CHAPTER XXIV.

Lake County Press, Issue 1068, 11 June 1903, Page 7

CHAPTER XXIV.

A moment of blank, breathless silence—a silence in which a pin might have been heard to drop—followed the staggering announcement made by Mr. James Connop in the diningroom of the Greyhound. Gontran and Challoner, with startled but incredulous faces, stared first at each other and then at Connop, who straightened back in his chair and wriggled uneasily. " Will you explain what you meant ? " begged Challoner, " you can't blame me for wanting to get to the bottom of it." " It's a short yarn," began Connop. " It happened that I was down at Esperance Bay when the exploring party landed there from Adelaide and started for the interior I picked up an acquaintance with several of the men, and I had more than one good look at Sir John and his friends. I'm referring to Cyrus Elderton and Charles Travers After that I knocked about for a while, finally went up country, and got a berth as manager at Eraser's, which is in the wildest part of Western Australia, and right on the edge of the desert. In the interval eighteen months had slipped round, and that brings me to the night of December 31 of last year, when the three survivors of the exploring party turned up at the station as nearly dead as could be." " I remember the particulars," broke in Gontran. " The three were Sir John Vallenger, Charles Travers and a scientific chap named Yorke. They had endured terrible sufferings from thirst and heat, and they had recently lost Cyrus Elderton. But go on, Jim." " I can finish in a few words," Connop resumed. " When 1 went to the Travellers' Hut, and saw the man who called himself Sir John Vallenger, I at once concluded that it was someone else. I had seen Sir John at Esperance Bay too many times to be mistaken." " But could you have been sure of it ? " asked Challoner. " Eighteen months in the desert, and those last frightful days of starvation and hardship, would have altered any man beyond recognition." " Yes, that's true," assented Gontran. " He wasn't altered enough to deceive me," said Connop. " 1 can't. tc|| you jus) why I fell, so positive, but 1 was certain then, and 1 am as

