THE TOWER OF SILENCE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19563, 16 February 1927, Page 18

THE TOWER OF SILENCE.

BY J. B. HARRIS-BURLAND.

CHAPTER XIX. ■ . The mist' lay thick over land and sea as Lambard made his way along the cliffs to old Yellow's cottage. There was enough daylight left for him to see his way along a path that lie,' knew very well. It would not be so easy to return in the. But possibly he might not return —at any rate not until the next morning. The mist was cold, and Lambard limped painfully in his haste to arrive at hie destination. In his left hawj fej carried a walking stick. His right hand was thrust in the pocket of his overcoat. It seemed odd that he should not have Used his stick with his right hand. But no stick would servo to help him if death came to him suddenly out of that fog. He would have to shoot and shoot quickly if he wished to save his life. The low garden wall of whitewashed flints showed through the mist, and the fringe c>f tamarisk shrubs, and a moment later the walls of the cottage itself. It must have been almost pitch dark :n those tiny, rooms with their' little squares of windows, but no- lamp had been lit. John Lambard knocked on the door, and, receiving no reply —neither answering shout nor sound of footsteps in the passage—he entered without further ceremony. " Anyone m ? " he shouted, and then he opened a door and threw the light of an electric torch on a bed in the corner of the little room. The head of a very old man rested on the pillow—a bald head, a face with a clean-shaven upper lip and a fringe of tangled white hair round the chin and cheeks. Lambard returned to the front door, locked it, and then stood by the bedside. Old Yellow was dead. It did not require the expert' knowledge of a doctor to learn that much. And he had died alone. The jaw had dropped and there had been no one to tie it .up. There was no one in the house. The woman must' have left about mid-day, and she would possibly return at five o'clock. Lambard had learnt this much in the village, where everyone believed old Yellow to be getting better and " makin' a good fight of it." Lambard had also seen Dr. Yerdon in Sanford, and the doctor did not intend to call and see ! his patient until the following day. But there was old Yellow lying dead. Lambard who had seen so many dead men, who had sent more than one man to his death, was strangely moved by the sight of this old man, who had been left alone to die. He covered the face with the sheet. Then he drew the curtains over the window, and lit the oil lamp, and looked at his watch. " Four o'clock," he said to himself. " The Endeavour is probably hecalmeif in the fog. Our friend, the idiot, will not be back for hours. The woman may be here at five o'clock, if she can find her way in the darkness, and if she is a decent sort of woman, she wiH put herself out for an old man." He began to search the so miserably furnished that there were few receptacles for clothes or any sort of possession. And, having found nothing that interested him, he made his way into the sittingroom on the other side of the passage. He Carried the oil lamp with him, and set it on a table. Then he drew the blinds arid curtains, and continued his search. This room contained, among much that was hideous in the way of a plush-covered suite and gaily coloured ornaments of china and glass, an ! old mchogany bureau, a., very fine pair of Sheffield candlesticks, and four coloured prints that seemed, to Lambard, to be worth a good deal of money. He opened the' bureau, and searched ■without scruple among the few papers that he found in one of the drawers. His fingers moved quickly—the trained fingers of a man who had done this sort of thing before. He found old Yellow's ivill, smiled when he saw the contents, and replaced it' exactly where he had found it. Then he came to a locked drawer, forced it open with a stout chisel he had brought with him for the purpose, and took out a very small, bundle of papers. He read them, thrust one into his pocket, and replaced the others. _ < Again he looked at his watch. Time seemed to be moving very quickly. He left the room, after he had, extinguished the lamp, and made his way upstairs. The stairs were steep and rickety and the passage at the top of them so low, that he had to bend his head—and he was not a tall man—in order to pass along it. There were only two bedrooms. He opened the door of one, looked into it and flashed the light of his torch round the white walls and scanty furniture. The other door was locked, and he forced it, and found himself in a sort of lumber room. The window was open, and near the window there was a large bird cage—a very handsome affair of brass and mahogany, made in the eighteenth century and probably of value to a dealer. The door of the cage was shut, but Lambard examined it closely and saw that the fastening of it was broken and that it had been