THE GREY CAR MYSTERY.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 144664, 26 April 1915, Page 5

THE GREY CAR MYSTERY.

rCOPYRIGHT.I

(By A. 'WILSON BARRETT.

Author of "The House Over the Way,” ‘‘The Silver Pin.” ‘‘A Soldiers Love,” etc. CHAPTER lll.—Continued Two or three minutes passed, and ho did 4 not return ; and Sybil, who had been tearing her little white gloves angrily in her clenched hands, stamped her font at last. ‘‘Now he is lost I” she cried. “Oh, why are all foreigners fools—or rogues!'’.’ The remark was inexcusable; but. Wind with unfounded jealousy aud rage, she did not know what she was saying.’ But her speech roused the anger, till then repressed, of the passionate young man by her side. “Then why did you marry one?” he said, bitterly. ‘‘That was a mistake, eh?” His bitter tone and savage glance and the knowledge that she had said an unpardonable and unforgettable thing to the man she really loved devotedly, caused the passionate young girl to" lose the last remnant of the seifcontrol she had till then barely retained.

‘‘Oh, I know you think so!” shecried. “That you have been thinking so for a long while. You want to bo free. It is uot me yon lovo, but—but Violet! Ah, well, you shall get your wish. You coward! You shall get jour wish!”

And, mad with rage, she seized a little jewelled half-pin half-dagger from her hair, and turned it to her heart. Violet screamed, and Sarento quickly putting out his hand, caught the fingers of the infuriated girl. But, strong as were his hands, the strength given by passion to the slim fingers of the young girl was equal to his, and for u moment the two struggled vainly.

Then suddenly a weight upon his kneejnade him glance down. And he .saw Unit Violet, overcome by the horror of the scene, had fainted.

The slackening of his attention, however, had caused him to loosen slightly his grip of the sharp-pointed weapon, and, catching it wildly again, it pierced llis finger to the bone. “Curse you!” he cried, and seized the weapon, the, blood rushing to his head, as the girl’s wild, angry eyes, with momentary hate in them, glared into his. And seeing red, .suddenly, he struck swiftly out, a vicious blow. There was a quick sob, a groan, aud then silence

“1 have killed her!” wont through his brain, and, ghastly white, he reeled back against the cushions.

And then tho stillness around him made him start suddenly,- giving him hope. Violet was still unconscious at his foot, and the chauffeur had not returned. He was a rich man now. All was not yet lost.

■ And swiftly, forcing his stiffening muscles to dp his work, he rose, and lifting the slim, light body of Sybil from the seat, he- boro it from the car.

CHAPTER IV. Meanwhile, the other merry supper party in -the Imperial Restaurant grew merrier as tile minutes passed. Laurence Carton's friends were chaffing him unmercifully about the beautiful girl who had claimed his glances all the evening, and who had just left with tho foreign-looking gentleman with the scowling face and his fair young companion.

He had been quite certain that she looked at him more than once, and that something in tho sombre depths of her lovely eyes had called to him in some strange wav—called to him for. help. It wns fancy, of course—the merest imagination of "a young man struck by a rather rare loveliness, and flushed with success and wine. But for a moment it seemed to change the whole evening for him. The wine, the dinner, seemed to have lost their savour, his gay companions to have become boisterous and foolish, and his whole life to have grown empty, as if he had lost a friend.

He soon nulled himself together, however, laughing at himself tor his vivid, imagination, which all his life had been rather apt to rule his intellect, and quickly he became again the life and soul of tho party.

And the dinner sped on its festive round, cigars and cigarettes following the dessert, and liqueurs the port, interspersed with laughter and gay conversation. till at length the growing emptiness of the restaurant and the rather fidgety hovering of the waiters gave warning that the hour had conic for the gathering to break up. As the swing doors were, held open for Laurence by the man in uniform, he started, for, instead of the accustomed noiso and hustle of the busy street, only a dull, velvety murmur saluted his car, and in place of the brilliant lights of Regent-street, with their mvriad flashes. only darkness was visible —thick .black, inpenetrable darkness, muffled, deadening, choking— a real oldfashioned London fog. “Afraid I can’t get you a taxi, sir,” said the big commisionaire. with a perturbed glance at Laurence’s dress clothes ami thin shoes. “They've all gone home long ago. It. wasn’t any good their doing anything else. They, couldn't see a yard. And even the four wheelers have- given it up. I m afraid vou’U have to walk, sir; and even at that you’ll have to be careful How you go. ti’ve' had people here already asking if this was the Haymarket.” “Well, it can’t be helped,” said Laurence, cheerfully.“l‘ll walk ; and even if I get lost, 1 suppose someone will find me again.” And-he stepped out into the darkness. “There may have been times, and not seldom.” ho thought, “when I couldn’t have afforded a cab to save my life. , Now I could buy a fleet of them, and can't get one. Truly, Sinks was right; and being a plutocrat is not all beer and skittles. Still, Victoria Street isn’t far, and adventures arc to the adventurous. Who knows, I may have some fnn yet!” . And Laurence Carton, thrilled by this feeling, and possibly a littlo affected by the champagne he had drunk, the cigars he had smoked, and his sudden accession to wealth, strode boldly out to meet whatever fate awaited him with a cheerful heart and a step that took him lightly enough across the well-known circus and down Waterloo Place as far as Pall Mali.

