THE MAMMOTH MANSIONS MYSTERY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19289, 30 March 1926, Page 18

THE MAMMOTH MANSIONS MYSTERY.

BY HEAD OH HILL.

SYNOPSIS. Mrs. Boyden. a famous actress having lost her latch key, comes aome We evening to discover that her husband. Mark Boyden. has. as she supposes, locked her which Mrs Boyden lost, but by the un latched doo'r. After this. Mrs. Boyden .goes away to stay with her X&artngSg" fortnight, resumes her theatrical eiiga„t. ments Later. Sir Jocolyn Eversley, who has been in love with Alma Boyden for manv ve ar s. calls upon the latter and offers bor Carriage which she accepts, never havreally cared for her fickle husband. She entreats Sir Jocelyn to help her to discover her husband's murderer, for she fecis that suspicion falls upon lierseli own. to the fact of the missing key. A year afterwards the two are quietly married. They purpose spending their honeymoon on the Continent: but while voting at Dover for a calm crossing. Aim c - treats to be given some mending. 0l » 0 ' the torn pocket of Sir Jocelyn 9 coat, which ; she was stitching, falls the missing ke>. her own lost key! With a rush it couits back to her—how she had been helped into her coat by Sir Jocelyn 011 the very cay of the murder, and yes—tie was wearing very coat which now lay on her lap. it, is all too clear—hor second husband is none other than the murderer of her first! oho immediately leaves him, catchir.c the ne " train to London, while Everslev goes on to Paris. Ho decides to bide his tune for a while, and think out a scheme whereby he may fasten the crime, on to someone else. At his dingy Parisian hotel he is drawn into conversation by a stranger—Mr. Kite, detective. Thinking to make use of the latter. Sir Jocelyn bribes him to keep quiet about the split between himself and Lady Eversley: and by a further offer, succeeds in getting the detective to allow him to assume the identity of none other than Mr. Kite himself. The latter hands Over the key of his office; and. Sir Jocelyn embarks on tbo career of private detective to uecure his own end 3. Sir Jocelyn Eversley. on returning to London. takes up his abode at Mr. Kite s dingy office. He is visited by a Darber, Prattle. his future landlord. who demands 12 weeks' unpaid rent, and is surprised when the pseudo Kite hands over the money without demur. Ihe charwoman also receives a liberal wage, and Sir Jocelyn, having so far succeeded in passing himself off as the detective., now encounters a more disturbing visitor m the nf Inspector Covlo, of Scotland Yard. The latter asks for Kite's co-operation m connection with the Boyden murder case, as the & t&1 murder. CHAPTER V. MR. MANFRED EDEN. Sir Jocelyn Evorsley was no coward, yet his nerve had received a nasty -jolt from Inspector Coyle. How on earth was he to succeed as the tracker of an absolutely unknown personality, when he himself was being tracked by that disagreeable officer . And the trouble was that the inspector had hit on a really sound motive as a working base. Sir Jocelyn had not got far in diagnosing his position, when again his privacy was intruded on. A loud rap sounded on the door and in response to the snarled permission to enter a man walked into the office. An .extraordinary-looking man, -with eyes blazing in sunken sockets, long hair and ragged eyebrows, hollow cheeks and a most alarming cough. He was powerfully built- Under his arm he carried a roll of manuscript tied with faded blue ribbon. Then fresh trouble swooped on 3ir Jocelyn Eversley. He knew this man, and