THE BADGE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20242, 30 April 1929, Page 20

THE BADGE.

/ BY BEN BOLT.

CHAPTER XXVI. It was over an early breakfast next morning that Darling explained thft programme lie proposed to follow. " There'll be a car here in an hour to run us to Bridport, and by the time we get there, I expect Bishop will bo waiting for us. He's bringing suitable raiment with him, and when we've changed we can make straight for London. I thought it best for you to keep clear of railways, Dorrington." "Yes! A slip now would be awkward." " Besides the car will be quicker. And when' we've delivered mademoiselle hero at Clare/ice Gate we'll go straight to Mention, where there's a plane waiting for us. Thank heaven, my job makes passports simple." "Us?" asked Dorrington. "Exactly whom ?" " You, myself, Tinker Dick and Bishop." " We're all hefty men, and more than n match for Mallinson and Carver and the Grot he woman if they should show up together." "Yes! You will go straight to Dauvrny ?", " Certrftnly! Walton will go to Lanson, which saves us bother there. If ho ficoopes the trio there, well and good. We shan't bo worried by them. But if lie misses them, or if Mallinson anyway gives them tho slip, we shall be at Dauvray waiting for them or him as the caso may be."

" I don't think Mallinson will slip Carver /easily. The latter suspected Mallinson last night, I'm sure. It will make him wakeful. It will be all or none whom we shall meet at Dauvray. " You may be right. . . Tho one risk is that Mallinson may do what you think he can't do, and slipping from the others get to-Dauvray first. There's one consolation, however, and that is that he'll have to hunt a little. Even if those trenches haven't been filled in, they must be in a pretty ruinous state by this. It will take him a bit to find what he is seeking, and if he s before us we sliall probably surpise him on the job. "We must! If he got away it would mean the loss of Celie's fortune, and what it would mean for mo you can guess." "Yes my son; I know. But where you are concerned, Mallinson, so fai as }.e knows, lias no need for haste, and doubtless thinks he has me scotched. All his concern will be to shake off the precious pair who are with him. And once he has done that, he will make a leisurely' journey to Dauvray quite sure of attaining his objective. And there he will receive the surprise of his evil life." "I devoutly hope so!" answered Dorrington thoughtfully, as his glance went' to the girl. "We must save Celie's fortune." " What do I care for that ? ' asked Cclie quickly. " Those gems on which my father set so much store arc nothing, if only you can be delivered from—from the .shadow of the prison-house ... As you must be, mon cher," she added desperately. " Do : not fear!" replied her lover calmly •ilt is ip my heart that deliverance comes 1 I am sWe of that. Evil cannot triumph for ever, or I should have died last night. You heard my cry, and I was saved. And to-morrow or the next day I shall emerge from the dark shadow of the past. I feel it in my bones. ' There's a divinity that shapes our ends,' you know, and what that end will be. Tam sure! The way of true love " He broke off as Tinker Dick entered the room. " The old pony's out to grass, and nobody'll steal the cart. I did what you told me major, and the stock-in-trade is stacked at that house of yours. . . Now I'm/ready to take the road of adventure." " Good! Ah! there's the car tooting."

.Ten minutes later they started, and as Darling had anticipated, found Bishop waiting them at Bridport, and by noon arrived at Clarence Gate Gardens. There they lingered but a little while, before going off to the aerodrome, and in the few minutes available Dorrington and Celie found themselves alone.

" Keep a good heart, my dear," he whispered. "We shall save your fortune. vet."

"My fortune!" she whispered. " Youare that ! What are a few stones " "Stones!" Dorrington laughed gaily. "Is it thus you speak of priceless things ?" " I would give them all to redeem you from. . . from "

" I know," he whispered. " But, sweetheart, I hope we may save both the stones and myself." She clung to him while she whispered apprehensively: " You must be careful. Mr. Mallinson is an evil man. It he finds himself thwarted at the last, he will be desperate. He is like that. What he will do, who knows ? But he will be a wolf! I know hirr. You must beware of his fangs.' " Not a fang shall touch me, never fear. Tliink, if be is alone—there will be four of us. If the others are with him we shall be four to three, and of the three one will be a woman."

" But you must not hold tliat woman lightly. No! She is evi! as Mr. Mallinson himself. For hiin she will do anything. I am very sure of that. She has a passion for him " "So much the better! That will turn fo gal! of hatred. lam sure that Mallinson means (o sell—to cheat, you comprehend ? both her and the man Carver. .Ami when she realises the fact, she will turrj and rend him like a tigress. That is my liope. For it I shall pray." " .Anrl I ! Every moment that you are away from me. Oh, my dear one . . till you return, I shall be in anguish." " When I return," answered Dorrington, quietly, " I shall, I hope, have nothing to fear." "But. if you should have?" she whispered. " Why, then, wo must go our ways apart." "No!" interrupted the girl quickly. " I will die first. All these years I have cherished the thought of you. . . Do you think I could be content to let, you languish and die in that terrible prison ? If you cannot save vouself, then we must go away . . . Oh, I know what you think! But love is more than exile, and in far places of the earth we can make n home. No one will know us. And together we shall be very happy." He felt her hands clinging fiercely. .There was the fiamo of a great love in her dark eyes. Her bosom rose and fell and her lips were tremulous as she lifted her face to him. Outside there was the sound of voices. Steps in the hall reached them and still her arms clung. Suddenly she hid her face on his! shoulder. " Oh, mon cher", she whispered brokenly. " You must return . . to me, or I shall die." That whisper moved him beyond all things else. " I .will return,," he said. "No one cl/all deny 1115 that happiness, least of all that scoundrel! Keep a good heart, my dear one—" " Ready Dorrington ?" Darling's voice told him that the moment for departure had arrived. Ho ki,ssed Olio, and her arms dropped from him, and two seconds later his friend entered the room. " Good-bye, mademoiselle. In three days or four we phall bring your fortuije."

