RED FOR DANGER

Taranaki Daily News, 5 January 1935, Page 19 (Supplement)

RED FOR DANGER

By LINDSAY HAMILTON (Author of “The Gorgon,” "The Black Asp,” etc.)

CHAPTER 10 (continued). Jill laughed and slipped the pistol into her bag. She was less of a novice With firearms than she pretended to be. "I’ll find a safe place for it among my things,” she said. “What about you? Are ' you going about armed like a Chicago - gangster?” “Well, the fact is,” ha answered, “I don’t like the idea. I’m more at home with my hands free. I should probably shoot some perfectly innocent soul and get hanged for it,” Later Jill hid the pistol among her belongings in a suitcase, which she locked and deposited under the bed, and there it might have lain indefinitely. But on the following day, going to her case for some unimportant trifle, she made an alarming discovery. The lock had been broken open. The pistol was gone. She sat on her bed and thought for a long time. Then she rang through th Timothy. Thera was no indication in her .voice or words that, anything unusual had occurred. *Tve got to go and see Mr. Carter,” she said. “But I’ll meet you there. The Pekin Tea Shop, didn't you say? "1 think I know it. It’s in the Strand, isn’t it? Good-bye.” She rang off without giving him a chance to reply. He would understand. ' . Which was expecting rather a lot of Timothy, considering that he had never even of . the Pekin Tea . Shop; nor was he aware that he had. invited Jill to take tea with him ..there. Timothy was far from understanding, but he acted as she knew he would. .He found her waiting for him at a table set in a secluded alcove. “I daren’t tell you over the ’phone,” she said atonce, “and . I daren’t tell you in the office. So I made the first excuse I could think of.”

Timothy was more mystified than ever. “You’ll probably think I’m mad,” she went -on, “but—well, you wait till I’ve told you.” Which was just what Timothy was doing with as much patience as he could muster. The arrival of the waitress with the tea Jill had already ordered put a strain on it. He began to help the girl unload her tray and succeeded only in upsetting the milk and causing a further delay. When order, was restored Jill leaned towards him and whispered: “The pistol you gave me ■ has been stolen from ray room. My suitcase. had been broken open. Nothing else was taken.” Timothy was tbo taken aback to use his brains very intelligently. _ “Seems to be quite a habit of theirs,” he remarked dryly. “But don’t you see,” she continued urgently, "no one knew about this pistol but you and I.” “No. That’s true enough. Deuced queer.” ... ‘Then how did the thief know exactly where it was?” “It wasn’t by chance, you think?” "Nothing else was taken,” she pointed out, “or even touched so far as one could see.” ‘Then how do you account for it?" “Someone must have been listening when you gave me it.” "In the corridor?”

JiU did not answer the question.. *1 was trying to puzzle it out,” she went qri, “when something else struck me that we both ought to have noticed before. . I mean that letter from K.I. Isn’t .it rather curious that it should have arrived the very day after Clive Grimshaw tried to persuade us to keep out 6f the business?” Grimshaw wouldn’t talk, Timothy pointed out. -'-‘That’s exactly what I mean. We haven’t talked except to Grimshaw and at - your uncle’s. K.I. can’t have learnt through either of them that we mean to go on to the end. The obvious inference is that when we discussed it with Clive Grimihaw somebody..was listening -in?’ •Timothy remembered in a flash the slow turning of the door-handle, the silence with which it was done. * . ‘ “Wfe. Smythe, by Gad!” he exclaimher • head doubtfully. "It might have been but for one thing the signature of the letter. None of us breathed a word about K.I. that evening, Don’t you remember how we had to scrupulously avoid breaking faith With Major Grier? Yet K.I. knew we should recognise that signature. The fact is that we have only discussed KI. arid his works when we were alone—in the office.”

Tirriothy began to see her drift. “This. is most mysterious. If ws haven’t been saddled with a permanent eavesdropper, out in the corridor, then how do you account for it?” "I’ve tried to think,” said Jill, "and the only explanation I can think of seems r little mad.” "We’re living in a mad world,” laughed Timothy. "So it won’t be inappropriate.’’ “Well, I think we ought to search . the office—every wall, hole and corner.” Timothy was highly amused. .He teased her a good deal, but she noticed that he wasted no time in. getting back to the Recluse and that once they were across the threshold of the office he carried but her admonition of silence with scrupulous care. Within less than, five' minutes Jill had found justification for her wild guess. She had pointed out to Timothy the iron grid of a ventilator high up on the wall, and when Timothy mounted the table and worked at it with his fingers it slid aside.