tied up with a piece of string. He drew the curtain over the window and searched the room. He found a green feather under an old broken mousetrap, and he placed it carefully in an envelope. In the cage itself there was a lump of something that smelt most unpleasantly. He did not touch it. It was not the sort of thing one would care to touch. Again he looked at his watch, and before he could replace it in his pocket, he heard the scucd of knocking on the front door of the cottage. The light in his hand vanished and he stood in the darkness. Ho crept down the stairs and entered the room where old Yellow lay dead. Then, as the knocking continued, he went into the sitting room and re-lit the lamp. "The old woman," he thought. "Well, perhaps it is the old woman." But he thrust his hand into his pocket, and drew out an automatic pistol, and held it behind his back as lie opened the door a few inches with his left hand, and stood behind it, one foot firmly planted on tilie brick floor so that the door could not be thrust back with such violence as to crush him helpless against the wall. Once before he had been caught like that—pinned to the wall so that he could not use his arms. It had been an unpleasant experience. lhe big, half-witted sailor pushed back the door and came blundering into the passage. He carried a lantern in one hand, and a bottle in the other. He did not seem t° notice Lambard, but strolled into he sitting room, making curious foohsh notses with his mouth, speak nC crea^r e attempting to Lambard closed the front door, locked , . and followed the man into the room. Jhe big sailor smiled sheepishly and raising the bottle to his lips, drank a inoutntul ot the contents. " Your uncle is dead " said Lambard. " He was dead when I arrived here—not very long .ago. Ho ought not to have been left alone. "Dead," mumbled the. big sailor. " Deed —dead—dead," his voice rising nt each repetition of the word, and then banging on the table with the bottle, nnd bursting into song: " Down among the dead men let us g °Lambard seated himself on lhe other s ; dc of the table, and taking the pistol from bis pocket, said: " Don t make that row. Whellock. h"s not behaving deccntlv to the dead." The bis man laughed feebly, grimaced. „„<] M his lower jaw drop. dr.hbhng like sn idiot. His enormous right hand crept over the edge of the table, and moved • toward the bottle-slowly and uncerT Tit andtv" >'» i> S! hands under th« table."

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The hand moved quickly back, the foolish mouth .closed, the shoulders were squared, the head came forward a couple of inches, and a look of ferocious intelligence came into the eyes. '" i'ou've hunted me down, Mr. Lambard," he said, " and that's very clever of you. But I'm: more use alive than dead—for the present at any rate. Can we come to terms ?" " What are your terms ?" " Well, shall wc say a thousand pounds in cash, and—your silence." John Lambard smiled grimly. " You cast a slur on my ability, Whellock," he said after a pause. " You hurt my professionals pride. It is easy to buy information— " " And still more easy to hold a .pistol at a man's head, sir, and threaten to shoot him if he doesn't give the information." Lambard lowered the pistol to. the tabic, but he still kept his hand on the butt of it. " I know more than you imagine," he said quietly. "Old Yellow, who, by.-the-bye, is not your uncle, but your father—" . ' "Oh, come, come, sir." " Yes, your father. I have just been reading his will, and he has left you all hjs money. It is true old Yellow was never married, but you are his son. Your mother's name %vas Whellock —and your name is Whellock—but your professional name—well, we will come to that presently. Old Yellow knew that Lord Torkington was money-mad—as I knew it. "Money-mad? What's that, sir? Do you mean he was a miser? "■ "No, my,friend —not exaclly a miser, but money—as money—fascinated hint. He liked to handle it. He liked the glitter of gold coin, and since gold coins have been hard to come by in recent years, lie liked the crackle of bank-notes, and feel of the crispness of them in his fingers." " Well, you surprise me, sir—a rich land-owner like that, and spending I don't know what a year on his big house and estate." "He had to spend . that. His vice—and it' was a vice—was his secret. I know what I'm talking about,, Whellock. I have seen liim counting his bank-notes, and* I have seen the look in his eyes. He was money-mad, and he was ready to do anything to add to his store of money." " I wonder at you telling me all this, sir." * "You know it, Whellock—your father knew it, and it occurred to your father that there would be a nice little store of money in that safe at the top of the tower, if he could only get ali it. " Shame on you, sir—to speak like that of the dead! " Lambard took no notice of the interruption. " You came to see your father after an absence of