FREEDOM FOR TWO

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22975, 1 March 1938, Page 19

FREEDOM FOR TWO

CHAPTER Xlll.—(Continued) For a moment as Erica pushed Jon into her room, their bodies were close together. There was a fleeting warmth, and a swift glance almost of kindness passed between them. "She had," said Erica. "You stopped loving her." She closed the door, and sat down. A chill clearness like twilight settled upon her brain. She did not know why Jon should be wanted by the police, what ho could have done to bring them upon his trail liko this; but they were there, outside her door, climbing the stairs, mounting steadily nearer to the room where Jon was sitting. And it lay with her to save him; and she would do it. Sho felt no bitterness toward him; sho had always, even against her will, admired him. Even now ,she knew a certain kinship with him, through the beating of her heart and the racing of her blood. A knock at the door, and Alva's face appeared comically round it, frightened, all-round eyes and blanched cheeks. She looked up, the book limp under her hand. "Well?" "The police have come," said Alva stupidly. "They want to know about the gentleman who came to see you." The two men entered at her shoulder as Erica closed lior book and rose from her chair. "But he's gone," sho said easily. "Whatever is it all about? He went away quito five minutes ago. It was only a man who wanted his daughter's voice trained. What do the police want to know about him? Ho wasn't a criminal, was he?" Alva, twisting her hands in her apron, said: "I didn't hear him go." "He has not gone from this house," said the foremost officer flatly. "We saw him enter, and ho has not left again. You will tell us where he is. It is your duty." "But I don't understand. There is some mistake. Ha is not here. You see 1 am quite alone." She longed to stand between them and tho inner door, but that would be to betray what sho wanted to hide. She was ready with citizen indignation, however, when they moved toward it, and slipped in front of them before they could enter.

"This is an outrage. I have told you there is no ono here. You have no right to enter my rooms without a warrant. If you can't take my word, you must bring your authority with you. I won't be insulted in this fashion."

They stopped. Tho leader said calmly: "Very well. This house will bo watched until the warrant arrives; and if the man i s s found in your room, you will be arrested as an accessory."

Erica smiled; she thought it would matter very little. "I believe that you are unaware of the man's crimes; his name is Jon Bernstorn; he is wanted for the leading part in the Bjornson jewel robbery, and for the murder of a policeman." Erica believed she had cried out, though no sound came from her lips. Sho put a hand behind her, and groped for tho knob of the door, and clung to its coldness. Her mouth wa3 dry, so that for a moment sho could not speak. But at least she could see clearly at last, could see hovr he had wronged her, how she had let him twist her mind into the shape which best suited his ends, how he had used against Martin every atom of evidence which stood against himself. Thero was a silence which seemed to last for an age, while she stared helplessly from one to the other of the faces before her.

"Do you still say that he is not here?" asked tho officer drily. She pressed her shoulders back against the panels of tho door, and said: "Yes."

"Very well. I am sorry you feel obliged to give yourself and us so much trouble."

They were going away, she believed. They would not leave the house unguarded, of course, but perhaps, while they were at least out of her rooms, she could think of some way of getting Jon from the house. Or at any rate, it would be his own responsibility then, for she could do no more. And if they arrested .her for helping him, did it really matter? But if sho thought not, someone else had other ideas on the matter; for before she realised it the inner door had opened, and a quiet voice remarked clearly: "I believe you are looking for me."

That, was more from force of habit than anything else, because, whatever hare-brained scheme had been proposed to him in the old days, he had always been on to it like a shot; and he knew that it was still expected of him. The one thing he could not understand was where the flavour had gone, why the prospect of diving for a small fortune was dust and ashes in his mouth.

And Jon walked from the bedroom

It was his moment. No one could have been more magnificent. And she was sure, as she watched him, that he was unaware of his magnificence. He strolled into the centre of the room, and what light was left fell full upon him, and showed that lie was smiling. Above his too handsome face his blond crest shone in disorder. One hand was in his pocket; between the fingers of tho other a cigarette sent up a thin blue spiral of smoke. "I think you're looking for me. I'm Jon Bernstorn."

They had him by the arms in a moment, one closing on either side of him like the jaws of a machine, which was what they were. "Jon Bernstorn, you are under arrest for the murder of Cristin Thornborg; and for the theft of jewels from the Bjornson house on the island of Nordholm." Jon stood calmly between them, easing his wrists in their grip with an expression slightly fastidious. Ho was not used to being handled in such arbitrary fashion. "One moment!"

