SECRET OF THE RIVER

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21404, 31 January 1933, Page 14

SECRET OF THE RIVER

(COPIMGIIT)

By FRED. M. WHITE Author of "The Golden Bat," "Queen of Hearts." "On the Night Express," etc., etc.

FINELY-CONCEIVED STORY BY POPULAR AUTHOR

CHAPTER XXl.—(Continued)

Then I will run over to Wcrnporfc at once,"- Blissett said. " Bub look here, Ncvil, an idea occurs to me. That man Blancliin. 110 is working out the formula of some infernal drug or another and possibly he has found all he wants by this tirno. You remember that business of the dog you told me about. Can t you get hold of old Jakes and ask him if ho has noticed anything peculiar about Blanchin's correspondence. Who posts tho letters at the Croft ? I suppose there is a post bag and all that sort of thing. " Unless things are entirely altered there certainly is," Ncvil said. " Ihe letters arc placed on the hull table, and it is Jakcs's duty to collect them and put them in a bag, after which it is locked ready for tho postman. Of course, there is no collection on Sunday in a country place like this, but there will bo one to-morrow."

" All, that's all right," Blissett smiled. " Then you sec Jal<cs and get him to make a noto of the addresses on Blancliin s correspondence. If they arc foreign addresses, as I expect some of tliom will be, I should like to know at once." " Am 1 to understand you won't be

hero 1" " Not for the next day or two," Blissett explained. " I go to town to-morrow and, first of all, sec Mrs. Haywood and make matters right with her. 1 shall probably get Haywood to write her a letter, which 1 shall deliver in person. Then I shall call upon my scientific friend at University College and have that pinch oE powder you gave me analysed. After that, we shall have to wait more or less on events. My address in London will be my club, and if anything happens at this end while I am away, call me up there. I will make a point ox being on the nremises from one till two and from five to seven." It was no difficult matter to get hold of Jakes next morning and all the easier because Murray and Sidoy had gone to town, leaving Blanchin, as usual, to his work. " Now, what I want you to do, Jakes, ' Nevil said, " is to make a careful note of all tho addresses on the letters that Blanchin writes. You can meet me casually at the back of the quadrangle just before five this afternoon if there is anything worth tho telling." Accordingly, Professor 1' inch met Jakes before dusk at the appointed place. " There were four letters sir," Jakes explained. " I have got the addresses down here on a bit of paper." " That's right, Jakes," Ncvil said. " You keep a careful eye upon those letters and I will see to the rest. I will be here to-morrow afternoon at about the same time." In the seclusion of his sitting room in the farm house, Nevil examined the scrap of paper given him by Jakes. He saw that the four addresses were all written to places outside England* one to Shanghai, the second to Bombay, the third to Bucharest and the fourth to Geneva. It was the last of these that caused Nevil to raise his eyebrows and whistle softly to himself. With the scrap of paper in his pocket, he made his way as rapidly as possible to Blissett's house, where he proceeded to call the latter on the telephone. At the end of ten minutes he was relieved to hear his friend's voice. " That you, Blissett," he asked. " Good. I suppose you can guess who is speaking." " Professor Finch, surely," Blissett responded. It was a gentlo hint that Nevil was not slow to take. " Oh yes, I am Professor," he said. " About those friends of yours abroad. The friends whose addresses you discussed with me recently. I have certain infermation." " Which I shall be very glad to have," Blissett responded. All this caution, of course, was to put off the scent any curious operator who might chance to be listening. " I have four of them," Nevil went on. " Three of them which I will forward by post, and the fourth to an address in Geneva. Perhaps I had better give .you this in detail." . This he proceeded to do and listened carefully, as Blissett repeated it, and then went on with another, question. " As to your friend at the university?" he asked. " Have you heard anything further from him ?" " Oh yes," came the response over the wire. " He has examined the sample and he confirms all that we expected. Most satisfactory indeed. Not quite a new thing, you understand, but a variation of an old one which is much more powerful. I don't think I need say any more, except that I have seen the lady we were talking about yesterday, and she understands the situation perfectly." There was no need to say any more, so that Nevil rang off, being more than siitisfied that Blissett had not been wasting his time. He wont in search of Eleanor Blissett with a view to telling her all that lie had just heard. " Of course, I don't want to see Haywood just yet," he said. " But J think you had better go upstairs and tell him that you have heard from Tom and that lie has delivered the letter to Mrs. Haywood which lie wrote at Tom's suggestion. It's a good thing he thought of that, because the papers are full of his mysterious disappearance. Do you know, Eleanor, if this matter were not serious, it would be distinctly amusing. You can imagine the perplexity and uneasiness of those scoundrels at the Croft and what they would give if they knew as much of the mystery as we do."

