THE WAY OF DANGER

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21893, 31 August 1934, Page 18

THE WAY OF DANGER

By DAVID WHITELAW Author of "The Little Hour of Peter Wells," "The Mystery ,j£ Furze Acre," "No. 15," etc., etc.

(COPJMGET)

CHAPTER \'W " Don't bo in a hurry, Brenda. I'm coming to that. When Iregellan gotclear lie came back to Cornwall, where ho shook off his New York name and took his place as one of the Tregellans of Wolfs Crag. It was the safest thing ho could have done, and everything would have gone smoothly but. for your friend, Bess. She'd married Dan over in. the States, and had that ' where-yoq-go-l-go ' [sort of complex that can be so disconcerting at times. " Seems to have got on Dan's nerves, and he looked about him for distractions. And all the time he was searching for the stuff his old greatgrandfather w&s supposed to have 'hidden. And then the smuggling idea j took him. It is in the blood. Coasts j unwatehed, high duties on silks ami brandies—and drugs. Drugs was a traffic he had had a bit to do with over on the other side, and he knew the markets; and now at Wolfs Crag ho had everything to his hand. His old ancestors' stronghold—and Chicago methods. We had all this from Malone, who came across to. identity the body found up at Trevose Head. . " And I suppose Mr. got wind Slade lowered hist voice. " I'm not worrying about Mr. iSoel and I don't fancy Inspector Carron is worrying either. I rather think Carron was more interested in bringing the murderer of Bristow to book. I hey were pa;!s in the Force together ih the old days. But they'll never know who hilled him now-but Dan fregellan had been seen in Manchester, and the Collins man too «< But why aren't they worrying about Mr. Noel? Surely it's a criminal offence to hold a man up the way they held him up?" _ , " Sure it is. But . . . well, Brenda. if 1 say what I think you'll forget it, .won't you?" She nodded " Tell me, Ronnie." " Well, between you and me and the gatepost, I've got an idea that MrNoel isn't the white ben s cluck altogether. I've got a notion back of, this silly old head of mine that Mr. Noel was out for a « u^at the illegal profits as much an old Hertzocr was. Something Hughes let diop in the office the other day. .. " Mr. Noel a crook ? Oh J wouldn't say that. Smugglings like doing a railway company— Sa sort of thing that soma peoplo lrink on as a crime. But I may be wrong. All I know is that he's gone on a trip for the benefit of his health. Cuba or somewhere. I shouldn t worry anyway." Brenda smiled. "And now let me-tell you something" she said. "Old Hertzog -was at Wolfs Crag on that Friday night. 1 "Is *that so? Then I guess y°"'* e about the last person who did see linn. No one else seems to have done so. I saw Inspector Can-on the other cay and he tells me that a man called Pollard has been taken as a P* u . and that our friend Adolf is taking things more easily. Shouldn t be sur- ' prised if Adolf isn't taking a trip for the benefit of his health as well. u Perhaps he'll run across Mr. Noel in Cuba or wherever he's gone. " I'd like to see the meeting. But old Hertzog must have had the wind up pretty badly. It was m his jar that Bvistow was murdered—or they are practically certain of it. That s the worst of all this. Two 6 CI ° men . J, under —Bristow and poor old Haines. , Brenda's-eyes grew sad. j " I wonder what happened to the j others. Ther* was quite a gting- ot . them at Wolfs Crag." " Quite a bunch. There's been all sorts of rumours. Some of em go . away in the boat that they used for the" smuggling stunt. They got the boa.l but not the people who were in it Baptiste was the onlv one they couild pin anything on to andl he a now in a prison somewhere in Havre. Your friend Bess was with him but " the police have nothing on her an she's somewhere, in hospital over in F:i'ance—and I'm not sending her any He leaned across the bed and helped himself. . r . , + "The others got away, I guess but they're only small fry. I had that from Malone who came over from New York to identify the body of Tregellan. Man known in'the underworld of Chicago as * Snarl' Craig. It would have been the 2iot-seat, sis they call it over there, i hu'd been caught—so perhaps he s Imlitter off where he is comparing notes with old Dan in another hoUeat where else. Maione says that looking through the collection of fingerprints I he found in Wolfs Crag made him fee homesick. Said it was just like looking through his own police files in Little Old New York."' • "I suppose this will mean a rise for you in Cheapside, Ronnie. And 111 l>e out of a job perhaps.' . " Old Hughes is in charge there just now. 1 wrote him one of ihe prettiest , little apologies ever written and took I him out to dinner up West. We went ■lto the ' Green Spider,' and I think the ,i>1(1 boy quite liked it. Gob him homo irather- late, but happy. We've entered •Ijnto a (iort of compact to scamper on 'the grans together. He's coming up to •the ' G:reen Spider ' again one nigh t, when Mrs. Hughes is not at home--and I'ni: going to learn chess. So wo 11 be quits;. I haven't tired you, have I, Brenda s"' " Not a little bit." The girl as she spoke held up the diamond arid emerald ornament by its slender gold ichain. Now tell me about this." " Thsit," he said, V is a little memento from old Dan Tregellan, smuggler and hell-fire pirate of old. Its part of the treasure the old boy parked away moxe than a hundred years ago. Like it?" She lifted it and placed the chain about her neck. Then gave a little shiver. "Take it back, Ronnie; it's.sort of cold. It feels like a thin band of ice—or a knife I don't think I like it. I'd rather von gave me something at sixpence —honest 1 would." / " All right, Brenda, old girl. But I thought you might like a little keensake of a rather eventful week. But perhaps, you're right. Aren't psychic, j are you, by an-v chance?" " I don't know It frightens me. j that's all I wonder who the poor women was whom it "belonged to." Ronrie took the bauble and sat for a moment looking at it. Then: // So'ne people say that if you take an object, in your hand and concentrate von see all sorts of things . . . i Listen.He I«ant back Viis head and shut his eyes Holding the trinket to i his forehead he spoke in a sepulchral : voice " 1 hear about me the rushing of ; mighty waters. A sky of turquoise blue and a palm-fringed shore of golden sands. Somebody is singing a deep-sea chanty. I don't know quite what a. deep-sea chanty is, Brenda, but they're singing it." " Don't btv silly, Ronnie." not silly. I'm seeing things. • y There's a little proun of peonle. A dark man with rings in his ears and in front of him a lady. They are on a ship. She is kneeling and holding up her hands to ther man. She has taken off her jewels and sne u offering them to him. There's ft all tied up with ropes standing on a plank jutting out over the water

