NIGHT TIDE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 252, 24 October 1934, Page 20

NIGHT TIDE.

r, I A ROMANTIC STORY OF A GREAT SEAPORT

"CHAPTER XII. Two Men Surprised. Garvin Blake was surprised when lie saw no light shining through the glasspanelled door of his office in Atlantic Building, and he cursed softly as he inserted a key in the lock. It was unlike Slim to disobey instructions. He knew better than that. His training in obedience had been irreproachable. Closing the door behind him, Blake fumbled for a moment for the electric switch on the wall beside him. Immediately the outer office was flooded with light an exclamation of surprise burst from his lips, for, lying half in and half out of the door to Blake's private office, was the inert form of the man who had called on him at the Crescent —the man whom he had instructed' to go back to the office to await his arrival. Moving closer, Blake saw that a thin trickle of blood had made a serpentine mark down the chin from one corner of the man's mouth. He also saw that the right eye was delicately plum-coloured. Both were closed. Kneeling down, Blake was relieved to find that Slim was breathing, and a smile played puck-like on the importer's lips. Straightening himself, he passed through the outer office and disappeared into a small compartment. Returning a moment later, he carried an enamel can filled with cold water. The smile was still on his lips as he tipped the contents of the can over the inert man's face and awaited developments. He had not to wait very long. The man on the floor gave a creditable imitation of a playful elephant trumpeting in a tropical river, succeeded by a torrent of curses that were sufficiently indicative of the man's rapidly returning consciousness. The smile had gone from Blake's lips. In its place was a sneer as he stood, almost menacingly, over the quickly writhing figure. "Get up!" he commanded curtly. The sound of that voice was a more efficient stimulant than the cold water had been. Slim scrambled unsteadily to his knees and blinked at his employer with amazed eyes. "Where is he?" he grunted thickly. "Let me get at 'im!" The man accompanied this vague request by gaining his feet, where he stood for a moment swaying uncertainly. Blake was in no temper for a display of heroics on Slim's part. He caught him roughly by one arm and pushed him into a chair in the private office. Then he crossed to the outer door and pushed the safety catch into position. "Well," he asked, in an icily calm voice, "what's the play—'Macbeth,' or something more modern ?" Blake seated himself at his desk and cast an appraising eye over the surface and at the nest of drawers below. One of Slim's eyes remained closed, and he dabbed at his lips with a handkerchief.

"This ain't no play, guv'nor," he began in a pained voice. "Whoever told you this burg was a quiet hole's been handing you the hooey all right. God, my head's that sore." "Can it!" interrupted Blake. "And get down to the meat. Who painted that pretty picture on your ugly face? Quick, I'm not feeling kinda slowmotion to-night." "Don't ask me," wailed Slim. "I never seen before to-night. Mind you," he went on, growing more confident, "I caught 'im all right, I did. Honest to God I caught 'im—monkeying about, 'e was, with your desk —great big hobo with curly hair. I just kinda walked in on 'im, if you understand. 'Put 'em up, honey,' I ses; 'I've got you covered as good as a blanket.' " "I can see he put 'em up all right," broke in Blake irritably. "He put 'em up to good purpose. You say he was a big guy with curly sail*. Your powers of description ain't been to college lately, Slim. ' Tell me, wliere's your gun ?"

Slim's hands went aimlessly to his pockets. "Search me, guv'nor," he wailed. "I guess 'e frisked it. You see, guv, that there guy laughed when 'e saw the gun, like as if it were a jokel It was the laugh that did it. I ain't ever been laughed at like that before, and then he came for me. Say, guv, that guy's a tornado with 'is fists. He sorta leapt at me—caught me clean on the jaw and another in the eye. I remember now, v I felt faint-like, and 'eard the gun clatter somewhere, though God knows it sounded about as far away as from 'ere to Noo York. But wait till I sees 'im again. 'E's something coming to 'im, J e 'as." "What was he doing when you came in?" demanded Blake. "Sat in the chair where you are now," came the reply. "Booking himself to sleep, I suppose." Blake's voice was deadly ironical. ■ "It never occurred to you to use the gun, eh?" "Use it, guv'nor! Use it!" screamed Slim. "That guy made forked lightning look like a string of goods wagons." "This is twice in one night that you've mussed things, Slim," Blake reminded him quietly. "Bemember that the third time won't be lucky. Now get out, and if anyone wants to know how you got like that, tell 'em you were beaten up by a high school kid for pinching his marbles." Grumbling Slim got to his feet and shuffled out into the general office. His head ached; his jaw felt as if it had been kicked by a mule, and the eye that was still closed was a hot cinder. Left to himself, Garvin Blake reviewed recent events with a frown. If this had happened in New York, or anywhere else in America for that matter, he would not have worried for a moment. But it was different in Liverpool. Someone was showing a much too lively interest in the office organisation of Pacific Importers, Limited, and it had got to stop. But who could it be, he kept asking himself? He had prided himself on the impossibility of anyone possessing knowledge of his organisation. And yet

(Author of "TUe Mysterious Masquerade," etc.