presumably, the man would know htm. The latest caller had been one of his iel-low-guests at the luncheon-party at the Gigantic on the afternoon before Royden s murder. Eversley had been introduced to him in a casual way, but had forgotten his name. He had a vague notion that the curious creature was connected with the theatrical profession—probably as a playwright,, judging by the bunch of manuscript He did not look like an actor, unless lie had made up and dressed for a tragic part. The pressing question of the moment was—did the shabby stranger want Sir Jocelyn Eversley or Simon Kite? It quickly appeared that the man whose business k plate decorated the door was the object of the call. After a prolonged stare the visitor ejaculated: ■ " It's Kite sure enough. For half amo I was doubtfuL See hero, Simon,, I have missed that key, and I believe you've got it. I want it back." Sir Jocelyn essayed a laugh which rang hollow. "My good friend, I should be better able to answer you if I could remember who you are and to what key you are referring. Your face is familiar to me, but I have a short memory for names." H Eversley's laugh was hollow, thai of his latest visitor was harsh. " You. bally fox, you know I'm Manfred Eden all right, and .likewise you know about the kev. Who should do so better? As to why I think you're got it, you were seen among the' overcoats in the hall of my club—the Cormorant." " I have never set foot in the Cormorant in my life," Sir Jocelyn declared with a shudder that reflected his loathing for that notorious resort of tenth-rate actors and literary Bohemians. _ But then he quickly saw that it was just the sort of place Mr. Simon Kito, either as member or guest, would be likely to frequent. And he had no object in insulting Mr. Manfred Eden, so he added apologetically: " I am not a member and no one ever asked me in." So strangely did Mr. Eden look at him that he feared his apology had made things worse. It was possible that he had pnt his foot in it again—that the genuine Kite had on one or more occasions been at the Cormorant as Eden's guest. Or, worse still, Kite might be a member. If so, Mr. Manfred Eden did not pursue the matter, though he might be drawing back in order to leap more savagely in the near future. "Ah well!" he shrugged. "If you won't admit that you took the key it is of no use me trying to make you. Anyway, it's ,gone. There's something else. I hear that Royden's widow, who married again the other day, is about to lease a theatre. I want you to get her private address for me. I should like to offer her the play which her swine of a first husband rejected—the pearl I flung to him, my masterpiece, ' Dora's Revenge.' " Here was a pretty dance he had let himself in for, Eversley ruefully reflected. His first commission in his role of detective was to obtain bis wife's address for this scarecrow of a playwright who was mixed up with Simon Kite in some queer jugglery with the key of the Roydens' former flat. The situation was fast growing too complex for his simple brain. Yet u U r ot aband on-the task he had set J, 1 wa » Possible that this tangled tery contain the clue to the mysWhat is - th , e name of the man Rovden's ™ w married ?" he inquired with/creditable assumption of careless ignorance. sneered name—Sir Jocelyn Everslev T'n ° j & Ab rl * & SEX no T ~r I rhoUgh ' lf y°« bave made Vfe of raSCa1 ' the arHha title. wearing the name nor the \ S T nd tho kd y' s address ■, I am able to procure Clubf'* 1 yn aske(L Cormorant "That win do as well as anywhere " re KMS -J -■ h.

