THE JAPANESE PARASOL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19762, 8 October 1927, Page 14 (Supplement)

THE JAPANESE PARASOL.

BY ELLIOT BAILEY.

SYNOPSIS. Hugfr Monro's attention is attracted to a blue and red parasol, which lies opened above a moored punt. Soon he discerns the outline of a girl's figure. A nearer approach shows her to be Violet Chichester, the actress. Advancing, he calls to her. No answer. As Hugh lays his hand on the actress' heart he starts back in horror. She is dead. Gwennie Bourne comes along. She was to meet Hugh here. Placing a pocketrmirror on the actress' lips, she, too, discovers that Violet is dead. At the request of the young man, Gwennie mounts her bicycle and goes for Dr. Marshall, who is to communicate with the police. She rides away Hugh walks round the bend of the bank. Returning, he notices that the parasol ha 3 disappeared. He walks over to a copse forming part of a riverside estate. It is protected with formidable spiked railings. There is still no sign of the parasol. He returns to the punt. Dr. Marshall arrives in his car, and with him is Blagdon, the superintendent of police, aid a police sergeant. The actress has been d;ad about an hour. The disappearance of the parasol is commented upon and the sergeant told off to search for it. Blagdon searches Violet Chichester's ib&ndbag. Among other things the superintendent produces the photograph of Hugh Monro! Superintendent Blagdon tries to discover the relations existing between Monro and the actress. Hugh' disclaims any but the merest acquaintance, Blagdon tells him that he and Miss Bourne will have to attend the inquest. The finding; of the photograph has disauietened G-wenie Bourne. She mounts her bicycle and rides off. Feeling _ very depressed. Kugh goes home, to find his greatest friend. John Milton, awaiting him there. CHAPTER 111.—(Continued), Hugh hesitated. /To tell the truth, he was " fed-up" with the whole occurrence, and had little desire to return to the spot. But something of Mi-ton's eagerness communicated itself to him, and he nodded in agreement. "All. right," he said, "come along and I'll take you there." John Milton was a naturalist, about ten years older than Hugh, and a man of whose shrewdness the latter had a considerable opinion. On second thoughts, he was not averse to having his advice and assistance in the matter. " The part that intrigues me, Hugh, is the disappearance of the parasol. Someone must have carried it off when your back was turned —there's no other explanation." " I fancy Blagdcn thinks I removed it myself, and hid'it for some reason.of my own!" ) " Blagdon's a fool," was the impatient reply, and without the imagination of a woodlouse." Hugh laughed. " Also," he remarked, "he's had a down on me ever since he summoned me for leaving my car with the lights not burning, and the Bench dismissed the case." " Oh, he'd never forgivG you for that. !Ah, here's the spot, is it?" as they came out on the bank of the backwater. The punt was still moored in the same -place, and Milton inspected it minutely from end to end. The superintendent had had it stripped of everything except the paddle and pole, and it was soon evident that nothing remained in it that- would afford the slightest clue to the mystery. Presently Milton reascended the bank and gazed round him. " You're quite right, Hugh," he agreed. *' The only possible concealment is in that copse yonder. I wonder—" " But the railings," Hugh broke in, " I don't believe anyone could climb them, liia"tHey corner rigfit down to the water this side." . " Ah, well," said the other thoughtfully, we'll see. Monro," he went on, " I'm going to borrow this punt for a few minutes. We shall have to stand the racket if Blagdon or any of his minions come back, but I'll risk that. I've got an idea!" He climbed back into the craft, and this time Hugh accompanied him. They cast off the mooring rope, and, using the paddle, Milton urged the punt slowly along the backwater toward the copse. He Kept close inshore, almost under a .line of stunted willows which overhung the water, and, every now and then, he stopped and sounded with the pole. Once he pointed to one of the trees, level with their heads. A small branch had been broken off, and was trailing in the water. He snapped this completely off, and tossed it in the bottom of the punt. A little further on they reached the copse, and, as Hugh had said, the enclosing railings, with their barbed wire, j ran right to the edge of the bank. But to them Milton paid little attention—his eyes were probing the tangle of undergrowth, which, in place of the willows, now fringed the backwater. The he pointed again, and smiled. " So much for your parasol problem!" he murmured. "Solved it?" Hugh asked quickly. Already some inkling of what was in the other's mind had occurred to him, but he waited for Milton to explain. ■-•' I think so," the botanist said quietly. !He leant over, and, with a pocket magnifying glass, examined the broken stalks of some plants upon the bank; then he submitted the willow twig to the same scrutiny, " Listen," be went on; " I may be wrong, but this is my idea of what happened. The person who lifted that parasol from the punt certainly sought the shelter of the copse, but his method of getting there was by water, and not by land. In other words, he waded under shelter of the willows until he reached this point, where he scrambled up the bank, incidentally bre&king of! these plants in his progress. You noticed that j I sounded with the pole as we went along -—it showed that the water is shallow enough for him to do this, although the general level would be about his chest. Where the bough was broken on the willow tree % T take it he slipped and grasped at the tree to steady himself My botanical knowledge tells me that both the twig and the plants were broken off about two hour#*ago r which would be just about the time you discovered - Miss Chichester." Hugh looked at his friend, and nodded. " A jolly good bit of reasoning," he admitted, and, pon my word, John, I believe you're right. Still, it infers one curious thing, you know—that this fellow, whoever he was, must have been actually .'hiding in the water under the trees while Miss Bourne and I were discussing the affair." , " Or crouching among them, further up the bank," Milton pointed out. "You didn't go along there, remember, until after you missed the parasol." " That's so, of course. Oh, well, now we're here, the thing is, I take it, to inspect this jolly old copse." Fastening the punt, they climbed up the bank, and almost immediately found themselves in a practically impenetrable tangle of trees, brambles and bnshes, the unchecked growth of years. There seemed no vestige of a path in any direction, and the only clear space was close to the water, where, twenty yards or so from the bank, stood a weather-beaten stone summer house, in whi,?h open embrasures took the place of windows, and to which there was no door. This they entered, and stared round at the damp, empty interior. In a faw moments Milton led the way outside again. " Obviously nothing there," he grunted, " and what abont all this wilderness, Hugh ? I don't see that we can do much good if we do force our way into it. Our man, if he came here, had only to dry himself in the sun, and make off when the coast was clear. By climbing along the lower branches of one of those tree's, he could clear the railings and drop off, and. depend upon It, that's what ha did .■da." ; . the parasol?" Hidden under his coat, or possibly VPJ *o* sunk in t,