And. the secret lay revealed—the ventilator cavity held a small microphone. He would have set about dismantling the instrument, but Jill shook her head vigorously and handed up to him his own scarf. Timothy bunched it against

the mouth of microphone and slid back the grid to hold it in position. Jill gave vent to a sigh of relief. “Now we can talk,” she said, and talk they did, for the most part in exclamations, and Timothy’s were more picturesque than polite. One significant fact had. Struck him forcibly. “The wires go into the wall,” he told her. "Fixtures.” Jill’s eyes were gleaming. She nodded. “We are in the enemy’s stronghold.” “This hotel,” said Timothy, "it’s incredible. If we can only trace those wires we’ve got ’em.” But that was likely to prove no easy matter, for, as Jill pointed out, it would mean pulling the hotel down brick by brick.

“In the meantime,” she counselled, "we’U leave the mike alone. When we want to talk shop we must remember to muffle it.” "It may come in useful sometime,” he agreed. “I’ve no doubt they’ll find our conversation very edifying. Gad!—we’re one up in the game, Jill, and it’s thanks to you, you bally little sorceress. I think I’ve told you before what I think of you—” He was on the point of telling her again in the most extravagant language he could command, when Jill suddenly put her hand to her mouth in blank dismay. "Oh!” she cried. “Your bedroom!” The next few moments were anxious ones. They made haste to know the worst, but though they subjected the room to the most careful search,they found no place where, a microphone might be concealed. Jill, on a sudden thought, hurried off to her own room and returned a little later with the significant information that it. too, was equipped in a similar way with a hidden ear. The 'magnitude of the discovery an.l the plain inference to be drawn from it was at first too stunning to be credible. Reason boggled at accepting the obvious implications. If two rooms were so equipped with permanent microphones then so, probably, was every private room in the hotel

And that supposition brought one face to face with a host of contradictory arguments. Such an elaborate system of eavesdropping would necessitate a central exchange somewhere on the premises and operators to work it. The jnanag e r must of course be in the conspiracy. What about the staff? Impossible. Yet they would at least scent a mystery behind a door always guarded, or kept locked. Something would have leaked out before now—enough, at all events, to affect subtly the atmosphere of the whole hotel. Could one, even when one looked for it, detect any sucn air of mystery pervading the Recluse? Emphatically not. It’s restfulness, its decorum, the sense of favoured consideration and attention it imparted ,to its guests were too solid, too convincing to rest on foundations of pretence and duplicity. But—there was no getting away from cold, facts. Inferences might appear preposterous, but microphones must have wires and those wires would lead somewhere.

"We shall have to make a plan of the hotel and account for every room,” said Jill. Timothy reluctantly agreed. "Sam can do the domestic quarters. Even then, we may get no forrader—it may be some attic or a cellar. However, there’® nothing else for it." CHAPTER 11. A DISCOVERY. ’The work of making a plan of the hotel proved easier and less irksome than Timothy had expected. Once tackled, it worked out like a straightforward problem in Algebra, and the unknown quantities assumed one by one their correct proportion. Sam was able to supply a diagram of the kitchens and other domestic offices; Timothy worked out the ground floor and ventured into the basement where the beauty parlour, the barber and the large ballroom were situated. Jill undertook a tour of the first floor. Before proceeding further the three plans were compared and made. to fit. The hotel, to all intents and purposes, was built in the form of a square with a central well. Timothy’s rooms on the first floor were situated in the northern wing and looked out into the central well. The yard at the bottom of the well was three storeys below, ana Timothy argued that it must therefore be at a lower level than the street. There was a tunnel exit from the yard into the street at the back of the hotel — no doubt the mouth through which the monster absorbed its daily nourishment. The kitchens occupied the bottom of the wing opposite Timothy’s window. It was while comparing Jill’s plan of the first floor with the one he had made of the ground floor that Timothy made an interesting discovery. A considerable area of the ground floor remained unaccounted for. Timothy went down at once to check his diagram. He returned visibly elated. “There’s no mistake,” he announced. “The corridor of this wing runs the whole length of it, and comes out into the conservatory at the side entrance And on the right of the corridor there’s a space of about forty feet with no door at all.” He pointed to the diagram. “That’s the drawing-room on the left, end opposite to it is a cloak-room. Next comes the writing-room on the left, and opposite to it a sort of alcove ’with palms and cane seats and what-not—but no door. Then the smoke-room on the left, and a little farther on the billiard room on the opposite side. You see, there’s nothing between the cloak-room and the billiard room—a gap of about forty feet.”

(To be continued).