WOLVES AMONGST THE HONEY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21616, 7 October 1933, Page 12 (Supplement)

WOLVES AMONGST THE HONEY

By E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM Author of "The Wrath to Come," "Into the m«io

(COPYRIGHT)

CHAPTER XX.—(Continued) Roger that night was a man unlike himsolf. Anyone who was not a close observer would have thought that he was 011 the road to becoming drunk. His eyes were unnaturally bright, his manner detached, he was holding a half-filled tumbler in his hand, the contents of which lie drained at one gulp. He passed the glass to a valet. " Thornton," he confided, " 1 don't want to talk to anyone to-night. I'm going to have one more drink and then I'm going home to bed." " Did you follow out your crazy fancy? " Thornton asked him, with a shadow of that faintly disagreeablo smile at the corner of his lips. Roger, too, smiled, but it was a gesture of a different order. It was the smile of a man who, after stumbling about in a morass, has found solid ground beneath his feet. " Don't think I'm bad tempered or obstinate, Thornton, or crazy," he begged. " I'm not one of the three, 1 can assure you, but to-night I have nothing to say. To-morrow my head will be clear. I will meet you, and there will be things to bo said and a plan to work out. I'm just going to let things lie to-night." " Just ns you please," the other replied. " I simply thought if you had discovered anything you'd like to get it off your chest." " What I have discovered 1 have not yet digested. To-night 1 am going to have another drink and go to bed. Savonarilda," he invited, turning back to the group at tho bar, " you have many virtues, but one fault —3'°" never drink. Have a last whisky and soda with me? " Savonarilda made a wry face. You flatter me with your invitation," he acknowledged, " hut I do not like whisky. 1 will drink a tine with you." Roger gavo the order. Dalmorres was watching him curiously. " I've never seen you take three drinks in so short a time, Roger Sloane," he remarked. "And you probably never will again," Roger assured him. " To-night 1 guess I'm in what they call an expansive mood. I'd like all you boys to drink with me. I feel as though it were the last night 011 the steamer after a three months' cruise." " Heaven save me from such memories, ; Dalmorres groaned. "Everyone singing national anthems and slopping tears, into their tumblers over ' Should Auld Acquaintance be Forgot. 1 What hideous reminiscences you have evoked, Sloane! " " I promise I'm not singing any national anthems to-night," the latter declared. " This is just a drink between myself and Savonarilda, and you others chiming in. Savonarilda, 1 raise my glass," Tic added, selecting his tumbler from the counter. There was a Hash in the Sicilian's eyes as he followed suit. He had known nothing of the man cowering behind the grey stone wall when the rain was beating down on the mountain side, but he realised intuitively that something had happened; somehow or other this stubborn young American had come a little nearer the light. He felt it in his blood that this drink was a challenge. His eyes Hashed as he raised his glass.

" To your very excellent health, Mr I?oger Sloane," he murmured.

"I do not think that I will marrj' you, Roger," Jeannine decided, as she helped herself with lazv fingers from a box of chocolates by her side. " That's tough," he remarked, without undue disquietude. "And why not, please? "

" You are not obedient. I demand that you cease these dangerous expeditions up to that terrible place, and come to England with Lady Julia and me. You prefer to stay. You prefer the man hunt. Is it not so?" Roger did not answer for a moment. They were lounging after luncheon on the famous balcony of his aunt's villa at Cap Martin, from which a queen had once declared was the most beautiful view in the world. Below them flaming beds of llowers, a pergola of wisteria, a bordering hedge of hydrangeas, merged into soft and silvery green of the olive trees and the deeper green of tho pines. These fell sheer to the sea, and when the south wind fluttered up from the boy with its incense of ozone fluttered through tho pine trees and shook the petals from the clustering roses, the place came very near to being the paradise that tho guide books proclaimed it. " The thing has come nearly to an end, Jeannine," he told her quietly. " To-night will probably finish it." " You mean that you have made a discovery ?" " I have certainly discovered one thing." he acknowledged, " which has surprised me very much indeed, but it is not everything."

"I do not see why you run these risks," she protested. " You are not a gendarme. It is not for you the protection of the people. Beside, a married man should not run risks. You are fiance, which is the same as being married. You are making me nervous so that T cannot sleep. Fancy if anything should come to disturb happiness so marvellous as this!" Ho leaned over and kissed the tears from her eves.

" You need havo no fear, dear, Jeannine," he assured her. I may r<eem rash, but I am not. Listen, you will hear this and you will forget it.''

" I promise," she murmured. " The uoxt time 1 climb tho Corniche and arrive at that hotel it will not be alone. It will be with gendarmes and perhaps with soldiers. There. Now 1 have told you a secret."

" All tho same," she persisted, with a sigh, " I wish there would be no nexttime."