A POWERFUL MYSTERY STORY, SUPERBLY TOLD.

(COPYRIGHT.)

Hugh looked at his companion with some surprise. Up to now, Milton's eagerness had been patent, and this sudden suggestion of his that the trail should be abandoned was puzzling. In fact, Hugh had a queer feeling that there was something behind it, and that some further notion was fermenting in the botanist's brain. But he knew that Milton was a secretive fellow, with his own way of doing things, and that he was unlikely to say anything on the subject until he chose. He shrugged his shoulders. "All right," he acquiesced; "let's get back before Blagdon finds out about our expedition. I don't Want to get further into his bad books." CHAPTER IV. Colonel James Winthrop leant across the dinner table to Hugh," " Extraordinary thing, this Chichester business, Monro," he observed, " and bad luck for you, happening just after you have arrived in the neighbourhood." " It is rather," the young man said, a trifle ruefully. " And matters weren't carried much forrader at the inquest today, were they?" "I suppose not; adjourned, wasn't it?" Hugh nodded. The inquest proceedings were still fresh in his mind. He and Gwen had described how they had found the body, and an eminent pathologist had detailed the result of his postmortem. Valvular heart trouble, he declared. was present, sufficient to have j caused Violet Chichester's death at any moment, but—and this was significant—he was not prepared yet to state categorically that this was the sole cause of death. The inquest was adjourned for him to make further examination. Blagdon's evidence, too, had been purely"formal, and in it be had omitted all mention of the finding of the £SO note, Hugh's photo, or the parasol incident, but Hugh guessed that the police had reasons of their own for suppressing these facts for the time being, and felt pretty sure that a good deal might be heard of them when the inquest was resumed. As Colonel Winthrop had hinted, the whole affair was unfortunate for him It was only a few months since the death of an aunt had loft him unexpectedly in possession of Callowdene, and the small estate which adjoined the colonel's wider domains. The latter, a retired Indian veteran, and a bachelor, had evinced a desire to be friendly, with the result that Hugh had been a more or less regular visitor to his place, Grange Hall, which was presided over by his sister, a faded, somewhat angular lady of uncertain yearsIt was here one night at dinner that he had met Gwennie Bourne and her mother, who were the colonel's tenants in a house about a mile away, and had at once been attracted by the girl's obvious frankness and sincerity, an attraction which, since then, had steadily increased. It was of this he was thinking, apropos the colonel's last remark. Gwen and her mother, were present again to-night, but there was a studied coolness in the former's manner toward him-which distressed him more than a little. He knew quite well, as Winthrop had hinted, that when certain things came out, they would set the tongue of local gossip wagging, but for this he cared little. What he did value was the opinion of the girl he* loved. " By the way," his tell, grizzled host resumed, " you were going to tell me something aiaout Milton, that botanist fellow, weren't you?" r " Yes, I was," he assented, and briefly he ran over the details of their joint expedition. to which Winthrop listened with obvious interest. " Cute chap, that," he observed, when Hugh had finished his recital, " and I shouldn't wonder if he hadn't to some extent hit the nail on the head. It's interesting to me, too, as that railed-in copse belongs to me." "To you!" Hugh ejaculated in surprise "I didn't know your property extended as far as that, colonel, and, as a matter of fact, I was going to ask_ you who that wilderness