THE WHITE GLOVE

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 144711, 21 June 1915, Page 5

THE WHITE GLOVE

(COPYRIGHT.!

(By William Lo Queux,

Author of “The Room of “The Mystery of X.,” etc., etc.

CHAPTER IX. THE LOVERS. Great surprise was caused when it became known that Sir Somers Gethen had left Doris Courtney a large part of his fdrtnne. The will was a somewhat remarkable one in several respects. Executed eight months before the date of his seizure, it provided, among other things, that m the event ot Doris’s marrying before his death, the sum left to her should he distributed among a number of philanthropic institutions to bo selected by his executors. In two places mention was made of Austen Shaxhy, with whom Sir Somers had apparently been on terms of great friendship. To the old man .Sir Somers left no money, but. “In place of the five hundred pounds 1 had intended leaving to my intimate friend, A listen Bertram Shaxhy,’ the will run, "1 give and bequeath to him the whole of my unique collection of volumes of scientific works loft to me by my late uncle, George Henry Gethen, in the conviction that he will value them at their truo worth, and that they will be of practical service to him ; also all the electrical apparatus that he, the said Austen Bertram Shaxhy, sot up for me on different occasions at my country place, Semperlcy Park. Susses. “I also give and bequeath to the said Austen Bertram Shax'by,” the will stated in another place, “certain papers and documents relating to matters of interest to him, at present locked up in the lowest left-hand drawer of the escritoire in my small sitting-room on the first floor of my house, Xo. 250, Park Lane.” Sir Somers had died without after all being able to speak to Doris, and the few remarks ho had succeeded in addressing to Cecil Mylno during his last hours had been disconnected and apparently of no importance. One thing Mylne could not help feeling positive about, and that was the message in cipher contained in the second of tho two telegrams that Sir Somers had received just before his stroke had weighed heavily on his mind. This he had gathered from several disjointed remarks let drop by Sir Somers on tho afternoon of his death. Three months had now passed since Sir Somers GfgJicu’s death. It was early in January, and Doris Courtney and Cecil Mylne were staying at Vincent Westerton’s country house in Norfolk, near Fakenham. Wcsterton, a rieh middle-aged bachelor, for whom Mylne had at once time acted professionally, had his usual party for the closing weeks of tho shooting season. Besides Doris were her two friends, Winifred Haralyn and her mother, Marjorie Orpon, Lallie Maynard, who was a cousin of Doris’s, and a woman of whom nobody seemed to know anything, though it was rumoured that her married life had been “peculiar”— a Mrs. George Mockridge. Tho weather during tho week tho party had assembled at Tallwood Court was gloriously fine, as it occasionally is in January, and it happened that ono afternoon—it had been an “off’’ day for the guns, and some of tlie party were motoring, some in the neighbouring little town of Fakenham—Doris and her lover were roaming along one o’ the wide, moss-grown rides leading through the home covers at the back of Tallwood Court. Their intimacy had long since been renewed, but by mutual implied understanding no reference was now made to that period of estrangement that had so distressed Doris. True, the cause of it had never been explained by Cecil, and though, on the occasion of their second meeting after tho death of Sir Somers Gothen, Doris had asked him point-blank what had made him keep out of sight during all those weeks, apparently for no reason, whereupon Cecil had answered with a curious look that he “had deemed it advisable not to see her or write to her until such time as his innocence of any knowledge whatever of the cause of Alwyn’s death should have been established beyond question.” He had then asked her, rather bluntly, never to allude to the matter again; and though she had many times . been ’ tempted to, she had prudently refrained. For some minutes they had rambled through tho wood in silence, their footfalls deadened by the carpet of rich moss on which they trod, for a thaw had sot in the day before. When, however, they reached a spot where the ride turned abruptly at a right angle and became suddenly narrower, Doris spoke. “Seeing that before Alwyn’s death you were so anxious that we should be married at once,” she said, almost pettishly, “I can’t imagine why you now insist upon one postponement after another. Are you quite, quite sure that your love for mo isn’t waning, dear—that you are not putting off the day because in your heart of hearts you would sooner not marry me, and that— She stopped short, unable to speak what was in her thoughts. “My own darling,” ho exclaimed, impetuously, and ns he spoke his arm stole about her and his head came very near to hers, “how can you possibly say such a thing? Iter I know you don’t mean it, and that yon are speaking at random. Yon know that I love von still as passionately ns I ever did. and that my ono wish is that we should be married without delay, hut,——” “Well, why 'but’?” she asked, quickly. ns he checked himself. “Oh, I can’t explain, beyond saying tlicit I have a good reason for holding myself in patience. I must ask yon, I do ask you, my darling, not to press mo to toll you. because for the time my tongue is tied. Some day—when wo arc married—l will tell you everything. and then you will seo for yourself how important, it was that we should wait. It ought not to bo for long now.” “But you have said that before, several times—Tt ought uot to bo for long now.’ Why need there be any delay at all? Oh, it there must be, why must I he kept in ignorance of the reason? Surely I have a right to know.” Cecil made a grimace: it might have been out of irritation, nr to emphasise what ho had said. Then ho deftly changed tho subject. “I wonder,” he remarked, carelessly, after a pause, “if anybody will ever find out what the meaning of that second telegram was that Somers received on the morning of his stroke, and who sent it. Very little importance was attached to it by anybody, you remember. Even the lawyers passed it over as of small consequence. Yet—l have never told you this before—l hare a theory that that cipher message con-

