THE GREEN LANTERN

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22434, 2 June 1936, Page 17

THE GREEN LANTERN

Bv BEN BOLT Author of "A Shot in the Night," etc., etc.

CHAPTER Vll.—(Continued) The Honourable Bill's earnest sincerity almost convinced Miss Ip, yet there were lingering doubts, and halfway through the third dance, having prevaricated for ten minutes in a way that would have left Sapphira at the starting-point, it was borne on her that instead of stringing him along, as had been her intention, sho herself was being led like a penitent in tho Confessional. With that realisation, sho took a firm hold of things. " You got my name," she said. "And exchange is no robbery." " You've said it," he laughed. " My name's Bill to my pals. Family name's Pallisier, and one of these fine days I shall bury all the joy of life in that Mausoleum —the House of Lords." The girl looked at him sharply. " Honest injun?" " Ab-so-lutely! If you don't believe me, ask the waiter there. Ho knows me." "My!" said the girl, • visibly impressed, as Pallisier had hoped she might be. Then she asked another question, which showed him how the wind was veering. " And those gentlemen you were with, are they peers in the bud as well?" Ho shook his head and laughed. " Not a hope for them. They belong to your own great country —" " Americans?" snapped the girl, a thought too eagerly in Pallisier's judgment. "All of them?" " All," he said, and elaborated. " Don't know much about them. Met two of them for the first time to-night, y'knoiv. Tall one back there at the table I've known for a goodish bit. He introduced me to the others, but for tho land's sake don't ask me to name them, for I can't. Awful memory, you know, real affliction and all that." Then, quite deliberately, he added nonchalantly: " Don't care much for the chap who has gone. . . . But I'm sorry for him. He's had a perfectly awful shock." He felt the girl stiffen suddenly in his arms, and wondered if it implied knowledge of the tragedy that had befallen. Then he dismissed the idea, remembering that it must have happened since her arrival at the Paon d'Or. A second lator the question he anticipated came.

" What sort of a shock?" " Investments have flopped. Fairly flattened on the Wall Street pavement. He's been expecting to hear something all day, and just now his secretary rang up from the hotel. There was a cable, and the secretary phoned here by arrangement. Rough luck I call it—" The lady accepted this tarrididdle at its face value, though she must have known it was not the truth if she were acquainted with Sullivan's real activities. But Pallisier's nonchalance would have convinced a judge of his own innocence in the matter, and Miss Ip deliberately broke the thread of the conversation. "How thirsty dancing makes one. I'd like to moisten my throat." "You shall," he said quickly, steering her to a table. "I ought to be kicked for not asking you before." He looked at the clock, and laughed. , "Sun' 3 gone down behind the yardarm right into the sea. It's zero-hour! But where there's a will there's a way. We'll call for two of the dryest gingers." "Hog-wash!" commented Miss Ip in a voice of gloom. "Wait!" he laughed. "Maybe you'll find it none so bad for prohibition hours. .. . . But remember, if there's anyone who looks like a copper steps in, you swallow the whole dose, tumbler and all, pronto! You get me? Costs the management five shillings a year to be registered, and they wouldn't like to lose that crushing figure." He signalled a particular waiter, gave an order, and a private sign, and presently, from a bottle which bore a label that belittled its contents, the lady was moistening her throat with a passable champagne. When the moistening was completed she smiled her transfiguring smile. "Now I call that real good, Mr. Pallisier." "None so bad, none so bad!" he agreed. "But what about a little more ot the light fantastic?" "My dogs are tired," said the lady, glancing down at her dainty feet. "Time, too, that I was getting to my hotel." The Honourable Bill was pleased to hear it, but nevertheless expressed regret, and ended with the declaration, "Can't let you go alone. Wouldn't be decent at this hour. I'll see you to the steps." "That's fine of you," answered Miss Ip. "Sure you don't mind?" "Mind? I'd be cut to the heart if you denied me the pleasure." The lady laughed. " Then in five minutes." She moved off in the direction of the ! cloak-room, and Pallisier promptly crossed to his friends. "So long, boys, for the present. See you later at —" " You're never going with that Jane —" began Patterson. "You've got it wrong, old chap. The lady's name is Minnehaha; and Sullivan was quite mistaken in the notion that she comes from Chicago. Virginia is her stamping ground—' ] "Don't be such a blithering ass—" 1 "S-s-s-h-h! . . . How about follow- 1 ing on, and taking a compass-bearing 1 of the course, commander? As a navi- ' gator that should be in your line. ' What?" * The commander was dumb for a 1 moment, then he laughed sharply. "My 4 apologies. ... I took you for a darn fool. Of course we'll follow—and we'll 1 get a line on that crowd. Off you go, i and don't look behind you." i The Honourable Bill answered 'gaily. "It will be eyes right all the way— i unless Minnehaha sits on the left. Ta- j ta!" i

