“TO-MORROW’S CHILD”

Manawatu Times, Volume 64, Issue 148, 26 June 1939, Page 10

“TO-MORROW’S CHILD”

Synopsis of Preceding Instalments: Val Clarke, ougaged to Kobert Ureeley, of New .Manchester, Conn., goes to Mew York to shop. At Kate Hollister’s, fashion magazine editor. her cousin, she meets Hugh Malcolm, playwright; Bret Gallishaw, Xew Manchester author of a best seller; Leslie Crawford, Bret’s stepbrother. and Winifred Sperry, who starring in Hugh’s “End of Tears/’ and Guy Williams, who inherited millions and has a small part in the play. Bret was engaged to Kate but married wealthy Evelyn Garfield. He hates Leslie after losing a legacy and Leslie resents Hugh’s interest in Winifred. When Guy takes Val to Pete Gaboriau’s luxurious place near Philadelphia, Louiso (Leeze) Cameron and Crandall Scott, of Washington, are waiting for Guy. Leeze strikes Val who defends herself so well Guy has to assist her cut. Cran drives Val to Kate’s. During a stage storm scene Leslie is shot dead. * Harrying out, Val sees Hugh at the theatre entrance. Bret had left his seat earlier. Leeze goes with Cran to see Val, whose Aunt Mahala orders Leeze out tor smoking. Val goes along. Kate wires Val who goes to New York and clears Hugh of suspicion. Hugh had seen a play iu s personality and offered her a salary to stay in New York. She accepts now when her aunt sends her trunks on. Hugh loves her but she thinks *e loves Winifred. Prosecutor Kellogg re-stages the storm scene and Bret is shot dead in his seat. Winifred admits she and Leslie were married and quarrelled over Hugh. Cran tells Val he loves her. While with Guy, Cran is shot and dangerously wounded. “If you two are going my way,” Guy said to Kate, “I’d like to tag along. I’ve been here since a little after five and I'd like to clean up and get something to eat. ” Val crossed the hospital’s big reception room and stood with her face to a long window, a clenched fist pressed to her lips. After \ moment Kate followed, saying. “Want me to stay with you, Val—or would you rather be alone?” Not moving, Val said, “You go along, Kate. I’ll telephone if I need you.” Presently she saw them walking down the steps, Kate between Guy and Hugh. When the car passed from view, Val sanlf into a chair. Leeze paid for the telegram to her mother. A little frown marred her forehead as she walked back toward the notel. Yesterday when she and Cran were about to leave her home in Washington she had told her mother, “Don’t be so darned maternal, Ethel. You’d think our having Christmas dinner together was a matter of life and death.’’ And then she had caught her mother’s troubled face between her hands and kissed her and said, laughing, “Of course I’ll be back in time. We’ll leave New Y'ork before daylight and I’ll sleep all the way while Cran drives and when the gong sounds for dinner, I’ll be aH set for my half of the turkey.’’ And now Cran had to go off on some fool trip with Guy and here she was. Cran had brought her back to her hotel at half-past two and she had thrown herself across the bed to snatch a nap while she waited. They had registered at different hotels, due to one of Cran’s quaint notions of propriety, and Guy had told her “Cran’s probably been in bed all night. I’ll go by and shake him out.” She had no idea how long she had been asleep. When she awoke to the jangle of the telephone, she heard Guy 's voice over the wire. He had to make a little trip and he needed Cran along. It was important. “I’ll get him back as soon as 1 can, Leeze, but no matter how long it is, you wait there.” And because Guy was in her blood—as she had once told Val—and she was ready to jump from the roof of the Empire State if he commanded it, she had waited, was still waiting, would probably go on waiting . . . The clerk said no one had called during her absence, “I’ll be on the mezzanine,” she said, “if there is a call.” Guy lived in a penthouse apartment well downtown and though Hugh offered to take him to bis door, he insisted upon being dropped off some three squares short of that point. “It’s Christmas and time for dinner and I’m hungry;” he said, grinning. “When I’ve satisfied the inner man, I’ll clean up the outside. Thanks for the lift. I’ll drop back by the hospital in an hour or two and if there’s anything to report, I’ll call you.” When they had let Guy out, Kate said, thoughtfully, “I’ll never understand that boy. He can be as pleasant and engaging as you could a3k when he feells that way. When he doesn’t he’s plain ugly. Someone told me— Bret, I think—that Guy didn’t shed a tear the night his father—” She checked herself, looked up: “You knew about it?” “Suicide pact, wasn’t it?” “That or murder and suicide. Thev hadn't lived together for a year or two. Pretty sordid, the whole business. Imagine being worth twenty-three millions and then sliding off into eternity and leaviug the whole of it to a perennial sophomore like Guy.” Hugh shook his head. After a little he said, “I saw the gun that did the job. Walter Kellogg had it up in his office. It looked for all the world like an ordinary flashlight, but if you held it up in front of you the way you would a flashlight and pulled the snap, you got a bullet in your chest. Ho had a collection of firearms worth about half a million. ” Suddenly Kate gripped his arm: “Hugh—l’ve just thought of something—something terribly important . . . ” Guy was within half a block of his apartment building when he saw the small black car parked at the kerff before the door and recognised its insig-

By Julie Anne Moore

Instalment 26.