did belong to." Winthrop laughed. " Wilderness is a good description, ne admitted. " I suppose hardly anyone has entered that piece of wood for years— I certainly haven't. One of my predecessors put 'up those railings "round it for reasons of his own—to keep out poachers possibly—and since then it's simply run wild. I've often looked at it and thought it ought to be cleared, but I doubt if it s worth the expense. So Milton thought the parasol merchant went in there, did he?" " He did, and so do I, now." " Well, it's quite likely. I think I'll have to have the place cleared out after all. What about the punt—was anything found about that ?" Yes; Miss Chichester engaged it herself from Matthews' boat-house, poled it up the river", and evidently into the backwater. After that—well, no one knows!" " H'm," the colonel said thoughtfully. " It's a curious business, but I expect, in spite of that parasol mystery and the rest of it, that the poor girl died of natural causes. Don't you think so, Miss Bourne ?" " No, I don't," was the unexpected definite reply. " I can't explain, of course, but I believe there's something dreadfully sinister about the whole aflair." She looked straight at Hugh as she spoke, and the young man gained scant comfort from the expression in her eves. Possibly Miss Winthrop sensed the tension for she gave the signal to rise, and her brother turned to Hugh. " What about a hundred up at billiards, Monro, before we join the Indies ?" lie suggested. "I owe you a revenge for that last thrashing you gave me, don't I?" They played their game, and this time Hugh, unable-to concentrate, fell an easy victim. When finally they returned to the drawing room it was to find that Gwen pleaded a headache, had left early with her mother, and Hugh, after talking aimlessly for a while, also made his ex cuses as sfoon as he felt he decently could. Without her, the evening had lost whatever savour ii had possessed He slept badly that night. The death of Violet Chichester had got on his nerves and as he tossed from side to side ho lived again through the scenes that had followed his finding of her body. What intrigued him most, apart, of course, from her actual death, was the discovery of his own photograph in her possession, for this, he felt pretty certain, was the main reason for Gwen's altered manner toward him. Why should she be carrying this ? he asked himself, and where ori earth had she obtained it from ? From this, his thoughts passed to John Milton, and the painstaking procedure which had possibly unravelled the mystery of the disappearance of the parasol. " Clever fellow, Milton," he murmured to his pillow " Shouldn't wonder if he finds out something else. Worth a dozen Blagdons." So his mind ran on, until long after the light of dawn had stolen through his window. It was late, therefore, when he came down to breakfast, and scarcely had he sat down at the table when his telephone bei! rang. Colonel Winthrop's voice, low and agitated, came through from the other end. " That you, Monro? For heaven's sake come over at once; something dreadful has happened. In consequence of our talk last night, 1 went down this morning to that summer house of mine in the copse, and—and, just outside it, lying on the ground, I found John Milton. *. . ." He paused, as if to allow Hugh to take in the purport of his words, and with a gasp of horror the latter grasped his meaning " Vnu found Milton—you mean vou found him—" I found him dead—T fear murdered!" was the devastating reply. CHAPTER V. Hugh's thoughts, as he raced across th 6 fields toward the Hall, were a welter of chao3. Shocking as the finding of Violet Chichester's body had been, to some ex- , tent it had been, at least, an impersonal matter—he had known the girl too short a time for her to have taken any deep root in his life. " 1

