OUR SERIAL STORY

Taranaki Daily News, 14 September 1927, Page 11

OUR SERIAL STORY

“The Mystery of Number 13 a”

By

MICHAEL CARMICHAEL

Jill Righit Reserved.

(Chapter 13 continued.) “He's tied up fast enough, isn’t he J” Huntley queried, and Dampierre felt hands hurriedly examine the bonds which held him. To his own ears his breathing sounded forced, too regular, but the others were apparently satisfied. They filed bark to the room next door without further words and Dampierre heard them go with a relief which was as enormous physically as it was mentally. For a moment, indeed, he sank into unconsciousness again, overcome by the pain in his head and the efforts of simulation, but some last, fading thoughts of Enid, of the danger he was in, roused him and, clenching his teeth, lie managed to bring his mind into tome kind of focus. The first thing he heard was the splash of soda water squirted into a tumbler, then 'Huntley stying: “Ah, that’s better.” Then there was another pause, and Dampierre sought to ease the cramped discomfort of his body by changing his position as much as he could. “Well what’s the big idea ?” he heard Huntley ask in a minute or two. There was the sound of a match struck before the reply came. “Idea!” It was the girl speaking. Dampierre felt that, .whatever happened or however long it was, he would never forget that leisurely and mocking voice which was singularly more ominous than either Mason's or Huntley’s. He could not, in that brief interlude of silence, quite make up his mind whether she was Irish or American, but there was something' odd about her certainly, something foreign. “I don’t see that there’s any idea, big or little,” she went on deliberately. “We’ve got to do something. Can’t have that fellow there forever,” Huntley brought out. “No, quite. What exactly do you propose doing with him ?” “Dam’ it, Nora, can’t you suggest something !” said Mason. There was another pause, a lengthier one. The girl had gone back to sit on the table again, though all that Dampierre could see of her were her slim, Silk-stockinged legs swinging gently to and fro. The others he could not see at all. So far there had been no mention whatever of Sir Bartie, and Dampierre found himself wondering what, exactly, they had done with him, if, indeed, they had done anything. They couldn’t, they wouldn't dare, bold as they were, to keep him a prisoner in the house, besides, if he were still actually alive, he’d been seen, he himself had seen him, or somebody uncannily like him. Yet Dampierre knew that ho had seen Sir Bartie lying dead upstairs, stabbed to the heart. He couldn’t possibly he mistaken about that, either. In fact, the more he thought of it, the stranger everything became, and Dampierre was presently lost in a number of vague theories about the disappearance of the baronet which had every decoration except that of being probable until Mason’s voice suddenly interrupted him. “Well, old lady, how about it?” “How about what!” she returned coolly. “That meddling idiot next door,” was the rather curt reply. “Oh, that.” Dampierre felt a chill that was not due entirely to physical cold. He tugged unavailingly at his bonds, then listened. •Well!” “There’s only one thing to be done with, him now, my dear,” the girl continued. "And that is?” prompted Mason. The girls voice was icy. “Dead men tell no tales,” she said with a sneer. "What do you mean!” asked Huntley quickly, nervously. Next door Dampierre was conscious only of a sense of overwhelming horror and despair. Everything else, the cold he'd suffered, that throbbing in his head, were lost in the bitterness of knowing that he'd be killed there, murdered, like a helpless sheep and for no purpose, that nothing he'd succeeded in doing that night would be of the least use in the solution of the mystery of Sit Bartle Armstrong’s disappearance, that trussed up as he was he hadn’t a chance. And there was no mistaking the imulaeabJa intention of that voice, no! Dampierre was strong enough to face that. Only a miracle could save him. But the tragedy, the pity of it wasn’t that. It was the fact that he would have accomplished nothing, that Enid would be no better off than before, worse possibly, since it left. the coast clear for any further villanies which Huntley and his friends might plan—if only he could free himself! Silently, savagely, he struggled to lose his hands and feet, but without euceese. He was tied up as securely as a dead rabbit. “And you know what I mean, too,” added the girl significantly. "You haven’t got felt ears.” There was a third, an even lengthier pause than the preceding two, which was broken only by the sudden and insistent purring of an electric bell in the silence of the landing just outside the door. CHAPTER 14. When it ceased, the pause continued for a minute or two, tense, unequivocal. Dampierre saw the girl leap lightly to her feet from the table where she had been sitting and throw away her cigarette. Mason rapped out an ugly oath. ■ “N«w, who the devil ; can that be!” he asked at last.

