THE JAPANESE PARASOL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19780, 29 October 1927, Page 14 (Supplement)

THE JAPANESE PARASOL.

A POWERFUL MYSTERY STORY, SUPERBLY TOLD.

CHAPTER Xl.—(Continued,)

Had Grange Hall not been upwards of a mile away, and that morning's episode not have happened, it is probable that she would have hurried off to acquaint Colonel Winthrop of what was taking place in the copse. But it was likely that by the time she got there and back the man would long ago have vanished, nor, under the circumstances, did she wish to meet the colonel again so soon. She was thus left to act upon her own resources. Prudence, perhaps, should have bade her continue on her way, and leave matters as they were, but in some ways Gwemie Bourne was a girl of unusual character. Fear had little place in her make-up, and she had all a woman's curiosity. That stealthy entrance into the wood intrigued her. It savoured of mystery, and mystery of late had been present in full measure. Suppose that, by a little observation, she could gain soma light that would help to pierce the veil. With no very definite plan of action in her" head, therefore, she moved swiftly over the grass toward the gate, and when she reached it she found that it had not been relocked. That fact decided her. »Without ctoppicg to heed the cooler counsels of reason) she, too, slipped inside. It was darker in the wood than she had expected, and, momentarily, the prospect «of pushing further among the trees brought her to a pause. It was the first time, remember, that she had ever entered the copse, and its sinister associations began to make themselves felt upon her spirit. She was within an ace of turning back. But then the latent obstinacy in her nature reasserted itself. The conviction grew stronger that what she had seen had some bearing upon the bizarre series of events of which the finding of Violet Chichester had been the first. She listened; there was no sound of the man she was stalking. Something in the nature of a track seemed to open amid the undergrowth. She moved slowly forward, and, with little inkling where she -was being led, took the way to the pagoda. But to her at the time it appeared that she was merely wandering aimlessly among the trees, and her eventful sudden emergence upon the clearing gave her something of a shock. It was here, at this verv spot, she recalled, that John Milton liad met his death. The thought shook her steady nerve, and made her give some hsed at last to the insecurity of her own position. And then/ in a flash, excitement had her again in its grip, and she forgot her growing apprehension at the sight that the clearing afforded. Her eyes, accustomed to the dim light beneath the trees, were able to take in every detail of the scene—one almost incredible in the evening twilight of an English wood.. On one side of the clearing the whitcturbaned native she had followed squatted on his haunches, his whole attention fixed upon the basket which he had placed before him on the ground. It was this absorption, no doubt, which prevented his hearing Gwen's —to native ears—by no means noiseless approach. One thing was certain—he had no idea that he was overlooked. In his left hand the girl saw that he held something that had the appearance, at a distance, of a leather bottle —and was, in fact, exactly that. His right hand was empty. He was quite motionless, his eyes upon the basket. For what seemed to Gwen an age, nothing else happened, and then all at once the native gave vent to a low but distinct hiss—and immmediately from the mouth of the basket there reared itself a long, swaying, menacing shape that made her gasp. She knew well enough what it was, one of the most deadly reptiles in the world, the dreaded cobra of India. For an instant the hooded head of the snake poised in mid-air, thrsatening and malignant. Then, with a movement indescribably swift, the man's thin, brown arm shot forward and his unoccupied right hand grasped its neck at the very moment that the snake itself appear to strike. Indeed the watching girl felt certain at first that the cobra's fangs must be imbedded in his other hand—and then she saw how man's skill had outwitted reptilian cunning. It • was the little leather bottle that had been the recipient of the infuriated snake's attack. Fascinated, Gwen realised well enough what she was witnessing—the deliberate extraction by a snake-charmer of the venom from the deadly poison glands. For what purpose ? Even then, she asked herself the question. Possibly, under the stimulus of her excitement, she made some involuntary movement, for, with a sudden sweep, the native thrust the cobra back into the basket, clapped on the lid, and stared round suspiciously. Hardly daring to breathe, she stood stock still. She did not need telling what discovery might mean to her. She was in the position of one who witnesses forbidden rites. The knowledge of the penalty she might be called upon to pay had already begun to sap her courage. Finally, as if reassured, the snakecharmer allowed the tenseness of his attitude to relax. He peered closely into the bottle, and Gwen saw him shake his head, - as if dissatisfied with the contents. Then once again his brown hand shot out, and tipped the lid off the basket. The former proceeding was re-enacted. A second time that malevolent head, with its darting tongue, raised itself aloft; a second time its keeper's hand hovered to seize i% as it struck, and guide its fangs to the receptacle designed to receive the poison. But on this occasion the drama had a different ending. It may have been a momentary carelessness, born of the ease of long usage; the slightest wandering of attention, caused by the vague suspicions to which he had been a prey just before; the minutest miscalculation of hand and eye. But, whatever it was, it spelt tragedy—tragedy stark and irrevocable. As "before, the snake struck —struck, perhaps, a shade quicker than usual in the rage engendered by its unceremonious bundling back into the basket—as before, that lean brown hand darted out to grasp its neck—and this time grasped the empty air. Faster than Gwen's eye could follow, the cobra reached its objective. There cams a shriek of fear and agony, and the brown man sprang to his feet, hurling from him the reptile whose fangs had pierced his forearm. Then he spun round, staggered a few paces, and fell—to squirm in dreadful fashion ois the ground. So much, transfixed with horror, Gwen saw, until a rustling in the bushes near her, which she believed might be the now invisible snake, struck terror to her very fouL With a strangled cry, she broke from her concealment and fled in blind panic across the clearing toward the summer-house, which in some vague, nebulous /fashion seemed to offer her sanctuary from that writhing thing of death. She stumbled up the steps, and dashed to the furthest -confines of the nrcular room. Crouching there, her straining eyes upen the opening, she saw the cobra's head rear itself above the steps—and then, in that moment of her extremity, nature failed her. She sank down fainting, and the snake i slid silently toward her across the floor. , CHAPTER XII. ; Sitting alone in his first-class carriage ] of the Thames Valley train, which he ' had chosen in the hope that he might be left undisturbed, Detective-Inspector Walter Lucas ruminated on the result of his visit to the museum. The pencilled notes and plans he had copied from the book were oh his knee, and his jaws Parked mechanically as he read through sacra again and again until he could

