Stronager Passion

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 640, 17 April 1929, Page 6

Stronager Passion

By

Author of " The Great Anvil , The Best Gift of All,” For Love or for Gold." &c . &c

Rowan Glen .

CHAPTER X. (continued)

“I was thinking sir, that instead of the tip which you’d have given me i in the. ordinary way, you might give j me—seeing we’re old friends, as it j were—a cheque for fifty pounds, if j you. haven’t got that amount on you j in notes- I wouldn’t be afraid that I you’d stop the cheque because y’s.ee J I could call later, and ” A closed fist was held near to his chin and he backed away a pace. | “Blackmail, eh?” Macßae asked, j “You’d better take care, my friend. A word from me, and you’d lose your j job here. My record will bear examination; yours won’t. That’s what | you sefem to forget.” But Noakes, who knew quite cer- | tainly now that he had blundered, j was so galled by non-success that j recklessness grew in him. “Don’t you try no tricks with- me,” he warned. “I like your tale ..about being innocent! Gawd! I do. Heard that yarn before, I have. Always seemed to me like a story out of a book they give you for prizes' at, Sunday School. I got a pKze ' once at Sunday School, mister, though you mightn’t think it..” “I suppose,” Macßae said, “that you got it when some other boy wasn’t looking? Anyway, I’m going back to my table, and you’d better go back to your work. For a start, bring rhe my bill. Let me tell you, by the way, that you’ll get your ordinary tip, only because I understand that tips are shared among the staff. He was moving away when a hand touched his sleeve.

“I’d bet my last bob —and I’m near to it —that the young lady of yours doesn’t know you were ever lagged,’ Noakes said. “Let’s get this straight, matey. Fifty quid from you, and I'll say nothing. If you play the hoitytoity game, then I’ll split, and she'll be "the first one I’ll te11..” Macßae swung round. “You say a word to her.” he threatened, “and I'll call for the head waiter and have you dismissed. Either that, or I’ll handle you myself.” Exactly as Noakes had done, he realised that he had spoken incautiously, but again, exactly like Noakes, auger had urged him toward recklessness. “So that’s the way of it?” the waiter asked. “All right, mister, you’re for it then! If you’d been sensible, I wouldn’t have said a word. I'll do ”

“Do wliat you dam* well please, you fool. If you haven’t sense enough to ; believe what I’ve told you at least j you've sense enough to know that you ; won’t get any liusli-money out of me.* j Wondering in what way he could j answer the questions which Elaine j would inevitably put, he rejoined her < and was thankful when he saw she j was ready to leave. “Tell me,” she said, after she had j urged him to finish his coffee and j liquer, “what did that funny little j waiter-man want with you, Blair?” Prepared for. the question, he answered it glibly. “It seems,” he answered, “that he and I met some years ago when I was —down in Devon. I’d forgotten all about him, but he’d remembered me and —well, he tried to get m© to lend him money. I refused because I didn’t like his way of going about things and —oh, that’s really all. . . . Here he comes with the bill. I don’t suppose he’ll have anything to say, but if he should be impertinent. I’ll do one of two things. I’ll either pay no attention j to him —and of course you won’t —or | I’ll get hold of the landlord and raise j a storm that'll blow Mr. Walter right j out of his job.” i “Don’t do that,” Elaine urged. "I won’t have even the slightest thingj spoil this wonderful, wonderful day.” i Noakes, so bitter with Macßae; with, j himself; and with the entire world as i it went at the moment, that the almost certain loss of his post seemed I as nothing compared with the petty j triumph that he had promised himself. { set down a plate with the folded bill j on it. I He waited while, quite calmly, Maci Rae counted out the sum due, x and | added a half-crown tip. “Thank you, sir,” said Noakes, and. leaning fojrward, spoke in a sort of rasping whisper to Elaine. “Sorry if I upset you, miss,” he said, “but because this gent here wouldn’t listen to reason and said he’d get me fired. I’m going to tell you something about him that perhaps you don’t know. If you do know it, then I’ll have made a blinking fool of myself, and I’m willing to pay. “Dr. Macßae, as they call him, is an old pal of mine in a manner of speaki ing. You ask him how he liked being No. 109 and working in the quarries besides No. 108 —that’s me, miss—when him and me were convicts to- ’ gether in Dartmoor prison. That’s , all, miss. Thank you very much! Thank you very much, sir! Good - evening.” , i He bowed; chuckled; suppressed • the chuckle, and walked briskly toward the cash-desk. Macßae had risen, but the smile t faded from his face when he saw I Elaine’s: She was almost white and was star-

