ANNOUNCER'S HOLIDAY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23037, 14 May 1938, Page 17 (Supplement)

ANNOUNCER'S HOLIDAY

CHAPTER XIX. „ GRETA ASKS A QUESTION TTPSTAIIIS beside the windows which looked out on the river Geoffrey Allardyce and Greta Mahler stood facing one another. Somehow neither of them saw anything absurd about the situation; the situation of two young people facing each other with some nine feet of expensive carpet between them, and eacb of them wearing an expression of utterly serious tensity upon a face both whitish and drawn. Neither had attempted to shake hands. They merely stood and looked at each other, end felt choked. And when at last speech came, both spoke together absurdly, and as absurdly apologised simultaneously.. But it was Greta who stopped, and Geoffrey who stammered oa. ■ "Please, Greta," he said, his fingers twisting the brim of his hat unconsciously and furiously, "tell me one thing. When you left me the other night —was it to join Prince XavierP" "What right have you to ask me that?" demauded the girl. _ "None, I know. I only implore you to tell me. You see, I love you." Greta laughed. "Oh, please don't laugh! I take it that it's true, then?" "And if it is—you pretend that it matters." Geoffrey took .a step toward her and •topped. "It matters so much," he said, "that it doesn't natter at all! I love you so Much that 1 don't care if he's your lover ten times over!" "Why do you love me?" The tone should have warned him, hut Geoffrey was a young man desperately and sincerely in love for the Ms't time in his life. ffWhy?" he repeated stupidly. I don't know —I just love you—" His voice died away. .Greta turned to the window, and sjjoka ovi-r her Shoulder. "You asked me a question just she said. "Will you answer me one?" "Anything, of course!" "Did you come to make love to me at tho suggestion—or the orders —of the Count von Keichenberg?" "Greta!" She stamped her foot. "Answer me, Geoffrey!" "I suppose Lucia put you up to this!' "Leave Lucia out of it. Geoffrey, please." "Very well. It began as a crazy notion of von Reichenberg's—yes. But the moment I saw you — "That's enough, thank you. And as you've answered my question I'll answer yours. I did leave you the other night f°r Prince Xavier —though he is not, fild never has been, my lover. But now * shall marry him!" , "But Greta—why? You don't care ™ r him! It doesn't matter about me! Jou're all wrong, as you'll learn one day. But leave that out. Only remember I enme to tell you first. If you marry the prince, they'll kill you." And if I don't," retorted the girl, will kill me! Suppose I see who Jlfians it. I'm inclined to b«licve Xavier. Hease go now." But Greta—" »he sat down. Geoffrey made a baffled Movement toward her, and tried to s P®ak, but the words would not come. At that moment the telephone bell . a ®g. Greta picked it up listlessly, then Un n up witfl widened eyes. "It's for she said. "Who knew you were with mo? If it's Xavier—" U. out) handed over the instrument and *®Ped her hands togethor. «\r " sa ' ( ' Geoffrey, fiflu Allardyce?" queried a sharp IMP^® n t;S°unding voice at the other end instrument.

"Kindlv leave the hotel at once, collect Ts73, and meet Superintendent Moresby at the address in Soho where you met him before. Urgent." The line went dead. There was a little silence. , , _ , "Was it Xavier?" asked Greta. "No." "Then, who?" "I can't tell you, Greta." "But where are you going?" ■ "I' can't tell vou that, either.""I see. I thought—well, it doesn't matter, does it, as I'm never going to see you again." "Greta!" "I mean it. Go away —and please never try to see me again!" And as Geoffrey went slowly and miserably from the sitting-room he heard behind him the slam of Greta's bedroom door. CHAPTER XX. ASSASSINS' PICNIO The Channel Islands —particularly the smaller of them—are among the most delightful of holiday resorts. Even in latish autumn a generally equable weather can as a rule be counted upon witb reasonable accuracy. And on this particular afternoon a sun that woukl not have disgraced May shone down upon the cliffs of Sark out of a cloudless sky. . Upon the delightfully springy turf of one of these cliffs were sitting four men. It would have appeared to an onlooker —there was no onlooker, by the way—that they were having a picnic. He would also probably have surmised that they were four Continental students enjoving a holiday from Munich or the Sorbonne. For their appearance was beyond doubt un-English. They Avore tight jackets with rather small lapels. Two wore faintly ridiculous straw hats. All of them, when they stood up, carried about their shoulders the unmistakable mark of having at one time or another been drilled. Two were dark, two were blond. But only one of them carried anv outward visible y ign or being other than altogether commonill ace. He—the taller of the two blonu

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By VAL GIELGUD Well-known radio dramatist and author of Beyond Dover, etc.