BY ELLIOT BAILEY.

(COPYRIGHT.)

literally have repeated them, and drawn : the plans from memory. Then he placed them to his pocket-book with almost reverent care, and leant back with closed ■ eyes. Hugh was wailing for him at Hengrave . station, for the inspector had good--1 naturedjy promised to let him know if anything eventuated from his search. Corning along, Lucas had asked himself , again why he had broken his almost inl variable rule of working and had taken | ™? ls young man, partially at least, into fua confidence in preference to seeking the assistance of one of his subordinates at the Yard, and had had to confess that i there was no very good reason save his i instinctive liking for the lad. Later, no doubt, it would be necessary to call in s another trained helper, but first of all be more sure of his ground. ' Well," Monro asked, when they were clear of the station, " any liick ?" A certain amount," the C:I;D. man 1 admitted. " The book, of course, was [ there, and I found it—interesting." i Hugh regarded him quizzically. He . realised at once that his companion had no intention at present of divulging what * precisely it was that he had discovered, and, wisely, he made no attempt to pump , him. He guessed that, if he thought it , the other would tell him in his own good time. ' " The next step ?" he hazarded. [ "What is that to be?" " The same as last night," was the [ prompt reply, " I'm going* up to the copse again. Oh, you can come, too, if ■ you like," he added, as he saw the shade of disappointment which crossed Hugh's ! features at his use of the personal pro- • noun. " You'll think I've got a mania ( for that belt of trees, Monro. Weil, per- ; haps I have, but this time I propose to [ visit it at a different hour—midnight . seems too fashionable a period for my Eurposes. Can you be ready in, say, two ours? Daylight will be failing then." ' "Of course, I can," was the eager , response. " Winthrop rather upset your L plans last night, didn't he ?" l " To some extent, yes. On the other i hand, he may possibly have furthered them." ' And with that enigmatic statement ( Hugh had, perforce, to be content. ( Thus it came about that ten minutes after Gwen had ventured into the wood in the wake of the white-turbaned ( stranger with his burden of ill-omen the man she loved and the detective also i reached the gate. A hedge which divided , one field from another had prevented their seeing her in the distance, and Lucas gave ; a little mutter of disgust when he observed the gate to be unfastened. " Good heavens," he growled, " is someone here again ? Are we never to get ' this place to ourselves ?" He hesitated for a moment, as if debat-, ing whether to postpone their expedition to another time, and then shrugged his shoulders. . " Oh, well," he said, " we're here, so I suppose we might as well go in." Knowing their way far better than the girl, they made much quicker progress through the undergrowth than she had done, and they were already close to the clearing when that dreadful scream rang out which denoted the snake-charmer's doom. For an instant they stopped, appalled, and then simultaneously broke into a run. But when they emerged from the bushes all was already over for the wretched man. The swift poison, racing through his veins, had done its deadly work. They were within an ace of stumbling over his inanimate body. Going down on his knees at his side. Lucas enveloped him with the beam of his flashlight. "My God!" he murmured softly. "My God! A man who has died from cobra-bite is not a pretty sight, and Hugh felt physically sick as he regarded this fresh victim, whose end was to both of them, for a moment, another mystery. -Gazing into each other's white faces, for even Lucas* iron nerves were not proof against this sudden shock, it seemed to them then as if this piece of ground must be accursed. Beyond speech hiteiself, Hugh waited for the other to take the lead. And then, while the seconds ticked by in a silence so profound that they felt they could hear the very flutter of the wings of death, from the gloom of the nearby pagoda there came the short, sharp crash