By J. R. WILMOT |

the fact that someone had entered his private office twice in one week was disconcerting. It made him think, and the more he thought about it the more apprehensive he became. Then a thought flashed through his mind, and his lips formed one word — Stevens. That was it. Stevens was playing a game of his own; Stevens, who was known to have landed in Liverpool a fortnight ago. Well, he'd get Stevens. As a matter of fact, he'd been wanting to get Stevens for a long time. Useful fellow, Stevens, and he wanted a useful fellow at that moment. But he did not want him nosing about in Liverpool. He wanted him in Morocco, and he swore that if Stevens was in Liverpool he would get him all right. The ringing of the telephone bell startled him. "Hello?" "That you, Chief? Phoney here. I tagged the. girl. She went to a house on the other side. Not a bad little house. Went inside she did. I waited. Nothing doing. Made inquiries. Woman name Fillinger lives there with her nephew, name of Fare. Shall I hang on, Chief?" "You can quit, Phoney. Come back and look after Slim. He's been beaten up." "Okay, Chief." Garvin Blake replaced the receiver. "Wrong again," he thought. "But one has to be careful. Martin Fare, eh! Nice kid, but no confidence." Nevertheless his teeth bit deeply into his lips and he wondered whether the present was the propitious time for worrying about women and rivals in love.

At his home in one of the suburbs of Liverpool, Peter Dobbin sat in his bedroom staring solemnly at a sheet of foolscap. It was filled with figures and hieroglyphics that did not seem to make sense. "This beats me," he told himself, "but I'll have a chat with Martin to-morrow and see if he can sort it out. All the same, it's a funny sort of business document, if that's what it turns out to be." He folded the paper and placed it in his pocket-book, and prepared for bed. Then he remembered something and slipped downstairs to the cloak room. From the pocket of his overcoat he pulled out a revolver and took it back upstairs with him. In the light he looked at it curiously and smiled. "I wonder if I did hit him too hard?" he thought, and, still thinking about it, he tumbled into bed.

Chapter XIII. An Unexpected Visitor. The month of October was drawing to a close, but the night skies across the Mersey River were still beautiful. There was a rugged grandeur about the clouds that was absent at other seasons of the year, and the purple and orange lights that flecked the water were more vivid by reason of the deeper shadows among which they lurked. Captain Macadam still sat at his window and watched the river during whatever moments he could snatch from his stewardship of Atlantic Building. It was his custom, whenever opportunity presented itself, to watch the river for an hour or two during the afternoons.

On this afternoon he was watching a Cunard liner manoeuvring into position at her berth at the landing stage. She should have arrived that morning but she had been delayed a little waiting for the fog to clear from the bar. Many a time Macadam had suffered a similar experience. Irritating hours he recalled waiting in that muffled grey blanket afraid to move for fear of disaster on the treacherous banks. A responding glow of sympathy swelled, his heart for the captain of the liner slowly edging her way to the stage.

As lie watched the ship lie wondered; just as he wondered as each ship came up the river . . . wondered about John. 1 Yet in the midst of his trembling speculations he kept telling himself that he was weakening; that he was growing into a sentimental old fool. It was odd, he thought, how often his thoughts had been of John since Shirley had insisted ' on re-introducing the topic oil that Sunday morning a fortnight ago. Captain Macadam felt that he could not face liis daughter's wrath much longer . . . her wrath either about John or about giving up The Building. Through his glasses he watched with all his old fascination, the gangway swinging slowly outwards and upwards from the landing stage, drawn by the derrick claws towards the aperture in the deck railings. Soon now the passengers, impatient of the delay, would come down the gangway to the Customs sheds. For some there would be friends to give them a welcome home; for others perhaps a sense of loneliness and brooding at finding no familiar faces. Many of them, doubtless, did not expect a riverside welcome. . . . hard-headed and perhaps hard-hearted business men from New York, where they had been engaged in a stern battle of commercial wits, spurred by greed or industrial advantage, which was merely a more artistic name for the same thing. Back they would go, some to Yorkshire, I some ,to the Midlands; some to the cotton towns of Lancashire, yet all of them eager to consolidate the victory. Not all of them would be of this genre, Macadam reflected with the mind of a philosopher. He had met the others many a time —the failures; the disappointed adventurers; the ne'er-do-wells of this world to whom success was as fickle as it was elusive. They, too, would be arriving without welcome— welcome for them was something always for someone else. Yet it was strange how life's failures were often the most optimistic of men. Probably it was because they had been schooled in a hard and difficult school that demanded a measure of optimism greater and more potent than the optimism born of success.

Captain Macadam sometimes told himself that there had been moments when he had admired the failures more than he had admired those who had achieved success. For one thing it was harder to he a failure and to keep on hoping; it needed a greater depth of character, for while a successful man was not always conscious of his success, the failure was not permitted to harbour any illusions about himself. The captain aroused himself from his reverie with a start. He remembered that his own son, John Macadam, was a failure, and somehow his philosophy was never meant for John. John was different. John had had his chances, and had thrown them away. He had turned his back on a successful career, for what? That was a question Captain Macadam could not answer, for questions can only be answered with accuracy when one is in possession of full knowledge. It was true he had bitten hard oil what Shirley had told him. It presented John to him from a new angle, but that angle was too acute for his prejudice. There again he was thinking just as Shirley had accused him of doing. He was prejudiced against John because John had dared to llout the sea, but, then, to Macadam the sea and the ships that sailed the seas were omnipotent and Neptune was a god. (To be contiued daily.)