THE GREY CAR MYSTERY.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 144669, 1 May 1915, Page 5

THE GREY CAR MYSTERY.

rCOPYRIGHT.I

By A. WILSON BARRETT.

Author of "The House Over tho Way,” “The Silver Pin,” “A Soldier’s Lore,” etc.

CHAPTER SI. Poor Miss Lint-on watched Laurence tremblingly as, with a whito face, he read Eve’s farewell note—watched him almost as if she feared that he would turn upon her and hlamo her for this sudden calamity which had fallen upon him. But he only looked up at her with haggard face and dark, anxious eyes. . “We must try to find out what has happened,” ho said, “She must have seen someone or heard something which startled her and recalled to her the shock which originally caused her to lose her memory so strangely. She would not have left us, she would not have written those letters for nothing. You left her all right, you say?” “Quite, poor darling. I was only go* mg out for so short a time. And she was her own sweet self when I said good-bye.” “And you weren’t gone more than an hour?” asked Laurence. “Where are the servants? Do they know anything? Have you questioned them?” “I have asked Thomas,” said Miss Linton. “He knows nothing. Cook was out. Bella and Margaret were do- , iug the rooms; and they did not even know that she had gone.” j “We must question them all again,” said Laurence. “Someone must know something. There must be some reason for this.”

Miss Linton rang the bell, and Thomas, tho old man-servant, came in response. “Your mistress has already asked you, I believe,” said Laurence, looking keenly at the old man ; “but did you see Miss Eve go out this morning? Or do vou know if any of the other servants did?” Thomas rubbed his hands a little nervously. “Well, sir. 1 didn’t, sir,” ho said/ “But I have been making inquiries among the maids, and X think it must have boon the gentleman who came for her that she went out with.” “The gentleman who came for her!” both Laurence and Miss Linton repeated. And Laurence’s aunt looked up at the old servant, for her quite severely. “This is the first I have ooard of this, Thomas,” she said. “Did anyone come?”

Thomas reddened. “A gentleman, ma’am, yes,” he said. “It appears it was like this, ma’am. Just after you had gone out the boll wont. I was out, as I have said, ma’am, and Bella and Margaret being upstairs, did not hear il. And tho door was answered, X am sorry, ma’am, by the kitchenmaid.” Laurence looked at Miss Linton, his face whiter than before.' “Ask for the girl to como up,” he said, quickly. She appeared in a few moments—a rather heavy, stupid-looking girl, her face tearstained now, evidently from an encounter with the harassed Thomas. “Will you please tell us all about the gentleman who called this morning for Miss Eve.” said Miss Linton, severely. “And how you came to answer the door and let anyone in.” “Please, mum. I didn’t let him in; ho walked past me. I heard the hell ring twice, and I thought it was just tho postman. It was his time, and ho rings .when he’s got a parcel. *1 want to speak to the young lady,’ he says. ‘Just show me to her. She wants mo.’ And be goes on into the ball, and, not knowing any wrong, I opened tho morning-room door for him, where Miss Eve was at the window,”

“Did you hoar Miss Eve go out afterwards?” asked Miss Linton, looking at the maid’s smudged face and tearstained eyes doubtfully. “No, mum. I didn’t hear her go out, nor him. I waited a minute, because 1 thought I heard Miss Eve call out to mo. and then I went downstairs to my work.”

Laurence bit his Jip, The girl had thought she heard Eve call. Had the sound been a cry. of recognition, even fear? “What was b© like, this man?” he asked, quickly. “He was a foreigner, sir, and tall and dark: but he was that quick, I didn’t rightly see him to remember him.” “It*was that man, whoever ho was,” said Miss Linton as soon as the servants had left the room. Laurence looked up with his brow clouded, “Whatever has happened, whatever all this means, wo must find her,” be said, “and quickly. It may be that she imagines that something connected with her past, and which has come back to her with a sudden shock, might change in some way our feeling towards her. It is absurd and wrong of her to think so. of course; nothing could make me change towards her. But it is too late to talk of that. Tho only think to think of now is how to find her and got her back.”

They went up to Eve’s room together. Laurence’s’heart beat fast as lie looked round the pretty, bright pink-and-whito place, with its lac© and hangings, and bright ■ autumn flowers placed there by the hands he had kissed so few hours before.

He was aroused from his thoughts by a little cry from his aunt, who was bonding over a little china box on the dressing-table. “Oh, she has left her belt,” she said—“her silver belt. It must have broken again, and she has forgotten it.”

Laurence looked at the article she held up—a silver belt made of chasod medallions joined together by little links—and suddenly turned white. “Let me look at that,” bo said, quickly, and with trembling fingers he caught the thing almost roughly from his aunt’s hands.

His thoughts were back again to the motor-car in tho fog and darkness of St. James’s Park on the night of his dinner-party. And again he heard the woman’s low, broken-hearted sobs, saw tTio bent, c'rouchcd-up figure in the dim interior of tho car, felt himself try to raise the senseless form that had suddenly become inert and motionless, felt his fingers catch in the little silver belt, and His eye turned to the centre of the belt where two of tho medallions, joined together roughly with a little piece of ribbon, showed that the links had once been broken.

His face grew tense and white. In the depths of his mind vague, dark surmises were rising, which he did not want to dwell upon, and which yet ho could not dismiss from his thoughts.

It was nothing in her letter, or sudden flight, it was nothing in the discovery of the belt and Eve’s connection with "that adventure of the mysterious motor-car which had made him for the first time remember and associate with it in his hind another and more terrible adventure of that night, an adventure of which he bad onl~ heard of afterwards—the discovery of the murdered woman’s body in the Park. (To be continued.)