THE HOUSE OF EVIL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19474, 2 November 1926, Page 16

THE HOUSE OF EVIL.

BY WILLIAM LE QUEUX.

CHAPTEII XXll.—(Continued.) "I*, makes you think a bit, eh? re pout* 1 the detective. " And what turn do your thoughts take ? The wages of sin is deafi. or something of that sort ? '• /ou've hit it." said the Colonial, spe-iking with great seriousness. " I told y„u my mother was a good woman; she did her best to bring me up religious, but my father always scoffed at her for her pains. How many times I heard her use that verv phrase; it has always stuck in mv memory. I thought of her a goodish hit when I was struggling back to life. I began to feel quite sick of the past, and all the evil 1 had done. But you know, mister, when you've once got into the crooked life, it's precious hard to get OVlt o{ it. But now I've got that bit ot in.-,-toy, I've made up my mind to go straight." ~ " I'm exceedingly glad to hear i., sai Grewgus heartily. " Most crooks come to a. bad end. Stormont, who was clever and cunning as the devil, took his life at the finish, and most of 'em overreach themselves and got into quod. Bo I'm making a »rcsh start. Till I read that in the papers, 1 was going out to Canada, for fear of Stormont. But now he's out of the way 1 shall stick in the old country. I shall buy h smug little business, a tobacconist's by preference. Gosh, it will be pleasant to pass a policeman without fearing he s going to lav his hand on you. ' Thev chatted for a little time longer, nnd at parting Grewgus offered Newcombe his hand, which the colonel shook heartily. Since he had now resolved to lead aii honest life, the detective felt he was justified in showing him this mark of esteem. He got back to his office about four o'clock and busied himself with his correspondence. In the midst of it, a clerk entered and said that a lady wished to speak with him for a few minutes, but would not give her name. Bather impatiently, for he was very occupied with his letters, he ordered the visitor to be shown in. What was his astonishment when the mysterious lady entered, and he recognised in" the dark, handsome young woman who had refused to give her name, Etise Makris, otherwise Mrs. Edwards. CHAPTER XXIIL The handsome young woman addressed the detective with the charm of manner that had no doubt beguiled so many men, notably Hugh Craig and the susceptible Leon Calliard. " I take it from what you told my husband, Bertram Edwards, that you are acquainted with me —at any rate> my appearance. I suppose, Mr. Grewgus, you must have been in Paris at the same time 1 was there." " That is quite true," was the answer. Grewgus had certainly formed the opinion at one time that the young woman's sudden departure had been occasioned by her discovery of the fact that she was being watched. But her next words settled thi,s point once and for all. ' And I suppose you followed me about from place to place. It is rather stiange that I did not spot you; I flatter myself that I am rather a keen observer. From what you know of my career, you may he sure I have had to cultj\ate the quality of alertness. You must be very clever at your business. I should have said it would be impossible for anybody to shadow me continuously for even a day >itliout my being aware of it." Grewgus smiled. " I think I may say, •without undue vanity, I am rather clever at it. In voui* case, I took somewhat elaborate precautions, as I felt I was dealing with a very resourceful woman. I shadowed you under perhaps ft dozen different disguises. Well, Mrs. Edwards, I need hardly say I am very astound to see you in my office. 1 suppos»»ou will tell me in good time the object of your visit." A very hard look cams over the handsome face. 11 1 need nc-t keep you waiting a moment longer. My object is revenge." " Against your former associates, in general, or some particular person?" suggested the detective quietly. " Against mv former associates, wiih one exception, 1 have no rancour. They did theif best to make my Ufa pleasant, so far as such a life can be made pleasant. 1 was one of those unfortunate creatures whose mode of existence is determined for them at a very eai'lv age by other;, from whose domination it is impossible, to escape. My father was a cfook; my mother, so long "as slit- retained her good i-wks, followed the same calling. And I was trained to follow in her footsteps. You csji say it was easy to break away, to separate from these evil counsellors, and earn my living in some honest way. Mr. Grewgus, it was not easy. Mofe than once 1 have tried and I had to go back."