The girl shrugged her shoulders. ' Heaven knows,” she answered, “but 1 suppose I'd better find out.” “Wait a. minute,” interrupted Huntley. “What about that fellow in there?” “You and Harry lug him upstairs out of the way —no, bring him in here. If he eomes to and yelps he stands less chance of being heard, and it’s impossible to get him upstairs quiek enough. We'd better not keep whoever it is waiting too long.” “Oh, absolutely. We’ll simply have to chance our arm that it isn't the polite with a search warrant.” “Well, even if it is, we’ve got a perfect answer,” explained Mason. “After all, we caught the fellow' prowling round upstairs a moment or two ago and—” “Good enough. Now I’ll see who it Is. Cecil, you and Harry bring him in here quickly.” Dampierre heard Nora tell them, then the sound of a door opened and shut. The next moment he was seized by the feet and shoulders, not too tenderly, and carried through the folding doors and dumped unceremoniously on a sofa. Ho dared not open his eyes but lay there, inert and lifeless seemingly, while on© of them carefully closed the doors between the two rooms. “Cecil, slip upstairs as fast as you can and turn on the lights in tho rooms at the back of the house —at the back, mind,” ordered Mason, “and pull out a drawer or two and muss up things a bit to make it look as if there had been somebody snooping'-round up there, in case this is a visit from the police. Wo must have something to show ’em. Meanwhile, I’ll go down and give Nora a hand in repelling invaders.” “Is he all right, curse him?” Dampierre heard Huntley ask from the other side of the room. “Yes, yes! But for God’s sake, itian, hurry.” The door was hastily opened and shut, and in the stillness which followed Dampierre was conscious of hot breath upon his cheek, of Mason bcndiug over him. His fingers itched to sieze the other by the throat and wring his neck with what little strength he had remaining, as he lay unmovingly beneath that searching scrutiny. The breathing on his face abruptly ended; satisfied, apparently, by the result of his hurried examination. Mason quickly left the room, closing the door carefully behind him. Dampierre cautiously opened his eyes and, as soon as they became accustomed to the light, looked round as best he could. Tho room in which he now found himself was, like the other, large highceilinged, square, with two tall, closelycurtained window's at one side. There were some flow’ers on a table against the wall opposite the fireplace, where the last glow of burnt-out logs was flickering faintly, and several comfortable armchairs scattered about. In the centre of the room was the table on which Dampierre had seen the girl sitting- a few minutes before and it was occupied by some books heaped one on the other, a large silver box for cigarettes and a tray containing tumblers, tw-o syphons of soda water and a half-emptied decanter. He himself was on a sofa pulled out from the windows at an angle so that it partially faced the fire, and by tilting his head backwards he could see a shaded lamp and the top part of a telephone standing on a small table just behind him. Could he reach it? His hands s were tightly bound together at the wrists but his arms were not secured to his body and he could, after all, use his fingers more or less. With any luck, he might be able to find the wire and drag the telephone within reach and ring up Scotland for help, only there was not the slightest time to lose. Mason and the others might return at any moment. Dampierre at once raised his arms above his head and groped feverishly at tho edge of the table just behind him but his fingers merely encountered a copy of an evening newspaper and upset an ash tray heaped with cigarette ends over himself; he swore savagely. His second attempt, moreover, stretch as he would, was no more successful than his first, and with every movement he made the pain became excruciating, the room swam before his eyes.