nia. Instantly he wheeled, walked rapidly in the opposite direction and turned the first corner at little less than a trot. His brain functioned clearly. He knew now what he would do and Eow he would do it. He had three telephone calls to make. He decided to begin with the Long Island airport. Leeze sat in the booth on the mezzanine and .shouted at the mouthpiece: “Where’s Cran, you lug! Do you think I want to spend my life hanging around a hotel lobby while you two —” “Shut up!” Guy’s voice was like a slap in the face, sharp and stinging. “Listen to me now and no wisecracks. Cran’s on his way back to Washington to tell your mother we ’re married ...” “Married!” her voice suddenly all laughter. “How romantic! Where—when . . . ? ” “Get your luggage or whatever you’ve got and be at Thirty-fourth and Broadway in ten minutes, Leeze. Everything’s arranged. But you’ve got to step on it. There’s a ’plane waiting on Long Island to take us places.” “Married, married, married . .1” feeze’s heart sang as she raced for the elevator. “Me—married!” She had never really thought of it before. Not seriously. Not where Guy was concerned. She hadn’t thought he was the kind. You just went on going with a man like Guy, fighting him, hating him, never happy with him but utterly miserable awav from him.

Hugh and Kate ate ininciugly, talking little. They were both thinking of Val, w6ndering whether something deeper than loyalty had held her there at the hospital. Since last night Kate had suspected Val was in love with Cran. but Hugh was simply puzzled and confused. They were back in the living room when Kate asked lightly, “Can you tell me what happened between you and Val? ... I’m not simply curious, Hugh. Yal’s been in a low frame of mind since I came back and I ; m trying to diagnose the difficulty.” The question caught Hugh oft guard, but after a moment he told her evenly, “Nothing happened. Not in the sense that there was somo active conflict. We both discovered —at about the same time fortunately—we’d been chasing rainbows.' ’ “In other words, you both thought you were in love with each other and Taen you both had a great awakening and realised it was all a pretty dream?” She was watching his face closely. Hugh nodded. “Something like that.” “And you ask me to believe that?” He did not answer; nor did he look at her. The telephone brought Kate to her feet. When she came back there was a bewildered look in her eyes. “It was your friend the district attorney. Wanted to know if I could suggest where he might find Guy. Apparently he hadn’t heard about Leeze. She’s the fresh young thing who came up from Washington with Cran. I couldn’t tell him where she’s stopping, but I suppose he has some way of checking the hotels.” Hugh said, “I suppose this means the pay-off for Guy.” Kate looked up quickly, “What do you mean?” “Walter must have something on him or he wouldn’t be so anxious to find him.” He said then, “We’ve all been inclined to think of Guy |is a spoiled kid, Kate, but there’s something vicious about him all the same. Vicious and a little depraved.' On the face of what we know, he couldn’t have killed either Leslie or Bret, but with his money he could have had both jobs done and I wouldn’t put it past him. Though, of course,” he conceded, “I’m not an unprejudiced judge. I never cared for him very much and he took a violent dislike to me after he failed to get the part he wanted in ‘End of Tears.’ Frankly, I’ve always suspected he bought his way into my apartment and wrote that threatening note to Leslie on my typewriter—in the hope, of course, the police would ultimately trace the note back to me. Which,” he added, grinning, “they did.” Suddenly Kate said, “Look, Hugh—let’s work from one angle at a time. He disliked you because he thought you could have got it for him. He isn’t the kind to take a disappointment as a matter of course. Suppose now he let it prey on his mind—the fact that you refused to in his behalf—and he decided to get even. And he starts off by— ’ ’ “Setting fire to the old Van Amburgh Theatre?” Kate caught her breath. “Good heavens! I hadn’t thought of that.” “And then,” said Hugh, “we open the show again an«t he decides to close it by frightening Leslie by threatening to kill him if he goes on in the second act. Obviously, if Leslie doesn’t go on, the understudy does and the audience howls over the change of actors and the show’s dead. Leslie is frightened, all right, but he doesn’t bolt and so Guy hires some gunman to kill him . . . Then comes the police review of the storm scene and that crazy streak in Guy inspires him to provide the police with a real thrill. .So he hires his killer again and we end up with Bert shot through the head.” He suddenly laughed. “It’s easy to fcrove a man guilty of murder when you don’t have to prove what you say.” “Yet,” said Kate, slowly, “being familiar with what you call that ‘crazy’ streak in Guy, it isn’t inconceivable that it could have happened that way. All except the hidden gunman. The theatre was thoroughly searched both times. ” “Wait a minute!” Hugh protested; “I didn’t mean to be taken seriously. For all I know, he had that flashlight contraption of his father’s along . . . Let’s quit theorising before we convict an innocent young man—” grinning—“of double murder.” Leeze sat with her small nose flattened against the window of the four-

passenger cabin ’plane. They were taxiing out across the field. Guy was up talking to the pilot. It had all been very exciting to Leeze —despite the fact that the town clerk Guy had called had said he could not issue a license on Christmas Day. “Never mind,” Guy had told her; ‘ ‘we ’ll go on down and spend the night with your mother and slip over to Elkton, Maryland, first thing to-morrow.” So they were not married yet, but they were going to be, and anyway this was fun and she was amused to think that Cran would ride into Washington to break the news and find them there ahead of him. It was not until the ’plane came around in a wide circle and stopped, nose into the wind, that Leeze saw the small, dark car leaving the hangars, racing toward them—and behind it a man running, waving his arms, lyShe called to Guy, but he didn’t hear her, in the sudden deafening roar of the motor. (To be Continued.)