of a pistol shot, followed by another, shivering the unnatural quietude into a thousand phantom pieces whose fall seemed to mingle with the echoes of the shots. The spell was broken. His own weapon drawn, Lucas leapt for the entrance of the summer-house, Hugh close upon his heels, and in the damp interior of that lonely building the torch showed up a curious scene. Revolver in hand, Colonel Winthrop was bending over Gwen's still form, and on the floor, still wriggling and squirming in its death agonies, was the headless body of a monstrous snake. CHAPTER Xin. Hugh's first agonised thought was for the girl. With the remembrance of that dreadful object outside in his mind, he tore across and went down beside the colonel, who had pillowed her head on his arm—and immediately, with unutterable thankfulness, he realised that his fears were unfounded. Pale she was, with the pallor of one visited by overwhelming terror, but even as he arrived she opened her eyes, and, seeing him bending over her, instinctively her hand sought his. tt "Hugh," she murmured, "Hugh, dear. A moment or two later seeing that she had shaken off her faint, they lifted her from the floor between them to the stone seat on the pagoda. Both stood so that she should not see the writhing thing upon the floor, whose movements now were little more than spasmodic jerks of muscular contraction, and Hugh turned to Winthrop. " You saved her, sir ?" he whispered. " You saved her from —that?" The colonel nodded. He, too, was pale, and more moved than Hugh would ever have believed this gaunt, self-contained man would be. Yet when he bent his gaze on the youngster his face wore an aspect that left the other disturbed and* puzzled. Except that he could see no reason for it, lig would havG said that it was a look of enmity. " Yes," he muttered. "I saved her from that." AH this time Lucas had been standing silent. He had made no attempt to assist with Gwen, but while the others were engaged his eyes had taken in every nook and cranny of the summer-house, and finally, from the ghastly reptile on the ground, thev dwelt on Winthrop himself. " Colonel ' Winthrop," he said, and his tone was curt and frosty, I should be glad to have your account of what has been happening here. There is a dead man outside—dead, I can guess now, from snake-bite —and here I find this, and the wave of his hand was comprehensive. Leaving the fast-recovering Gwen to Hugh's ministrations, the colonel turned to Lucas. , , L , , " I should say," he remarked, that Miss Bourne would be likely to give you a clearer amount, since sho was here before I was." " That is a version we can discuss later. I want your version—first." Hugh was surprised and somewhat nettled, at the inspector's brusqueness. For himself, he was only conscious of a feeling of supreme gratitude toward the man whose accurate aim mast have saved Gwen from the fearful end of the miser- * able wretch outside—he shuddered at the I prospect. He, too, was all agog to hear what bad brought her and the colonel ] there, to hear anything that would shed i light on these fresh amazing happenings, i but hs saw no reason why Lucas should ] be—almost offensive. But Winthrop did not seem to take umbrage at the Scotland Yard man's ] attitude. " Very well," he said slowly, "I will ; tell you ail I know—ib isn't much. I had • just entered the copse when I heard a cry i and rushing in its direction saw that !

aativa twisting on the ground. , Looking round, I was just in time to spot that brute of a snake sneaking in through the doorway. Realising at once what had happened to the native, and knowing the folly of leaving a cobra at large—for there is no limit to their activities, they can swim rivers like a fish—l followed with the intention of putting paid to its account. . ~ _ " To my horror, directly I got inside, I saw Miss Bourne lying insensible against the wall* and the cobra making straight for her. I fired twice, and, thauk heaven I did not miss—one bullet would have been enough. I stooped over Miss Bourne, and it was then that you and Monro entered." " How did Miss Bourne come to be In the summer-house ? "