He secured his hat and coat, gave instructions for a taxi to be oalled. and waited for the lady to appear. When she did he caught his breath. The white fox evening coat enhanced her beauty amazingly. Her eyes by contrast with the whiteness were mystic pools of darkness, but luminous as moonlit tafrns. Her lips, parted in a smile, were sheer allurement. Her small head carried regally—"Steady the Buffs!" he whispered to himself, and sternly repressing the emotional excitement she aroused offered his arm. She took it, and as he could have sworn gave it a little playful squeeze. Then they moved toward the door. Before they reached it, it was opened from without and two people entered —at the sight of whom Pallisier caught his breath,, and gave a start which made the girl at his side look at him with swift curiosity. The pair who had entered were the neat little man who earlier in the evening had left his hat in Grosvenor Gardens, and the languid lady of the Golden Carp. It was the lady who recognised him first. Ho marked the flame that leaped in her slanting eyes, heard the couple of words she spoke in her own tongue, and saw recognition in the man's eyes. "Now for a holy row!" he thought, but met the venomous gaze of the pair with a stony British stare, unwinking, annihilating, curious, but without a spark of recognition. The pair stopped, but Pallisier, tinconsciously urging his companion, kept right on. As he passed them, the pair were! plainly uncertain what to do, and

(COPYRIGHT)

A THRILLING STORY OF MYSTERY AND ADVENTURE

"My dear," complained the Honourable Bill, " do talk my native tongue.

and give me a chance to please you. This Benny fellow whom I'm supposed to have tipped, I never heard of him —" " Hell!" broke in the lady, m n baffled exasperation. " There's no fella in it. A benny's a hat." " Oh. I get you. A wonderful language this trill'of American nndefiled. 'Pon my word I'll take conversational lessons —" Miss Ip checked the further utterance of this good resolution by a sudden sharp dig with the pistol. "Reach for the roof," she said snarlingly. " You mean—er —put 'em up?" "So vou've got that much sense? Wonderful! ... Up with 'em."

(To be continued daily)

