WEB CENTRE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22353, 26 February 1936, Page 22

WEB CENTRE

By RALPH TREVOR

(COPT RIGHT)

I Author of M Death in the Stalls/* " The Eyes Through the Mask/* etc., etc.

AN ENTHRALLING STORY OF MY CHAPTER X—(Continued) "That I can't tell you," smiled Peter, truthfully enough. "But I expect you'll be hearing before long." With that he set out for London again. Arrived at the hotel, the porter carried the luggage up to Peter's room, and Peter followed him. As they passed along the narrow corridor Peter glanced sharply as they came abreast of one of the doors. Why he glanced when he did he could never be quite sure, but as ho did so he was certain that someone closed the door ever so quietly. Peter locked the door of his own room immediately the porter had set the luggage down, and for a moment stood wrapped in thought. Then he smiled at the whirl of his own imagination. " You'ro getting nervous," he told himself. But that reassurance was short-lived, for, on opening his own suitcase he saw immediately that someone had gone through his things since he had packed them earlier that morning; and whoever had done so had been absurdly careless. The contents were tumbled about as though the searcher had either been in a desperate hurry, or else he had been rudely disturbed. For some minutes Peter stood staring at his suitcase with a perplexed frown on his face. Then he remembered that hurriedly closed door down the corridor, and his face was unusually grim. CHAPTER XL For the life of him, Peter Worthing could not think why anyone could want to tamper with his baggage. Then there was the question as to how they had gained admittance to his room. Of course, he had left the key at the office desk when he had left to go out to St. Albans, but he did not suppose that the young woman in black silk, who presided over the reception counter, would hand the key of his room to anyone who might ask for it. That being so, the intruder must either be a member of the hotel establishment staff, or else someone who had in some way become possessed of the bunch of pass keys by means of which rooms were opened up for cleaning purposes. Peter sat down on the edge of his bed to think the matter over. Obviously it had not been a case of ordinary theft, for he had satisfied himself that nothing had been taken. That quite delinitely ruled out the usual hotel thief. Peter was certain on that point, because a stud-box in the case contained a pair of diamond-edged cufflinks which he had worn with his dres3 outfit the previous evening at Carleon Towers. Whoever it was had been searching his baggage either for curiosity or in the hopes of finding something else. As his mind wandered along these lines, he began to wonder whether it was possible that in some way his tele* phone conversation with his uncle might have been overheard. On the face of it, such an eventuality appeared impossible. The telephone cabinet had been a substantial and a sound-proof one, and so far as he knew none of the private rooms in the establishment had phones installed for the use of guests. If, on the other hand, it-had been possible in some way for that conversation to have been eavesdropped, that might account for it. It might, for instance, mean that Vorsada had "got wind" of his investigation, and had sent one of his minions down here to discover whether he was carrying around with him any documented information which might possibly have incriminated Vorsada and his financial intrigues. But how was it possible, Peter wondered, that Vorsada knew he would be staying at The Grafton Hotel? Peter himself had not made up his mind about this matter until he was actually driving over Vauxhall Bridge. There could, of course, be only one explanation. The Cottage had been watched ever since he had found Maryon Santley trembling and white on his doorstep. They had followed Maryon from Carleon Towers. Marj'on had told him that Vorsada had advised her to return to her room. The girl had decided against such a course. She had fled Blindly into the night, but unknown to the girl there had been someone hard on her heels all the time. Such a supposition was reasonable. It appeared to conform to whatever canons of logic he could remember. Vorsada, if he were playing the kind of game Peter shrewdly suspected, would want to keep track of the girl, and if he were holding her father against his will, what more natural than that he should wish to have a hold over the girl also? Assuming, therefore, that one of Vorsada's men had been assiduously watching the cottage—and Peter vividly recalled the face that had been pressed against the window between the chink in the curtains while he had been listening to Maryon's story—it was equally possible that his own departure early that morning had been recorded, and the information, for what it had been worth, immediately conveyed to Vorsada, who thereupon dispatched someorfte post haste to follow Peter to London. Come to think of it, Peter had been so absorbed in his own thoughts during the journey, that he had never once thought of noting whether or not he hatd been followed. Yet there could be no other explanation of this incident here in his room, and that, coupled with the affair of the half-closed door, combined to strengthen the assumption. It meant that one of Vorsada's army was actually in this hotel —someone who would doubtless wait there until such time as Peter thought fit to move. The thought intrigued the young man considerably. So far in this investigation he had undertaken there had been little excitement. Even last night's affair down at The Cottage had been Maryon's, and not his. He had been merely an accessory after the fact. "Well," smiled Peter, stretching his legs, and crossing over to the window, "I ought to be able to give the fellow a good run for his money. The first ! thing is to make sure that I am being | shadowed. Now, how is that to be ; done V' | For a few moments Peter stood stari ing out of the window down to the al- | most deserted street below. Beyond the ! opposing roof-tops he could see the end | of Victoria Station where a standing J engine emitted a steady stream of j blue-black smoke that curled up into the afternoon air with an almost | apathetic insouciance. Peter had read a host of detective novels, and remembered that on the occasion of such eventualities as this, the character concerned usually walked down a street, turned sharply right or left, and then scuttled into a near by doorway. Having schieved this adroit manoeuvre, the investigator pressed himself into as small a compass as the limits of physical disposition would allow, and waited for his "shadow" to come gliding past. Peter considered the idea a good one, and decided to put it into operation immediately. Snatching up his hat and coat, he made a great pretence of banging the y door quite unnecessarily behind him, |