" How can I tell you ? I never set eyes on her until I entered. I say once more —thauk heaven I did." There was no mistaking the genuiness of Winthrop's emotion on that point, and it found an echo in Hugh's heart at least. He was about to express something of the kind to the colonel when Lucas forestalled him with another question. " What are a native and a cobra doing in your copse ? " Winthrop's ,„eyes narrowed. For the first time ne seemed to become aware of the suspicion in the other's voice. " Goodness knows," he replied, evunly. " I won't say I never saw the man before, because I have. The man called at mv house this morning. Apparently he had learnt that I was an old Anglo-Indian, and he came along in the hope of inducing me to witness some of the usual snake-charm-ing tricks. But these were no novelty ( me, so I wasted little time on him, but paid him the English equivalent of a rupee and packed him off. I saw no more of him tiu—now, inspector," he ended abruptly. "Is this wood of mine bewitched ? "

" It would seem to be a little unhealthy to people who venture in," Lucas responded drily. He appeared to be about to add to his comment, and then he checked himself and turned to the girl. " Better, Miss Bourne ? " he asked in a lighter tone. " Able to answer a question or two ? "

Her hand was in Hugh's, and he gave it a reassuring squeeze. " Yes," she answered. " I'm all right now. Shall I tell you everything from the beginning, " " That certainly would be best, if you feel up to it." " Very well then; I was walking across the fields this evening when I saw a man in a white turban entering the wood. I was rather curious about him, as I had seen him before—during the morning when I was going down Colonel Winthrop's drive —so I slipped in after him to try and spot what he was up to. Had I known what. I should see. ... She shivered for a moment at her recollections, and then, pulling herself together in a way that Lucas admired, proceeded to tell what had happened up to the moment when, with the snake gliding toward her, she lost consciousness. " So you saw nothing of the colonel ? " the detective remarked, after she had finished.

" Nothing; ho must have arrived immediately after I fainted." " H'mph," Lucas commented'; rather grumpily. He turned once more to Winthrop, and his tone was still hard and vaguely hostile.

"It seems strange," he said, with significant deliberation, " that you shoidd have seen nothing of Miss Bourne before, since you must have been in the wood before either of them." This assertion was so at variance with Winthrop's own statement that Hugh was startled. JFhe colonel, however, remained unperturbed.

"On what assumption do you base that, Inspector ? " he asked quietly. "On this," was the emphatic reply. " For the native to have passed through the gate it must have been unlocked. You and I have the only keys. Therefore, I maintain that you must have preceded, and not followed, both Miss Bourne and the man with the cobra into the copse."

A slight smile lightened Winthrop's stern features.

"An admirable piece of reasoning, Lucas. I must, as a matter of fact, plead guilty to carelessness in leaving the gate unfastened, but that was from a visit earlier in the day. Unfortunately for your theory regarding this evening, I did not enter by tne gate. I came by water. Following poor Milton's lead, I had been inspecting .the back entrance to the copse. You will find my boat moored to the bank now."

The detective bit his lip. This seemed checkmate with a vengeance. Without a word he strode from the pagoda, and down to the water's edge'.