He lowered his head, and raising his hand to meet it, as well as ho could for the encumbrance of their arms, lie got the cigarette between his lips, and drew at it with a sigh of pleasure. "Don't trouble," he said round it, "I'll give you no trouble, at least until we're out of this house. After that, I advise you to look out." Erica did not speak. Over the shoulder of one of his captors ho looked at her; his smile had never been so impersonal or so reassuring, even in the days when he had walked with her up from the ice-rink at Dalgano, and talked of Martin, and mountains, and the three stars in the dagger of Orion. "This lady knew nothing against -me. She tried to shield mo only because I happen to have been her " She saw his lips hover for a long time round the word, but they formed it at last, with a slow deliberation which gave it deep significance. " friend." "You havo saved her a great deal of trouble, then," said the policeman. "We have nothing against lier." Jon fell in between them, and they marched him toward the door. Then he turned again, and gave her a last look. She was standing beside the table, straight and still, with her empty hands clasped before her, and her eyes fixed upon his face. She felt nothing but regret, and even that less for herself and Martin than for this man who had done his worst against their happiness. >lt seemed to her tragic that the effrontery of Jon should ever bo brought to this pass. What would become of him ? She did not think he would be executed; but would not a long term of imprisonment, to him, be far worse? She could not understand why she should feel sorrow for him, but sorrow was there, deep within her. At this last moment she would have freed him if sho coukl.

By MARGARET WATSON A STORY OF LOVE THAT ENDURED THROUGH STORM AND STRESS, A LOVE THAT WAS BIG ENOUGH TO UNDERSTAND

Neither of them spoke a word of what was in their minds. If he felt any shame, any regret, any gratitude, he did not show it. All lie said was: "Good-bye." "Good-bye," said Erica. The door had closed after them, and the sound of their footsteps was receding steadily down the stairs. She never saw Jon Bernstorn again. CHAPTER XIV. MARTIN GOES TO BHANDFOIID Martin sat upon the end of the crazy wooden jetty swinging his legs over tho sea, ana gazing, with eyes half-closed against the glare of tho sun, into the blue distances ahead of him. He had been in Germany all the winter, wandering hero and there somewhat in the fashion of a lost dog looking for its owner. Then, with January, perhaps becauso the thought of his first wedding anniversary hurt him rather badly, ho had hauled up his anchor in good earnest, and set out at the fastest pace of his life, and for any point of the compass which happened to offer diversion at tho moment. There had been no lack of company on that endless and aimless journey. Ho had lost, too, the inevitable responsibility of a wife, and was as free as in his bachelor days. He tried—indeed, he was still trying—to tell himself this with due conviction that it was a blessing; but thero remained something in him which was not satisfied. Ho had boon in several countries since that tragic wedding anuiversar.y; and everywhere opportunity had offered of the very things which had been the breath of life to him in tho old days. That was all lie needed, to get the cramp out of his limbs again. So, at least, he had constantly tried to persuade himself, but somehow it had not worked. Ho tilted his peaked cap forward over his nose. Tho sun was brilliant as daggers along the waves; and far off in tho mid waters the blue was opalescent as sunlit mist with something of green in it, and something of i grey, and something of hazel like a woman's eyes. Not Erica's eyes, howover; they were of the deepest brown. He had been here in the Pacific for a month, ever since Cavendish had picked him up on the beach at St.Felix. Good old Cavendish brought him, as usual, handfuls of adventure; and here they were upon an island miles from anywhere, preparing an expedition to salvage two merchantmen which had been at tlio bottom of the Pacific off St. Feodor reef for a matter of two years. "Just tho man I can use!" Cavendish had cried as they ran into each other below the ridge of palm trunks. They had hunted the wild geese before, several times, and knew each other's ways. But Cavendish did not know, thank heaven, that Martin Hirst had ever married a wife, let alone lost one. In Europe there had been a certain number of people who had known, whose irritating tactfulness in not questioning him had driven him mad; but here was an old fellow-adventurer who know nothing about that pathetic interlude, and who was, moreover, inviting him to be in on just such an exS edition as he had loved all his life, [e should have jumped at the chance. He had accepted, certainly, but in the tones rather of an outsider, a sceptic, one who was new to the game. "More Spanish gold?" lie had said, in the cautious voice of o:tio .who suspects a hoax, or, Avorse, a swindle. "Not much cold about it," Cavendish had said cheerfully, "though one of 'em was a Spaniard all right. They rammed each other beautifully round about midnight, in the devil's own fog; and tho crews —they were greasers mostly—cut for their lives. I still think they could have brought the one in if they'd tried, but they were too intent on saving their own skins. I have them nicely located—did a bit of private prospecting round there a few months ago—and you're just in time to bo in the game. Mixed cargoes, both of 'em, and pretty valuable, and most of it as safe as the day it was laded. Are you on ?" "I'm on.''