Pa!lis : ,er was conscious of goose-flesh between his shoulder-blades as he wondered if Lamia had retrieved that thin knife of hers. The stalwart uniformed doorkeeper stepped inside to hold the door wido for them, affording cover for which the Honourable Bill was fervently grateful. His companion looked back over her shoulder. "Say," she asked curiously, "who was that sleepy-looking Jane?' "Lord knows," he answered, and in the same moment became aware of another Japanese gent 1 " lan, 1 who was in the midst of a hot argument with tho taxi-driver from whose vehicle the pair must have descended. He caught sight of tho man's face and came near to whistling in astonishment as he recognised Mr, Cliojiro Ritsuo. "Seemed to know you!" said Minnehaha, too engrossed in following the hare she had started to note the arguing pair. "Lots of people make that mistake," he said cheerfully, and led her to the taxi waiting a couple of yards or so in front of the one where tho dispute was being waged. Tho driver, good man I had the door open, and having helped the lady in Pallisier breathed a silent "Thank Heaven!" and asked aloud: "Where do we go ?" "London Palace." He gave the driver instructions and stepped into the taxi. As he closed the door he was aware of his friends emerging from the club, and as he saw them bolt for tho second taxi, he chuckled softly. "What a lovely night'" he said asi he settled down by the lady's Bido. "A pity you have to hurry." "Think so!" the lady laughed. "What if I hadn't?" "We could do the parks—by starlight. Thing not to be missed by any visitor to London." "My! You don't say?" answered Minnehaha in tones that were distinctly encouraging. "But I do." He reached the speaking tube. "What about it?" "Must I—"—a little laugh—"shout it?" Pallisier joined in her laughter and gave the man revised instructions ending with a special one. "No need to wear out the accelerator!" No change of mind on the part of his passengers can surprise the London taxidriver, particularly when there is a charming lady in the cane. The man signalled his hand and manoeuvred his vehicle into the Mall. As they slid into that fine thoroughfare the girl looked out of the window, stooping forward a little as she did so. Then she turned and faced him, and the next moment the Honourable Bill suffered the most complete shock of his life. In the light streaming through the window he saw something in her hand that gleamed. A further second of startled observation revealed that it was an automatic pistol, lady's size, and then her voico broke on his ears crisply with a ring in it that proclaimed the speaker was not to be played with. "Now, you swell bonehead, just spill how you stand in with Bull Sullivan from Chicago, an' be darn slick about it!" CHAPTER VIIT. A RIDE IN A TAXI For a moment the Honourable Bill ! let surprise have its way with him, then the humour of the thing struck him and he laughed, and laughed again. The lady did not approve of bis mirth, and intervened peremptorily. "Stop that. An' spill the beans!" Mr. Pallisier's mirth continued in spite of the glinting pistol, but at length he managed to bubble a few words. "Say, Minnebaha . . . you're full of surprises. . . . Quick-change artist and all that, what?" "Stow the gab an' get down to it, sharp!" The lady's voice was like the ring of tempered steel, her face, as he saw in the light of one of the lamps as they passed, was vicious and hard, while the dark eyes were blazing. With well-simu-lated amazement he allowed the truth to dawn on him. "Good Lord!" he ejaculated, halfrising. "Y-you—you're not in earnest, m'dear?" "Sit down," said the lady, "or you'll sure find out that 1 am."

"But, Great Scot! You . . . you "

"Chuck that blather," commanded the laciy brusquely. "An* come across with it. Where d'you link up with that skate, Sullivan?" "I ... 1 don't just get you. Minnehaha. You see "

"Liar!" came the rude interruption. "I guess you're one of those fancy new cops they're turning out over here. Regular dudes, I've heard. You didn't think I swallowed all that poppycock about the House of Lords, by any

chance, did you?" "Well," owned the Honourable Bill in a grieved voice, "I thought you'd recognise the truth when it was spoken . . . What?" 'Still taking me for a boob?'" The lady's voice had a snarling note, and it dawned on him that her feelings were really hurt by the notion. Also, he realised that there were unpleasant possibilities in the situation and that it behoved him to step warily. London was not Chicago, but Minnehaha might not have grasped that fact, and there

was a kind of bulge at the end of the automatic in her hand which he guessed

must be a silencer, though he was quite unacquainted with the gadget. That meant that in the traffic the sound of a muffled shot would not be heard, and the lady would only have to step out at the next traffic hold-up, and she could get clean away. It was as well perhaps to avoid exasperating one who lived so adventurously as this Cicere madonna.

"I assure you, no!" he answered with placating earnestness. " I should never dream of doing so. Anyone looking at you would whisper to himself that such a , charming head must be full of the little grey cells which—" "Aw! Darn!" broke in Miss Ip. "You'd sure jaw a corpse till it 'ud get up an' walk away out of earshot. Put the lid on that stuff an' come to the brass nails. What about Sullivan?"

" Lady, I told you the whole truth back there in the club. I never saw that unfortunate gentleman in my life before to-night and—" " You won't see him again, ever, if that's the line you're going to take. . . Come clean an' cut the frills, or I'll corpso you. Where d'you stand in with Sullivan, and what's his li'l game iust now? He's on me. I know. I saw him glimp me in that dance-joint, an' 1 guess it wasn't to just step a fox-trot or two that you tipp'd yo'r benny to me."