SNOW-BOUND

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21589, 6 September 1933, Page 19

SNOW-BOUND

A BRILLIANT ROMANTIC STORY

, CHAPTER Xll.—(Continued) • > Stuart gathered his forces together -to demolish Soames' arguments, and, as ho did so, ho realised, with some misgivings, the formidablo array of facts ho was called upon to meet. The mero idea of any complicity on tho part of Lord Romsey or any member of his family still seemed to him ab- ' surd, and tho one pieco of knowledge ho now held concerning Geoffrey Ford ho did not earo to use without his sister's permission. He was not sorry to see Miss Adderley speeding toward them from the barn, her voice high and shrill with excitement. " I havo found something!" sho ex* claimed. " You seo what a good thing it was that I decided to have a good look round. How did this get there?" She hold up a small red leather case. "A jewel-case!" sho went 011 breathlessly. " And look what's on it!" Sho turned tho light from Stuart's torch 011 to tho lid and revealed, stamped in gold letters, the initials: " 8.0.C." "O.C. Orkney Cloude!" she carolled. " They must bo her jewels!" " Where did you find them?" asked Soames. Miss Adderley turned on hkn a faco beaming with innocent joy. " Underneath the seat in that big motor-car of Lord lloinsey's," she answered. CHAPTER XIII. They trooped back into tho house, Miss Amy triumphantly leading the way, Mrs. Orkney Cloudo's jewel-case clasped to her bosom. Bates having taken charge of tho jewel-case, Stuart and Soames adjourned to their own landing, where they found Constantino still keeping guard in Stuart's bedroom. He had nothing to report save the abrupt arrival of Miss Amy at the bedroom door,* bursting with tho news that "something was going on in tho barn," and that she had watched the lights and moving figures until she could bear it no longer. " She invited mo to accompany her," ho informed them, " but running about in the snow with a lantern in the early hours does not appeal to me, so I cunningly suggested that it was the duty of old gentlemen like myself to hold the fort in the absence of the more active members of the community. 1 assured her that her sister would be quite safe in my care, upon which she dashed off in search of adventure. I hope sho found it?" " She found something worth having, at any rate," said Stuart. " It's probable that Mrs. Cloudo would never have seen her jewels again if Miss Adderly hadn't happened on them." He told Constantino of the evening's work. " The chap, whoever ho is, had vanished into thin air as 110 always does," he concluded. Constantino frowned. • " That's tho most puzzling element in the whole case," he said. " Try as I will, I can't place him." Stuart took him up sharply. " Which means, that you havo placed the original thief?" But Constantino still declined definately to commit himself.' " I'm not /sufficiently suro of my facts yet to say for certain," he answered, " but I think so." Soamcs, who had been restraining himself with difficulty, burst; into speech. - " Look here, doctor," he exclaimed. " After what happened to-night you can't rule Lord Romsey out any longer. Stuart's talk of the man vanishing into thin air is all bunkum. If you ask me, lie's washing the black off his face at thin minute, and cursing Miss Adderley for having stumbled on tho jewel-case he'd tucked away so neatly in his car. The whole bunch of them's in it, and you must admit that they'd got it worked out pretty cleverly. If I hadn't been on the watch, tho thing would have gone like clockwork, and 110110 of us would have dreamed of suspecting them. Young Ford would have slipped away with the loot, and his family would have been suitably anxious till thej - got a wire from him saying he was safe in London. And it might have been all of 24 hours before Mrs. Cloude missed her jewels!" Stuart lost the rest of the argument. His mind had gone off at a tangent, which had been suggested by Soames' last words. Angela Ford, in search of her brother, had g<Sne straight to Mrs. Orkney Cloudo's room. Supposing that, for purposes of his own Geoffrey Ford had been conducting an intrigue with that lady and had, earlier in the evening, passed the jewel-caso to his sister. It was a relief to Stuart to feel that Soames was mercifully unaware of this further complication." He came to tho surface again in time to hear C»nstantine's closing remark. " You've got a good enough case against them. I'm quite ready to admit it. But 1 still stick to my original contention that, knowing the liomseys as I do, I find it impossible to connect them in any way with a theft of that kind." Soames was frustrated in his retort by the sound of footsteps in the passage, followed by the appearance of Miss Amy Adderley in the doorway. " It was Mrs. Orkney Cloudo's jewelcase!" she exclaimed impressively. " Where did she keep it, do you know?" asked Constantine. "In her dressing-case." " Was tho lock forced?" asked Constantine. " No. Picked! And very cleverly too. It wasn't till Bates tried 'to open the case that wo found it out. Ho says it is tlie work of a professional !"• Sho paused to give her words full effect, then continued breathlessly. " You realise what that implies, Dr. Constantine? We are harbouring a professional burglar in this house!" Constantino nodded. " I find it even more disquieting *to remember that we are harbouring the murderer of Major Carew," 110 s.'iid mildly. Miss Amy blanched. Her little triumph collapsed like a pricked bubble, and she became a very frightened eldcrlv lady. "Oh!" she whispered. "I'd forgotten poor Major Carew. And, if he thinks we suspect him. the man must bo desperate by now. I wish we could get away! The moment the roads are clear I shall take my sister away." " You suggested that the thief might know we suspect him," said Constantino. " Had you anyone special in your mind, Miss Adderley?" The panic in her eyes gave place to bewilderment. " Who could I have?" she asked helplessly. " There is 110 one, unless it's Mr. Melnotte. Ho never seems to be there when anything happens, does he? But that's not really a reason for suspecting him, ai\d ho certainly doesn't look like a professional burglar." " What is everybody doing downstairs?" asked Stuart, more in the hope of turning her mind to more harmless topics than from any real desire for information. " When 1 came away Girling was just about to lock up the barn, and Bates was going with him to take a last look round." r . " How was tho'barn first entered this evening, by the way?" asked Constantine. " As you had to break open the door to release Lord Bomsey, I gather that the lock hadn't been forced in tho first instance. I thought Girling had put tho kov in a safe place." It was Miss Addorlto.v who answered. Since her interview with Bates sho had become a fount of information. "Ho harl. It was locked up in his desk, and Bates says that the lock of I the desk was picked too. Just as skil-

By MOLLY THYNNE ■ Author of " The Red Dwarf," " The Murder on the Enriquetta," etc.

