THE COTTESMORE CASE.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume VI, Issue 1839, 6 January 1920, Page 2

THE COTTESMORE CASE.

By JOHN OAKLEY, author of "The Blackmailer " "The Great Craneboro Conspiracy," "A Gentleman in Khaki," etc.

(Copyright in U.S. America. All Rights Reserved). CHAPTER XVII. I CONFIDE IN LTJMLEY. I told my story carefully, with such detail as was necessary to give Lnmley i full grip of the facts. "She has gone, then?" Lumley asked, at length I concluded. "Yes; that is why I am here. "Entirely gone? No sign?" '' None." ~ "No message from her since?

"None." "You wouldn't dare make very keen inquiries about her—l can see that. You could not, for instance, go to the "I-made some, but without result. As you say, I dared not do too much in that way.' And then I got leave from the office. I could not stick to work with that hanging over my head. And besides, I wanted to be absolutely free in case of an emergency." "You wanted to solve the mystery. "I wanted that, but I wanted more than that—l wanted to find the girl. He glanced at me keenly. "Yes?" he said. "For the—er—the same reason—let us say—that you set out to—er—to seek vour fortune." "Yes. The search has taken you —how long?" "She went on the day you came to say good-bye to me. So that it must be three weeks to-day since she went. I spent just over a fortnight in Sheafborough following some blind clues that led nowhere. I was a few days in Cottesmore." "And the brother—what of the brother?" -r

"I thought cf him. He is still in Westchester waiting for news of his sister. He was going abroad, but her escape astonished him apparently as much as it did anybody. Besides, she wouldn't be likely to go there, because the police have never ceased to watch him."

'' She wouldn't think of that.'' "No; but I am sure he knew nothing of her." There was a long pause, broken first by Lumley.

""It seems to me," he said, "that vour German friend—or is it Austrian? "—Count Margendorf, is the centre and pivot of the situation." "I had such an idea myself," I responded. "And what of the others — Loxdale and the widow Felton?" "They may be but the instruments of the other.' But still, they must be looked up. Your problem is a. dual affair. There is first the murder. Who committed that? And then the girl. Where is she? And I rather fancy we shall find that the one is bound up with the other. We know, for example, that Count Margendorf and his Companion, Jutzi, attempted to rescue Marjory. Why should they do that? There may be something in it of which we know nothing, but on the surface it would suggest that they—one of them—had committed the crime, but jibbed at the notion of an innocent girl hanging for it. They must have known that her confession was bogus, and they could only be sure of that because they were acquainted with the real criminal.'-' "I have thought of that, too," I responded. "And I wondered whether thej' also supposed that she knew who the real murderer was, and were in consequence anxious to get possession of her bo as to make sure of her silence." "Yes?" "But she told me she had never seen Margendorf or Jutzi before. I questioned her categorically upon that point, and she was most explicit in her denial. If they harboured any such thought they were in error, because she concocted her confession solely in order to shield her brother." "Her brother—yes. Where are you staying?" "At Murfitt's Hotel—a quiet place. Not that I am hard up. I have a bit, and the publishers owe me some more. I must get somewhere else though. I cannot afford to give up work, and I have contracts " "You can have this room—why not? And afterwards go shares at Staple Inn with me. You could even keep your room on at the hotel if you liked, I must have my kennel, as I said, but I shall not disturb vou."

"It will suit me exactly," I replied "A hotel is not an ideal study." And we settled it so.

"I will make some inquiries about those Austrians," Lumley added as I took my leave. "They keep up their acquaintance with the Latterys, and I rather fancy Hiram P. has some business on hand with them, but that hasn't come my way yet; though it soon will. I'll let vou know if I find anything out."

With my departure I settled myself down to consider my future course of action. My one absorbing idea was to find Marjory; the solution of the problem of the murder occupied a quite secondary place in my thoughts, though I had a misty hope' that the one might be bound up with the other. But I had no idea where to begin or what to do. Everything seemed to be enveloped in a dense fog, through which not one ray of light penetrated. And I cursed my own helplessness with a bitterness born of my fears for Marjory's safety, and of "the deep and passionate love I bore her—a love which seemed to have magnified tenfold since I lost her.

CHAPTER XVIII. IN WHICH I MAKE NEW ACQUAINTANCES. The man was following me, of that I felt sure, and he was doing it a little clumsily, as one not quite at homo in the work. Indeed, he seemed to make no effort to keep himself concealed, but jdodded along steadily in my track, after a time almost obtrusively in my track. At first I tried to laugh myself out of my suspicions, though it seemed a coincidence too monstrous for belief that he should be following entirely on his own account the exact course of my wanderings, which had been aimless, without method or goal, just where my fancy led me. Then I took to testing him. I jumped on to a bus and went inside. He pursued me, but climbed to the top. I paid my penny and immediately alighted, being evidently regarded by the conductor as a species of lunatic. The other man also descended. I could stand it no longer. Wheeling round suddenly, I came up with him, and stood facing him.

