The LAST LAUGH

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 35, 11 February 1935, Page 17

The LAST LAUGH

I By | I WINIFRED 1 GRAHAM |

CHAPTER XIII. Miss Woolfe's strong hand shut and bolted "the door. The servants had gone to bed. Then she followed the slim figure into the room where the champagne glasses stood empty. "Well," she said, "so that's that!" 800 stared at her. There was something queer in the girl's attitude. She looked wild-eyed, like an animal at bay. Even her lips were white. Just for a moment she seemed as if caught by invisible hands that gripped her fiercely, gagging her mouth, while the definite horror in her eyes cried to Lou. "What's the matter?" asked Miss Woolfe, speaking as if she had only just noticed something was wrong. "Surely you are pleased now that it's 0.K.? I congratulate you, my dear, on pulling off the deal. I bow to you with real admiration and say 'bravo!' You will make him a dear little wife, and I was absolutely genuine when I said that I thought he was lucky." Suddenly 800 staggered forward, seizing the strong arm with a hysterical cry. "Lucky! My God—lucky 1" "Hush, Boo!" "I can't hush! I won't hush! I must tell you! Not lucky—-oh God! — not lucky, but doomed!" She crumpled up in a heap at Miss Woolfe's feet, and lay sobbing on the ground as if her heart would break. "Get up, 800, get up! Don't make a fool of yourself!" Miss Woolfe spoke peremptorily. The crumpled figure on the carpet made no movement except for a queer quivering as if it were being elrwly stamped to death. "Why don't you get up?" Lou felt this exhibition of hysteria should be dealt with from an unsympathetic angle. Hysterical girls were tiresome things, of which she knew little. It surprised her that this partner in Gussie's scheme should give way to such a shocking lack of control. The older woman was not only annoyed, but bored. " 800 dashed the stream from her eyes, then stared at Miss Woolfe with a look of horror. Emotion choked her as she tried to say what was tearing at her heart, rending her even a« the spirit of evil rent its victim in the Bible. "But it is all different to what you think," muttered 800, in a voice hardly above a whisper. "They are cowards and devils, those two men, Gussie and Jim. have let you clown. You, who are so clever, are not a match for such scoundrels. 1 can't think how they persuaded me. You see, I wasn't to tell you. I was just to many my victim and wait until—" The words dwindled to silence. 800 was ashamed to meet the sudden questioning in those stern eyes, always such lire-filled eyes, with the. brightness of an animal in their startling depths. "Let me down? What do you mean, child?" There was demand and command in Miss Woolfe's quick question, as she laid magnetic hands on the shrinking shoulders, drawing the girl closer to her, forcing 800 to look into her face with an expression that told of shame and terror. The twisted features were not only marred by tears, they were drawn with actual pain. Some frightful suffering had gripped the young form, so that its youth withered up. In that moment of acute agony, 800 looked old and haggercd. "Yes," she gasped, "they fooled you. When I consented to come and keep their secret, I never dreamt Clem would be like this and that I should love him! I adore him! He talks of loving me, but ho doesn't know that I idolise the very ground he walks on. Now it ia> awful to think I was so vile. I became vile when 1 was left alone in the world with no protection. I used to say to Joyce I wasn't fit to live and certainly not fit to die. I might have known I was being driven to the devil on too hard a rein when Gussie first offered me what he called 'a rather tough job.' I should think it was tough, if he considered it too terrible for a woman of your nerve, Lou. That's why you were kept in the dark." "Oh, stop it! Don't talk in riddles!" Miss Woolfe hissed out the words, exasperated. "Just tell mc, in plain English, what's up! How have I been tricked? If Gussie has failed me, it is for the first time. I have never regretted trusting him. I could have sworn he would be true as steel, to me." "Oh. yes, so far as payment is concerned, quite true. But Jim changed him. Jim seems to li3 r pnotise people. He worked some ghastly spell at The Elms, when he first tempted Gussie. That desperate man, now at Mistletoe Park, will commit the last hideous crime. It is Jim who will kill my Clem!" The words came in hushed horror, yet to Lou it seemed as if they ran round the room like a scream from her own heart. This truth, which was strangling the girl with fear, came like a thud on the brain, for Lou had never suspected such a foul intrigue. "Don't you see, Lou, that is how I was to pay up? I should inherit the fortune, then how easy to share out the blood money, unquestioned! Jim has done a crime" like this before. He isn't afraid to kill. Ho has his own methods, and it always appears as an accident. I was to see nothing, not even know how it would occur. Now Clem and I love each other like this, but we can never, never marry. If I married him I should be signing his death warrant. I couldn't explain. If I gave them away, I should be damning myself into the bargain. I'm sorry I was hysterical; I felt like shrieking the house down. I only want to die." Her tears had suddenly burnt up, and she looked in dry-eyed horror at Lou, who was gradually taking in this appalling revelation. It crystallised quickly in the brain of the woman who had never been caught before. She saw it all like a picture on a screen —this trap into which she had walked, Jim luring Gussie to his ruin, the two carefully concealing from her their diabolical plot. First, Jim's foxlike face seemed dancing before her, the leering lips smiling in triumph, his features so like that murderer in the dock, who killed children to satisfy the lust of cruelty in his blood. Then Gussie, fat and complacent, always so generous to his Avorkers, urged on by tempting visions of wealth, controlled and dominated by a man he should never have admitted into his confidence. What a downfall for him! Presently Lou said:

I (Author of "A Wolf of j the Evenings," "Tongues 1 in Trees," "Experimental ] Child," etc., etc.

