THE WOMAN IN RED

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 307, 28 December 1934, Page 15

THE WOMAN IN RED

I SPENCER KAYE || holdron.

CHAPTER XVII. (Continued.) Phillips shook his head slowly, gloomily, as he replied: "You've heard of 'dust and ashes,' haven't you, old man? Well, I'm having a meal of them now. I've done what I set out to do— I've found out who killed the woman in red, I've proved that I've got some of my father's knack for tracking down criminals in me, but it has sickened me. I've had more than enough of it. I truly hope that I shall never come into close contact again with—murder! Suppose the murderer had been anyone I cared for? Suppose he or she had got me before I got them. I tell you, Watkins, this spying business is pretty horrid. Take it from me, it hurts." "You're right, it does hurt," agreed the detective, soberly; "only it would hurt a jolly sight more if no one did it. Why, there's no wild beast known to the God Who made it that is quite so 6avage or devilishly cruel as a human being can be of its fellow men and women! Think of what's been done to little children, to —well, say to that poor woman in red. And now we've come round again to her, I insist on you taking steps at once to secure her arrest. It's your duty." "I'm going to leave that to you, Watkins," Phillips told him, slowly. "I want to havo as little to do with it as possible. It's your line of business, and I ■ owe you something, old fellow, for snatching your case out of your hands, and making use of your discoveries. You found those two secret drawers, which I'd been looking for ever since- tho murdered woman pointed to the old bureau, and, if you'd read tho papers which were concealed in them, you would have made the most hideously cruel blunder of believing that my master, Mr. Richard Dane, was the criminal, and you'd have taken out a warrant for his arrest within the hour, which would havo ruined him socially, and you professionally and irretrievably. He would have regained everything when the truth came out, but you would never have held up your head again." "And," asked Watkins, hesitatingly, "you can prove all this, and put the rope round the right neck, yet pit here, calmly talking to me while one of the most dangerous criminals in tho world is at large and making her get-away. If anything else happens, Phillips, you will be as guilty as she is, and as responsible for any further crimes she may commit. Come, man," persuasively yet authoritatively, "do your duty, even if the woman is your own sweetheart or wife. A word to the Yard and the whole country will be sifted to catch her, every port will be watched, every railway station, it's your plain duty to the public to take it to the policc. It'll be a great case. I only wish it had fallen to my luck to solve it. It would have made me —just have made mo," with a sigh of envy. "It isn't quite finished yet," Phillips told him,wjn ; a. speculative kind of tone. "It's quite possible that you may find yourself made through it, that is, if you see and seize your chance —though you may miss it." "You talk as if I were a tool!" cried Watkins, indignantly. "I don't think you are one, by any means," Phillips assured liim, emphatically, "or else I should be talking to someone else at this moment and not to you, for there's no time to lose. I must take someone else into the game, and I've decided on you, Watkins." The detective stared at the speaker perplexedly, but did not speak; he was trying to grasp the other's meaning, but failed to do so. ''I owe it to you to give you the chance," continued Phillips, meditatively, "for we've been running neck and neck from the very beginning, and you were pretty near death to-night, old fellow. If you'd held on to her she'd have killed you dead, sure as a gun." Watkins shook his head gloomily. "What a placard for the evening papers it would have made," he commented, sadly: "Detective's struggle with a master criminal! Stabbed in the execution of his duty! l i aint hopes of his recovery.' What a placard!" "Much bigger sensation than 'Gentleman's servant missing! Also diamond studs and bank notes!'" put in Phillips, with a jest at his own expense. # "But you'd never rob your employer? "I'd die first," emphatically. "And he Gold bless him!—wouldn't believe it if I was caught with the goods on me. But if anybody thought that life would run a "bit smoother for themselves if I was out of the way, they'd be cute enough to take care there was a reason for my disappearance. Take yourself, for instance, Watkins. Person comes to vou, reports servant missing. Any suspicious circumstances?' asks you. Well, they tell you, 'there's jewellery or banknotes missing, or maybe the fami y silver.' See?" Watkins gulped again. Phillips was not ordinarily sharp. He was brilliant. "What I can't make out, lie said, desperately, "is why on earth you go on fooling about so long, and don t put her where she can't do any more miscliiet. The kind of woman you've described is just the sort to do you an injury if she <rot the chance." . "That's so," replied Phillips, siowly. "But there's a reason why I've hesitated before taking action. In a way my hands have been tied. The developments havo conic suddenly, and instil to-niglit? though 1 knew all, and could have proved powerful motives for her wanting to pet the woman in red out of the way, it would only have been my word against hers that she was ever in this place at all, and you can be sure that she'd be able to prove a strong alibi. Now, both you and the Jorkins can swear that she was here. I followed her downstairs and slipped by while Mrs. Jorkins was talking to her husband. But trust a woman to know whether it's a woman or n man she talked to. Before I actually get her arrested I must get my master s consent." „ "But while you delay she may escape. "She won't try to," said Phillips. "She knows that I'm the only person to lie feared. She knows that as yet, e\en if I've fathomed the vital secret she s lost her soul to hide; that as yet I've kept it to myself; she knows that sooner or later the blow must fall unless I am silenced. She won't try to buv me, for the double reason of knowing she couldn't, and that, if she could, she'd never feel safe lest 1 should round on her. She realises that only death will seal my lips, and so do you see your chance at last, old man.' The detective breathed heavily; a faint light was dawning on his brain.

