack in the wall, as Verenov said, and peeped through on the pleasant gathering. Then the action of looking out of the darkness into a blaze of light sort of hypnotised me and I came over dizzy. So I hopped it, back to you—and that's all there is to it." "So. Well, I'm going to have a look for myself," and before I could stop him Helmuth was slithering up the steps. I almost called out to him to be careful, forgetting the necessity of caution. We had really been conversing against Verenov's orders, and he had been iinplicite that not even whispering should be indulged in so near to the Brethren. Excitement, and my unfortunate lapse, had made us forget this for the time being. Helmuth was back almost immediately. "Nothing but darkness up there," he announced. "I suppose that means that the .lights have been put out on the other side " "And our friends have toddled off to bed," I added. There was no need to be ultra-cautious now. At least so I thought. And we should have to decide on tho next "move at once. . "Good," said Verenov. "We will give a little time to make sure, and then it will be ready to get on the move. You did not," he went on, a trace of anxiety creeping into his voice, "see any sign of my daughter?" "There was nothing but evil in the whole gathering," I answered. He was not satisfied with this. "Please answer my question absolutely honestly." [ "I have done that. Had Miss Verenov been present there would have been some influence for good. I feel sure of that." And indeed I was. "Thank you," he said. "You are right. My daughter, dead or alive, would have provided such an impression." "Dead or alive? What do you mean by that? What are you suggesting?" "The worst possible." and the gravity of his utterance was heightened by the solemn apprehensiveness of a man who knew to the full what deadly danger menaced his child.

The Rescue. Eagerly we passed up the steps when Verenov gave the word to leave our hidden lurking place. Helmuth laid a friendly hand on my arm with a reassuring warmth of feeling that was fine encouragement. Imagine • that, and remember _ that only a little over a decade since we had been at each other's throats on the battlefield. Now it was side by side, and a husky "Thanks, old man" for a comradely understanding. Verenov engaged in more fumbling in front of us and led the way out of the shelter into the now darkened meeting place of the Scarlet Brethren. Pah! There was an. aura of evil that almost overcame me for the second time that night. It might have been a prayer that Helmuth was' muttering in guttural German, and the Russian told me after--wards that he clutched in his hand a precious relic which had been presented to him by his mother in the far off days. A kind of incense, I suppose, accounted for the odour that got into the nose and hung chokingly at the back of the throat. They must have been burning the stuff wholesale to have left such a reeking miasma thickening the air. It was a relief when the door swung open, surprisingly easy, and we slipped through into the open air. "Spring lock — variation of the ordinary Yale," whispered Verenov hurridely. "Slips from the inside and locks' on the outside. We shall have to lodge it to prevent it banging to and cutting off our retreat." Picking up a couple of convenient stones he placed one just inside the lintel so that it was impossible for the door to shut accidentally. The other he wedged outside. "To prevent swinging wide open and rousing suspicion," he explained. This was evidently a procedure he had made use of on other occasions, and the familiarity with which he guided us into the shelter of shrubs and buttresses as we went on our careful way was further proof of many previous visits. Presently we came to the side of the building where the barred windows were located, and I picked out our erstwhile prison, in which the bars had been replaced in new concrete. Next door was where the girl had been, and herewith unconcealed impatience—Verenov breathed v.-gent entreaty. "Olga! Olga!" It was only a whisper, but it held the pent-up feelings of hours of anxiety-filled waiting. "Olga! Olga!" with the breeze swaying leaf and grass in rustlings for all the world like sympathetic repetition. Then more insistently, with the three >f us crouching closely, as we listened intently for the merest suggestion of a response. Then Verenov groaned ludibly, a pathetic sound, such a sound I do not wish to hear again. Heroically iie repressed what must have been the most cruel of all possible anxieties. "I'm going inside," he announced. "How?" Why, easier than slow labouring with an insufficient pocket knife. The Russian had come prepared for eventualities, having quietly made plans without telling us much about his intentions. There was a pocket case of instruments that, would have gladdened the heart of the I