"Why do you shadow me?" I asked abruptly. "What purpose have you in view?"

He was a little wiry-looking man, and in tho rays of the lamp beneath which wo stood I saw his eyes, shrewd, and keen and blinking rapidly. "Do you mean hie?'' he asked, speaking good English, though with just the merest trace of a foreign accent. "I mean you—yes." "Have you a monopoly of the etreets! Do they belong to youf Sure-

]y a man may please himself where he walks!" "But you have been following me." "That is—untrue." "Which way do you propose to go?" "What is that..to yon?" "Because I intend to give you your choice and to go myself in the opposite direction.'' "Oh—and where are we now? This is new ground to me. I have lost my way.''

"Then you have been following me! " "Yes, if you will have it so. But I have not been shadowing you. I am a stranger in London and I lodge in the house next to yours in Stimley Street. At least I saw you go out of it yesterday and again to-day."

He spoke slowly, as if searching in his mind for the proper words. I could not judge on the instant whether he were making up the tale as he went along, or whether it was that he was not sufficiently sure of his English to go with native speed. But I did not interrupt him: I waited for him to finish. j

"When I saw you again—this evening—in Ludgate Circus," he went on, "I recognised you, and I thought you were going home, because I noticed you buying an evening paper, which you folded up and put in your pocket, as if to read over your supper. For me, I was lost. Stimley Street had disappeared from off the face of the earth, and I thought if I followed you I should perhaps get home, too." "If you were really lost," I broke in, "why did you not get a cab?" "A cab," he replied with a quick laugh. "Do the inhabitants of Stimley Street patronise cabs? They are better off than I am if they do. But I can find my way somehow, since you are so churlish."

He turned on his heel and walked rapidly away, leaving me not a little astonished, but for all that with the minimum of belief in his story.

■ I remained in Stimley Street that night and kept careful watch next morning from my window, gaining thereby so much confirmation of his excuse that I did actually see him emerge from the house next door. I should have dismissed him for the present, possibly for good, from my mind, but that we seemed fated to meet. It was no later than on the evening of that same day, as I was sitting over a very modest dinner in a restaurant in Fleet Street, that lie came in, accompanied this time by a lady. The tables were ranged on each side of the long, narrow room, but, though one just opposite me was vacant, he did not take it, but piloted his companion to another a little higher up, on the same side as that at which I was seated. The wall decorations consisted, however, of large* mirrors, and I jumped to the meaning of his move in a minute as I looked up and met his glance fixed upon my reflection in the glass. He turned .immediately to talk to the woman at his side, showing no sign in his face that he had been caught spying. I finished my dinner and sat for a little while, smoking a cigarette and reading a Parisian newspaper which the waiter had brought me, and presently the man passed me on his way out, leaving his companion to finish her meal alone.

But that did not take her long, for in 10 minutes' at the most after the man's departure she too rose from her seat and sauntered slowly down the room. She was not very young —seven or eight and 20 perhaps—but was very good to look at, with oval, regular features, clear, penetrating eyes, anda slim, elegant figure, gowned with exquisite taste in that simplicity which is more expensive by far than finery. If she were not a lady she was a very pleasant imitation; certainly-she carried none of the characteristics of the demi-monde, to which category I had at first consigned her. She came slowly and quietly down the room, buttoning her gloves, j but at my table she paused. "Ah! 'it is Mistare Ardland," she cried, and her voice was very sweet and clear, though with an obvious foreign accent, which, however, did but add to the piquancy and attractiveness of it. She came'and sat herself down by my side on the red plush-covered seats, but for the moment I was far too astonished at her very unexpected salutation to be capable of either acknowledgment or repudiation. "I vish to ask you ze question," she went "on, and I noticed that she dropped her voice so that her words might be audible to mvself alone, "vere is Marjory Cravsford?" Then I found my wits. The shock of hearing that name in that place from the lips of one who was so absolutely a stranger, strung my faculties up to concert pitch. For all that, however, I made no reply to her query. Was this a new move? Had the other companion followed me in order that she might crossexamine me? That, too, was curious. I had not noticed them before, and yet it seemed a little too much to credit the meeting entirely to coincidence. "I am singularly at sea," I responded at length, gravely and with 1 deliberation. "I do not know you, and the name you mention —Margaret Crawfoot, was it? — is entirely strange to me." She laughed quietly, and seemed in no wise either disturbed or surprised at my denial.