(COPYRIGHT)

fully as Mrs. Orkney Cloude's dressingcaso. It must, of course, have been the same man." " What's ho done about it now?" asked Soames. " The lock's smashed, and, in any case, he hadn't got tho key." Miss Adderley was vague on this point. ■ \ " I think lie's 'doing something with a padlock. He'd got tools with him. Shall you bo sitting up, Mr. Stuart?" „ Her voice was pathetically anxious, and Stuart hastened to set her mind at rest. Ho assured her that he and Soames would be 011 guard till the servants wore up and about. Stuart waited till he heard her door close, then ho turned reproachfullly to Constantino. • " You frightened the poor old thing half out of her wits," he said. " She's been jumpy enough over the whole business, as it is." Constantino's thoughts were evidently elsowhere. " I'm sorry," he murmured vaguely. " It was stupid of me to say what I did, but my mind was so full of the vanishing gentleman that I forgot to allow, for Miss Adderley's nerves. What 'is bothering 1110 is this. Tho roads will be clear very soon now, and, as soon as they are, we shall have tho man from New Scotland Yard upon us. A professional burglar won't take the risk of being recognised. If we're not careful he'll slip through our lingers before tho London man gets here." " As he was trying to do to-night," insisted Soames stubbornly. Constantino smiled. "As the Romseys will have no chance of doing so long as you're about, my dear Soames," he amended. "I'm trusting you to look after them." The muscles round Soames' mouth stiffened. " I shall," he rejoined shortly, as he left the room, presumably to take up his old post on tho landing occupied by his special quarry. In less than a quarter of an hour ho was back again. " Things aro getting beyond a joke," he announced acridly. Stuart was feeling both jaded and sleepy, and ho cordially agreed with him. Constantino surveyed him quizzically. * " You arc not going 'to tell me that the Romseys have taken French leave while your back was turned?" he protested. Soames ignored the jibe. " Did you look at any of the tyres in the barn when you were there?" he demanded of Stuart. " No. I never went into the barn. Bates said they were all right. Why do you ask?" " Becauso they're anything but all right now. Somebody's had a go at the tyres with a knife, and done the job pretty thoroughly, too. The only car that's escaped is yours. Everyone of the others has been put out of action." Stuart gazed at him in consternation. " When could they have done it?" " That's what Bates is asking," answered Soames grimly. "He and Girling found them like that when 'they went to lock up the barn just now. Lord Romsey swears his tyres were all right when he last saw tho cat, and, as Bates corroborates him, it looks as if he was speaking the truth." "Of course ho was speaking tho truth," said Stuart impatiently, " Do you mean to say that, during the short time that'elapsed between our rescue of Lord Romsey and Girling's return to tho barn, someone got in and slashed tho tyres?" " I mean to say that the chap we've been chasing half tho night not only got away, but had the nerve to go bac;k again and finish his job," exclaimed Soames savagely. " Whoever ho is, he's got tho laugh of us all along the line. Much good we've done by sitting up and watching!" " Ho could have got down the back stairs, 1 suppose, while we were all gathered on the landing," said Stuart. " But it was pretty quick work. Anyway, you can't attribute this to tho liomseys!" " I don't. I saw them into Lord Romsey's bedroom, and they didn't come out while I was there. They're out of this unless — He paused as a thought struck him. " Did anybody see Miss Ford after we started to fetch Lord Romsey?" " She went to bed," Stuart informed him shortly. " She did, did she? And her bedroom, if you remember, is at the top of tho small flight of stairs loading to tho back passage. Except for Melnotte, Mrs. Cloude and Mrs. Van Dolcn, she's the only person that was not in, the passage. We can wipo out the other two ladies, and I'm not putting my money 011 Melnotte at the moment." " But what earthly object could she have in disabling her father's car?" asked Stugrt. " Why do 'you suppose your car was left unmolested?" demanded Soames. " I can't imagine." " Tut! Use your brain, my dear fellow," put in Constantino unexpectedly. " The lighter the car the easier it will be to manipulate with the roads in their present condition, and yours is the smallest oar in the barn. The others wore disabled with a view to preventing pursuit. The vandal who slashed the tyres has a quicker brain than the thief who made off jvith Mrs. Cloude's jewel case." f) Soames stared at him, his mind diverted for the moment from the Romseys. " Then you don't believe that they are one and the same person?" he asked. " I doubt it. The jewel-case was found in Lord Romsey's car, arid, according to him, he surprised the thief in •the act of starting tho engine, so that 110 evidently intended to use it. He may, of course, have changed his mind before his second visit to the barn; but, considering the little time at his disposal, it doesn't look as if ho coukl havo given much of it to reflection. Ho would bo much more likely to carry 011 with his original plan." (To he continued daily)