"You mean," he said, slowly, "that if anything happens to you, that the hand that kills you is the one that killed the woman in red."

_ "I mean that she is working against time. I'm the only living witness able to ensure her downfall, at present. I might share my knowledge with anyone at any minute. If you wait until I'm dead, Watkins, you'll never catch up with her."

A hurried knock at the flat door revealed Jorkins, standing there with an envelope in his hand. . "For you, Mr. Phillips," he said, jerkily, being still upset by the events of the night. "Marked 'Urgent,' and come by express messenger." . "I quite expected it," replied the man, quietly. "Only perhaps it has arrived a little sooner than I reckoned. Read it for yourself. No answer," he told Jorkins. "Car in collision on Epping Road. Leg broken. Come at once. Car will meet train at Lougliton.—Dane." "Bad luck," said Watkins. " 'At once' means—" "At once," laconically. "A train leaves Liverpool Street in an hour's time. It's just 4.150 now. It will still bo dark when I reach Lougliton," slowly. "But what about—" Phillips looked at the detective and smiled grimly. "Yes, what about— Man, must I take a hammer and drive things into .your head?" Watkins realised in that second the truth and all its possibilities. He was electrified—alive; lie was then, for the very first time, the shrewd, dauntless sleuth-hound of his own dreams. "That's a trap! She's trying to lure you to some lonely spot to kill you. I'll come with you, man, I'll send out a call." "Better not," counselled Phillips, putting his hand in his breast pocket and drawing out a sealed packet, which he held out to his companion with visible roluctanee. "Inside this, mate, is my case. Now quite complete. Inside you'll find'everything there is to know about the woman in red, her murderer, and tho motive for the crime. I'm giving it to you for safe custody. Country roads by the side of a forest are none too healthy at night. Still less the carefully prepared trap to which that car at Lougliton is to take me. I'm relying on you, Watkins, to frustrate her." "You're paying me a big compliment in trusting it to me." "I'm doing more than paying you a compliment," said Phillips, in a curiously .tense tone. * "I'm trusting you to safeguard my life. That letter, as you rightly guess, is just a trap, but I am going to treat it as if I'm taken in by it. I'm going to catch the Jiext train to Lougliton—alone, because if anyone was with me there would be no one to meet me there, and she might slip through our fingers, after all. Don't try to travel down." with me; you'd be seen." * "Your train doesn't leave for another hour. A motor car leaving at once can reach the rendezvous at the same time." "That's the idea. Oniy give yourself ten minutes to read, mark, and digest those papers I've given you. Treat them as your own notes; act -as if they were. You are. a guardian of the public, you are paid to check crime and punish criminals. The motives that have held me back do not apply to you. From this moment I retire from the case, and become just one of the public you are paid to protect. "And, by heaven, I'll do it!" cried Watkins, with a ring of cold steel in his tone. "And I'll (ell the world you are a true sport, Phillips." But Phillips had already left the room, was lialf-way down the stairs, and Watkins was alone in ' the tragic fiat, still reeking with the mingled fumes of smoke, burnt carpets, singed wood, and petrol—alone, with the papers in his hand which held the vital secret of one woman's life and death, and the loss of another woman's soul. * * ♦ * "My master was not tho only 'Richard Dane,' his cousin, tho late earl, bore the same name before he came into the title. My intimate knowledge of both these gentlemen helped me to get at the truth directly I recovered from the first shock of finding a dying woman at the door of Flat No. 7, Yorick Mansions, and catching the last words that fell from her lips, those words being:— "'I have come to get my rights. I am Mrs. Richard Dane.' "She had been stabbed to the heart, and died with her hand pointing to the old bureau, which she saw through the open door as T came to answer her ring at the bell. Her assailant had vanished before I realised what had happened. The landing was in darkness, and I neither saw nor heard anything but the woman in red. "Now I'm a man of few friends, 'no relations, and my master, Mr. Richard Dane, is the one human being on whom I've concentrated all the affection I'm capable of feeling; so, when I saw that dead woman and heard her declaration that she was ' Mrs. Richard Dane,' for the first few minutes (although I never for one moment thought he had killed her) I realised how black the case would look against him, ajid set my wits to think out what was the best thing to do to shield him from all annoyance. I decided to keep silence altogether—to know nothing, to say nothing. I changed the clothes I had on, and which were stained with her blood, and I removed all marks from my hands. Everyone knows what followed —the police, the inquest, the verdict. The secret story I will {ell briefly, and enclose the necessary papers to prove the truth of all I sny. These papers were found in the old oak bureau by Detective Watkins, in mv presence. — (Signed) Henry Phillips." The first paper Watkins opened was the one he had found in the old bureau, which Phillips had skilfully exchanged for blank sheets. "The story of my life. My secret. Tq be read onlj' after my death.—Richard Dane. "At thirty years of age I met my fate, a very beautiful woman, Sophie Andre, and married her. She was of foreign extraction, and not in the same position by birth as the one to which our marriage raised her, which was my reason for not bringing her to my home, and presenting her to my world as my wife. -I hoped that presently, travels, and her own quick intuition would enable her to rise superior to the station she was born in, and to fit her for the higher one she had entered. It was a love match on both sides. She knew