A THRILLING SERIAL

from the sides of the ship; there are a lot of cut-throats standing along the bulwarks ..." "That's enough, Ronnie. You haven't told mo how the thing was found." The face of Ronnie Slade grew serious. "1 wasn't going to tell you that but I don't see why you shouldn't know. Old Mrs. Polglaze was pretty decent when you were ill and , . ." "She was a dear. It isn't anything to do with her, is it?" "Indirectly. It's the old man." "Old Syd?" Ronnie nodded. "I don't fancy they'll do anything to him. His brain's gone, they say. They found this old ornament among a lot of clutter in his room when they took him off to Truro to tho asylum. And then bit by bit they got the whole story from him. "You know the old boy had a bee in his bonnet. He'd been in Government service for over twenty years and when the coast-guards were disbanded he took it hard. Used to go prowling about in his old haunts at night. It was old Syd who showed me the way into Wolfs Crag. Knew every inch of the coast, every cave and where they led and all that." Ronnie stopped, expecting that Brenda would put a question, but she was silent. Leaning back on her pillow, she gazed at him wonderingly, her fingers twining in and out among the links of the old gold chain. "Nobody seems to know when he found tho stuff, but his cunning old brain had told him that here was something that he could hold against the Government. If he could expose the smuggling operations at Wolfs Crag and lead them to Old Dan's treasure as well, he felt that he would have a trump card to play—a stake in tho game he was playing against the Government. "I rather fancy that it was while he was poking about for the evidence he wanted that he tumbled on to the secret of old Dan Tregellan. Funny to think of, isn't it, Brenda, the old man living in that old Trewenth Farm and within half a mile of him enough to make him rich for life " "Have you seen the stuff?" "I'm just going to tell you. When the constables got on to the track by things tho old man mumbled, they brought him to see the error of his ways. I was with the party he led to the treasure hoard. "It wasn't far from that tunnel of ours, Brenda, turning off that the old man had carefully blocked up with rubble and stones he had carried from the cave mouth. Must have had a sort of magpie complex, for there was nothing taken away so fq,r as we could see except that thing you're playing with. He didn't seem to know how it had come to be in his cottage. Guess he must have carried it away accidentally when on one Of his visits to his treasure house and forgotten all about it. It made a fine show, Brenda. Gold and silver and a whole heap of church ornaments and a sort of diary written by old Dan himself." "Can I see it?"

