THE PHANTOM CAR

Sun (Christchurch), Volume III, Issue 788, 19 August 1916, Page 3

THE PHANTOM CAR

j [ALL RIGHTS RESERVHD.I

CHAPTER IX.—(Continued.) A POSSIBLE CLUE. The question as to what ho must do —as to how he was to set to work to discover M. Eysdel's whereabouts, and where exactly to begin—was ou a different plane. Given a starting point, he was convinced of his ability to run the abductors to earth and to rescue the ambassador if he were still alive, which was open to doubt. But here there appeared to be no starting-point. Sir Bruton had refused on the previous day, and had omitted now —no doubt deliberately —to give him the names of the men he suspected to be leagued together for the purpose of precipitating war, and who would therefore have an object in removing the ambassador at the critical moment. Had he had that much knowledge, it might have been possible to discover the men by starting the search from their headquarters. As it was, he would begin with nothing more helpful than those disappearing tracks which savoured of the supernatural so strongly. There was no clue, nothing. He could go through M. Eysdel's belongings in the hope of finding something that would give him a starting point; but the hope would be a remote one. After Gort had returned to the house, Boughtoii had spent the best part of an hour in making an examination of the grounds within the park, with the result, that he was convinced that the car was not hidden within them; believed that it had not escaped through either of the gates, and was certain that it had not gone out through any secret door iu the walls surrounding the park. Nothing further had rewarded his search. 'Then, borrowing on. of/Port's ears, he had done the only thing that suggested itself—gone straight to Sir Bruton and given him an account of the whole occurrence, together with the facts of the disappearance of the Atom, which Gort had been willing that he should reveal if he considered it necessary. At the end, as we have seen, Sir Bruton had -calmly told him that there remained only one thing for him to do in order to retrieve his failure. There had been no reproaches in the ordinary sense of the word—that was not Sir Bruton's way—no reminder that he had been given a responsibility to which his years of service did not entitle him. How could he accomplish it, this task which he had been set? Thinking it all out as the car whirled him back in the direction of Northamptonshire, Boughton remembered suddenly his friend, Grigor Hawtrey, the brilliant barrister who had won such a reputation for himself in four or five pieces of detective work he had undertaken in his spare time. Here, if anywhere, was the man who could help him; the man whose practised hand and relentless application of his peculiar logic would find perhaps a hundred clues where a man like himself could see nothing! Here was a man who would laugh at the dry, formal methods of Scotland Yard, and who, while they were beginning work, would have tracked down the criminals who were bent •on bringing about the destruction of their country and have released the Schol/.ian ambassador!

Putting his head out of the window,j Boughton shouted to the chauffeur to return at full speed to town and to make straight for the Temple. Then he sat back in the car and trieii to possess his soul in patience till the greyness of Fleet Street in the early morning should greet his anxious eyes. What a fool he had been not. to think of Hawtrey before he started on his return journey. The oue man who could solve the problem, in all probability—and, most important of all, in one sense, the one man who could place him in the position of discovering the clue to the disappearance of the Atom, and in doing so open the road to his claiming the fulfilment of the promise Gort had made! He wondered what Gort would say when he told him the price he was going to ask for placing the National within his grasp—that was if (and God grant that it might be so) he could ask it at all; if Kathleen loved him or had not already given her heart to Stockvis or another. He was thinking of Stockvis—suave and imperturbable on the surface, but a cad and a bounder of the worst description—as he climbed the stairs to Hawtrey's rooms half an hour later, and Hawtrey, coming to the door in his pyjamas and more than half asleep, laughed when he had recovered from his surprise at the visit. "My dear Boughton," he said, "if I had not known you to be as harmless as a sucking dove, I should have defended myself at once. You looked, on my honour, as though nothing short of murder iiiartistieaily executed would have cooled your blood, which must have been boiling over something or other." The young barrister had returned to his bed, shivering as he spoke, and he was scrutinising the extreme edge of his pillow as though he hoped to find written on it the explanation of his friend's perturbation. "Light that fire, like a good chap, and then come and sit down and tell mo very slowly as though you were speaking from a refrigerator what it is aH about. Or, at any rate, so much of it as has brought you here at this unearthly hour of the morning to seek my guidance, counsel, or philosophy." "I don't think my rage had anything to do really with the thing that has brought me here," Boughton laughed, applying a match to the fire, "though T believe an inartistic murder would have relieved my feelings, provided the victim had been a certain theatrical manager who has just practically accepted one of my plays and then backed out of it. However, I didn't come to talk about that." "Then tell me," said Hawtrey, looking at the poker, "exactly what you did come to me to talk about. It may be less interesting, but 1 suppose I hail better hear it.'' Seating himself in an armchair at the foot of the bed, Boughton went through his story again, beginning, however, this time with the details he hail loarnt from (Jort with regard to the Atom's disappearance, and omitting, as he had done with Sir Button, all reference to Gort's financial affairs. Grigor Hawtrey listened to the narrative without speaking, staring all the time at the toe of Houghton 's boot, ami betraying no suggestion of surprise or amazement at any time. When Hough-

By JAMES McELDERRY, Author of "The Veil of Circunislar.ee," etc.