CHAPTER xxrr It was fairly early on the Wednesday morning when Blissett returned by car to his house. He had a good deal to say to Nevil, when the latter put in a appearance and most of it was vital to the success of the coming operations. " First of all," he said. " Let mo tell you about that powder. There was only a pinch of it, but quite sufficient for our purpose. It turns out to be a sort of offspring of heroin, only much more effective and flangerous. There was not enough of the powder to try experiments, but my man seems to think that it is practically a new drug of an extremely potent nature. Much stronger than cocaine, for instance."

" Who on earth would suspect that anything sinister was going rin at Ashdown Croft?" said Nevil thoughtfully. " Nobody, of course," Blissett agreed. " And we would not have known but for the fact that Ashdown Croft is your property and you know the secret of its ancient biding places." " That business of the dog, for instance," Nevil said. ".Do you know, I came across that very dog in the grounds on Monday when I was talking fo Jakes. Just the same big, docile creature he generally is, and quite pleased to sec me. I could hardly believe that f was in the presence of the samo animal." " Well, we know how all that was brought about, of course," Blissett said. " But, let, me get on with my story. After T. had obtained a signed report of the analysis of that powder, i went off to .£collandi .Yard. (There X ; &3 'v; tomeoacpj

in authority and laid certain facts before them, not bringing in your name at all. I told the man I am speaking of who I was and what my qualifications are, so it was up to him to listen carefully. After that, I spoke of my suspicions and mentioned Blanchin as the culprit. I was not in the least surprised to find out that Blanchin's name was no strange one to the authoriiites in tHo Yard. Ho seems to be known to more than one police bureau in Europe, though, so far, there has been nothing against him to warrant an arrest. But when I gave the divisional inspector a copy of those addresses you sent mo ho did really begin to sit up and take notice. I rather gather it was the address in Geneva that moved him more than anything else. Then ho got busy on the telephone and I gathered from what I could glean from a one-sided message, that all Blanchin's letters were to bo intercepted and opened. I mean, letters that arc addressed to those persons named on the envelopes which old Jakes handled. I shouldn't be at all surprised to read in the papers, at any moment, that Aslulowti Croft has been raided and that our friend Blanchin is safely in tlio hands of the law." " Very interesting indeed," Nevil said. " Now, if you will ask Eleanor to come in hero, I have something to say to you tliat I have never mentioned to a soul before. I should not mention it now but for the fact that, what you have just told nic throws a whole flood of light upon certain things which have been giving me a tremendous lot of anxiety ever since this tragi-comedy began." A few minutes later, Ashdown together with Blissett and his wife, were seated before the fire in the small room which Blissett always spoke of as his snuggery. " Well, fire away," Blissett said encouragingly. " I hardly know how to begin," Nevil remarked. " The whole thing is so terribly complicated. I have io go back to a certain event that happened before Murray and his confederates cams out in their true colours and tried to rob me of a large sum of money, with the aid of that fellow who is upstairs. At any rate we have got him where we want him, and he will be useful enough when the time comes. You know, without my repeating myself, that business of those copper shares was a most ingenious conspiracy to deprive me of a large share of my fortune. And you know that I was half inclined to fall in with it to preserve my reputation arid should probably have done so if I hadn't happened to have intercepted a signal That passed between two of the confederates. That is why I am posing here to-day as Professor Finch. When the incident that I am about to mention took place, I had not the remotest idea that I was more or less at the mercy of three abandoned scoundrels. Like you, I thought Murray was a man of the highest integrity and that his friends were equally trustworthy." " But why go over all this again ? " Blissett asked. " We