THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22404, 28 April 1936, Page 18

THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS

(COPYRIGHT)

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

AN EXCITING STORY, PACKED WITH THRILLS AND MYSTERY

CHAPTER Vlll.—(Continued) The knife handle groaned under the impulse of his immense strength running counter to the stiffness oi the window catch. The blade had slid up between the two sections of window (which was of'the ordinary sash and cord pattern), but it would not slide sideways—as yet. However, lie suddenly felt a movement. The stiff and unused catch at last surrendered. The blade, impelled fiercely, swept sideways. The catch slid horizontally across the top ledge, and tho window was unfastened. Jeff pushed up the lower portion, permitted himself a long look left and right, and climbed insido. He pulled the window down again, and, sliding the tableknife into his pocket, breathed heavily. At any rate, for good or ill, he was in. He groped round tho window and found a'blind cord. Ho pulled the blind down. It was of blue shining material and quite opaque. He then realised that he had omitted to bring an electric torch, and that all good burglars carry such an article. However, he had a box of matches, and he managed to get an id*a of tno interior of the room with its aid, striding match after match in order to do so. A shabby desk with a shabby chair behind it stood in the floor middle on a small and shabby square of carpet. There was nothing else in the plac*). He tried all the drawers of the desk. None was locked. All were empty. There was nothing on the desk top save an old blotter, a cheap inkwell, and a twopenny pen. There was no paper of anv kind, no envelopes. He let the blind up, and groped to the hall and struck more matches. No letters lay on the floor inside the door. The floor itself was bare and uncovered, as were the stairs lifting from it toward the upper storey. Behind the office room were two others, a second sitting room and a kitchen with a scullery off it. More matches went to the inspection of these apartments; and those matches revealed an absence of furniture and floor covering which was absolutely complete. The matter was becoming more and more strange. Jeff's matches wore now nearly exhausted, and he groped up the staircase in the dark, stumbling to the landing and striking one more match ■when he reached it. Three rooms opened off it, each standing above corresponding rooms downstairs. In the middle room of these three he found some blankets and a pillow. They were carelessly arranged on the floor as a rough shake down, and he had an idea they had recently been used; so that somebody or other at times slept in that strange deserted place. He searched through the blankets, but they revealed nothing of interest. The striking of more matches showed him that the front and back bedrooms, the dirty little bathroom, were all as empty and devoid of indications of human habitation, as tho two rear rooms downstairs. In effect, save for the blankets and pillow, the shabby desk, chair and square of carpet, the house was utterly and completely empty. It was not even swept. The office itself was moderately clean, as though somebody went over it now and again; but the rest of the place was heavy with dust, as Jeff had discovered when moving about in it, for his feet had stirred the dust up to some good purpose. He stood, Jjis empty match-box in his hand,' and slowly rubbed his chin. This was a go, he thought; an extraordinary piece of business. Who rented a house like this, made pretence at furnishing one room as an office, and kept nothing in the place, nothing at all — not even a record of business done? He was moving across the floor when, from downstairs, came a