But this was different. John Milton was the friend of years; Hugh's guide and counsellor ever since the days when he had fagged for him at achool. John dead! It could not be; it was impossible. But .Colonel Winthrop's fs,ce when they met was strained and sombre. " Come this way, Monro," he said briefly; "I will show you." He led the way toward the copse, skirting it until they were on the opposite side from that which Hugh had previously inspected. Here, as on the other flank, the encircling railing ran down to the water's edge, but it differed from the reverse side insomuch that set in it was a gate. In the lock of this the colonel inserted a key. which ho turned with obvious difficulty " Infernally stiff," he muttered, " from lack of use. Had to oil ft before I could get in at all this morning." Presumably, there had once been a path leading through the wood from the gate, but this had long ago been obliter ated by the spreading vegetation, and thev had to force their way through the dense undergrowth, which, here and there, showed signs of the colonel's previous passage. It wns now that Hugh voiced ( thc doubt that he was trying desperately to foster. "It was Milton you found, Colonel ? You are sure of that ?" , " Quite," was the gruff reply. " Never spoke to the chap, but I know him well by sight." The pushed on in silence until they reached the edge of the clearing in which the pagoda stood, and there, face down ward, close to the entrance of the sum-mer-house.®' Hugh saw the dread object which his first glance fold him was the body of his friend. With a queer throaty cry. he ran across and knelt down beside it. .Milton wore waders, thigh-high, such as fishermen use, and they told Hugh in a flash what had happened—up to a point. At some period or other the botanist must have determined to renew his investigations, had no doubt walked down the bank until he reached the rail ings. and had then waded round the end of these and climbed the bank into the copse. Of what happened lated there was ghastly enough evidence. The top of the skull was literally crushed in by some murderous blow. His cut and bloodstained cap lav about a yard away. " Better let him remain until the police, come!" Winthrop's warning voice checked Hugh's natural motion to turn the body over. That Milton was dead was evident at first sight. No human being could have survived that blow, and the corpse was stiff in the grip of rigor mortis. Hugh's face was like chalk as he straightened up. " You've informed the police ?" he asked huskily. The colonel nodded. " Immediately after I 'phoned to you. They should be here at any moment This is terrible, what ?" Hugh stared down at all that was left of the man whom he had liked and respected more than any other man in the world, and he shuddered. " Henceforth," he declared, " I'll devote every penny of my money, and every minute of my time, to discover the brute who did this, and when I do—he shall pay the penalty." As was only to be expected, Winthrop was far cooler, far less moved than the younger man. He had in his time seen death in many forms, but even he appeared to find the spectacle distasteful. He averted his eyes, and faced Hugh. "I'm with you, Monro," ho said quietly, " but something tells ma that this affair will prove very difficult to fathom," A brooding silence fell between them, and it was evident that Hugh could hardly | trust himself to speak. But at length he made the effort. "You found him this morning, Colonel?" " Just after breakfast. I'm usually an early riser—most men with Indian service are—but last night, for some reason or other, I got thinking of poor Milton there and found sleep difficult. Consequently, I was half an our earlier than usual, hurried through the meal, and set off to have a look at this place which I haven't seen for years. As soon as I reached the clearance 1 spotted him—and here,' if I mistake not, come the police." The sound of voices filtered from beyond the copse, and Winthrop raised his own and directed the newcomers to pass through the gate. They arrived, the same trio as before, Blagdon, Sergeant Jackson and the doctor, Marshall, and it was evident at once that some of the superintendent's customary pomposity had deserted him. To be called out twice in a few days to inspect a dead body was something beyond his ken, and had a sobering influence. Moreover, from what Winthrop had told him on the telephone, the presertt occasion pointed undoubtedly to foul play. There was none of the ambiguity connected with the discovery of Violet Chichester. He caught his breath at sight of the grim evidence that it would be his duty to unravel, and even the doctor rose shaken from that relic of violent death. Killed about midnight probably; murder. I should say, undoubtedly. No man could inflict those injuries on himself." Briefly, Colonel Winthrop recounted the circumstances attending his finding of the bodv. and Blagdon turned to Hugh. " Friend of yours, wasn't lie, Mr. Munro ?" " My best friend." was the husky replv. The superintendent's eves were searching. They summed up the young man's patent grief and misery Tlis voice had a softness foreign to it when 4 he spoke again. Don't take it too hardly, sir Pray ! God, we'll find the chap who did it." And from that moment Hugh knew that the breach between the policeman and himself was healed Blagdon remained in thought for a moment, and then he took the wisest decision of his career. " I'll get in touch with the Chief Constable." he declared, " and urge that Scotland Yard be called in without delay." Colonel Winthrop glanced at him, as if there were qualifies in Blagdon he had riot gauged before " If in any way I can be of assistance, command me. superintendent," he said. (To b-3 continued on Rnturday next,)