curtain now. that the man was not Sir John Vallenger. But he vowed that he was—Charles Travers did the sain. and when we had sent for a magistrate at. his request, and drawn up the will he dictated, he put his nam.- to it. " Heaven forgive me,' he sand in such a low lone that I was the only one that heard him. After that he sank rapidly, and died just, before daybreak." " His last words might have meant anything," said Challoner. " Or one thing in particular," added Gontran. " Have you any idea who the man was, Jim?" ■• Well, I wouldn't swear to it." replied Connop, " but ho looked to me very like Cyrus Elderton, who was supposed to have been lost in the bush. Challoner shrugged his shoulders. " Why would Elderton have lent himself to such a deception ? " lie exclaimed. " Why V " echoed Gontran, leaning eagerly across the table. " Tell me. this, Challoner. Didn't Cyrus Elderton try to poison your uncle's mind against you once or twice ? " " Yes, that's right." " And didn't he always have a sneaking regard for Larry Vallenger ? " " By Jove, I see your drift ! Challoner exclaimed excitedly. "The mystery is clearing up. It was my uncle who was lost in the desert, and Cyrus Elderton " ' — " Don't jump at conclusions," interrupted Gontran.. " Keep cool. How are you going to prove anything ? Connop's story wouldn't amount to a fig in a court of law. There's just one chance my boy, and that's such a slim one that it's hardly worth a fig. Look here, Jim, what became of the other two—the man Travers " " He died of fever in Melbourne." " And Maurice Yorke, the scientist ? Isn't he in an insane asylum somewhere ? " " Yes," replied Connop. " He had been sunstruck in the desert and when he got to Eraser's he had a clot of blood on the brain—that's what Traver's called it. He sat like a corpse, and if you told him anything he'd forget it the next instant ;his memory was clean gone. The doctors down country pronounced his case hopeless, and a relative in Sydney took charge of him But I heard a few weeks ago, when I left Australia that he had been sent to England. He was in a private home, or some such institution at Barnes." " And never operated on 1 " Connop shook his head. " They couldn't find a surgeon to undertake it." " I think I know of one who will" said Gontran, " and he's at the top of his profession. If Maurice Yorke's mind can be restored he may have something very important to say." " He would be able to say whether Sir John died in the desert or at Eraser's," exclaimed Connop. " By Jove this is getting interesting ! Get your surgeon's opinion Garnet, and I'll stand all expenses." The entry of several persons interrupted the conversation, and ten minutes later Gontran and Challoner —they had abandoned their boating trip—were driving back to town with Connop. » • • THE CRUISE OF THE VICTORIA. Day after day, a veritable little queen of the seas, the Victoria pursued her course as safely and easily as if the water surrounding her was that, of the Buro River. Steadily and smoothly, by day and by night, the submarine craft ploughed on—out of the English Channel, away from the homeland, and round the Bay of Biscay to the coasts of Spain and Portugal, twice, with daring temerity, creeping into port, under cover of darkness, so that Langford might go ashore to purchase newspapers, food supplies and chemicals of the sort that were required by the colonel for the manufacture of the liquid air that drove his invention. So time slipped by, and, at last, one star-light night, the Victoria nosed her way into the harbour of Lisbon. " If I had any doubts as to outreaching our destination," said Larry as he watched the distant lights of the city, " they were dispelled long ago. Your boat is worth all the others of its kind put together— French, English and American. I feel as safe as I would be on dry land." Jose Castro was indeed a friend in need. That same night he found an empty launching-shed for the boat — he had shipping interests of his own and he took Colonel Lovering and Larry home with him to a stately residence in the suburbs. In the next few days he provided a capable assistant for Langford, and the Victoria straightway departed from Portuguese waters on her return trip to the Buro. A week later the expected cargo-steamer, the Westward Ho, touched at Lisbon, and when she sailed again, Larry and the colonel went with her. They bore assumed names, and were altered almost beyond recognition by heavy beards that were purposely grown. The voyage was tedious and uneventful. There came an evening at the beginning of December, when the two passengers .stood on deck towards sunset, looking across five or six miles of shimmering sea to the tree-clad headlands that guard the mouth of Port Philip Bay, beyond which a haze of smoke overhung the populous city of Melbourne, the capital of Victoria. It was a familiar 1 scene to Larry, one that recalled ] bitter memories and sweet, and he ! could hardly bear to tear himself away. During the night the Westward Ho ! reached her dock, and in the morning I Larry and the colonel went ashore ! and put up at German's Hotel in 1 Queen-street. After lunch the colonel went off, promising to be back within an hour ; but it was seven' o'cloek in the evening when he returned, and then he offered no explanation of his absence. " Heii) are some newspapers—recent ones," hu mid. " 1 looked over

an old tile at the library and it seems that what I predicted has been fulfilled in every respect...the mystery of your escape and my disappearance has not been solved and the police are utterly at fault. Tho launch was dredged up from the harbour, and if merely led to the belief that we got away from Yarmouth on some steamer or sailing vessel. " I have a letter from Inspector Truplock," he went, on, " and from Langford who got. back all right. Truplock is working on the case, though so far without any satisfactory result. He has failed to find your wife —if she is that—and he seems to think that she has quietly left England." "It. is time and money wasted, I am afraid," said Larry. " 1 don't believe it," the colonel answered cheerfully. " Traplock will be sure to succeed in the end. And in the meantime, while he is working on that side, we'll be pursuing our investigations here. I'll start to-morrow, Vallenger ; but for the first few days 1 had better make inquiries by myself." " Surely there is no danger of my being recognised ? " " No, hardly that ; but I prefer, all the same that you keep close for the present." To this Larry assented, though not without a natural curiosity as to his friend's motive in making such a request. The colonel departed directly after breakfast the next morning, and as the day wore on, and Larry's voluntary confinement to his cheerless room grew more irksome and unbearable, he concluded at last that a short stroll would do no harm. It was late in the afternoon when he left the hotel, and having sauntered to the corner of Queen-street and turned into the bright colour, and noise and surging life of Col-lins-street, he suddenly came face to face with the last person he would have expected to find in Melbourne^ —Lorna Lovering. (To be continued.)