THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22401, 23 April 1936, Page 18

THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS

By JOHN HUNTER / Author of "When the Gunmen Came," "Buccaneer's Gold," "Dead Man's Gate," etc.

(COPYRIGHT

AN EXCITING STORY, PACKED WITH THRILLS AND MYSTERY

CHAPTER IV.—(Continued) Barclay looked serious. "Mr. Turquin, forgive me, won't you? But if I 6ay that I find it rather —peculiar, shall say?—that you should come to me because this man is murdered. 1 hope you will understand." Turquin smiled. "A thousand apologies. There is no ulterior insinuation in my visit. It was a question of trying to find out what I could about the dead man. That is all. As I say, ho mentioned your name." "Did you say that?" asked Barclay quietly. "Well, if 1 didn't, I intended to do so. Ho did mention it —once, when he was drunk. Mr. Paul Barclay. The House, or something to that effect. It was rather an inexplicable thing for a man in Mahoney's position to do, so I thought I'd come along." "I see." Barclay looked him straight in the eyes. "And on such a foggy night, too. I congratulate you on your anxiety for Mahoney, Mr. Turquin." Turquin answered with more smoothness than ever. His words seemed to slide on to the silence of the room and hang there momentarily like gun smoke on a windless hill-top. "I am very loyal to my friends, Mr. Barclay; and ... I am afraid . . . implacable toward ray foes. A good trait and a bad trait in my somewhat deplorable character." "Well," said Barclay airily, "we all have faults. I'm afraid I can do nothing for you. Of course, I'm sorry about this man; but those people get into nasty brawls at times . . ." "Yes." Turquin got up. "I'm a little disappointed," he confessed. "I had hoped to give the police some assistance. I'll bid you good-bye, Mr. Barclay." Barclay, on his feet, offered him his hand. "Let us call it 'au 'voir,' " he suggested. "A . . . friendship ... so strangely begun should endure, don't you think?" Turquin inclined his head. He did not take Barclay's hand. He turned toward the door without another word, and Barclay hurried to the bell-push. Kimber met Turquin at the door, and deferentially held it open for him. A second or two later a heavy slam told of Turquin's departure, and Kimber came into the room. "I told you so," h"e panted. "He's on to us. He's on to us." Barclay's face was contorted. He had dropped—like a heavy, draggling cloak —all his self-control. "Like hell he is . . . N0T1" he snarled. "Get out, and stay out!" And Kimber fled. Barclay swallowed wine. His hand shook slightly. The strain had been enormous; but he had won! Ho had won 1 It clanged in his head like the tolling of a great bell. He had beaten Turquin at all points, outplayed him in a game which was as grim and deadly as though they had fought across the room floor with naked steel in their hands; a game of smooth words and quiet smiles with the shadow of death across it. ;■ Yet . . . Mr. Percival Brendon had killed Mahoney just in time. That was obvious. Mr. Percival Brendon deserved all praise for that. For Mahoney had obviously babbled. How much . . . Barclay did not exactly know. Yes . . certainly his killing had been in time. Or it been just too late? Barclay dared not consider that question. CHAPTER V. Jeff Sanders was a changed man. He had got himself a new suit and a shave and some money. He was living with his only surviving relative, an elderly spinster aunt, who resided on the edge of Blackheath in South-East London, in one of those large old houses which look out across the Heath, and continue to preserve that sedate respectability which marked them in the days when merchant princes graced the district with their presence. A nice woman, Aunt Sarah. There were those among the very young who laughed at her and called her an old maid—as though old maids are funny. Old maids are sometimes tragic, like other people, but more often than not they are very happy people. Aunt Sarah satisfied a great many of the music-hall old maid conventions. She was tall, angular, ncid-loking. A close observer, however, might easily have perceived that many years earlier that angularity had been delightful slimness, that what now passed for hardness, in her face had been marvellous regularity of feature; and the observer might have deduced the fact that worldly wisdom had contributed toward the aloofness in her still bright eyes.