tained some very grave news—news so serious that it may have been directly responsible for pool’ Somers’s seizure. Just before his death he kept rambling on about it, and there was ono sentence ho must have repeated a dozen times if he said it once—‘lf he were dead we should have no further trouble.’ He spoko a good deal about you, as I told you, hut what he said about you was mostly unintelligible. I had a queorish dream last night—a nightmare, I ,suppose—and I seemed to sec in it the whole of that scene again in Somers’s room on the day he died, and to hear his voice again. It was an extraordinarily vivid dream. That sentence occurred again and again, just as 1 had heard it—‘lf he wore dead we should have no further trouble.’ Oh, and that nurse, the woman who puzzled you so—she was all the time standing by Somers’s bed —in my dream—and stooping over him. She didn’t move once. Yon have never seen her again, I suppose?” “Never. But, of course, that is not to be wondered at. Hospital nurses aro here, there, and everywhere. I have never got over the odd impression she made upon me that day. Do you remember what strange eyes she had? They were just like Mme. Blavatsky’s eyes. I once attended a lecture Mme. Blavatsky gave, and her eyes made an extraordinary impression upon me. They seemed to rivet one’s gaze. I suppose you will think it silly of me, Cecil, but I still can't help associating that nurse with the woman seen in our house in town by that old man Austen Shaxhy, and afterwards by Jack Deighton. Cecil, do you know 1 sometimes lie awake at night, even now, wondering who that woman was, and what she was doing there. If Jack Deighton hadn’t seen her, too, and assured mo there could bo no possibility of his having boon mistaken, I should have been tempted to disbelieve old Shaxby’s story. Old men like that sometimes suffer from hallucinations.” “Oh, by tho way, I saw Shaxhy yesterday,” her companion interrupted. “Saw him! Why, where?” “In Fakenham. I quite forgot to tell you. I motored in directly after breakfast with Deighton and some of tho others, you remember, to inquire at tho post office about those clothes 1 was expecting. Well, in the post office I came face to face with old Shaxhy.” “What an extraordinary thing! Did you speak to him?” “Xo, I don’t know him to speak to, and I am sure he didn’t recognise me. I mot him only once—in Oxford Street with Somers, 'Somers didn’t introduce mo, of course, Shaxhy wouldn't remember rao. Those old scientists are always in tho clouds; they are worse in that respect oven than literary people and painters, and other folk with what arc called, I believe, ‘artistic temperaments.’ ” “What was ho doing in the post office?” “He had just handed in a telegram. When I came out afterwards I saw him shuffling away down tho street, all humped up. What ago can he be? Ho •might bo any ago, to look at him.” They had readied tho end of the ride, and stood together at tho corner of the wood. It was nearly dusk. Away over a distant hill beyond many miles of flat, uninteresting country the sun was sinking in a ball of fiery rod. They waited a minute or two, watching it disappear. At last, when tho whole sky had turned to shades of ruddy purple, Doris looked round at her lover. “Cecil,” she exclaimed, hardly above a whisper, and glancing about her apprehensively, “I don’t know what it is. I—l feel frightened somehow.” She took his hand in hers, as a nervous child takes hold of its mother’s hand when it fancies danger lurks. “Why, little girl,” ho said, drawing her close to him, “you aro trembling. What is tho matter? Ido hope you haven’t caught a chill. We’ve been crawling about these woods at a snail’s pace, and 1 forgot that the grass is so wet.” Ho glanced down at her feet. “My darling, you ought, not to have como out in those thin shoes. But it’s mv fault; I should have noticed them when we started, and have made you put on your thick shooting-boots, as you call them.” “It isn’t that; I’m not cold, not a bit, and my feet are not wet. It's something else that’s frightening me, and making me tremble. So awfully still hero, isn’t it? Not a sound anywhere. Do let us walk homo quickly and get away from this place. Ugh! I seem to hate it suddenly! 1 don’t know why. There seems to bo an oerie presence of some sort about—here, quite close to us, and yet we can’t seo it. Hark!” She clutched him tightly with both hands, and he put his arm about her shoulders. “What did you hear—or think yon heard?” he asked, when they bad listened intently for a moment or two. “I hoard something like a sigh; I’m sure I did.” She was glancing furtively about her again, peering into the now dark depths of the wood they had just come out of. “No, my darling,” Cecil said, reassuringly, ’‘it was your fancy, I assure yon. Come along; we’ll walk homo together as fast as we can.” (To bo continued.)