"Let me tell you ze story," she went on. "It is vet' ver' strange story. Mr Ardland—who is he? Ze writer of books and newspapers—is zat not? Goot, it is so. But he never write a story so ver' ver' strange as zis one. He vas born in Guiltfort —how hard your English names are to speak! And his muzzair die ven he vas born. Zat vas ver' ver' sad. He vas ze only child. He haf no bruzzairs, no seestairs —ze only von. Is zat not?"

I sat outwardly tranquil with imperturbable faro, though inwardly I was consumed with astonishment. The fragment of biography was entirely Correct, and I judged that, there must be something highly important behind all this Hint- they should have gone to the trouble to lay base my small and meagre history in this fashion.

"Is zat not?" she repeated a little impatiently,i drumming softly with her gloved fingejrs upon the table.

"I have no reason to doubt the accuracy of your narrative," I responded coolly. "My only question is, why it should be detailed to me. What is true in it is at, least no novelty to me —nor is it so very, very strange. Why should you tell me?" "Because—you are Mr Ardland."

'ln which case, as \ have already suggested, the story is stale news." "Ah, yes, but zen —vero come ze bruzzair? Soddently, zero is a bruzzair, a fair, pretty boy " "Would you mind telling me what you are driving al ?" I queried suavely, "and as rapidly as possible, as I have a pressing engagement " "Zen tell me—verc is Marjory Craysford? I know ze all of it, zat you took her from ze train—zat she lived in your lodgings—zat she vas bruzzair to you who haf no bruzzair —zat you brought her to London and hid her avay " "What makes you think that I brought her to London?" 1 asked. " Vere a.re you?" "J —well, I am here." "In London—zat Is so," she returned, with obvious triumph. "Zerefore, is, she not in London?'* "Oh, I see, she is here because I am here. You, if you will pardon me say-

ing so, make the mistake which most amateurs make in a game of this sort. You think the obvious must be true. But the truth is never obvious. Because you think a thing is certain is precisely the reason why you should regard it with suspicion."

She shrugged her shoulers a little im patiently. "I do not understand," she began.

"No, but do you not see that I probably sent, the young lady—Millieent Crayport was her name? —to Paris " "You mock at me," she whispered, angrily. "And came to London myself in order to throw people like you off the scent. Though what, in Heaven's name, you have to do with it is more than I can settle. I don't even know what I have to do with it. What was the name of that man who came in with you?" "Kuliler," she said, and then bit her lips with vexation. Evidently the abruptness of my query had thrown her off her guard. "Then tell him with ' my compliments," I said, "that next time I find him within a yard of myself, be it in Westminster Abbey, I will punch his head.''

Her laugh bubbled out in silvery cadence, and she laid her tiny gloved hand lightly on mine. "If you pooneh; —yes, zat is ze ver' goot word —ze head of Kuhler," she said, "I vill —I vill gif you ze—ze kiss."

"Which reminds me," I went on, "are you here on James Loxdale's behalf?" "Vat is ze behalf?" "Did he send you?" "Send me! Vat haf Ito do vis ze Loxdales? Zey is pigs, bot'." "I can foresee," I returned grimly, "that we should be very good friends. We certainly have some aversions in common. Do you come from Count Margendorf ?"

The name touched her as it had done James Loxdale. She shrank back, and her face gradually whitened. "I do not know zat name," she whispered hoarsely, even glancing round as if in fear that I might have been overheard.

But I only laughed. She, too, hadcome from Margendorf, as Loxdale had. My shot in both cases, one pure chance, the other design, had rung the bell. But even that ltnowiedge raised disquieting thoughts. If Margendorf were still looking for Marjory, the hunt in which Lumley was engaged was likely to prove abortive. Our only theory was based on the supopsition that the Count or one of his friends had taken Marjory away.

" Vere is slie—vcre is ze girl—Marjory Craysford?" my companion went on, evidently eager • to avoid further conversation on Margendorf. "I do not know," I said. "Zat is not true." "I beg your pardon." "Zat is not true —zat vich you say."

"No? Well, have it your own way. We will suppose that I do know. What do you want her for?" "For missing bad—for goot—for ver' goot. She vill haf mooch money, and lufly, lufly dresses, and jewels, rubies and di-monds." "Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes, she shall have music wherever she goes," I quoted. "I do not understand," she said, wrinkling her brows and gazing at me with evident perplexity; "And now," I went on, "I will, if you will permit me, say good-night." "You vill not tell?" "I do not know." "You are ver' foolish." "Because I do not know?" "Because you vill not tell." I rose from myseat. "You will not forget my message to your friend, M. Kuhler," were my parting words, as I strolled slowly down the room, leaving her seated there, very much disappointed, and, I think, more than a little wrathful. (To be continued.)