nothing of my future title and great wealth, which fell to me. some time later, and my happiness seemed complete when a son was born to us. But, alas! instead of the blessing I thought it, that child proved a bitter curse. It only lived one week, and my darling wife paid for it with her reason! Grief at the loss of her child and other complications brought on a fever, the result of which left her mentally ill, after she had regained her physical health. "The doctors gave hopes of her ultimate recovery, but in the meantime the mental trouble caused further delay in taking her to my ancestral home. For her sake, as well as mine, I strove to keep her malady a secret from all except those few whom necessity compelled me to take into my confidence — the doctors, the nurses, and her recentlywidowed cousin. Madame Lanoir — Sappho, we called her —and who came to my assistance in the emergency, and devoted herself to us both, in a way for which I shall ever be grateful. I think her own trouble made her so sympathetic for mine. She volunteered to come and take charge of my poor Sophie until her health improved, so she brought her child (a fine handsome boy, just about the age that mine would have been had he lived), and she has been an angel to both of us. The doctors having ordered absolute rest and quiet for my wife, we took a small cottage in one retired country place after another, moving with the seasons to catch the warm weather, always with the hope that the mental trouble might pass away with time. I cnclose the certificates of my marriage, the birth and death of my child, and the portrait of my dearly-loved wife. This, in case of my death, as an explanation due to the next heir, my cousin, namesake and almost brother. —Richard Dane."

Detectivc Watkins required nothing further to elucidate the mystery of the woman in red. He now understood the ease as clearly as if he had everyone concerned ii* it, there in the box before him, under sharp cross-examination. He coukl even fathom Phillips' difficulties, and sympathise with them. He loved his employer dearly, wanted to shield him, and save him from insult and annoyance in the first place, and then realised how bitterly that employer would resent the honoured name of his race being convicted of murder! "As he said," decided Watkins, philosophically, as he shut up the documents and placed them next his heart, "the scruples that stopped his taking aetion don't apply to me. I'm the servant of the public. I'm paid to protect that public from murder and sudden death. And just for the present the 'public' is represented by just one person Phillips. And the ten minutes is just up, and I'm off." (To be concluded.)