A VOICE, KNOWN TO MILLIONS OF 8.8.C. LISTENERS, BELONGS TO A YOUNG MAN WHO HAS BEEN GRANTED A MONTH'S HOLIDAY. ON THAT VACATION MANY THINGS HAPPEN.

young men—wore upon bis left check the crooked cross of the Nazi movement; it had been unskilfully burned into his flesh in a concentration camp. They ate and drank cheerfully enough in the sunshine. Away to the horizon stretched the glittering carpet of the sea toward Great Britain, whither their thoughts were also tending. Until they had finished their alfresco meal, and were all smoking thin Italian cigars, they spoke lijfctlo. When they did indulge in conversation they used invariably each other's Christian names—or rather they used Christian names. And they were names with some significance, for all that the names themselves were not so uncommon or peculiar. They were, in fact. Adolf, Benito, Josef and Franklin. For it was a quaint conceit among these voung men to adopt as names the names of those whom they intended, sooner o" later, to put to death. Adolf —of the swastika-scarred cheek —-might perhaps have qualified for a place in the records of a very suspicious police. His expression was not really that of a peaceful citizen. His body was unusually powerful. And he was an exceptionally fine shot with a rifle. But Benito would have seemed entirely in place with a napkin over his arm in any cheap restaurant. While Josef and Franklin had been born to pass in any crowd. It would have needed something of a miracle to persuade the charming and competent lady, who is the chatelaine of the island of Sark, that her demesne harboured on that sunny afteinoon four of the most experienced murderers in Europe. Yet so it was. Josef stretched himself out at full length, tilted the brim of his hat so as to keep the sun out of his eyes, and concentrated his attention on a pair of gulls wheeling between sea and sky. "How much longer liave_ we got to wait. Adolf?" he asked. "We're getting fat." 1 "It's in the lap of the gods," said Adolf. Franklin picked up a pebble, ancl flung it over the cliff with the over-arm swing of one who bowls a cricket ball —or throws a hand-grenade. "You mean," said he, "that it's in the hands of Casimir Konski?"

"If you like."

"That's just the trouble. I'm not sure that I do like. I don't trust Casimir, Adolf. What do you say, Benito?'/ The little Italian—he was actually a Corsican licked his rather thick lips. "I trust nobody," he said. "Five years in the Lipari Islands does not increase one's confidence in one's fellow men. But Casimir is risking his skin, too. He can't throw us down without ruining himself into the bargain." "He has a way of getting out, when his friends go to gaol," grumbled Franklin, a New York Neapolitan, who had graduated to political murder from a gang run by one of Capone's rivals, and whs in cousequence a specialist in the use of the sub-machine-gun.

"He knows the ropes in London," said Adolf calmly. "We don't. The organisation must use what tools it can And. No one has jet questioned Casimir's ability." "And what'about the ability of the English police?'" persisted Franklin. "Those boys have a reputation to lose so I've been told."