most up-to-date burglar, including a metal saw and a variety of glittering steel tools, the purpose of which I could not even guess. "Even with those tools it is going to take a lot of valuable time," Helmuth objected. "I've got another plan. The concrete round the bars of our old cell cannot be hardened yet, and it should be simple enough to work them out of their sockets, and so make an entrance. And while one of us carries on with the work the other two might as well have a look round. I notice several windows that appear to be similar to these two." In fact, there was quite a row of them, and the advice was undoubtedly good. So Verenov, who approved the plan, made a preliminary test, which bore out Helmuth's observations. The remaining advice was not so satisfactory, because we decided', that if Olga was not in any of the other cells there might be occupants whom it would be desirable to keep unaware of prowling outsiders. Accordingly we stood by, taking a turn at times, until there was room to get back thankfully into the dismal little room from which we had been so

glad to escape lees than a couple of days previously. Needless to eay, we took the greatest care to make sure that this particular cell was unoccupied—a risk of revealing ourselves which had to be undertaken. Silence reassured here, though the silence wae not complete. Startling afresh our over-wrought nerves came a blood-curling scream —a tortured

cry such as we had heard while we had been prisoners. It seemed to come from some distance, and it continued for the time of a half minute or so before it died away.

"God. pity us," muttered Hclmuth piously. But Verenov renewed his attack on, the bare with extra . vigour, whispering to us to take 110 notice, but to concern ourselves that nobody approached unheard while we were essaying an entrance. "Sometimes there are patrols," he said, but, if that wai so, there were none about our part of the premises that night. It would have been a bad thing for him if there had been, for"I swear we were desperate enough to take any measures. Although quite new, the- concrete did not surrender readily to our efforts, but at last we -were inside, where we encountered an obstacle we ought to have anticipated, but did not. It was the locked door, and when he came to it Verenov showed signs of angry impatience. Helmuth, however, took a hand and selected a thin tool, which he manipulated so dexterously that it was little longer than the turning of a key before the latch clicked free. Of course, I should have remembered that his knowledge of locks was profound. The manufacturer of the best safes in Germany would naturally find such a simple lock mere child's play.

"But you can't do it with a penknife and a corkscrew," he whispered, "or we could have tried the door before. This is a nice little collection —" "Sh!" cautioned Verenov. "You'll find more uses for your skill without talking about it." In that he was wrong, for the doors along the passage opened without burglarious aid —all except one, and that was not the original place where we had first met Olga. It was right at the end, and, as we afterwards learned, had no opening to the outside —a precaution the inmates had taken after our successful flight.

Here Helmutli repeated hie lock-pick-ing exploit—the portal swung slowly back with a creaking of hinges and we waited expectantly on the threshold. Not a sound either encouraged or alarmed ue. Verenov brought hie torch into action and swung the brilliant light round in a sweeping movement that revealed such simple furnishings as we had been accustomed to duriiig our own imprisonment. First a table, then a chair . . . and the light passed on until it came to rest on a bedstead.

• Stretched upon it, so etill and deathlike, that she was like a waxen imitation, was Olga Verenov. Her eyes stared unblinkingly at the ceiling, and her colourless lips were slightly parted. Fair hair eprayed in a tangled mass over a pillow no whiter than her cheeks —hair that glittered in the rays of the torch, eheen of gold that wae the only life force in all that frozen beauty.

For Olga Verenov was the most lovely woman I had ever seen, with a face that kept company with the silvery laugh which had attracted me so much when I heard it welling up from the darkness of her cell.

Could it. be that the laughter was silenced for ever? I felt it so, and sorrowed for it, while the three of ue stole quietly into the room, as though afraid of disturbing the dead. Bitterness must have eaten into the soul of Verenov when he looked down at the immobile form of his daughter, and we who had followed him in friendly assistance could not help 'being affected by the sad meeting.

Even in the anguish of the moment Helmuth kept his head, the thoroughness of hie Teutonic caution prompting him to close the door gently to, and there he stood, with his back to it and his eyes meeting mine in sympathetic realisation.

"Too late," I eaid gently. Verenov bent lower and lower. Until he spoke, I thought it was the action of a man bidding farewell to one he deeply loved. "No, it is not too late," he replied: So his determination for vengeance was to be strengthened by the added tragedy. "We must get her out of here at once, while there is still hope." Still hope ? What could the man mean? Or was it that this was the filial straw that meant the breaking? Rescuing the living was no easy task to undertake, but removing that ominously still form was an impossibility. (To be continued daily.)