Grewgus looked at her curiously. She hud spoken very calmly up to the last few sentences, and then her manner had suddenly changed. Her voice had in it a vibrating ring; her attempt to break awav, and the futility of it, had aroused in her very bitter memories.

" They would not allow me to sever my bonds." she continued, speaking in the same intense tones. " Once I thought J had succeeded, and hidden myself awav from them. I had taken a situation as a shop assistant. Somehow» they tracked me down. One of the gang went to the proprietor, and representing himself as a pofice official, warned him that he had a thief in his service, a girl who had lately come out of gaol, It was a lie. I have deserved prison many times, but luck has kept me out of it ; hut it was a lie that served its purpose. I was dismissed there and then, turned out into the street with the few miserable francs I had saved out of mv poor wages. My mother was waiting near by to take me hack. I think in a way she pitied me, but she told me it was useless struggling against them; they would nevw let me go. I was too useful to them." Your natural advantages proved, no doubt, a great asset to them," remarked the detective. " Your appearance made you an ideal decoy "

Yes, good looks are not invariably a Messing," said the beautiful voung woman with a melancholy smile. " Had I been at!; ordinary-looking girl, they would have allowed me to remain in that humble shop, and troubled their beads no further about jite. They were the cause of my being ctevotid to a life of evil by which I enr rhed others more than myself. But the greatest carse of all which they brought upon me was my association with the man you lately called upon, my husband, Bertram Edwards."

Her voice, as she spoke the name, was full of passion and hatred. Grewgus guessed now why she. had called upon him.

" You know something about him. a great deal too much for his comfort, but you cannot know ihf> niter callousness of his brutal nature. Storraout was hard and ruthless in a way, where he encountered opposition, but lie had his good points, he was genial, he was generous. If you knew how to handle him. von

could get on well with him. The same might be said of John Whitehouse, who for a long time has passtjd as my uncle, although there is not the most remote re-

(COPYRIGHT.)

lationship between us. But after the firstfew months of glamour were over, I could never find a single redeeming quality in Edwards. I think the man had all the vices it was possible to amalgamate in a single temperament." " You were in love with this man then, when you married him?" " Passionately," was the reply. " Nobody could have been more successful than he in masking a vile nature under a prepossessing exterior. But even in the early days of our honeymoon he showed the cloven hoof. During the whole, of our married existence my life has been one long experience of infamy, insult, brutality, and outrage. And the love I bore him has turned to a hatred so intense that I would risk anything to procure him the punishment he deserves." So, when she had showed Wraysbury (lie bruise on her arm, and told him her husband was a brute and a bully, she had been speaking the truth, thought Grewgus. " Have you come to me with the idea of getting him punished?" asked the detective. He would have dearly loved to aid her in such a iaudible object but for the express wishes of Lydon to let sleeping dogs lie. " That is my sole reason. I can give you so much evidence about him you in the way of corroborating it without me having to appear myself. But, of course, a wife is not allowed to give evidence against her husband in a criminal charge." " That is the worst of it," said the artful detective, who wanted to get all he could out of her, to turn her hatred to his own advantage. " But let me know some of the details, and I will see if anything can be done. Let us start with the murder of Calliard. Was Edwards the murderer ?"

Reluctantly, as it seemed, she had to admit he was not. In the course of her confessions on the subject, she confirmed what Stormont had insisted on to his brother, that murder had never been intended. Edwards had not been on in the final act of the tragedy. As at first resolved upon, it had been a case of simple robbery. She had not even sought the jeweller's society with the object, of blackmailing him, but. solely to ascertain his movements.

