THE HAMMERS OF HATE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVI, Issue 17294, 18 October 1919, Page 3 (Supplement)

THE HAMMERS OF HATE.

BY GUY THORNE, Author of " "When II Was Dark," " A Lost Cause," Etc. (COPYRIGHT.) CHAPTER IV.— (Continued.) " I worked two years under the French Government at Toulon," the Scotsman said quietly. " That's how I know it." " And these men have been building the boat?" "In the dry dock, and under Bill's and my supervision. There are certain peculiarities about the hull, which, of course, cannot have escaped their notice —experienced workmen as they are. But that doesn't matter. They've no suspicion of the real secret—the upper part of rubber glass. They've never even seen the new substance. The lower hull of steel plates is almost completed. When that is done, Bill and I must build the upper part ourselves. Bolt the plates together and finish everything off." "I'm handy with tools myeelf," said Ivor, " I'll make a third. But it will be a long job, won't it?" '" Not so long as you might think, sir," said Laing, " the plates are all ready. Each one is numbered and marked. In the dry dock we have the most up-to-date and handy electric machinery that can be found in any workshop in the world. It cost your father thousands and thousands to install, but he was determined, when the time came, only two or three men should finish the work, so that the secret should be kept absolutely. There's every possible device for eaving man power." "What exactly remains to be done?" The engines are the principal part. The oil engines for surface running are in Paris, and could be got over here' in a week. The dynamos and other electric fittings are on their way from New York. It is the money to pay for them, that has been the difficulty, though that would have been got in a week or two before Mr. McGregor's death by mortgaging the docks. Now the matter's simple, and the bills at three month* which have been given can be taken up at once for cash. We must keep the Frenchmen until the engines are in position. Then they can go, and they'll be none the wiser. There are a hundred other details, chiefly technical, which are inventions of Mr. McGregor, but all these are well forward." - " Now that we have got the money we require," said Ivor, "do you" think "that if we work night and day the boat will be ready to go to sea in a month "It might b<s done in a month," Blacow answered, " I'll not say no. But now that money doesn't matter in the leaet, if we Eut our backs to it I'll guarantee' to get er ready in five weeks at any rate." After this they cleared the table and went into a long technical discusison. Neither a trained engineer nor a shipbuilder, Ivor had nevertheless a considerable knowledge of both sciences. The whole thing was in his blood, and he was a practical sailor as well, his own yacht being fitted up with the very latest type of turbine engines. Both Laing and Blacow were astonished and delighted at his quick understanding of each technical point, and the latter, placing his huge paw upon Ivor's arm burst out with a boom of pleasure. " Eh, lad, thou'rt a true chip of the ould block!" " We'll make an engineer of Mr. McGregor in time," said the more cautious Laing—and if Ivor had only known it, this was nigh praise from the Scotsman. To-morrow morning," Ivor said, "we'll begin the campaign. We'll go for it baldheaded. Mr. Blacow, all your hopes are bound up in the success of my father's boat. Mr. L«ing, it is the same thing with you, and you've got an additional interest as well. Am I not correct?" "You're Terra correct, Mr. Ivor, and if J might venture to make a suggestion, I should sae that the pairsonal element is no verra absent fra ye'ro ain mind." The shrewd, calculating eyes of the Scotsman were fixed upon him, and Ivor, in epite of himself, felt the blood mounting in his head.

'_' If all goes reet. they'll make a proper pair, Bill," remarked Mr. Blacow, as he tilled an old briar pipe. " Confound youj" Ivor shouted, half laughing, half in anger. " Don't dispose " of my future like this!" The bloodhound rose quietly from his sleep, stretched himself and strolled over to Ivor. He placed his head against the young man's knee, and looked at him with his red-brown eyes affectionately. "By this, Gregor McGregor," said Laing, " you'll realise that while you're master, fate has mastered you. You're not a free man any more. Mon, ye're just vowed." j The great dog heaved himself up, and I put his paws upon Ivor's shoulders, looking into his face as though he sought confirmation there. The young man pushed him down with a firm and gentle hand. Then he turned to his lieutenants. "And now," he said, " I'll go and see the ship as she is at present. Take me and let me have a look at her." That's a good idea," Blacow said in his low, organ-like voice. " Bill, we'll take t' mester to see the boat." The old sense of moving in a dream came over Ivor as he was rowed to the great concrete wall of the dock, went up the stairs, and was taken by his companions by a devious route towards a building of ."olid brick with many sky-lights in the roof. A key was produced, a little door was opened, and he entered a vast, dark I cavern. Then in an instant many steel-blue j arc lights hissed and flashed into being. He stood upon a narrow pavement of j j concrete. He felt as if he had suddenly I come to a great, hollow cavern, brightly lit by an almost intolerable radiance from J the roof. As he looked down, he .<aw a succession i of concrete steps, leading into an immense ' oblong space which suggested nothing so j much as a huge swimming bath emptied i -of its water. I Steel ropes running over a complicated j system of pulleys descended from above. ; To right and left were strange, unfamiliar '■ machines running on rails around the basin below, or descended into it by inclined ' planes. Behind him was a great vulcanite j switchboard, with many handles. I " It's the most complete thing in the ] world." Laing was whispering in his ear. " It's here that the money's gone. Your ; fa'her spent near upon thirty thousand ; pounds in this shed." I Fur down below in the centre of the dry i I dock, was a long, dark, almond-shaped 1 I thing. It lay there black and motion- j ' less, surrounded by complicated machinery, i but clear to the eye in its graceful curves!. | | " There she is," said Blacow, "and. j ! please God, in another five weeks we'll i ; Hood the dock, and she'll move out. to her ' I mission." ! ! Without a word to his colleagues. Ivor : I descended the steps—down, flown, down, ! I until at last he stood upon the. floor of t.hn ' dock. eH looked upwards. Above him ' | were the smooth-swelling curves of the J | submarine. He walked around ite length ; j j once he smote the side with clenched fist, j | and there was a dull reverberation. j I At the squat bows there was a ladder. I I He mounted it and came out upon an un- ! ' completed section of steel main deck. He ! i turned and found that Laing and Blacow ' j were licside him. i j " What do you think of her. sir?" the i ' Scotsman asked eagerly. j j Ivor turned and looked down at the long, ' i empty shell. For him it meant a triumph ' : of fortune andperhapsthe triumph of i ' love itself. | " You don't christen the ship until she i is launched, do you'.'" he said to Blacow, who was standing just beside him. *" "I never heard there was any rule about it, Mr. Ivor but why not give her a temporary name now —indeed I thought you ' might be wishing something of the sort, and here's a bottle of claret." \ He put his hand into the capacious pocket of his jacket and handed over a bottle of Chateau Margot. The young man took the bottle, raised it above hi« head, and brought it down with a crash upon the steel side of the submarine. " I christen her ' Hope.' " he cried. "That's for the moment. My friends, we'll christen her again when she's ready , for her work," I 1