When Jeff came to her house on that foggy night, she just looked at him and said: "Why, Jeff! Upon my Sam!" (This exclamation was Aunt Sarah's only expletive, and it was used when she was mightily disturbed.) Ho stooped and kissed her, towering clumsily over her, in spite of hor tallness. For a split second her white, well-carcd-for hands clung a little too tightly to his muscle-rolling shoulders. Then she had drawn back, the normal composed Aunt Sarah, brisk as a terrier dog. "Have something to eat," she said, "and then tell me all about it." So, in her somewhat old-fashioned dining room, with all the family plate gleaming about him, Jeff told her everything. She heard him without speaking until he had finished. What she thought and felt did not show on her face. She spoke quietly. "Well, my boy, perhaps you know best. I'm not sure. You can stay here as long as you like, and " Ho broke in. "I mustn't, auntie." Ho had called her that from a little boy, and would continue so to address her until she died. "The risk to you is " She checked him. "If you talk like that I shall be cross. Do you think I'm going to turn my own sister's flesh and blood out? Here you are—and here you stay! I'll lend you all the money you need. You'll have to pay me back. I don't believe in giving young men money to squander. Does them no good. And now come upstairs. I still have some of your suits." Sho showed him a bedroom. It had been his own —at ono timo. His clothes werr> there, cared for, brushed, hung up. She watched him examining them, and her eyes were suspiciously bright. Ho bathed, changed, shaved, and she stood in the bedroom while he put on his collar and tie. Thus standing, she gaw something on the bed and picked it up Faint, delicious perfume crept from it. "What's this?" she asked. He turned quickly. "Oh, I want that. I mustn't lose it." He had flushed a littlo. Ho added. "It belonged to the nicest girl I've ever met. She doesn't know I've got it. She helped mo out. The one in the train, you know." "Pretty?" asked Aunt Sarah. "Marvellous. Could I bring her here, if she'd come?"

