A PLUNGE INTO THE UNKNOWN.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 16610, 6 December 1919, Page 12

A PLUNGE INTO THE UNKNOWN.

FASCINATING STORY OF POPULAR INTEREST

BY CHARLES D. LESLIE. Author of “A Wild "Wager,” “Loved fur Herself,” “The Errington Pearls Mystery,” “The Power of the Purse,” etc., etc.

CHAPTER. XXll.—Continued-. The sight of him sitting there smiling, the possibility of having to introduce him to Arnold Berlyn, seemed to Eva a tragedy greater than she could bear. Mow dared this man, Fate csmpelled 3ir;r to call father, come now and threaten to ruin her life. How she hated him! The strength. ol : bar passion surprised her. Almost did sho feel capable of taking his life, or putting an end to her own. I'or ail chance of happiness in the future, so sho felt, rested on the. two men not meeting. "You must go—please! I won't have you moot him!" sho said in . a harsh voice. m | Rather to her surprise he immediately rose to his feet. "Oh, I'll go, if I'm *de trop. But I must have a talk with you. Kvn. AVill you dine with mo to-night, at some restaurant up West? Just our two selves." "Yes—yes," she said distractedly. She would have consented even to ' meet the unspeakable Dcnison to get him off the Dremises. "Good! Lot us say the Ritz—no, I forgot, I'm not a persona grata, there; I was almost chivied out oftJie palm court only yesterday. A little affair over a lady's handbag 1 picked up. a while back. Women are so careless. The Carlton? No, I'm too well known There. Let us make it the Grill Room, Trocadero, and you needn't dress. AVill 7.30 suit, you'r lie punctual, please! Then, au rcvoir." Don't trouble to come witTi me. I will Jet myself off the premises." He smiled, nodded, and walked o'iit, bumming an operatic, air. She heard his voice receding down the corridor, and then the tlat door open and slum. He had actually gone. The whole episode had not lasted five minutes. His unexpected arrival, and ] no less unexpected departure left her confused, almost dazed. tier relief that he had gone made the important fact that he had traced her and forced himself again into her life, of only minor importance. And yet she foresaw it threatened subsequent trouble. li~,. f..,-i i.,..i !..„,. <.... t .i,o,i™,i. .„,

Her father bad been ti;e shadow 01: her life ever sir: e she could rcmem ber, a bogey man haunting the livci of the motiier and daughter living ir the little Devon town which was al the 'world Eva knew till she was seventeen. Not that they saw much oi liim : he lived in London, but lie novel lost touch with the- wife ho had practically deserted; sometimes he stayoci with them—Eva remembered thre< such visits during her mother's lifetime; upon the fourth her mother lav in her conin, and the funeral was next day. When he left the town three day? later Eva accompanied him. This capture of his seventeen-year-old daughter was one of Paul Wantage's cleverest coups - . By acting the role ol penitent, by solemn asseverations that he was a reformed man (he was just out of prison for fraud), he won the girl to his side. She stood, she Knew vaguely, at the parting of the ways. Mrs. Wantage's small income on which both had lived died with her. but Eva had the oiler of a home with some friends of her mother's. This she declined, her dui/j-, she said, lay with her father, to whom she would bo an influence for good. And she certainly was, though not in the way she imagined. Hut nearly two years passed before she realised the use the unscrupulous swindler war, making of her, and the use ho intended to make.

Outwardly Wantage's ’tie in London was decorous enough. Father and daughter lived in rooms, and he travelled into the city every day. What he did there tiio girl never knew. Outwardly, too, he did his duty as a father. Eva went to college, and attended clauses in various subjects. Nevertheless from the first sho paid him more than she cost. He had a wonderful knack of fraternising with young men whom ho would bring home and entertain. Eva would play and sing to them, or play accompaniments. It was all very harmless and domestic. She was always sent to

■. bod at ten, and then there were little . games of cards at which sooner or 1 biter the visitors lost money. But ■ you couldn’t suspect the father oi so fresh and innocent a daughter of do- • liberate cheating. It was an odd life the girl lived, how odd she never realised till it was ; over. Gradually, very gradually, she discovered that her father was crooked in grain, that he couldn’t run i straight, lie was so unstable that his swindles sometimes failed. He had queer lapses of memory, queer nutbursts ol temper. To anyone well versed in criminology he was an interesting study, hot Eva, when her eyes were opened, turned from him in disgust. She was finitely honest, with nothing of the adventuress about her; and alio was furious at having boon his tool, the unconscious decoy-duck he used to fleece the young men ho brought homo. His very care of tier, the money ho spent in her education, had a selfish motive. Ho had at once seen the promise of beauty in the half-developed girl. When she was older he would find some rich young fool to marry her; TT wealthy son-in-law would be an excellent provision for his own old ago. This ho blurted out in one of his raiv fits of frankness, and next day Eva, then nineteen, left him. Through Madeline Kent she secured a place as a governess, and, having carefully hidden her tracks, hoped her father and she had parted for ever. CHAPTER XXIII. IX HIGHGATE. Something of her strang- history Eva told Ldld Doultou, .sitting in the park, something too of what befiT in the Highgate flat after Arnold Uerlyn had gone, leaving her his pledged wife. She sat lost in a happy reverie, cut short by a ring at the. door. She wont to answer it. Her father stood on the threshold, his smiling face, a trifle perturbed. ‘’Your visitor gone, ray dear?” “Yes.” He came into the hall. “I left ray overcoat. 1 see—this isn’t mine—where's mine?—don’t tell ino your young man has gone away' with it.” ‘T expect he has. Does it matter?” “A trifle. I left the necklace in it.” "Necklace?” a certain prescience of calamity fluttered her pulse. Then it all came out. Fate, not content with bringing Eva’s father to the flat that afternoon, had involved her in Jits latest robbery, that of Mrs. Dickson-Uickson's necklace, which he had instigated N-idd to steal. And Arnold Bcrlyn, who had promised Mrs. Dickson-Dickson to recover it, had kept his word, in all ignorance taking it away with him when ho left. Even after her father had gone, and, hut for one moment of hitter auger at his own folly, he had taken tho. loss in a spirit of semi-cynical philosophy, Eva tried to tell herself she was dreaming, that this was a nightmare from i which she would presently escape. Vain imagining. .She was awake, not asleep, the real disaster, and the consequences —alas, she could guess the consequences. Arnold would never believe her innocence. It meant too big a tax on his credulity. She had sworn she had never seen the necklace, and he himself had found it in her flat. And her explanation that a man had brought it unknown to her would involve her in a deeper quagmire. "What man?” ho would ask. ‘‘Her father,” she would have to confess, a thief and swindler known to the police, with whom she had lived two years. And her explanation would only' prove her a liar. She went to her bedroom, and lay down on the lied, staring dry-eyed at i tho celling. Tears would not come, her misery seemed greater than she could hear. Yet a further ordeal was to come. Arnold would return, demanding an explanation. He would very’ soon notice he had the wrong coat on, ho would examine it and find the necklace .... then ho would hurry back. Tho wonder was he hadn’t yet arrived. But tho seconds sped into minutes, and the minutes leisurely transformed themselves into hours, and the dusk turned into darkness, but tho silence and solitude remained unbroken. (Continued daily.)