After she had left Paris, two members of the gang had been despatched to Brussels to wait for the unfortunate man and entrap him. In rendering him senseless, one of the miscreants had given him too strong a dose of chloroform, and it proved fatal. To cover up their crime they had thrown his body in the river. She had learned these 'details afterwards from Whitehouse, but 1 she did not know the names of either of the men. Stormont, who was the lending spirit of the gang, and had originally marked down Calliard for a victim, was alone acquainted with their identity. It was always his policy to keep the" subordinate members of the association as far as possible. They worked in little coteries, and, in the majority of cases, one coterie knew nothing of the other, But dearly as she would have loved to implicate Edwards with the tragedy, she had to confess she could not do so. As a matter of fact he was in Spain on other business when it happened.

" Our married life would have been intolerable, but for the fact that we did not spend a great deal of it together; when we did, I suffered physically and mentally." she explained at this point. " His vile temper vented itself upon me on the slightest provocation, in spite of the fact that both Stormont and Whitehouse frequently intervened on my behalf, and remonstrated with him. When the plot against Wraysbury was hatched, it was a necessary part of it that we should live together. That was a time of terrible torture to me. When it failed, thanks to your intervention, he wreaked his disappointment on me. On the day he left England, frightened by your knowledge, he beat me almost into a; state of insensibility.".

Was she exaggerating, or was Edwards such a monster as she made out ? But Grewgus. a shrewd judge of demeanour, guessed by her emotion, her frequent accents, that she was telling the truth, that this man had terrorised and illtreated her, that but for his devilish power over her she would have broken away. She remarked incidentally that she and her mother had a fair amount of money pat l»y, their share of the proreeds from the various schemes in which they had taken pait under the leadership of Stormont and Whitehouse.

Slie gave him a great deal of information about Edwards. This rascal had specialised chiefly i:i blackmail, using her in most cases as a decoy, and his activities in this direction had almost exclusively been practised abroad. The affair with Lord Wraysbury was the only serious coup ha had attempted in his own country. This unscrupulous scoundrel was intensely proud of his birth and social connections, and that perhaps was the reason he did so little in England. " But, from what he said to Whitehouse on the day after you had so thoroughly frightened him, I don't think he will ever return. You see, he is not sure how much you know. He guesses your inquiries were made on behalf of a private pei-son, but he also remembers you threatened him with Scotland Yard." said the young woman when she had concluded "this portion of her story.

Grewgus explained to her that he could not very clearly see his way to assist her in her* schemes of vengeance on her brutal husband, as he had appeared to confine himself almost exclusively to acts of blackmail abroad. "In all these cases," he told her, "there is no chance of securing the cooperation of the victims. If we could have connected him with the kidnapping of C-alliard, which resulted in unintentional murder, you yourself could assist the Belgium police who have abandoned the case. But you emphatically say he was somewhere else at the time. All he did, I suppose, when in Paris was to convey the instructions set out by Stormont, and meet you from day to day to learn what progress you were making. When you both left that city, I presume others were engaged in the affair."

Mrs. Edwards admitted that this was so. In spite of the prejudice engendered against hec. by his of her evil past, Grewgus had to admit that the woman had extraordinary powers of fascination. They influenced him so far that he found himself pitying her profoundly for being tied to such a brutal husband, so much so that he voluntarily offered his services to her if Edwards should again seek to intrude himself into her life.

She thanked him very sweetly. I have a notion I shall never see him again," she said. " But one never knows. Fie has made a good deal of money, but he is a very greedy man. . He. is very frightened just now, but his fear may pass away, and he will want to further enrich himself by the same old means. In that case, he would seek me out with with the object of compelling me to help him. In that, case, I should be glad to come to you in the hope that you could terrify him again."

*' What are your intentions as regards the future?" asked the detective presently, "It would hardly be safe for you to go abroad, would it ? You would be pretty certain to run across him some da v."

** Yes, I would prefer living on the Continent, but I dare not run the risk of falling in witfi him again. After the design upon Lord Wraysb ry miscarried, thanks to your intervention, and both Whitehouse* and Edwards, judged it prudent to clear out. I telegraphed to my mother to come 5 oyer from Rouen. where she was, living quietly. We talked over matters verv thoroughly, and we made tip our minds that we would hide ourselves in some corner of England under an assumed name." (To concluded to-morrow.)