He swung his legs over the end of the jetty, and looked from the pallid blue breadth of sky to the shimmering miles of sea, to the muddy punctures of the driven piles in the dark water under him, to the sands behind, which were of a dull fawn colour, and the splay dark heads of the palms beyond. He hao. thought of just such scenes from the brief imprisonment of the London flat, and his heart had yearned for their colour, and perhaps for tho distance of them, too. Now that he had them here in his hands, he was busy thinking of the golden-brown cushion in the living-room, and tho Meryon etchings, and the little basalt Horns falcon, and And Erica, of course! Cavendish came whistling down the jetty, with a crisp clumping of large boots upon the creaking planks as punctuation to his tunes, and sat down beside his guest and partner. "Nice going. We'll be off next week, if Lacey and Gerrard arc ready. Feels good, doesn't it, to be back in those latitudes? I can't think how you lived for KO long in harbour." Martin filled his pipe, slowly stubbing the tobacco down with his linger. After a moment he said gruffly: "Got plenty of partners, haven't you?" "Only those two. Didn't you want 'em? You could have said and we'd have done the job between us; but they've been in harness with us before." "No, I meant—you won't bo sunk for want of cash or help, if " "If what?" "If I quit?" "You're not thinking of quitting, are you?" The incredulous stare ho gave Martin raised the faintest shade of shame, but could not sting as it would havo done once. "Why, man, we're set for ono of tho biggest and most profitable larks of a lifetime, and now you talk of backing out. What's eating you?" Martin said, from under the peak of a cap which obscured almost the whole of his face in its shade; " 'Fraid I've lost my taste for larks, cl'you know! I know it's a lack in me, not in what you're offering, but I can't help it." "But you were as keen as the rest of us." "I tried to be. I suppose I was for a day or so. But it won't wash, old boy. I must be off colour, I think. Anyhow, you won't be startled if I elect to go home." Ho knew then that he would go home; and that in itself was a strange phrase to use of a country in which he had spent so little of his life. Only his boyhood belonged to England, his boyhood and that elusive little scrap of his manhood which had tied him for a while to Jameson's office, and to a London flat full of brown cushions and homeless books. That, surely could not have woven even one thread so strongly into his life as to draw him back to it now; and yet here he was, with the sea and the

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wild earth his poors, homesick for London's littleness. There was no flavour in the once sweet distances. Even to heave up his anchor again and be off faster than ever on his wild goose chase would be useless, a mere pursuit of the horizon. It was 110 use trying to fight facts; the zest was gone from roving.

He would go home. So Cavendish might watch him covertly in puzzlement. Cavendish might confide to the sky, to the empty verandah at night, to the sea itself, that something was very much wrong with old Martin. Lacey and Gerrard, when they came, might put their heads together in corners over the chant*e in him; all three of them might shake their heads sadly for the passing of a boon companion. But no power of theirs could win him back again., nor do anything to cure this strange, hesitant sickness of his. They took him to St. Felix, and deEosited him thero regretfully to make is own way home; which he did in a sort of living dream, which drew him every day leagues further from the old life he had tried in vain to revive. They went on to St. Feodor reef still subdued by his defection. It was most disturbing to watch such a change taking place in one of their wide and wild circle.

"Ho had," said Cavendish, who carried somewhere in him a scrap of vindictive poetry, "a homing look in his eye." "Homing?" scoffed Lacey. "What should he go homo to? This is more his home than England." "Search me! But I tell you, my son, that the spirit is gone out of him. Offer him treasure trove on a golden plate, and he'll turn his back on you. Why? How should I know? Maybe because there's something else be wants and can't have, or maybe because his liver's out of order."

