The Evil Chateau

Matamata Record, Volume XVI, Issue 1447, 3 August 1933, Page 2

The Evil Chateau

By SYDNEY HORLER,

CHAPTER XX.—TIIE INN IN THE FOREST.

They were lost. Darkness had come and they were like blind men moving In a sightless world. “Hell and all the Peckham T u ,\jj Councillors!” exclaimed Bill Matcham. He had just stubbed his right big toe for the eleventh time in as many minutes. “Let’s sit down, Stevo,” ho said—and did so in an unexpected pool of water. Which did not, of course, add to L.s calm, even if it added considerably to his language. The more collected Heritage essayed with his foot to find something to sit upon, discovered it in a biggish boulder and lowered himself with half a sigh and half a groan. He was depressingly tired, and, if the truth must be told, a little exasperated by his companion’s loudly-expressed lamentations. “We should have brought a car,” he said. In the other’s present mood he had expected opposition, but he did not yet know fully his Bill Matcham.

“You’re right and I’m wrong,” came the agreement.. “But, oh, Stevo, your Uncle Bill will make amends; I’ll promise you that. At the moment I must confess I’m not quite myself; the seat of my pants is. oozing what I’m sure is slimy green water and I’ve nothing but a hole where my stomach ought to be —but wait: something will turn up —if it’s only the morning.” Stephen continued to pull at the pipe ■ which he had lit. Next to a trusted pal there is no friend like a pipe. Heritage had bought this particular briar at a certain famous shop in the Haymarket on a Saturday night just before he had left London. The purchase had cost him a guinea, and at the time it had seemed like paying for half the earth. But the solace, com- |

fort and pride that pipe had given him I Like a gratified parent he had regarded with loving care the rich wood getting darker and darker. Never a night passed without he had caressed its hot bowl softly against his nose to see the grain of 'he wood becoming more and more deeply marked. Heritage was one of that noble band of smokers who could not tolerate a pipe already coloured. Bill Matcham, who always carried at least five pipes m

his different pockets and who never paid more than 1/6 for each, laughed at flnickyness. But Bill, for once, was wrong. There may be good men with honest, trustworthy souls who are i to be found smoking pipes that the i makers have already coloured, but . . i How they had come to this impasse, i neither Bill nor Stephen could have 1 told. So far as was possible, they had i followed the road which had led, according to the hotel-keeper of Vence, t

straight to the Chateau de la Siagne. The trouble was that, though the way may have been straight, the road wasn’t. Three miles out from Vence it came to an end. In a wall. On either side branches off another road, hiit which one to take?—that was the question. Bill Matcham solved the problem—or imagined he had—by clambering I : over the wall. j

“Keep straight on, Monsoor Chicken Casserole said, Stevo,” he had remarked, “so here goes." “Wait a minute,” advised Heritage, but nothing could induce the other Lo believe that he might be wrong. "Both those roads—if you can call ’em roads —lead away from the damned

SERIAL STORY

(AlLßights i Reserved).

I place,” Matcham argued; and eventually, although he felt convinced somehow that they were making a mistake, Heritage allowed himself to be persuaded. They walked on, over country wild, barren and precipitous; and they had not proceeded many miles before it became evident thev must be on the wrong track. There was not a sign of human habitation so far as the eye could search; they were in a wilderness of desolation. Then the light commenced to give. By this lime they were footsore and weary in mind and body. Bill said that he felt like Death —Death that was too long-drawn-out. At the moment that he sa; t down in the miniature lake, they had been in what appeared to be a forest for perhaps half-an-hour. “Let me just say what I’d like, Stevo," murmured his companion; •a chop with chips and plenty of Worcester sauce. A pint—no, not a pint, a quart of beer and a beautiful big bed afterwards. I wouldn’t insist upon being tucked up by a a nice, sisterly chambermaid, because I should be too

tired. That’s what I’d like, old corkscrew; as it is, I’m cold and damp and —” i “Dry up,” cut in Heritage, not unkindly; “you haven’t earned the chop yet, let alone the tucking-in business. When I’ve finished this pipe, it will be a case of allons —” “Allons, old boy?” queried the exclerk: “what’s allons? It sounds like something nasty.” . “It will be —but you’ll have to get over that. It means to get on—to walk.”

I d walk if my feet would only le me. Don’t hurry, old man, with the pipe; take your time.” The speaker struck a match to light a cigarette, and by its flame Heritage could sec that Matcham’s face was bedewed with

sweat. What a couple of fools they had proved themselves to be 1 It was too late now to speculate how they could possibly have gone astray: that was assuming, of course, that the Vence hotel-keeper had directed them right. The only fact that mattered was that they were benighted—lost in a forest where the silence was so deep that a breathless suspense seemed to hang all around them.

“Gome on,” he said at length when the tobacco at the bottom of his pipe was burned to ashes; “allons!” “Allons be jibbered . . . Oh, all right, keep your hair on, Stevo.” Matcham rose lumberingly, and looked around. “ ‘What big eyes you havegrandmama,’ said Little Red Riding I-lood. Eugh I I’ll bet you this place is haunted.” “Save your breath. I’m going to try to find a way out; we can’t be

worse off than we are, anyway—and walking will help to dry your trousers.” ‘‘An unsuspected sense of humour, by Gad!" mocked Matcham; “lead on, Macduff." Luck accompanies the brave, they say. Within ten minutes of Heritage making his resolution, they were standing on the outskirts of the forest in \Vhich it had seemed they would

have to spend the night. Not only were they free of the trees, but they had approached a number of houses, scattered about in what looked like a rough semblance to a horseshoe. “Houses!” announced Bill excitedly; “living people . . . food ...” (To be Continued.)