Dalmorres sauntered out through the opened windows, a very elegant figure in white flannels and panama hat. He sank into a chair bv their side. " Wo are to talk before the little one, yes?" he asked. " Naturally," Roger replied. " You have .soon Major Thornton this morning?" " I have been with him for two hours." Dal morres tapped a cigarette upon the table and lit it. For some reason or other the information did not seem to give hint unalloyed pleasure. " You persist in your idea?" " Absolutely," Roger declared. "Until last night I bad many suspicions which Thornton was perhaps the first to laugh at. To-day 1 havo no suspicions. I deal with facts. Even Thornton is convinced." Dalmorres grunted dubiously. He had all the time the air of keeping something back. " After all, this is your show, ltoger," ho pointed out. " Why don't you make the linal arrangements yourself? That fellow Thornton is a secretive sort of dovil, but L fancy when he does open his mouth he talks to some purpose. Why should ho have the credit of running to earth p famous band of criminals and relieving Monte Carlo

A THRILLING MYSTERY STORY BY A FAVOURITE AUTHOR

CHAPTER XXL

of this infernal cloud of depression? Seems to me you have done all the work, and he's been trying to put you oii' all the time." " Not quite so bad as that," Roger protested. " He has made one or two very useful suggestions. Then you must remember that the police are far more likely to work pleasantly with him than with a young fellow like me who is not in the profession at all and lias just blundered into the thing. Thornton's connection with Scotland Yard entitles him to a certain amount of respect from them. They only know me as one of the crowd here." " There's something in that, of course," Dalmorres assented. " Tell me, though as a matter of curiosity—should you have confidence in Thornton in a crisis Y Do you think ho would stick it through if you got into any real trouble!'" "Sure!" Roger replied. "On the other hand I reckon we've about finished with the risks. It's the other fellows who've got to take them now. The way we have planned it we are going to be mostly lookers-on in this show." " Glad to hear it," Dalmorres affirmed doubtfully. " 1 hope you won't change your mind. After the way I laid bare my heart to Jeannine I should have to marry her if you left her a widowette." " It would bo something," Jeannine sighed. " You've not a hundred to one chance," Roger declared with unabated cheerfulness. " if you're interested to know what's going to happen I'll tell you. My beloved aunt has given in this morning, and even Jeannine doesn't know yet. The idea of a London marriage is off. Jeannine would have no friends there, and she would be miserable in a crowd of strangers. Jeannine and I arc going to be married very quietly indeed, either at my own little church of La Bastida, or hero —before Aunt Julia goes to England." Jeannine's eyes were shining like stars, her lips were parted. " Roger!' she gasped. " You have to go through with it some time or other, my dear," he told her. " As for the honeymoon, that belongs to you. We can either stay at my villa, or my aunt will lend us this one. The bathing's pretty good fun. Afterward we shall have to go over to the States, but that won't be bad—my people are dead easy." " Roger!" she begged, " do not go to that horrible place to-night. 1 shall lie awake trembling all the time." He held her hand lightly in his. "My dear," he promised, " for your sake I shall run no risk. You need have no fears. The authorities are taking over the whole business. After all that has happened during the last two months they are simply panic-stricken. When it began they looked upon us as meddlers. To-day wo are little tin gods." " You will not forget." Jeannine begged wistfully, " that you are my real god." * «r . # * For some reason or other Pierre Viotti was spending a restless day. His lilac coloured automobile was seen outside the door of every bar in Monte Carlo between the hours of eleven and one. At two o'clock it stood empty in the small Place of La Turbie and Monsieur Pierre, with his napkin tucked under his chin, sat at table with his brother in a neat but unassuming little cafe exactly opposite. The conversation to begin with was not of serious moment.

" The affairs of the heart, my brother," Paul inquired, as he helped himself liberally to hors d'oevres. "They progress, eh?" Pierre growled. " They will never progress," he confided " until "

" Until the young man is out of the way, eh?" Paul chuckled. " Well, well, that will be not so long now." Pierre eyes twinkled joyously.

" It is understood that—yes?" "It is certainly understood. The young man knows too much. What trouble comes to him is of his own seeking." Pierre Viotti spilt a tablespoonful of soup in his excitement. "There is a way of disposing of him," he ventured, with tentative longing, " which would be safe—very safe indeed, Paul."

"O-ay, what is that, Pierre?" "It is the way tho young Nicois, whoin the English milord shot, went, the way the English milord would have gone if he had not escaped, the way Pietro went the night after he got drunk and began to talk. All tied together he would go in the chute well like that."

Paul Viotti frowned at his brother reprovingly. " Pierre," he remonstrated, " you shock me —you shock me very much. You should remember that you are working now with great men, real swells; a Prince among us—men who move in swell society. That is a low idea of yours. We kill, but we kill like gentlemen. After he's dead, naturally that is the way he will go." " You are sure of that?" Pierre asked wistfully. Paul struck the table so that the wine rocked in their glasses.

"So like a fool you talk!" he exclaimed. " This young man will see the inside of our hiding-place; he will know of its secrets. More fatal than anything else—he will see our faces. Is it likely that after that a single one of us would bo willing to let him live?"

Pierre nodded with slow satisfaction. " Good words!" he admitted. " Good sense. 1 shall see him die—that is what I wish. I shall remind him that the little Jeannine will then be mine. Ho, la, 1 shall skip for joy. One year and a half I shall have lost*, but she's all tho better for that."

" Let us remember," Paul Viotti said with a suddenly altered note in his tone, " that this is not the night for dreams. You are sure of the Wolves?" " Twelve of them," Pierre replied. " They are here now. Two of them in this very cafe. They will be at their stations by eleven." " Remember also that nothing is to be done to the young American until 1 give tho word." Pierre sighed. " That is more difficult, but 1 obey." Paul paid the bill and tho brothers rose and left the place. They dawdled in the Place for a few minutes, exchanged civilities with the gendarme and lit cigarettes. Afterward they entered the lilac coloured automobile. Pierre took the wheel, Paul relaxed into the cushions. " To the bank," the latter directed, " and drive carefully. Remember that this is a great day." (To be continued daily)