THE TURMOIL

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15769, 18 November 1914, Page 11

THE TURMOIL

BY PAUL URQUHART. COPYRIGHT. CHAPTER XVI. Th 3 words seem trite and melodramatic enough, written down here, but in the strange silence that prevailed in the hall, and uttered in MacClintock's grotesquely piping voice, they sounded terrible. And what followed lacked nothing of the horrible. As soon as he had uttered the words, MacClintock sprang with a sibilant shriek straight at Hanoteaux. I saw his huge hands clutch madly at/ the other's throat. They went to the floor, the Scotchman, uppermost. It was not like a fight between human beings. It was more like a struggle between a man and one of those terrible hybrids in the story of Dr. Morgan's Island. MacClintock wat raving mad, and with tho unsettling of his brain he seemed to have shed every human characteristic. His grossly deformed body, and the gruesome way in which he sought to destroy the life of the man he imagined to have robbed him, made the scene the most sickening I had ever witnessed. He had dug his fin gen deep into the other man's throat, and was trying to tear his windpipe out as a man* plucks the core out at an orange- 1 heard Hanoteaux give one stifled shriek of pain and then we were all running to where the two men lay struggling on the floor. It was all over in a moment. One of tho men employed by Hanoteaux in the park raised a heavy cudgel of knotted wood and brought it down with all his force on MacClintock's head. As he did so, he uttered an execration such as a man might use in stamping out soma venomous snake. Cruei though the confession may seem, the word and attitude of mind that it expressed appeared at the time strangely appropriate, for the tiling that lay on the floor, plucking ferociously at Hanoteaux's throat, had ceased to be human.

There was no necessity to repeat the blow. There was a smothered cry, and then M. Hanoteaux flung the bodv from off him, 50 that it lay on its back, its face distorted in the last grimaces of death, and staggered to his feet. They took iho body away through the swing door, into the forbidden win* 0 f the house. Hanoteaux. (ingenue ° his throat followed with, the rest. I was left alone—in the excitement of the terrible tragedy we had just witnessed my presence had been passed over. With mv mind seething with horror and disgust, I walked across to the dining salon, and opening the door entered the room. Madame Hanoteaux was still seated at the table, with a cup of coffee and a green chait re use in front of her. I will do her the justice to suppose that she knew nothing of the tragedy that had taken, place in the hall not a minute before. Io see her sitting there complacently, surrounded by all the evidences of common- | place usualness, aroused in my overj wrought niind a feeling of unconrollable disgust and hostility. When, moreover I sb;.- rose with her coquettish smile, and I came towards me with outstretched hands I, ,! "'F 1 a " abo " ,he P art 1 bad to play.' I All that 1 know was, that mv dislike of | 1"' l ' amounted almost to hatred, and the I veiy thought of continuing the little | comedy that I had started for my own i ends seemed like an art of treason toI wauls my beautiful Joan.

"Ah. M. Lovegiove, at last I see you alone ' film said, coming up dose to me, and putting her hands on' my shoulders' looking languishinglv into my eyes. " How ran I ever thank you for'all voir have done ! My husband told me all last night. llow brave you weir! How you must have .suffered ! And you endured it all for me. Is it not so?" I removed her hands from mv shoulders with as much gentleness as I was master of. I did nothing which any gentleman would not have done under similar circumstances." In her ardour the coldness of my voice and attitude passed unnoticed. " She walked across to a couch, and settling herself there motioned to me to take a seat by her side. I was ill-inclined to comply, but the habit of fulfilling the trivial requests of the opposite sex made me to do an she wished. I allowed, however. some distance to separate us, but to tie purpose, for Mitip. Hanoteaux de--1 berate] moved close to my side. "Where have you taken her?—what lmve you done with her'" .She laid one of her hands on mine, and in my then mood, her touch gave me a feeling akin to physical nausea. "Taken whom?" Of course. 1 knew well enough to whom she referred, but I chose rather to prolong the subject in conversation than to en" gago in those lover-like amenities which I knew she expected from me. "That girl, with whose presence in the house M. Hanoteaux chose to insult me." " Oh. yes," I said, nonchalantly, as if the subject was one of such little "importance that I had forgotten all about it in the press of more important matters. " I have sent her to Paris, and from there she will go to England." I saw her eyes narrow as she scanned my face. "Why are you sending her to England." "It is her country; her home is there."