"Sure! The police have got it, but Inspector Carron, who has charge of the case, will lend it to me, I know. It was CaiTon who got on to the track of Bristow's murder, and put the Penzance police oh to what was going on up at Wolfs Crag. Pretty thrilling reading some of it. Old Dan was a tough guy if ever there was one. There was one bit where he told of the wrecking of a ship he had lured on Veor Point and the loot they carted up to the Crag—a Spanish ship with wines and all manner of stuff aboard. That was the ship that had the church ornaments —vessels of the mass that were being taken to Mexico for some great celebration or other. And there's entries where he got religion." "Old Dan —religious?" " Got it bad, Brenda. Your Cornishman is a devout sort of fellow anyway. Wesley did great work there, and it was Wesley's teachings that got the old man. There's an entry in the diary that 1 speaks of his intention of taking the treasure he had accumulated by the shedding of blood out to sea and sinking it But the old boy simply couldn't do it. He buried it instead in the tunnel where Old Polglaze found it, ■ and the old pirate seems to have brought peace to his soul by doing so. Dog-in-the-manger, I call it. Can't you see him taking a lantern and slipping down at night to sit and gloat over his riches —the riches that would die with him and that would never be enjoyed by his descendants. Queer idea of doing that right thing-rwhat?" "But how romantic!" "It was when we saw the stuff with the gleam of our lanterns on it and the dripping walls of the cave, I halfexpected to see the ghost of old Dan gibbering in a corner. But it wasn't half so romantic when I saw it last in Truro police station, all laid out and catalogued. The police are even trying to trace some of the stuff. Coats-of-arms and things like those may form clues. Fancy having a police inspector call at the house with your greatgrandfather's watch that had been stolen a hundred and fifty years ago!" "I think I can fancy anything after what we went through together, Ronnie." The boy slipped to his knees beside the bed, laid his hands over the slim ones resting on the coverlet. "Together—that's just it. When we start out on a road like that, Brenda, surely there can't be any idea of parting company. That night in the teashop in Cheapside you gave me my soul. You found it for me, and finding's keeping. That soul you found is yours — every little bit of mo is yours. You taught me so many things that evening. Life opened out before mo and showed me wonders I had never dreamt of —service —lovo " "What are you trying to tell mo, Ronnie?" "That I love you. That I've loved you ever since you first came to Cotsfords —only I didn't know it then. But I know that I wanted alwavs to bo with you—to see you. I thought, of you all the time, but in a selfish way. I liked to be seen with you, to—oh, you know what 1 mean, Brenda." "I think I do, Ronnie, because I felt the same. I wouldn't have said what I did if I hadn't cared for you. But you seemed to be wasting yourself, looking on at life instead of living it." "Looking at the big picture from an armchair, eh?" She smiled down at him. "1 remember that night in the office so well, Ronnie. You looking into my little mirror and setting that Old Baronian's tie of yours and thinking of tho Regal. I remember what you said —' The big picture starts about a quarter past eight.' " He rose to his feet and placed his arms about the little, rounded shoulders. Their eyes met . . . their lips ._. . "Our big picture, Brenda, starts right now." TUB END "THE WHITE ANGEL" A Sensational Mystery Story By JAMES CORBETT Author of " Murder at Red Grange," " The Winterton Hotel Mystery," eto., WILL COMMENCE IN THE • SUPPLEMENT ON SATURDAY Instalments Will Appear Daily