sneeze I He had reached the door of the bedroom, and he came to a sudden and abrupt standstill. The sneeze was repeated, and he heard a voice—temporarily adenoidal—snarl: "Confound this dust! It's as bad as snuff." Another voice said: " Well snuff at times is good—" That second voice checked. A short silence ensued; then a swift hiss of confused whispering. The first voice spoke once more, clear now. " O.K. I'll go search this kitchen. You can get through this desk, and make it snappy." There was a fair amount of noise. The man who had gone to search tho kitchen clattered about carelessly. Jeff still stood by the open bedroom door, waiting, listening. And as he stood, a spreading ray of white light suddenly shot through the supports of the landing balustrade, flickered along the walls, over the doors and, checking, steadied itself full on him. A voice snarled: "Put your hands up. and keep 'em up!" Jeff slowly raised his hands. The light from the torch held him unwaveringly. The silence following the man's command was intense, and, it seemed, of tremendous length—a suspended, breathless silence during which Jeff's brain worked like lightning. The dust . . . Thai; was what had betrayed him. He had stirred dust up all over the place in his unlighted blunderings about downstairs, and that dust had not settled. He remembered the sneezing man's complaint regarding it, and how swift whispering hail followed the complaint. One of the two men had been clever enough to see that many small particles of dust floated in the light of the torch—dust, he and his companion could never possibly have lifted from the floor by their light careful treading; so they had searched —and found. The man began to climb the remaining stairs, keeping his light full on Jeff. As he mado the climb, he called out, and his companion, who had been pretending to search the kitchen, camo running upward to assist him. Tho man with the torch spoke briefly. He affected an American accent and what he deemed to be American argot, and Jeff remembered Aunt Sarah's letter. Probably the same two men. he thought. Some policemen, he added to himself; and still kept his hands up. " This guy was ahead of us. Told you so. That dust. A clever bird, ain't he? You keep still, up there." They were now on the landing, and the second man cried out, " It's the same fellow!" " You said it." agreed the man with the torch. " Well, Sanders, you're for it now, and no mistake. You go back to the pen. See? I'll say you do. Search him, Steve." Steve walked forward and, standing in front of Jeff, began to run through his pockets swiftly and skilfully. Jeff acted with a suddenness which took them both by surprise and completely turned the tables on them. He dropped his hands with a movement so quick that neither of them could act preventively, got a grip of the searcher's shoulders and hurled him backwards like a ninepin. He hit the gunman in this skeltering stagger, knocked him backwards too, so that the torch fell to the floor, split and went out- and so that both men hit the flimsy balustrading of the landing and crashed through it. One of them yelled afrightedly. The splitting of woodwork, the crash of their fall, the high terrified scream, were succeeded by a series of heavy bumps, the outcome of which Jeff did not wait to learn. He rushed into the front room, pulled back the rusted catch, flung the lower window up, and looked out into the street. It was empty and quiet. He went out of the window, slid downstairs, hung to tho sill with both hands, and then dropped, coming to his toes, staggering, falling, and, unhurt, got up and raced awav into the darkness. The following morning he looked through his newspapers carefully. They contained no report of any " outrage at the premises rented or owned by Mr.