ifSTERY, LOVE AND ADVENTURE and strolled nonchalantly down the corridor to the staircase. In the hall he paused, quito obviously, he thought, and deposited his bedroom key with the Black Silk Goddess who smiled pleasantly and murmured something about the "glorious weather." The clock above the desk told him it was three o'clock. In another two hours it would be dusk. Immediately on his right was the smoke-room; on his left the lounge. Carelessly he glanced into each room. They were empty of human occupation, and Peter felt distinctly disappointed. It appeared a futile mission on which he was about to depart. Nothing daunted, however, ho passed a complimentary pleasantry with the 8.5. G., was rewarded with yet another lipstick smile, and walked towards the door leading to the street. Here he paused for a moment or two, casually threw a glance over his shoulder into the deserted hall behind him, then walked down the three steps that begun and ended on the pavement. Another pause followed, for Peter had not the remotest idea which way to turn. One way he remembered led to Wilton Street; the other . . . Peter had not made acquaintance with that direction. So Peter turned left and walked along in the manner of a man not caring much where he was going, and to whom time did not matter. Peter did not dare glance over his shoulder now. He recalled that people did not disclose their fears in quite so obvious a manner. As he progressed his eyes searched for a turning, but for more than three hundred yards none came in view. At last, just before the road met a junction along which the omnibuses were running, he espied a turning. It was quito a narrow one, and he had no notion where it would lead him. Arriving-at the turn, Peter turned and found himself in a narrow thoroughfare flanked on one side with the back entrances of the houses and shops that lined one side of the main road he had seen a little further along, while on the side on which he had taken his lefthand turn were what appeared to be a number of lock-up garages with rather deeply-recessed doors. Peter decided he was in luck, for any one of these doorways would yield a refuge for him! He allowed himself to pass by the first two, and then stepped quickly into the third, which provided him with about three feet of shelter from the buildingline level. With his back pressed against the green-painted wooden door, Peter waited. Not a sound came to his ears except the throb of the traffic beyond the buildings facing him. One minute . . . two minutes . . . three . . . Peter counted the seconds with disappointed persistence. Something had gone wrong. Perhaps, after all, he had been a prey to unnecessary fears. No one could be shadowing him, and he felt absurdly foolish standing there like a man waiting for the firing party. After five minutes he decided to abandon the experiment, and emerged into the narrow street again. As lie had half anticipated, the street was deserted. He smiled to himself. He had been a fool. -it Continuing his walk in a circle, he arrived back" at' the hotel from the opposite end of the street, went up to his room, and sat down. On accepting Sir Maxwell's invitation to pry into other people's affairs, there had been an arrangement that any 111formation for which he asked would be deposited at the General Post Office, und while he thought it would be too early to expect his uncle to have obtained the information he required, he decided that, after dinner, he would take a taxi to the Post Office and see if anything awaited him. On his way to the dining-room he paused at the reception desk and asked for a taxi-cab to be ordered for halfpast eight, he having decided against going along ~to the garage and getting out his own car, for if there was one thing that Peter Worthing loathed more than anything else, it was driving his own car around Central London. The Black Silk Goddess smiled again, and made a note of Peter's requirements, mentioning at the same time that it would be "no trouble at all, Mr. Worthing." The dinner was good. Peter knew it would be, for Pappa Polukolos had a reputation for his cuisine which was the envy of some of the other small hotels in the vicinity. During the meal he cast his eyes unobstrusively among the diners. There were a dozen of them. One or two he picked out as obvious tourists. Another was probably a commercial; yet another most probably a stock company actress grown old in the service of Thespis. ' None of them, Peter concluded, had the stamp of suspicion on their faces. The woman was the only one of them that really interested him. Once he caught her looking across at him, but as their eyes met the woman hastily dropped her faintly mascaraed lids and looked away. Peter thought nothing more about it. and proceeded with his meal. Finished it, he strolled into the hall. "The taxi will be along in about ten minutes," the Black Silk Goddess informed him. Peter thanked her, and turned to ascend the stairs to his room to fetch his overcoat. As he did so rather abruptly, he almost collided with the woman he had stamped as an actress. He apologised hastily, and was rewarded with as sweet a smile as any man could wish. Ten minutes by his watch Peter stood on the steps of The Grnfton. Almost immediately a taxi-cab drew up at the door. Peter ran lightly down the steps and paused as the driver held open the door. "General Post Office," instructed Peter, climbing inside. Peter heard the door slam behind him, but that was the last sound that came to his senses for some time afterwards. Almost immediately something moist and sticky was pressed against his face, and another hand gripped the nape of his neck. He flung up his arms to beat off the attack, but the chloroform was swift in its lethal work, and Peter Worthing remembered nothing more. CHAPTER XII Maryon Santley, in spite of the unobstructive guardianship of Mr. Badger, was a prey to an endless chain of fear. She had not been conscious of this fear to quite the same extent while Peter Worthing had remained in the house; but now that he had gone, the girl felt that there was no one with whom she could talk quite so intimately 011 the events of the previous night, and receive quite the same cheery reassurance. It was true that Mr. Badger was surprisingly attentive in spite of the fact that he admitted that this was the first occasion in his somewhat chequered career that he had ever been offered the complete charge of a lady. Mrs. CJundle had fitted her out temporarily with a white silk blouse and a tweed skirt that fitted her slim figure tolerably well, when one remembered that they rightly belonged to Mrs. Cundlc's thirty-year-old daughter, who was staying down in the village with her nursing her third child —a boy who, according to the extravagant and enthusiastic description of his grandmother, possessed the most amazing blue eves that ever belonged to any child since Mother Eve had been given to the task of procreation. In fact, Mrs. Cundle had accepted the situation with an almost stoical calm when once Peter had given her an explanation of the girl's appearance in the cottage. (To be continued daily)