know every detail of the conspiracy, not to mention the fact that Angela is not any relation to the man who poses as her father." Nevil drew a long breath of relief. " Ah, well," he said. " That disclosure of IJaywood's fills me with satisfaction. If I had not learnt that, I should hardly know what to do. It is no light matter to tell the girl whom you passionately love that her father is an abandoned scoundrel and, what is more, to have prove it. It will bo bad enough, in anycase, when everything comes out and Murray finds himself in the hands of the police." " A nine days' wonder," Eleanor murmured. " All forgotten before we are three months older. And everybody must recognise that Angela is not in the least to blame." " Well, there is that consolation," Nevil admitted. " And now I had better go on with my story. I told you, Tom, how I hid myself in the Priest's Hole above the room where Blanchin is carrying out his experiments. I gave you all the details of the steel cage and how I saw the dog lured inside and some drug administered to him, and how a goodtempered, docile beast was transformed into a dangerous animal. I don't think that anybody can doubt for a moment that the drug was the cause of that sinister change. It could not have been anything else." "I think we can all agree on that," Eleanor said. "Very well, then," Nevil went on. " The question I ask myself is this—suppose that poison had been secretly administered to me, what would have been the result? " " You are asking me that, knowing me to bo a bit of a scientist," Blisset said. " Well, frankly, I don't know. I should say that it would probably affect you in a minor degree in the same way as it affected the dog. I don't mean to say you would have gone raving mad or tried to bito anybody or displayed homicidal tendencies, but it would probably have brought out nil the worst that lurks in human nature. My reading and training tell me that few men or women are as civilised as they think they are. Thero are hidden depths and hidden springs that, perhaps, are never touched during the whole of a lifetime. On the other hand, some queer hapenings has set their forces in motion. 1 am sure we have both met men in our time who are everything that can be desired when sober, but when drunk dangerous to the community in every sense of the word. Of course, this would depend largely upon the amount of drugs administered. If you had a small dose, then it might cause you to do some small, mean thing, of which you would be thoroughly ashamed afterwards. Do you follow me ? " " Perfectly," Nevil said. " You have put the case in a nutshell. And you are all the more convincing because I was a witness of the horrible sight brought about by Blanchin in connection with that dog. A creature usually as gentle as a lamb. You don't know how you encourage me to go on." " You have a sympathetic audience," Eleanor said. " Of course, I have, or I should not be telling you this. Now, Eleanor, do you remember the night of the theatricals ? " " Naturally," Eleanor said. But why ? " " Ah, I am coming to ihat," Nevil resumed. " I want you to recall to your mind the episode of Diana Longworth and the pearl collar that she lost, that evening." " Go on," Eleanor said. "I remember perfectly." " Well, the necklace was lost and nobody seemed inclined to own up to having found it, which was rather unfortunate because some of our villagers were helping us and were immediately suspected." " Yes, but Angela had it," Eleanor cried. " Yes, Angela had it all right," Nevil resumed. " And you all thought that it was a little joke put up between Angela and myself to give that young woman a lesson." "Do you mean to say it wasn't?" Eleanor asked. " No, indeed it wasn't," Nevil said mournfully. " Angela stole it. Oh, you need not cry out. It was a clear case of theft and I saw it myself. For a little time I was at my wit's end to sec how Angela would get out of the trouble which she had brought upon herself and you saw how 1 succeeded in the end." " Angela a thief," Eleanor cried. " Impossible." " Not a thief in the ordinary sense of the word, perhaps, but an involuntary one. I feel as sure as I sit hero that that scoundrel Blanchin has been using Angela as a subject in his experiment with those infernal drugs of his." Blissett jumped to his feet excitedly. You've got it! " ho cried. iXa be eoatioued ttaibi