I When the lights were all turned out, and i the three men went back to the hulk, Mr. Blacow suggested to Mr. Laing that the I name of the completed ship would probably ' be the name of a lady. I'll bet you half-a-crown to a shilling " said Mr. Blacow, "he calls her 'The Margaret.'" ' ( Ivor did not hear this muttered conversation. He thought that in five weeks he would paint the new name of the boat with his own hand. He thought he would steal out at night, when nobody was about, and the name he would imprint upon her bows should be " Love."

CHAPTER V. And now came a time of fierce, unremitting energy and toil. Day in, day out, the three partners worked as they had never worked before. Great crates of machinery kept arriving from various luanufacturers, and one day a special lighter came to the dock from an American freight steamer moored in the middle of the Mersey, with the great dynamos and electric motors on board. There was no time for thought, little time for sleep. Afterwards, Ivor remem- | bered that time as a fever patient dimly remembers ithe delirium of a long night. It was like a dream, this constant, neverending toil—this toil done in strictest secrecy, while the toilers were vigilantly guarded from dangers to which they themselves could put no name. The work went on. The engines were bolted in ttheir places. The electrical fittings proceeded with lightning-like rapidity. The steering and diving mechanisms approached completion, and always in Ivor's mind there was the endless sound of hammers and ratchet drills. In three weeks he himself became an accomplished fitter, and as he worked long night 'shifts with Laing and Blacow in ithe locked dry dock, his companions were amazed at his powers, for they did not know the driving power behind it all ■ was Love. Despite their hopes they found that it would be necessary to take at least one of the French mechanics into their confi-

dence, and they chose a shout wiry Norman, on whom they felt, they could rely. He was to remain ,when the other five had been dismissed, in order to,assist in the last secret work of fitting the deck dome and conning tower of, rubber glass. And all this time not a word from Margaret Kaintsbury ! She seemed to have vanished into thin air, and now and then, in moments of utter physical fatigue and the mental discouragement which goes with it, Ivor would ask himself if the lovely girl who had come to him in the night, were nothing but a vision, a ficition of heated imagination. But there was fifty thousand pounds — now indeed rapidly diminishing— in the National Provincial Bank, and Laing had told him a story of a gray, (*ld niorniug off the Blundell Sands, when a choppy S3a had threatened .to submerge a little motor launch, and a grim, shrouded burden which sank noiselessly beneath the waves. Why did he not hear from her ? Why did she not write? Surely it was easy enough for her to do that. Nobody could intercept her letters— postmen are not to be bribed nowadays. The thought that perhaps she was in grave danger— for after the stealthy and wonderfully thoughtout murder of Donald Stewart, there could be no doubt in his mind but that the girl was in grave perils was sometimes insupportable. He knew, of course, that her wealth and great social position were all in her favour. Yet— she herself firmly believed—her brother, a baronet and a millionaire, was utterly in the power of an enemy. And if in addition, Donald Stewart could be murdered in the way he had been, then the resources of that enemy were very great.

Each morning as the paper arrived no searched the Agony Columns of the Timet, but he never found what he sought. But one morning in a weekly society paper, he came across a paragraph which made him gasp in astonishment-, and in a sense filled him with dismay. The paragraph stated that Miss Margaret Saintsbury and her aunt, Lady Stcyning, were occupying a su;te of rooms at the newly-erected Hotel Splendide at Nice, and participating in all the gaieties of the Riviera season. So she was at Nice! She was taking pa : in the gay, luxurious life of the Mediterranean pleasure cities—he knew it well himself, the lunches, the dinners, the carnivals, the music, tilt gambling, and he stared at the paper with a white fare. Had she fled .there to be out of the way of the sinister and evil power personified by the name of the Countess of Kyle? Then why was her presence there openly advertised in the leading society paper of England'' And did she, could she think she was more safe in a spot where all (he notorious ' crooks and criminals of Europe mingled freely with the fashionable crowd ? Ivor knew well that for a couple of hundred pounds, at Nice, Monfte Carlo, or Mentone, it was possible to hire a man or woman to commit almost any (rime. Why did she not travel up to her old feudal castle at Ben Scourie ? Surelv there, if anywhere, surrounded by f.iithful retainers of her father's royal clan, she would have been safe. And instead of that she iras flaunting her presence among the palms and orange groves of " The Queen "bf (the Mediterranean." (To be continued on Wedneeda.y next.)