BRILLIANT ROMANCE OF BURIED TREASURE.

(COPYRIGHT.)

"My fortune!" she broke in. "Are you so sure of that, Major Darling? Here—"

She broke off, her dark eyes glowing as they rested on Dorrington, and Darling laughed with complete understanding.

" I daresay you are right, mademoiselle, Though half the world would not understand."

"You will bring him back to me?" asked Celio impulsively. " By tho scruff of tho neck if necessary," ho answered lightly. " But such drastic action will not ho needed . . . you will see, mademoiselle. He will como to you like a homing bird. . . But you must excuse him now. Every moment is of importance, and the car to take us to Hcndon waits. Wo start now!"

They departed on tho word, and as the car swept down the street, at the window of tho fiat Dorrington saw a girl's face, very white, with dark eyes that burned for him.

"God be kind to her!" his heart prayed. " God bo very kind." The vision of that face was with him all the way to Hendon. When tho aeroplane taxied along the ground and then lifted itself liko a bird, he saw nothing of the spectators, visioning still that white face and burning eyes, and when flying toward the coast, it was not the roar of sound made by the propeller and the engines .'bat filled his ears, but a girl's broken whisper: " You must return to . . me, or I shall die."

" God help m.e." His lips shaped the words, but did not utter them aloud; and for a while he sat there lost in thought, oblivious of all things—his companions, tho aeroplane winging its swift flight, the grey sea beneath, the two coast lines, gleaming in the sun. The completeness of Celie's surrender, instead of exalting him, induced a feeling of unworthiness. No man deserved so priceless a treasure, least of all himself. Yet the treasure was his. It had come unsought in these days of strain. But it had been waiting for him through tho years, ever since that night when, himself in an evil case, he had sought to save a mere girl from a terrible fate, and in doing so had enshrined himself in her maiden dreams. Darling's voice breaking suddenly on his thoughts asserted itself to their discomfiture :

" There's the packet crossing. I'd give a crown to know if Mallinson is aboard her. It's likely, I should think." " Maybe." Ho looked down at the steamer flattened in the bird's-eye-view it afforded him. " If he is we shall be well ahead of him."

" We'll give him the' surprise of his evil life," replied the major with conviction. " Whatever may be the case in regard to his accomplices, he won't be expecting us —least of all, you." Dorrington nodded. " It will surprise him. But I don't expect him to reach Dauvray alone, unless he takes some desperate step to rid himself of Carver and the woman. They won't be shaken off easily, and knowing Mallinson, the man at least will be on the watch against any evil plan on Mallinson's part." " I wonder if Walton is ahead of us," said Darling, then with the French coast lifting itself clearly to view, gave his attention to other things. An hour later after a meal hurriedly taken, they transferred to a car, and with a French chauffeur at the wheel, started in the direction of Dauvray. The way lay through a countryside that had already lost almost all trace of the grim struggle of which for four years it had been the arena. Here and there a dump of ruined weapons and vehicles and the vast wreckage of war came to view. The villages were largely newly-built, and where farmhouses grey and. beautiful with age had stood for centuries, new structures lifted themselves in the sunlight, tho unmellowed tiles startlingly ruddy. But where the batteries had belched roaring death, in stretches of land across which there had been the zig-zagging trenches where men crouched waiting for wild dawns, and from day to day living the life of the man of some primeval age, the stubble of reaped fields was golden in the sun, and the abundant ricks proclaimed man's new triumph over destruction. Again children laughed, and played in what had been tho arena of grim struggle, and love and happiness was triumphant.

" Wouldn't know the land," said Darling, suddenly, to Dorrington. "No! We and the Bosches made a hell or it. Now it's returning to itself." " Wonder if Dauvray will have been restored ? If it has we're on a perfectly hopeless job." " We m;iv be-able to trace the filled-in trenches, and if we can do that with the pointed' that was in Barnsdale's cigarette case we should still be able to locate it," answered Dorrington. " I hope we may," replied Darling. " Come to think of it, it's a little intriguing that when the land is coming back to itself we should be reaching back to the war years to restore what had been lost. . , . I wonder how many men have sought for clues to the Dauvray gems?"

" Lots, I daresay. But apparently only the man who scooped them knew of their exact whereabouts afterwards. I expect he collared them in some night raid, or before the Boches got to the chateau, and being unable to get away with them buried them under the fire-step of the trench—perhaps when the trench was being dug."

" But how did Mallinson get wind of him ?"

" Don't know! It's as stiff a problem as the information that Barnsdale carried in his cigarette case. But remember Pere Tabac was a popular figure. He went everywhere, saw everything and heard. I daresay, many secrets."

"Yes! He was a foul rogue and the perfect hypocrite. But no one knew it, and men believed in him. Somo dying man may have whispered part of the secret to him, and that set him ravelling it out. It's certain he got on the track; and from what Walton told me got hold of the man who knew and had him in that asylum of his at Linden House. . . . It must have been galling to him to know that lie hsd (lie secret under his hand, and yet not lie able to unravel it. . . . After all there's no safe deposit half so safe as a secretive mind. But I wonder what went on in that house at Barking when Mallinson was trying to get hold of things. There would be horrors I expect, There must have been for FrenchyCiron to be sent to penal servitude for his share in 'lie black business." (To be continued daily.)