"That's a kettle of fish! Having parked yourself in a lion's den, you, and probably .Gussie too, will come whining to me to get you out of the creature's jaws." 800 thought no lion could be more formidable than Jim, the assassin. "I am sure," continued Miss Woolfe, with decision, "that our spy at Mistletoe Park, who intends to make a corner in murder, cannot be entirely English. He has a streak of something in him far removed from the British breed. My word, it's an ugly-sounding business!" Her brows were contracted. She looked very fierce at that moment. Her face was so formidable in its grim expression that even Jim might have quaked before it. She appeared larger than usual, gigantic, as if her muscles had swelled with this knowledge. Instinctively she squared her shoulders, while her strong jaw appeared so rigid it might have been carved in stone. 800 felt there was that about Miss Woolfe calculated to make the quickwitted Jim squirm had he dropped in at Corner Close during this conversation. The girl felt comforted at the sight of such solid resolution. "Can you do anything, Lou?" "I must." The large lithe figure stood very upright; it dominated the crouching one weighed down by fear and misery. She glanced at the clock. "Look here, 800, I'm going to Gussie now! I'll get the car out and be at The Elms by three in the morning." CHAPTER XIV. In the flush of dawn Lou arrived at The Elms. Everything was strangely still, not a leaf stirred; that house of mystery appeared to be a place of perfect calm. Foi a moment her face belied her mission. She might have been blessing the birds in the sudden uplifting of her head and hand, while her nostrils drew in the scent of roses just opening to the misty morning air. In imagination she was a bird, trilling in a wilderness of shrubs. Then, sharply, she returned .to the actual, and with heart and brain strung up for battle she crept along the garden path until she stood beneath Gussie's window. "I will give him the start of his life,"' she thought'. "No front door entrance for me!" It was not difficult to climb up. Many stiffer problems hod been faced by this cat-burglar, and a moment later she was tapping on his window. Lou could hear Gussie's heavy feet pattering across the room. Even through the closely fastened window her quick ears caught his sharp breathing as he asked in a tone of alarm: "Who's there?" She knew he would have a revolver under his pillow; it was probably in his hand now, ready for emergencies. "Don't shoot,"'she replied. "It's Lou." Her voice broke upon Gussie's intelligence with the startling effect of a clap of thunder in the night. Great heavens! What could it mean? Something dreadful must have happened to bring her here, staring at him through those panes of glasH. He turned ghastlypale, unable (o take his eyes from the fierce face as he unbarred the window. As she slipped in she said: "How can you sleep in such fudge? I suppose you are afraid of God's fresh air, but you have good reason to be afraid at last, my friend." The word "friend" came satirically. Lou had wiped him out so far as relationship was concerned; she disowned him as a cousin, while looking him up and down contemptuously. He put out his hand to grasp hers, but she moved away, her fists clenched. He felt the silent rebuff, and stood, in his striped pvjanms, staring foolishly at her with startled eyes full of inquiry. "800 has split upon you," said Miss Woolfe, in her low, ringing voice. He dropped into a ohair and drew a dressing-gown about his shoulders, shivering as if with cold. "So the games up! I've planked down my money and lost. The girl has turned traitor, and I suppose you are going to say good-bye to the deal?" "Not exactly. First of all, tell me, Gus, how you could ever have been such an amazing fool as to have any truck with a verminous creature like Jim?" The man wiped his perspiring brow. Now he looked at her pitifully; his face seemed to sag into limp folds of white, quivering flesh. "That's what I've asked myself a million times. He's got some devilish power that digs you out of your natural environment and places you right away in his own bed of nettles. I believe he s a hynotist. He made me see the Corfield" millions as travellers look at a mirage of water when dying of thirst in the desert. I wanted to carry out one last big coup, then I meant to give up the whole worrying business, retire, and be a country gentleman at large. "And for that you would have shed innocent blood!" Lou spoke with such abhorrence that Gussie withered up, unable to utter a word in self-defence. • »\ voung lad in the freshness of life was to die that you might be a country gentleman!" Lou gave a bitter laugh. "As much a gentleman-as Jim, I supP °Gussie was actually crying at last. She could not have believed any words of hers could reduce this hardened sinner to tears. .. "For the last week," he said, dolefully, "I've hardly had a wink of sleep. I'm on the verge of a nervous breakdown." , , . , -4.1, "I am going to make friends with this monster, so, above all things, keep it dark that I'm in the know. Don t tell him 800 gave the show away. Now how can I get in touch with him at once ?" Gussie considered a moment. "I'll tell him to meet you somewhere. We telegraph to each other in code. When could you see him, and in what place? You will have to be very careful not to attract attention." _ Lou answered quickly, her mind rushing on at breakneck speed: To-morrow, or I should say to-day.' She glanced .at the clock. "In those woods beyond the fields at the end of our garden, say »hout 0 o'clock. AVe must meet by chance, and if I can get some idea of his mentality in a brief interview I may pit my mind against his and give him the! surprise of his life. So cheer up, Gus, for I mean to get equal -with your tormentor, and I can honestly assure you I have no fear of this man." "Only because you don't know him." Gussie harped on this point.

"I know that he is ready to commit j murder, and has committed It, foully, in the past. That is enough knowledge fof me to work on at present." I She put her arm round the flabby figure and drew it to the hed. j "I want you, Gussie, to snuggle down t now like an innocent babe and fall j asleep." Before he realised she was going, Lou, with her quick: movements, had sprung i on to the window-ledge and vanished from sight. j (To be continued daily.) j — i