That the boat was there, as Winthrop had stated, the sculls neatly ranged inboard. Lucas regarded it for a moment, and then pulled out his watch. Ten minutes only had elapsed since the dying man's cry had sent Hugh and him plunging forward. He bent over and handled the blades of the sculls. They were bone dry. CHAPTER XIV, Lucas went thouhtfully back to the summer-house. For reasons of his own he decided to say nothing of his discovery anent the sculls, nor to make mention c tho fresh train of speculation that discovery had started in his mind. He met Winthrop's slightly sardonic gaze with a very passable simulation of dejection. " The boat's there all right, Colonel," he admitted. " I'm afraid one is apt to jump to wrong conclusions sometimes." With a wave of his hand Winthrop accepted the C.I.D. man's apology, also accepted the C.I.D. man's apologia, also that the matter was of no great moment to him. He was careful to show no elation at the other's mistake. Much remained to be done. For the third time, the ambulance must be brought to that ill-omened spot to carry away one who was beyond all human aid, a fact that was not without its effect upon the colonel. " This cursed copse! " he exclaimed Biterly. " I'll have the railings down, and every bush and tree razed to the ground. To think that all these years nothing has happened here, and now three deaths, one after the other. It makes one think there must be a curse upon the place." "It certainly begins to grow monotonous," the detective acquiesced. But "it's an ill wind—" One thing at least had emerged very, clearly from all this welter of confusion, and that was that the breach between Gwen and Hugh was healed. The girl's deadly peril, her obvious relief at seeing Hugh among her rescuers, had drawn them together again as nothing else, perhaps, could have done. Explanation there might be between them later on, but misunderstanding had already fled, and was likely to have little place in their lives hereafter. Tacit and mutual perception had arrived instead. But to linger any longer at the copse was to do no good, and together the whole party went to Winthrop's house, whence the telephone messages were put through which acquainted the astounded Blagdon with this third grisly episode of the mystery. Then Lucas made his adieu to meet the superintendent, and Hugh and tho girl disappeared upon business of their own. The Scotland Yard man judged whimsically that he would see little more of Hugh that particular evening, and, to tell the truth, was glad. He, too, had his programme mapped out, and this time he wished to carry it out alone. It was curious, he reflected, but each time he had set out to that fata! wood the object of his visit had been baulked, and each time it had been Colonel Winthrop who had turned up, as though he spent most of his hours in the vicinity. What was he doing there? Lucas ask* himself—trying to solve the conundrum on lines of his own. The inspector wondered.

This snake-charmer affair was an added complication, lending an almost fantastic touch to what was already bizarre enough. From Gwen's account of what had transpired before the native made his irretrievable slip, Lucas had little doubt as to the meaning of his actions. For what sinister purpose had he been collecting the cobra's venom in that leather bag ? In due course, the native's body, the bottle-like receptacle, and the remains of the snake itself, were carried away, and, after listening to Supt. Blagdon's loudvoiced mystification, Lucas had the remainder of the evening to himself—to be employed as he had already planned*