Perceval Brendon in Pimlico; s° ho concluded that both his assailants had managed to get clear without any great hurt. There was, however, a sensation m their pages. The Franz Hals, stolen in the coun-try-house raid of the past 48 hours, had been dramatically returned to its owners, and by none other than Mr. Pa'd Barclay, of Kensington. Mr. Barclay s photograph was printed, and a representative of the newspaper had had an interview with Mr. Barclay, whoso public-spirited action was much commended. It seemed that a man in a mysterious motor-car had called on Mr. Barclay in the small hours of the night on which the robbery was committed. Mr. Barclay described the incident casually. " 1 am sure he was mad," he said, " but not so mad as to fail to understand that he and his confederates—as ] imagine they should be called had made a grave mistake in stealing so valuable a picture. Why he called on me I haven't the faintest idea. He wore a mask, and ho spoke with an obviously assumed voice. Also he had a pistol in his hand. Quito a melodramatio moment, I assure you. He insisted on leaving the picture with me. It was rolled lip just as I handed it to the police. Plainly, the thieves were afraid to keep it. Equally plainly I could not keep it, though" (and here the newspaper man said that Mr. Barclay smiled wistfully) " as a dilletante in art I would have given much to retain it." A photograph of the famous picture was also reproduced, and various comments on the situation were printed. Its rightful owner permitted a few phrases of thanksgiving to be published, and said he thought Mr. Barclay was a most public-spirited person. But at Scotland Yard there were some cynics. Police officers, particularly highly placed ones, are notoriously cynical. The big police detective summed up the general concensus of opinion at that institution which, through meeting the seamy side of life throughout every 24 hours, begins to believe in nobody—without proof. " Barclay's in this somewhere, and he got windy. He couldn't sell that picture for even a fiver, because nobody would dare to buy it. So he handed it back. Clever —" Curiously enough, however, Smith did not agree with this. Smith had other theories. CHAPTER IX. A day or two had passed. Lillian had tried unsuccessfully to secure a job ot some kind. It seemed that there were hundreds of beautiful girls in London who were quite capable of exhibiting frocks and other articles of feminine attire to the rich and indifferently smart, and nobody wanted her. She confessed failure to Paul Barclay, and he laughed. He was inclined to be expansive since he had indulged in his act of gratuitous honesty. He had that glow of self-satisfaction which only the very righteous ever know. The publicans and sinners are denied it. They only do good by accident, as everybody knows. " My dear," he said, " there's absolutely no need for you to -work. I much prefer you to be at home." He waved his hand across the table. It was dinnertime, and they had just finished an excellent meal. "Why should you beoutin a shop or salon, as I believe thev are called, when you can be here in comparative luxury? Let the poorer girls have their chance." " Thero is something in that." she from a girl who needs one; but at the same time, I hate idleness. By the way, I'm going to the pictures now." "Why didn't you ask me to come with 3'ou?" he asked. "Well—the next time. I can't to-night, as it happens. But if I'd known—" Lillian went off to the pictures and was fortunate enough, considering the run on the film, to secure a good seat, and when she had gone, Barclay sent for Kimber and Mrs, Allard. "And now," ho said quietly, "we'll have it all straight. Cards on the table. In the last few days you've both moaned and groaned enough for twenty. Come on I" For a moment they were silent. Then Mrs. Allard said, with darting suddenness: "Why did you return that picture ?" Barclay looked her over. "I always regard you as an intelligent woman," he said, in the same quiet voice. "I suppose it's fear, eh? Fear that has put you off your balance. Why should I keep it?" "It was worth thousands," she said, sullenly. "To whom? Not to me, Jane Allard, nor to you, nor to anybody who had no right to its possession. To a thief it was a worthless piece of canvas, and I have certain —er —artistic twinges of conscience. One does not destroy a Franz Hals." "Don't kid me!" she snarled. Barclay's eyes hardened. "Is this mutiny?" he suggested in a velvet voice. "Well, I'll explain. You know how the picture was brought here. You know that what I told the newspapers was true—that a masked man handed it to me, and that he had a gun ia his hand." "I know what you didn't tell them," she interjected swiftly, "and that was that the masked man said the picture was all the blood money you were going to get for a long time." "Why yes. . . . You're right. Blood money. A curious and repellant phrase. Now why blood money ? What have I to do with it?" His tono changed. "We known Turquin's gang carried out that raid, as they've carried out others. We know also that Turquin suspects me. But I am not going to allow Turquin to make suspicion into certainty. Turquin tried a bluff, and ho flung down a challenge. He sent that picture to mo —as payment. 1 can do without such payments. I called his bluff. I publicly returned the picture. I even made a statement to the Press, a procedure which, 1 understand, all the very best peoplo fall over each other to do, if ever they get the chance. Was that reprehensible? Was I a fool?" "You chucked awav a lot of money." Mrs. Allard was dogged. "An American would have bought it." Barclay chuckled. "You have primitive ideas, culled from cheap fiction and the films, Mrs. Allard. The Americans aro not gifted with looser consciences than the British. You think that one of those vague persons known all over the world as American millionaires, is waiting round each corner to buy some stolen article. You'-re wrong No American collector would have touched that Franz Hals. Turquin played a joke. He made me a gift of many thousands, a cheque which would never be met, however. So I returned the cheque." "I see." Mrs. Allard looked unconvinced. "And now there's this girl Betty. She snoops around. She's always listening. She's that kind of girl. Must have a finger in the pie of every household she works for. And she's always talking to that niece of yours. Shut up in her room with her." "Always . . .?" said Barclay silkily. "Well—she was the other day. I caught them." "And why shouldn't my niece talk to a maid who happens to be in her room ? And if she does talk, what should she talk about? Dark secrets? You . . . Me . . . Kimber here . . . Turquin , . ?" "She talks," said Mrs. Allard, with the same doggedness. "And so do you, Allard. Too much, curse you! Get out —and stay out!" The woman drew back a little under the could vemon in Barclay's tone. He leaned forward and added: "And do as you're told. Hear me? Do as you're told. They have a headsman's axe in Hanover for such as you. And never forget it." (To be continued daily)