THE PHANTOM CAR

Sun (Christchurch), Volume III, Issue 787, 18 August 1916, Page 3

THE PHANTOM CAR

< CHAPTER Vlll.—(Continued.) A CABINET MEETING. Kathleen laughed half-heartedly, but even that was sufficient to assure her sister that her banter had not been in vain. Kitty was beginning to feel better. It; would be easier for her now to tell what she had to tell. "I couldn't, Phil. You see, he didn't propose to me. He simply proposed to father that he should buy me for—l don't know exactly how many thousand pounds. But he was willing to pay a good deal, I think. Pedigree always puts a fictitious value on things, and, of course, he would make allowances for that. So it happened that I didn't get the chance to kick him. But tomorrow—it's to-day now, isn't it!—l shall do something just as nice and vindictive. '' "Kitty!" The girl's voice told Kathleen all she could want to know —that she felt no less strongly the horror of the thing than she herself had done, and that she had been no less deeply stirred. Then, very slowly and deliberately, halting here and there, trying to leave in her recital no hint that she blamed her father, but, on the other hand, to show him as she saw him, a figure for pity and not for blame, a man whose misfortune it was to be weak and unable to square his shoulders in the face of adversity, she told her story. Here and there, in the telling, the scorn and anger she felt could not be repressed; and Phyllis, knowing her well, knew how strong it must have been to betray itself at all. At the end: "You don't—blame me, Phil, for what I said?" Kathleen asked, with a pitiful eagerness and a little quivering of the mouth that she tried hard to control. "I would have done anything else —anything—to have helped—to have put things straight; but that was too horrible —too awful!" "If you had done it, Kitty,'you could never have looked anyone in the face again!" Phyllis said decidedly. "To have married that creature! To have let him laj r his trap, and then walk into it with your eyes open! For it was a trap. He did it all deliberately." "You think that, too, Phil?"" "I'm sure of it. To have sold yourself into slavery—worse than slavery! " The young girl's voice vibrated with indignation. "But, you understand, Phil, it will mean poverty—poverty for you and father —and for me. No more dances and invitations. No more Ascots or Goodwoods or Epsoms. The place will have to be sold —father said that —so it must have been a lot of money. I can't think of anything we could do to save it." Phyllis was silent for some time. Then she said, looking at her sister curiously, as though a new thought had struck her: "Tell me the truth, Kitty. You didn't mean me to see it, but I could see, when you were telling me, that father asked you to do it—to pay his debts in that way. Did you ever for a second think of—of selling yourself to that man —so that I should have all the comfort and luxury we have had up till now? Did you, for even a minute, think of doing that for father and me, and telling me nothing about it-about why you'd married that cad? Tell me the truth!" Kathleen smiled. "I don't think I did, dear. Though if I had married him, of course I couldn't have told you the reason." '' I should have guessed if you had, and I'd never have let you do it. But it was splendid of you, Kitty, even to think of doing it —as I know you must, or you would never have told me now. Wasn't that what was worrying you—the question whether you ought still to do it!" "Perhaps it was, Phil dear. And I'm afraid this question isn't quite settled yet." "It is," said Phyllis decidedly. "I've settled it once and for all. But about the money—that'll want a lot of settling, and I don 't see—just yet —how it's going to be done. I suppose if it's racing debts, they needn't be paid?" "I don't think they are—or not many of them. But even if they were, we couldn't dream of disputing them." "No." Phyllis's voice was a little dubious. "I tell you what, Kitty! Suppose we ask Mr Boughton about it—put the case to him as though it was someone else's whom we wanted to help? He rides and knows a good deal about raciug as well as other things. I'm sure he'd help. He's always been such a pal to us." "I thought of him. But even if this disappearance of M. Eysdel wasn't going to be a very serious business for him —as he says it will—l don't think we could ask him to help us out, Phil." "But why not? Surely " "I don't think we can ask him, Phil. I've been thinking about it. I'd rather not discuss why." Phyllis looked at her sister with eyes that were wide open and curious. "Is it for the same reason that we couldn't ask Sir Giles,' Kitty?" she asked shrewdly. "I shan't mind if you don't tell me; but really it begins to look as though you were rather dangerous, dear! " "I'd rather rfot discuss it, Phil," Kathleen rejoined, with more than a tinge of colour in her cheeks. "Very well, than, we won't," snid Phyllis; "but f shall understand all the s same. Of course, Kitty, we can't ask Sir Giles to help us —I don't mean financially?'' Phyllis framed her words as a decided statement, but they were in reality a question. "Of course not. He would only insist on putting things right—financially. And it would make me feel so horrible, because he's so nice. Do you know, Phil, I believe he suspected how things were yesterday, and that is why " Phyllis nodded sagely. "And he thought- it would be easy to give us a good time if you had married him, thought it would be like offering charity otherwise." "Yes. I don't, think ho cared for me in that way. although he askci me. Of course, he hadn't seen me for a couple of years till yesterday, and I suppose he wasn't prepared for the change. Ho behaved splendidly about it." "Did you tell father he had asked you to marry him?" , "After the way he'd put it, and the . splendid way he took my refusal, I ' couldn't, Phil. Tt seemed mean even to tell vou. I couldn't tell another soul."

[ALL, RIGHTS RESERVED.]