; But this time, leaving Hengrave with ' the last stroke of eleven dinning in his | ears, it was not toward the copse by the , back-water that he set his steps —he felt > bo had had enough of that for the pres--1 ent—but Winthrop's house, Grange Hall, ' that was bis objective—a rambling, Eliza- ' bethan mansion, whose wjwllw counterr parts in the district were Hugh Monto s [ and Milton's adjacent abodes. It was an ' expedition, by tne way, not wholly uncon- ' oected with his visit to the Museum. He moved cautiously as ho approached 1 the place. He had had some experience ' lately of the colonel's nocturnal wander- ' ings, and had no desire to meet him, with the consequent necessity of making some explanation for his own midnight prowlings round his demesne. As he went up ' the drive, however, he advanced with more confidence from the knowledge that, unlike most country gentlemen, the colonel I kept no dogs. The house itself was set among trees, . some of noble size and as ancient as the I building tboy sheltered, and at the back, terraced gardens sloped down to the park- , like fields which stretched away toward ' the backwater and the copse. Slowly and carefully, Lucas made a circuit of the whole structure. In his mind's eye were set clearly the plans he had copied from the Museum book, and he wished to verify their accuracy by ' comparison with the original. With satI isfaction, he noted that they were correct, a good earnest for further investigations ha meant later on to undertake. Returning with noiseless footsteps along the upper terrace, he noted that all the windows of the house were in darkness, ' save one. From its position) he knew this 1 to,be Winthrop's study, into which he and Monro had been conducted by the colonel the night before, and where_ he had brought off his feat of legerdemain with , the latter's revolver. A blind covered its French window which opened out upon ! the gravel path of the terrace, effectually obstructing any view within. This the inspector found regrettableHe would have liked a peep at the room s ' occupants—if any. 1 He was still eyeing it in disgruntled fashion when fortune favoured him. A shadow appeared upon the blind —to be precise two shadows, those of a man and a woman. Cast by the strong light be--1 hind, they were like silhouettes upon a moving picture screen. They approached, drew apart, and approached again. The man's long arms ' were raised as if in remonstrance —or denunciation. Then all at once they shot j forward, and grasped the woman's throat. , For the barest fraction of an instant ' Lucas hesitated before he leapt forward and rapped smartly upon the windowpane. Then he raced away, and flung himself full-length behind an herbaceous bed. The shadows fell apart—the light on the blind suddenly dimmed as if an inner curtain had been drawn across the win- ! dow; and presently what Lucas «xpected happened. Round the corner of the house came a man's dim figure, a torch in his hand flashing here, there and everywhere. He turned the prying beam into a belt of shrubbery which he searched from end to end, and, going to the coping of the terrace, let it play on the ground below. Only the insignificant bed of flowers behind which the detective was stretched escaped his scrutiny—it certainly seemed to offer small facility for concealment. At length he withdrew again inside the house. The light in the study went wholly out, and afterwards two of the upstairs bedrooms became illuminated in its stead. Inspector Lucas rose and stretched himself, and, more thoughtful even than he had come, crept silently away. CHAPTER XV. The next few days that passed did not ostensibly bring Lucas any nearer to a solution, and Hugh began to wonder on what lines the detective was working. Not that, to tell- the truth, he perturbed himself very greatly over the latter's " comings and goings these days, for his own were full of an interest which occupied all his time. With the rebirth of their confidence and friendship, he had given Gwen a full' account of his dealings with the dead actress, a thing he realised now he would have been wiser to have done from the first, and following her reception of this he had plucked up courage to ask her the momentous question he had been about to do when the finding of Violet Chichester upset all his calculations, and ushered in the weird series of events which had seemed to pull them ever further apart. In a word, he had asked her to marry him. She had consented, and both were now engrossed, to the elimination of all else, in the first halcyon period of their engagement. The question of the disappearance of his photo from her room, and its subsequent turning up among the dead girl's possessions, stiL. remained inexplicable, but both of them had agreed that only time could bring an explanation, and it no longer serve as a basis for misunderstanding. . Regarding that interview with Colonel Winthrop, the girl had decided to say nothing. She wished neither to anger nor upset Hugh, nor to cause bad blood between him and the retired soldier, and, after her very definite expression of opinion, she did not think that Winthrop was likely to reopen, the discussion. But if Lucas was apparently idle he had by no means allowed his intention to wander from .the matter in hand. Once again, as he had already done many times before, he worked with infinite patience through the notes he had made of the case—the stark body of the beautiful Violet Chichester in the punt, the missing parasol, the £SO note in the cigarette, Hugh Monro's portrait, the astuteness of John Milton and his dreadful end, the snake-charmer, and his even more terrible fate, that strange shadow-drama on the blind of Winthrop's study—surely, he tola himself, the most extraordinary set of events he had ever come in contact with, each leading with apparent inexorability to the next, and at the same time with no chain of connection that he could yet see—clearly at least. And, brooding over most of them like an atmosphere, the flitting presence of the Indian colonel. One of these intervening days the inspector spent in revisiting the Yard, where he put forward certain premises which eventually received the somewhat grudging endorsemnet of his chief. He returned to Hengrave with a fresh mandate to carry on with a free hand—to face, as it happened, a new and decisive phase of the mystery. Possibly the strain of his preoccupation showed itself in his face and manner. 4t all events Colonel Wintnrop remarked upon the fact when he met him in the main street of Hengrave. " You're looking hipped, Lucas—and I'm sure I don't wonder. I've got a suggestion." Yes?" the C.I.D. man answered. Since that night in the garden of Grange Hall, ho was conscious of viewing the other in a somewhat different light. It was difficult to get into his tone the cordiality he felt should be there. He would have given much to know tho thoughts that were passing behind the colonel's inscrutable eyes at that moment. " Yes ?" he said again. "It's this, Lucas. Why not take a holiday ? I've a bungalow down at Cowham — a charming spoi on a tidal creek. Part of Bichester harbour you know; the place where Canute sat by the waves, with the oldest church in England. Quite unspoiled by trippers, as yet. You'd revel in it. A Saturday to Monda. surely might be managed—clear your brain, and all that ? I've a topping little motorboat down there, and we might take young Monro along and do some fishing. What d'you say ? Worth considering, what ?" Was it? Lucas' first impulse wa. to refuse, to hint that the colonel surely could not expect him to go gallivanting about on holiday in the midst of his investigations. Then, with a sudden flash of intuition, he saw how this very holiday might be made to forward those investigations, might be the means of creating a certain opportunity he desired. Even if it didn't, there was something in what Winthrop said. A Saturday to Monday would make little difference, and the breath of sea air might well send him back to work refreshed and invigorated. He decided to accept. XTo be continued on Saturday next.). ~