"And they're goiing to lose it," said Benito, and added delicately, "Not losing your nerve, are you, Franklin?" The other snarled woi fish I,v, and his hand went automatically to his left armpit. "Quiet!" said Adolf decisively. "We're not carrying weapons, Franklin, and if we were, you know the rule of organisation —no private quarrels till the job's done!" "I know all right," said Franklin, and dropped his hand sulkily enough. "But all this hanging around and waiting for the balloon to go up is liable to get me steamed up a piece!" Adolf sat up, and crossed his arms across his knees. "Listen to mo for a moment," he said. "I want to talk quite seriously. We have all waited years for this message from London. For years the organisation has waited for the dictators to leave their countries —to go to some place where \ they cannot be surrounded day and night by precautions and bodyguards. And during those years 1 have been beaten and tortured, and Benito has been beaten and starved, and Josef has endured the hell of a Siberian saltmine, and Franklin has done 'solitary' jn San Qucntin. Each of us in turn escaped from our several hells, and the organisation has made ijs men again. We are surely not going to be schoolboys and throw away the chance we have earned with our blood and our sweat, just because wo cannot endure to .wait for a few days longer in the sunshine?" i There was no reply. His three listeners wore all staring out to sea. But not one of them at that moment saw the English Channel or the wheeling gulls. I'or Benito was back on the Islands of Lipari, sweating in the midsummer heat of the Mediterranean, looking through , bars at the black silhouette of an Italian destroyer patrol; and Josef ws working frost-bitten, shivering and emacjatdd, in tlie bowels of a Siberian salt-Mind, ftll d Franklin lay, huddled and semi-conscious in n pitch-black cell in the prison of San Qucntin, while jeering warders deluged and bruised him . with ice-cold water from hoses. "Well?" said Adolf at last.

He got no answer. But now he needed none. There was that visible upon the faces of the other three, which rendered reply in words quite unnecessary.

CHAPTER XXI. FANTASTIC NIGHT The second meeting with Superintendent Moresby in tne shop in_ Soho proved a sufficiently tame affair for Geoffrey and Charles Bland. They found the detective curt, official, and uncommunicative. He merely told them that he wanted, if by any means it was possible, personal communication to be re-established with Casimir Konski. It appeared that that worthy had quitted his establishment in Limehouse just before the River Police had entered it.

"And I'll bet old Cavendish took just too long to let himself be persuaded to raid it," said Charles irreverently. "You're on duty now, Mr. Bland," was the Superintendent's reply; delivered in a tone which showed clearly enough that he was not amused by that sort of comment at the expense of a superior officer. "But how are we going to make the contact?" inquired Geoffrey. He knew he sounded stupid. And he already had a very shrewd idea of what would have to be done. But he wanted to change the subject quickly. "That's your business," was all Moresby would say, looking from one to the other with the sort of expression that a tyro at any job would most dislike. "I needn't tell you two that you're our only, or even our maiu, thread in this business. But I can tell you that it's dam' serious." And he added privately to himself that it was a lot more serious than he liked to admit, and growing worse with every hour that passed. For the distinguished foreigners had made official announcement of their intention to start on their travels to the new Peace Conference. And already armies of workmen had cluttered up open spaces along the route between Buck-, inghain Palace and St. Paul's Cathedral with the scaffolding which in due course would turn into public stands from which the State procession would be viewed. And Casimir Konski—in spite of all the eyes that had been on the look-out for his bulky, though elegant form —had vanished into the thinnest of thin air. . . .

. The big policeman turned up his collar, pulled down the brim of his hat, ami went on his way.

"Well?" said Charles Bland. "Your move, I'm afraid, Charles." "Meaning?" "You'll have to contact Lucia, and so by easy stages to our Casimir. "Thank you for nothing!" "1 thought you found her attractive, Charles."

''My dear Geoffrey, I find her adorable. That's precisely why I hardly fancy using her as a sort of decoy-duck for her papa. It won't exactly improve my chances —if any. What about you and the fair Greta?"

Geoffrey Allardyce tightened his lips. "All washed up," he said curtly. "Oh, I'm sorry," murmured Charles, a little blankly. "I'm afraid I must know how you stand, if I'm going to do any rushing in." "All right, curse you! I've got to let you carry on, Charles, because I'm out of it, for the simple reason that Greta believes I made up to her at Casimir's orders! I'm suspect all ends up! Incidentally Lucia knows I'm a temporary spy. She probably knows you are, tool" "That's the deuce and all!"

"You've said it," Geoffrey agreed. "Why on earth 1 ever left my peaceful Fat Stock Prices "

"Yes," said Charles. "And just at the moment when there are likely to be some nice juicy news bulletins going begging!" (To be continued daily)