At the crossing of the latter stccet he experienced his first difficulty, for neither the friendly Service Club nor the cold and lofty Athenaeum was visible from that short distance, and there was no traffic to £iride his ear. He struck out ,however, in the direction in which he judged the Duke of York’s statue to be. .and hit off the steps, after only a brief collision with the German Embassy, with a snreness which boded well for his future progress. “I shall soon be home at this he thought, “and do adventures cither. Life in modern London is a.dnll and unenterprising affair after all.” But it was not so dull as ho was be- § inning to think, and before him, in the arkness. in the fog, heavy with the smell of the damp avenue trees and still with the hush of a vanished traffic, Fate was waiting for him. For out of the darkness suddenly came the glimmer of a light, and on his ear fell the sound of a motor-engine, purring softly, a sound that was to recur to him often in after life, and never without a thrill. Laurence started. The sound, the light, had been so unexpected, come upon suddenly in that quiet spot whence all noise and mo. omcnt seemed to have been banished. And he moved n stop nearer to the car, which he judged had been pulled up by the. kerb, while its occupants had snatched a moment to consider their whereabouts.

Even then the silence and stillness, broken only by the low purring of the engine, struck him with a queer, uncanny feeling, and made him catch his breath.

“Have they all gone?” he thought. ‘‘Left the car to itself and got lost while looking for their way ?” Then, again suddenly, from out of the darkness came another sound—-a sound which turned him white and left him for a moment startled and staring, unable to move hand or foot. It was the sound of a woman sobbing helplessly, bitterly, shaken by a grief which it seemed to Laurence nothing could ever soothe—the grief of a broken heart. A moment’s hesitation, a glance into the denths of the fog, and he was at the side of the car and peering into its recesses, from which came ever that dull and hopeless sound. The car was a large and roomy one. beautifully fitted, ns he could see; biit there was no interior light._ Even the big head-lamps hardly illumined a yard of the mist before them. leaving their rear, quite black, and it was some seconds before lie could catch a glimpse of the inside of the vehicle, much less of the person inside. And then, a dark figure, crouched up, not on the seat, hut on the floor of the car. caught his eye, and quickly he tnrued the polished handle of the door. For the sobs the bitter, hopeless weeping—still continued, in suite of his presence and the obvious crunching of his footsteps on the gravel, and the tears wore a woman's.

Breathlessly Laurence held back tho door and looked down at her. She was half-lying, half-sitting, upon the floor of the handsomely-upholstered vehicle, with her back turned to him, ber shoulders bowed upon the sent, and her head buried in her hands.

He could see nothing of her, whether she was old or young, but the sljm. graceful back, the heavy’and expensive furs, even the pitiful tones of her sobbing voice, told him that she was a lady, and quickly he ateopod forward. “Don’t cry so.” he said, gently and involuntarily. “What is the matter? Lot mo help you. Please let me help you.”

And even as the words broke Hurriedly from him, his voice sounding strajned and startled upon tho. still air, the sobbing stopped swiftly, instantaneously, and there came a breathless and almost ghastly silence. “She has-fainted.” he thought, and, leaning quickly down, he put out an arm to try to raise tho unconscious figure. Nervousness had probably made him clumsy, however; his hands were cold, and his position, leaning over from the kerbstone, was not an ant. one for his task. His fingers clutched and got entangled with a belt around the waist he. tried to grasp, and for a moment ho stumbled against the stop of the ear. The, suddenly, from, out of the darkness behind him came a hurried step, a rough exclamation, the sound of an oath in a man's deep voice; and two arms, endowed with almost herculean strength, seized him round the shoulders. dragged him from the ear, and hurled him'helpless and half-stunned to the ground. . , Even while ho struggled to regain his feet, wondering what avalanche had struck him, and rose half-dazed to grope back from tbo kerb, ho heard the motorengine’s note rise to a shriek, saw his assailant’s dim figure spring into the driving seat, caught the bang of the clutch jammed in" with reckless haste, aud saw- tho car spring forward and dart away, its still-open door banging wildly upon its hinges. ' . “Well, what the mischief——” he began. And then, stopping, ho looked clown at his hand. In tho fingers something was still clutched. It gleamed softly in the lamplight ,antl he recognised it at once as a little silver medallion broken from the chain which had formed the belt he had been fumbling with when ho was so suddenly attacked.

[Laurence held in his .hand the tiny due to the grim tragedy of tho fog which was to set him on the trail of Sarento. Dramatic developments, in which love takes a guiding hand in tho plot, take place in tho next instalment of this great mystery story.l (To bo continued.)

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