ing at him with the utqiost concern in her eyes. _ . , Curiously enough Macßae, though the secret that he had kept, had been divulged §o suddenly and callousiy. did not immediately realise the importance of the blow that had been dealt. , Just as physical pain is seldom felt \ at the moment of a wound s mnie- ( tion. so mental sensibility is numbed \ till the first force of the impact has passed. . So calmly did Macßae stand; so steadv was his gaze that Elaine, * watching him, felt her concern merge | t into amazement, then into unbelief. j “Blair!” she stammered, “what are i you going to do about that lying little j beast? He must have been drunk, or something. Will you go to the pio- c I prietor as you said, or t “l*d do that willingly enough, he mterrupted, “but 1 don't, see what good jit could do. I don't want to talk about !it bere. As it is, people are watching t j us. Once we’re in the car. we 11 go t i into things.” | She nodded, in agreement. Then, | her fingers on his sleeve, said: j “Tell me just one tiling, dear. A | ‘yes’ or a ’no’ will do till we’re out- j ! side I shouldn’t need to ask, but it s ! | all so _s o weird. Was that man lying?” Macßae did not look at her. “No,” he said. “He was speaking the truth, though only part of the truth.” j She did not answer that, but he , heard her sigh, and bitterness grew in . him anew. It was not till they had left the street of Inverglant behind, and were being driven at a steady pace toward j Dochrine that the silence between | them was broken. “Well?” Macßae started, “have you anything to say to me, Elaine, or shall ; I start with the explanations?” , j What she had been told had chilled j I her; horrified her. Whatever she ; might hear from the man who sat so • j stiffly by her side could not. she had j decided as soon as this, wipe out the i Tact that he had deceived her, deliberv ately, even smilingly. . He had said that between them \ there should be no secrets. He had l said that she had already been told t everything of importance about him- , self. j 1 Yet the most important thing of all had been left unsaid. He had been a j . convict; was, apparently, at the mercy j 1 of any fellow-convict who happened to have known him in prison. Her eyes miserable, her hands f pressed together in her lap, she sat ; gazing fixedly at the chauffeur’s back, j “I don*t think I have anything to say t —yet,” she answered. “I feel as I s though I’d walked straight from day 2; into- night, or as though some woudert ful treasure that I’d. longed for all my e life had been given to me—and been d shattered before I'd had time to hold it.” d Macßae strove to dispel the aloof :- gravity of her mood, g He even touched her shoulder in a s caress, but she moved a little away “ from him. Unseen by her, he nodded, as one ® who would say: “Ah, so that’s to be ■ the way of things!” c “If I know you as I think I do, then , when you’ve heard what I’ve got to say you’ll be where you were before that rotter dropped his bombshell,” he e said. “I don’t mean that you won’t w have anything to forgive. You'll have to forgive me for my silence. I'm r- hoping that you’ll do that when you

realise that I was silent—for to® sake. Won’t you look at me, while I talk?” “I —can’t!” she answered. “Son* thing seems to have gone wrong me. Go on. Blair, I'm eager to hear So he told the story of how he tmj been suspected of a crime committed by another man. He told of his r rest, and of how, because the r%i criminal had laid his plans with & i diabolical a cleverness, he, Macß* had, despite his innocence, been ai j judged guilty. He told, too. how he had betn sentended to hard labour, and he about to depict something of what his life at Dartmoor had been when, for the first time, Elaine interrupted him “But —I can hardly understand,’’she said. “What in the world was % judge who heard your case thinks about things? Surely, even If J liad looked so black against yon, hshould have had experience enough tt know that you were innocent. Tab father, for instance. He’s a judge, and I know that if he ” This time it was she who paused. At last she glanced at Macßae. Sht 1 drew her breath in quickly. “Blair!” she exclaimed. “You're not going to tell me that it wii father?” “I’ve got to,” he answered. “There j w-ouldn’t be any point in trying to 1 keep that from you, Elaine, and, reali,. [ there’s no reason why it should be kept from you. Sir Charles to, : j simply doing his job, and, as you know, he and I are good friends'tol day. You mustn’t let that bit of r r worry you. Shall Igo on?” 1 With a growing intensity as he w--1 \ lived in memory those days ami 1 j nights in prison, when his very sot seemed to have been warped, Mac j Rae described some of his exper. j ences, and described, too, the meata. j torture that he had suffered as he hac 2 I looked back to the life that he hac t j left, and forward to the life that h Q j supposed would be lying ahead o( „ him. 1 . a (To be continued daily)