ion came to the end, laughing a little uneasily over Sir Bruton's counnaud to him to find the Schol/.ian ambassador, Hawtrey glanced for a second at his little finger with an intelligent interest. "Yes, yes," he said.. "Yon really don't surprise me in the least, my dear Boughton. I have rather been expecting—well, something of this sort, though I didn't guess that it would be my luck that you should be concerned in it." Boughton stared at him in amazement. "Expecting—expecting that!" he exclaimed incredulously. "Are you asleep, or dreaming, Grigov?" Hawtrey examined the bedpost nearest his right hand. "Of course, though you picked up a good deal of Schol/.ian when we were over there together last time. you don't make a practice of rubbing up your knowledge by reading the Scholzian newspapers?" "Good Heavens, no! I've enough to do without that." "Ah!" Hawtrey, yawning lazily, fixed his eyes on the sheet. "It's not at all a bad idea." "Nor is having a cold bath when you happen to be sweltering hot," retorted Boughton impatiently. "Precisely what it's got to do with what I shall soon begin to call the mystery of the Phantom Car I don't sec. Bit. perhaps you haven't listened to what I've been telling you?"

Hawtrcy's attention wandered to a safety-razor lying on his dressing-table. "In the top drawer —middle row—of my desk in the nest, room," lie observed, " you will find a mattev of half-a-dozen issues of the 'Franold Kesieke,' and perhaps a dozen or so cuttings from the 'Helda Pelistoc.' If you wouldn't mind bringing them, Boughton, I should like to glance through thorn. Oh, and any copies of the 'Daily Turncoat' that happen to be lying about.'' Boughton, his curiosity by this timo awakened, left the room, and returned presently with the papers and cuttings to which bis friend had referred. "I haven't looked through them, strong though the temptation was, Grigor," he said, laying them on the bed. "Perhaps, later, on, you'll be good enough to explain." • Hawtrey smiled amiably at the agony column of the "Turncoat" he had picked up. "Yes—though I think explanations had better wait until we have landed our fish, you know, Boughton." Very rapidly, and appearing to glance only cursorily at each sheet or cutting, he went through the literature Boughton had brought, his visitor sitting silent, although fuming with impatience, the while. Then he laid them down and regarded the fastening of the nearest window thoughtfully for somo minutes. "Hadn't you better get up, you lazy brute? Lying there won't land our—our fish, will it?" Boughton asked in as casual a voice as he could command. "One thing's certain, I must get back to Gort House at once. I thought, as I've a car waiting, you'd have come down with me—that is, if you feel disposed to help me out of the hole I've landed myself, or been landed, in." Hawtrey stretched himself very slowly and deliberately. "1 seem to have heard." he said, with an admiring glance at his visitor's chin, "that Gort has at least a couple of remarkably beautiful daughters. Yes, I think I'll come, but I should like to sleep on it first. You'd better go on; I'll be down directly after breakfast." "And let the Yard men whip in in front of us?" said Boughton, protestingly. Hawtrey repressed a smile.

"See you soon after breakfast, my dear Boughton?" he said. "I'm not alarmed at the prospect of the Yard whipping in first. You see, I happen to have got the first clue, I think, and a little sleeping ou it will bo all to the good." "The first clue? Why, you " "I think we shall land our fish, Boughton," Hawtrey interrupted confidently. "But of course it may be a ticklish job, and I don't expect we shall do it to-day. Neither will anyone else. Ta-ta, old man." Boughton got up, an amazed incredulity in his eyes. • "But it Isn't possible- "he began. "All things are possible in this rather impossible world," interrupted Hawtrey, frowning at the clock. "Tata, old man." Franz Stoekvis, starting at a canter down the avenue leading from Gort House to its nearest lodge, ended his ride before his own doors at Hazleton Manor in a mad gallop on a foam-decked and exhausted horse. It was a 16-mile ride, and the gallop had never been broken since the moment he was elea.r of the lodge gates —an atrocious gruelling to a good horse in the pink of condition, which Stoekvis's mount was not, and carrying a light weight, which Stoekvis would never be again. Flinging the reins with a curse to the groom who was waiting for him, he tottered up the steps and entered the spacious hall., "Miss Helen —tell her I want to seo her at once—in the library," he shouted, in a voice that failed, from his own exhaustion, to be as commanding as he intended it to be. The footman, staring at his bloodshot eyes, went away on his message, and Stoekvis, going to the library, flung himself into the nearest chair he came to. For some 15 minutes he sat rigid, his eyes glued on the table in front of him, liis lips mumbling inarticulate words. Then the door opened and Joy came in. It seemed that, he did not see her at first, and she went over to him, lifting her brows slightly in surprise as she noticed his condition. "Hadn't you better go and have a bath and a change, father?" she asked, a faint line of contempt curving about her cold mouth. "Really, if you could see yourself in the glass . You are hardly fit to sit down in any chair, you know.'' Stoekvis, rousing himself with an effort, laughed harshly. "Hardly fit —to sit down in any chair! You want a few lessons, my child —a few lessons ou life when there are no chairs to sit in. The luxury I\v toiled for —for you to enjoy—has made you a little too exquisite for my taste. Sit down. I want to talk to you. We're going to quarrel very seriously if you don't mend soon, Joy." (To be continued.)