CHAPTER VL THE LADY WITH THE PEKINGESE. Sir Jocelyn had had enough of it. Per one morning he felt that he had done all that was required of him in serving his apprenticeship in -the .art of detection.

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He gave Mr. Eden time to get clear of the premises and then followed downstairs. He would not risk having to entertain any more awkward callers till he had weighed his experience of those already received. He sought the Charing Cross Hotel, lunched there, and then retired to a dark corner of the smoking room. He had many acquaintances, if no intimate friends, in London, and he had 110 wish to be recognised. He would not be able to deny his identity, and assume that of Simon "Kite, to people who knew him; yet it would be difficult to explain why he was in the metropolis when he ought to have been honeymooning abroad. A cup of black coffee and an excellent Corona aided his reflections. The most pressing question seemed to be the regulation of his private life, as apart from the gruesome hours he might have to spend at Kite's detective agency. As a bachelor baronet he had occupied rooms in Jermyn Street and he belonged to two good clubs. If he was to sustain the part he had chosen, all those refuges were closed to him. Similiarly, his fine ancestral home. Eversley Towers, in Hampshire, was barred to him. The old family retainers would not understand his solitary presence there, knowing him to have been married so recently. Even if he could have taken them into liis confidence, it would have been impossible for him to concentrate from such a distance on a murder committed in London so long ago. He wished that Kite had told him where he lived, as it would have been more in keeping with his impersonation if he occupied Kite s nest. It would probably be a foul nest, judging by what he had learrned of the unsavoury character of the man f but it would have been safei. Sooner or later one of the private detective's queer intimates would spot, him as an impostor using the agency offices day by day and not seeking what should have been his proper home at night. A compromise between the two expedients of being Sir Jocelyn Eversley after business hours and posing as oimon Kite in strange surroundings seemed the best solution of the difficulty. He would book a room where he was, in the Charing Cross Hotel, registering neither as Eversley nor Kite, but under some pseudonym which would convey nothing to inquirers interested in those interchangeable persons. No sooner thought of than done. Sir Jocelyn presented himself at the hotel bureau and was assigned a room in the name of Mr. Walter Tyzack, of York. He procured his luggage from the station cloakroom and settled down in his new quarters under his second alias. Ho was treading dangerous ground.. It is a tricky thing for a man suspected of murder by an officer like Inspector Coyle to run a single alias within a stone s throw of Scotland Yard. To endeavour to run two is to tempt Providence to the limit. His second morning at the detective agency passed off without adventure, though be had a most uncomfortable time. He was conscious that he was making no headwav in the work he had undertaken, and he'felt that as long as he sat in that horrible office his flank was exposed to all sorts of foes. At any moment Inspector Coyle might swoop upon him with disconcerting questions, or, worse .still, the cranky dramatist, Manfred Eden, might stalk in to demand the address of Koyden's widow." The latter Sir Jocelyn meant to withhold at whatever risk to himself, though for his own satisfaction he had ascertained that his wife was living with her mother in Copt.horne Gardens, Kensington. He had been unable to find out what name she was using, though it was reasonable to assume that she was going by her professional nomenclature of Alma Cranstoune. That would almost certainly be her course, if, as Eden had averred, she was about to lease a theatre. At one o'clock, hanging up the notice "back in an hour," Sir Jocelyn locked up the office and strolled round to the hotel for lunch. Seating himself at the table he had appropriated, he was eating without much appetite when a hand feJi on his shoulder —a hearty smack that might well have been delivered by inspector Coyle. It was not Inspector Coyle, but a massive blonde lady with a snub-snouted Pekingese toy-dog under her arm. stout and not uncomely as she was, she had a most penetrating eye which bored into Sir Jocelyn's face with the concentrated power of a thousand gimlets. " Yes, I guessed right. It's Kite sure enough," she burbled in a fat, throaty whisper. " I was fairly certain, because I spotted you round from Vilhers Street. Yet there's a difference somehow. Disguise, probably. Well, have you got that evidence against my naughty hubby yet?" Sir Jocelyn hadn't the faintest idea who she was talking about, who she was, and what her' " naughty hubby had been .up to. But fce could not confess to anv such ignorance. "Not yet," he stammered. 1 haven't been remiss. The thing is going fine, but I had to go to Paris on a special case." " You had twenty pound on account of exes from me," said the lady severely. " I expect that's what took you to Paris. Well, I don't blame you. I'm off there to-night myself. You can 'phone or wire me if you have any news, and I'll be back in a jiffy." ... "Where are youv going to put up. Sir Jocelyn inquired politely. "The same old shebeen,"—the lady's reply was so jerky that the dog under her arm began to yap. " In the press of affairs I have for the moment forgotten what hostelry you patronise in the gay capital," said the unhappy baronet. " Doubtless," he added undar increased threats from the barking pet, " I have got it in my diary at the office." " Fido doesn't seem to like the look of you," remarked the dog's owner with another of her basilisk glances. "In case vou don't find the name of that Parisian hotel at your office it is the Chat Noir in the Rue Bazaine." She went off muttering, leaving Eversley panic-stricken. His perplexities were arriving not as single* spies but in whole battalions. The Chat Noir was the obscure hotel where he himself had stayed on the occasion of his last trip' to Paris, in which he had met Mr. Simon Kite, and wherein that doubtful detective was still probably domiciled. Sir Jocelyn could only hope that real head of the Detective Agency would be equal to deeding with that unpleasant female when she turned up. He ruefully thought that he was as far from knowing what she had been talking about, who she wa,s, and what her erring husband had been up to, as at the commencement of the interview. In no pleasant frame of mind 110 finished his lunch and returned to the office which he was beginning to regard as a ghastly rendezvous for menacing demons. Without much hope of success he dug out Kite's current diary, a cheap octavo interleaved with blotting-paper, and almost at j once hit upon the information he sought. From an entry three months old he learned that the lady with the Pekingese answesed to the name of Mrs. Gouop. There could be no mistake as Kite had had correspondence with her when she had been in Paris at the Chat Noir. Kite's Agency, it appeared, had been commis sioned to obtain evidence which would enable her to divorce Mr. Gollop. But Sir. Jocelyn's researches supplied a piece of information of more pregnant interest to himself than these sordid detads. Mrs. Gollop's London address was booked as Mammoth Mansions, Victoria Street. And the giddy spouse against whom she contemplated proceedings was recorded as caretaker at the same mansions— the colossal budding where Mark Royden had mat his death. J Cfo-W controlled -daily*)