By JAMES McELDERRY, Author of "The Veil of Circumstance," etc,

"If only the Atom hadn't disappeared, Kitty!" Phyllis sighed. "If we could have asked Mr Boughton, I dare say he would have found him, since ■that's the sort of work he does, isn't. ! it? Rut as if is, if seems to me that there is nothing for it but to insist on father selling the place and the horses, and then doing our best to make a place in the world for ourselves bf sheer hard work! " Kathleen looked at her sister with shining eyes. "It wouldn't be quite so bad as that, I expect, Phil. We shouldn't have to work." "But it would be the .only thing to do. We would work, Kitty, and show that it was in us. even if we didn't do it when there was no occasion?" Kathleen choked back a lump in her throat. "Yes, we would, Phil dear," she said. "Do you know, T believe that is just what I expected you to say, although i didn't know it myself?" CHAPTER \X. A POSSIBLE CLUE. Sir Bruton Ware, called from his bed by an imperious summons at 5 o'clock on a bitterly cold morning, stood before a blazing fire in his study, clad in a heavy dressing-gown and smoking a very long and expensive cigar. He was very white, and his thin, delicate nostrils were dilating ami contracting curiously as he smoked and listened to Boughton's recital. "So it comes to this Boughton," he said in a hard, uncompromising voice at the last, "it comes to this, that you have failed lamentably in circumstances in which there was no excuse for failure; and you have lauded me in the most critical position I have ever been in, and incidentally ruined your own future. Boughton, standing at the far end of the room, a dishevelled and mud-splash-ed figure, with tightly-compressed lips, and eyes that, seemed to find a difficulty in meeting his chief's gaze, nodded! dully. He had expected a different j kind of censure, and knew that he was' being let off lightly, but he was not j sure that he would not have preferred a tirade of abuse to Sir Bruton's calm, cool summing up of his position. "The fact is, Boughton,". the older man went on presently, "you've tool much brains, and we don't want brains —exclusively. We want machines, plus j common sense and a little tact. People j with too much brains have always too j much nerves. You lost your nerve at the critical moment. Couldn't hit a runaway car with a Browning!" Boughton flushed. "There was Captain Benning, sir—ai crack shot. And he swears my sighting w r as perfect, and his own. There was something quee.'. not 1 altogether natural, about it." , "Pish! Ghosts don't walk nowadays; and I've never heard of a ghostcar as yet. Pure nerves; but it's no use talking about it. I don't profess to understand, or be able to explaiif the peculiarity you swear to —I mean the disappearance of the tracks at a given point; but there must be some explanation that escaped your nervous imagination. Now, Eysdel has got to be found, and to be in London for the signing of that Treaty to-day. I'm going down to the Yard to turn it upside down. You had better find Eysdel at once, and wire here and to the Yard when you have done so. Any expenses will, of course, be given you. The sooner you produce the ambassador the better for us all. Now you can go.'' • Boughton, prepared for a shock, was not prepared for this. "But -' he began. Sir Bruton waved his tiand towards the door. "A grave crisis," he said; "Scholzia will suspect us of making away with Eysdel —a declaration of hostility—war. A massacre of our subjects will follow, and the wiping out of the few troops we have there, who will fight to the last drop of their blood. You understand? Eysdel has got to be produced, and the Treaty has got to be signed." Boughton looked at Sir Bruton for some minutes without speaking. Then he asked: "And I can—l am free to do what I think best* I could, for instance, ask anyone outside the Yard to assist me in —in producing M. Eysdel*. In getting to the bottom of those mysterious disappearances of the car?" "You can employ whom you choose, so long as you achieve the result. Of course, if M. Eysdel is not forthcoming to-day—although I cannot admit any if at all —we shall be unable to avoid publicity. In fact, in our own interests we shall have to give all the publicity to tire facts possible. But in the meantime, while M. Eysdel is being found, no hint of the affair must reach the papers. And you must warn Gort that nothing must be said about the affair of his disappearing jockey. It might lead to something leaking out that we don't want to leak out. A few journalists on the spot, a little questioning of the servants, and we should be done." "I will tell Mr Gort directly I gjet back. He is upset —unstrung, I think, over other matters —and he might be indiscreet, sir." Sir Bruton tossed his cigar into the fire and lit another. "We're wasting time, Boughton. Hadn't you better get back and begin work at once?" The old man held out his cigar box as he spoke, and Boughton helped himself. "Remember, you've a heavy responsibility—the lives of your fellow-coun-trymen, my boy," Sir Bruton said, as he offered him a match and accompanied him down the stairs. "I will find him, sir, if it is possible," Boughton saiil doubtfully. "Then you will find him, unless you allow a Yard man to cut in before you," Sir Bruton retorted, "for nothing is impossible in our work." Boughton went out with a smile upon his lips, and a frown of perplexity furrowing his forehead. He had been prepared for Sir Bruton 's sneer on the subject of the inexplicable beginning and ending of the tracks of the motor in which there could be no doubt whatever that both the Atom and M. Eysdel had been carried off. The whole thing was incredible, and sounded on the face of it as though it were merely a trick of the imagination. He himself, indeed, had considered it to be nothing more when Gort had first, confided in him. Well, Sir Bruton would go down to Gort House, would see for himself, and would be satisfied. That r-i*peet of the question did riot trouble him. (To be continued.)