"Of course you could. I'd like to meet her." Aunt Sarah dropped the handkerchief gently on to the bed. She stood looking at it, dainty, laced, delicate. There had been days, long lost, when more than ono man had sought to keep just such morsels of fine silk that had been hers. Aunt Sarah smiled. She had no bitterness about those daysThe next morning Jeff returned Lillian's money. He did not write her a letter, as letters go. He just scrawled his address on a piece of paper and wrote, without beginning: "In part payment of the greatest debt I havo ever incurred. If you wish to increaso my liability perhaps you will meet mo again.—J.S." ' He hung about in Greenwich Park all that day. Ho was very uneasy in his mind, and was afraid for Aunt Sarah, for there were those after him who might track him to her eminently respectable house on the edge of the Heath. Also —there was the question of Lillian's uncle, Paul Barclay. It was difficult. Ho admitted it to himself again and again. And the presence of Lillian made it more difficult still. Ho regarded Barclay as a deadly foe. Lillian, he conceived, must love tho man; perhaps not so much as ho loved Aunt Sarah, who had looked after him since he was 14. but certainly quite a lot. Also, how did one go about investigating mysteries and secrets? It was all very well to read of such doings in a book, but when it came to reality ono felt rather lost, so to speak. His memory stirred vaguely. Thero had been that card Lillian had dropped in the train—the card bearing the address of the man Brendon, in Pimlico. Nonsense, of course, to think about it. People carried all kinds of visiting cards. But . . . why should he suddenly renfember it? Was it a "hunch" ? Was it just plain foolishness? Was he, in fact, evading tho major point, dodging tho issue, afraid? And afraid because of Lillian, because ho did not wish to do anything that would bring her suffering. He was restless. He tried to moon around and take in the air. But the name of Brendon stuck —and stuck. That evening he thought to himself that, anyhow, no harm would come of going to mid-London and having a look at Mr. Brendon's house. Might give him some kind of idea . . . though what kind of idea he could not have explained to any living being. He knew, indeed, that he really was evading the point, that he was postponing that deliberate and dangerous action to which lie had definitely committed himself from the moment he stepped into the little boat east of Dieppe. He took dinner with Aunt Sarah, and said he was going out and might be late; so could he have a key. She gave him a quick startled look, seemed about to speak, and said nothing. That, he thought, was where she was a dear. She had always had the great and gracious gift of silence. She supplied him with a key, and he travelled from Lewisbam Obelisk to Victoria. Up.there he felt perfectly safe. He moved amid millions. Ho was swallowed up in a vast ant-hill down on which the great gods might look in vain for any ono particular ant that crawled through the canyons of brick and stone. He walked through Ebury Square and so on to the heart of Pimlico, and was fortunat« enough to meet a postman who directed him to the street he sought . In his dangerous journey across tho Channel, in the hazardous hours spent on the roof of the railway carriage, ho had been calm and warily confident. Yet now, as he trod the prosaic streets, as he plunged into the spreading dinginess of Pimlico, ho felt a little uneasy, unsure of himself. He found the street. It was not too well lighted, and it was deserted. Mr. Perceval Brendon's office had been chosen carefully, an eye being given .to the fact that this particular little street was not, and never would be. anything like even a minor traffic way. Jeff found the house, and stood and stared at it. It was like all the other houses in the road, save that while most of them showed a light at one or other of their windows, this showed no light at all—a dead house, with blind-blackened panes of glass at its front, a closed and locked door, a quiet house which, curiously enough, seemed a little remote from its neighbours. Jeff stroked his chin and considered it. Ho had. during his life, performed at least one desperate and dangerous deed, so that alarms were not unknown to him; but tho contemplation of burglary distinctly disturbed him. How did one really try and get into a locked house? Did ono use tho age-old trick of sliding back the window catch with a knife blado? He had read of it, but had never tried it. He had a shrewd suspicion that it was far more difficult than writing fellows pretended. And . . . why should he think of breaking into Mr. Perceval Brendon's establishment?

This question obtruded itself suddenly, disturbingly. The whole journey was really a fruitless (Jbne. It had no reasonable basis. To think of breaking into the house and searching it was to indulge in madness. He was turning away, his thoughts rather wistfully wandering toward Kensington, when he saw a man walking along tho street. His right shoulder was hunched, and ho dragged his right leg in a pronounced limp. Jefl would not have given him a second glance, but that he stopped outside the house with tli© brass plate on its door and began to fumble in his pocket—obviously for a key. Joff happened to be standing on the other side of the road and in shadow, so that the limping man had not seen him. Nor was ho seen by tho occupants of a car which swung tho further corner at high speed and came to a grinding standstill outside Mr. Brendon's house. Its arrival was so swift that the limping man had no time to move, nor, indeed, had he yet fitted his key to the lock of his front door. A man decanted himself swiftly from the car. Jeff, who was now quite interested, saw tho limping man turn with a startled movement. The man from the car was close to him, and in tho silence of tho street—for the idling engine ot the car mado only a slight hissing sound —Joff heard: "T want you, Brendon! Put 'em up!"

The limping man slowly raised his hands above his hoad. The man from tho car was very close to him, and Jeff could see that ho held his right forearm at right angles to the upper arm, and close against his side. Ho guessed tho right hand held a gun. Jeff gave the car a hard and long look. Another man was in it, sitting over its wheel. Not a living b«iing otherwise was in the street.* "Get into that car —and get in quiet I" snarled the gunman. "But, listen—" The high-pitched, squeaking voice of Mr. Perceval Brendon mado itself heard. "I'm deaf!" snarled the gunman. "Move I" Mr. Brendon limped toward the car. Jeff hardly knew what to do. He felt that he could not stand by and see a cripple audaciously kidnapped off the streets of London by an armed man, and still retain his self-respect. On the other hand, there was the gun; and probably the fellow in the car had one, too. (To be continued daily)