many years, and you told him how you had been earning your living, and it occurred to him that you were the sort of lad that could get hold of that money. I remember the day you ealled to see Lord Torkington—about two years ago. You said you were old Yellow's son, but you did not give the name of Whellock, and you asked -his lordship to use his influence to get you a job on Lord Medland's yacht. You were clean-shaven in those days." Whellock laughed uproariously. " His lordship saw no strangers, sir," he exclaimed. " Why did he see mc—the illegitimate son of a humble butler?" John Lambard did not answer the question. But he raised the muzzle of the pistol an inch from the table. " In order to effect the robbery," Lambard continued, "it was necessary for you to find Lord Torkington alone. Now, as your father knew, Lord Torkington was rarely alone—and by * alone ' I mean that there was no one near at hand to come to his assistance, if he called out for help. I was always near him, except for that hour when I went downstairs to the billiard room. And that was obviously the hour a thief would choose." " How clever you are, sir," jeered Whellock. " You have thought of everything—almost as if you had planned a theft yourself." " It was necessary for you to get into .the tower unseen/' Lambard continued, " and that was an obvious difficulty. Lord Torkington very rarely went out, but on the day before his death we drove into Sanford 'in his car, and did not return until after dark. The rest of the family had. gone out to tea and did not return until it was time to dress for dinner. One of the two' footmen and the butler had accepted an invitation to have tea with your father. The coast was more or less clear. You got into the house, and into the top room of the tower. You had a good look around for a hiding-place—some place where you could conceal yourself until the safe was opened and Lord Torkington was alone. You could not find any place of concealment except the roof of the tower." " Ha, ha, ha! " laughed Whellock. "Go on, sir. You are wonderful! But perhaps you will explain why I was no» on the Andromeda, sir." > " You were not on the Andromeda," Lambard replied, " because it had been arranged that you should have a week's leave, and that you should bo picked up by Mather. I rather suspect that you had to make arrangements for the landing of this cargo of contraband. In any case I fancy that Mather's signal was to be two shots fired on the beach, and that you were to go down to the shore, and bo taken off. I don't know the details, but I can picture the general idea." " Oh, you have a wonderful head for pictures, sir—a wonderful imagination. But who would believe your story, sir? You say that I hid myself on the roof of the tower, and that I killed Lord Torkington, and then escaped ? I read the account of the inquest. How could I have escaped? And now was it that the. trapdoor opening on to the roof was belted ? Could I have bolted it from the other side? And could I possibly h&ve escaped, when the rooms of the tower were swarming with relatives and policemen, and it is impossible for a man of my size, or for any man, for that matter, to get out of any of the windows in that tower." " Yet you did escape, Whellock." " What right have you to say that, sir ? What evidence have you against me? Why, none at all. You have just imagined that I was there to steal his lordship's money. You have no proof—no evidence against me." For nearly a minute there was silence in the room. Then Lambard thrust his left hand into an inner pocket and took out a faded photograph, and laid it face downwards on the table. " I have this evidence against you, Whellock," he said with a smile, " that you are perhaps the only man in the world who could have escaped from the tower. The problem to me was just this. Lord Torkington had been murdered and the man who had murdered him must have escaped from the tower. I had to find the mar! who could do this—who could apparently achieve the impossible. Weft, I have found him." He turned the photograph face upward and pushed it across the table. Whellock saw the full-length portrait of a handsome muscular man in tights—a smirking self-satisfied fellow, with a row of medals pinned across his broad chest. unt ' er neath this picture was printed, Alured, the Man Meteor, Champion Diver of the World." Whellock grinned. " You are very " er ;, S!r > ' le sa id after a pause. "It <W+ S ° S!mp, ° nnd yet—so.difficult- I vn V U f pose 11 occ "rred to anyone but of tlv,t f * man ?" ld off the top Well' f n- Wer >» ln * dai * n ess, and live, risked it sure of myself, but nest thing rve ever ? a> i Well bc proud of 't. Wlieliol> " like tint 3 Of 3 " <0 CaVr ' V thr ™* h * !,if rocks an, T™ y ° U Coll!irln ' f water. But' Z \ h T Was worried vou and J 1 ness r!Ui^ t have the 't s . vou couldn't see back." Stnk£ the l ' ottom or break" your »To b« concluded to-nicriow.)