But no such sage theorising could reach or penetrate the dreams of Martin Hirst, as he was carried homeward over the Pacific, and across the face of America, and saw the sundering Atlantic again.

He did not know why he should long to see his homeland again. There was nothing to anchor him there, nothing to draw him back to town or country; yet ho could not hold back his mind from eager flight forward over the sea. He did not want colour; he did not want adventure; he did not want incident, or thrills, or danger, or the infinite variety of scene which had seemed to him once the only beauty. Ho did not know what he wanted. There seemed nothing left in life to desire. He wandered the decks of the ship, during that homeward voyage, like a man in a morose dream, watching the mother of pearl dawns come, and the purple nights go, without seeing any charm in either. The sickness grew upon him.

No one found him at all interesting during that voyage. The few who persevered for a short time on account of his good looks soon retired, giving him up as a lump of a man who leaned upon the rail, watched the waves and the distant skyline as if they had personally injured him, and had nothing at all to say to even the mo.st charming of sirens. Martin hunched his shoulders against them, and did not care.

But England, when ho reached it, held for him no more satisfaction than the ends of the world. He walked the streets of London with due intent to enjoy his homecoming, and found the wliolo thing noisy, irrelevant, and slightly haunted by uneasy memories of two Meryou etchings which changed places upon a cream-coloured wall, and a grand piano standing like a household god in the centre of a warm brown room.

It had been lovely; he knew that now. If only ho had been in less of a hurry to throw it all to the winds! But Erica had wanted adventure, so it was inevitable. Or —wait a moment! —had she really wanted it? Hadn't she perhaps responded a littlo too loyally to his own suggestions of what she ought to like?

If only 110 could have had it all over again! And there came that hideous and useless pain; because he couldn't, and that was that.

He did not quite know why he went to Brandford. When he had reached it he wished himself away again; when lie stood upon the rectory doorstep he wished he could make himself invisible when the door was opened; but lie was becoming inured to these contradictions in longing. He had wanted to come. •Ho was here. And here he would at least hear of her: and afterwards —well, if they threw him out he wouldn't blame them.

Mrs. Manning herself opened the door. Her eyes lit up at the sight of him, almost as if he had really been her son.

"Why, Martin, my dear! How lovely to sec you!" and her eyes went questingly over his shoulder. "Where's Erica ?"

If that was a particularly nasty shock, it was capped by the readiness with which he found himself telling string after string of lies. He could not in the least understand why she should know nothing of her daughter's parting from him; but ho could not bring himself to tell the story, perhaps because he knew that she had trusted him.

"I loft her in town," ho said. "We've only just got back you know, and naturally thero aro a hundred and one things to be done at the flat; so she sent 1110 here—to get me out of the way, I think." Ye,y, she would be coming down in a few days; she was anxious to come. Yes, she was simply bursting with health. He could believe that old talo about seven lies following each other into the world, now. And yet they were all foredoomed; he could not keep it up long; because he had to know what had happened to Erica, what she had told them, or—more important—what she had not told them. It happened that Michael Dunn was helping the rector to tie up his rambler roses; so there were four merry people at the rectory that afternoon; of whom Martin was the merriest, because he was desperate. All three of his hosts, and particularly Mrs. Manning, talked persistently of Erica. Sho was the person who looked after the correspondence; and who but she eoidd have remembered all the details of the ice-carnival at Copenhagen, which Erica had described so minutely, or the picture of Btigen in early spring, or the thrilling tale of the rail smash from which both Erica and Martin had escaped with only scratches? "Riigcn?" said the unhappy Martin, writhing. "Bail smash?" "Oh, she tells us all about everything you've done together, you know. Though I say it who taught her tin; art, she writes a very vivid letter. So lucky that women are good at that sort of thing, don't you think? Because the men never aro!" • "1 wonder," said Martin, dry-lipped, "if you'd mind. letting me read her letters to you ? She doesn't, you see, write any to 1110." They brought them to him, a whole sheaf of them, and he sat down before their eyes, and read every one. Good letter;!, accurate though "she hadn't, poor kid, seen half the places slip described, bubbling over with joy of life though she was breaking her heart as she wrote them. Or. 110, that was wrong; hearts like Erica's didn't break, tliev only went on hurting. The loneliness of being without himself breathed so deep in everv line of her gallant lies that he knew there was, there could bo, no other man in her life. (To be continued dsily)