“THE BLACK OWL”

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17835, 1 May 1926, Page 24 (Supplement)

“THE BLACK OWL”

STAR’S ” NEW SERIAL

[By

William Le Queux.

CHAPTER XVll.—:(Continued.) Tardy as the revelation was, Attwood had expected some expressions of gratitude. What was his surprise when Pearson overwhelmed him with abuse for having concealed the truth so long. Before the interview terminated there was an attempt to patch up the unexpected breach, but from that day Pearson nursed a grudge against his half-brother which time never removed, nor even softened.

Before they parted jie overcame his rancour sufficiently to ask for a loan to take him to Florence to interview his wealthy wife. He would take care that Mrs Winterton refunded the motley, he said with a grim smile. The next day he left for Italy. Attwood did not make a long stay in England. Ilis years of loose habits and his criminal pursuits had put him out of touch with the old people, and he was always afraid of embarrassing questions.

In due course, he received a letter from Pearson enclosing Mrs Winterton’s cheque for the amount borrowed. In it he stated that he had arranged to remain at Florence in the capacity of butler and major-domo to the mistress of the villa.

Attwood was very surprised at his accepting such an apparently menial position. No doubt he would have the whip hand of the lady, and make her dance more or less to his piping, but in public he would have to show a proper appreciation of the difference between their stations. It would have been so easy for him to insist upon her coming over to England and returning with him as her second husband.

Perhaps he hated her too much for the treatment she had meted out to him so soon after their marriage, to live openly -with her as his wife. Perhps he enjoyed the secret sense of power which his subordinate position gave him. Perhaps he did not care to live up to the standard which she might impose if she openly proclaimed him as her husband, and took him about to the fashionable hotels in the different capitals she visited. Possibly his later years of poverty had unsuited him for playing the gentleman as easily as she played the lady. In the after years when Attwood got more ip to actual touch with Mrs Winterton, he learned something of the actual details of this extraordinary relationship, the wife receiving her guests in her sumptuous rooms, the husband attending to their wants in the humble guise of a butler. He did not intrude upon her overmuch, to have done so would have caused suspicion amongst the other servants. In certain things he was very despotic, insisting upon running the establishment in his own Any feeling he had for her in the old days seemed to have entirely disappeared. When they were alone, he never addressed to her a single tender phrase that might remind her there was a time when he had loved her very dearly. But he did bleed her very freely, demanding from her large sums of money from time to time. This annoyed her very much, for she bitterly disliked the uses to which he put the money that she was afraid to refuse him. Once she had tried a halfhearted refusal, and had been frightened by the violence of his language ,and the threats he had used to her. She never repeated the experiment. All the money he got from her, and it was a large annual amount, went to the bookmakers. Betting was an absorbing passion with him, and he was persistent ly a loser. Still, so long as she let him have what he demanded he . did not cause her any serious annoyance. At the same time she never forgot to upbraid Attwood with having divulged her secret to him. If she had known he was in poor circumstances it would have been easy to help him in quite a generous way without bringing him into her house. So she said, but Attwood did not greatly believe in her generosity. At this point in the narrative, Marsden put a question. “ You have told me a considerable lot of history, that part about her being Pearson’s wife is of the utmost importance, of course. But so far no mention has been made of the daughter, Miss Iris. Is she to be left out of the story altogether?

Attwood laid down his MS. and regarded the questioner with a long, steady look. Then his face broke into a smile charged with meaning. ” I have kept her to the last, Mr Marsden, a bonne-bouche, in short. I wanted to finish up with a genuine dramatic touch. Perhaps you would rather have it now.” “Just as well, perhaps.”

And the man leaned forward, uttering each word with slow and sustained emphasis. “ Prepare yourself for the biggest surprise of all, the one which, I think, to a gentleman of your acumen, is alone worth the thousand pounds you arc going to pay me. Iris Winterton was the daughter of Hugh Winterton right enough. But Julia Pearson to call her by her right name is not her mother, only her stepmother. She is the child of Winterton’s first wife, and was nine months old when the second marriage took place.

These are not bivalve molluscs, for the two shells (valves) are above and below the body, not right and left of it. A stalk through a spout in the lower valve (this spout appearing as if intended for the wick of an ancient lamp) anchors the animal below a stone. There is a delicate horse-shoe skeleton within, not found in molluscs. The goose-bill lamp-shell (Lingula) is

CHAPTER XVIII. Marsden drew a deep breath. “ This puts an entirely different complexion upon everything.” “Naturally.” was Attwood’s comment. “I have been told, in the course of a confidential conversation I once had with Mrs Winterton, that it was the father’s wish that Iris should be brought up in the belief that she was her real mother. This mav have been a lie. One cannot easily find a reason for such a course, but then Hugh Winterton was a very cranky man, and on eatery subject took a peculiar view of his own.” “ There is no doubt then that Miss Winterton was unaware of the real relationship between herself and her stepmother?

“ None at all, if the lady’s statement to me is to be trusted,” was Attwood’s emphatic reply. “At any rate, the information must be very valuable to you, since in considering the woman, you can eliminate any question of maternal instinct.” A sharp fellow, this blackmailer, thought Marsden, would no doubt have made a pretty shreWd detective himself. As the young man made no comment upon this last remark, the reading of the closely-written MS. was resumed. Things went on like this for many years, husband and wife living under the same roof in this extraordinary and detached manner. Mrs Winterton was able to lead the life to which she had always aspired, a life of luxury and refinement. Pearson led the fife that suited him, drawing money as he wanted it, to fling away upon his in- , sensate mania for gambling on the turf. During this period, Attwood saw them a few times, and corresponded now and again with his half-brother. He was quite confident, however, that in spite of a surface cordiality, Pearson had never really forgiven him for having kept the truth from him for so long. Then a change occurred in Attwood’s fortunes. This gentleman had his weakness like the , other, only different in nature. . Pearson gambled and lost on the turf, Attwood gambled and lost at the card-table. The result was the same; neither could hold any money he received or made. Attwood had up to this period done very well out of his nefarious pursuits, that is to say he had received considerable amounts which had slipped through his fingers, some of it in personal extravagance, but the most in the pursuit of his favourite vice. Then suddenly things went wrong. Great changes had taken place in the small but successful organisation of which he was a fairly prominent member. There were in this organisation two persons of outstanding personality from whose fertile brains emanated the conception of the coups which enriched themselves and the rest of the gang. One died, the other fell, by a serious miscalculation, into the hands of the law, and paid the penalty of his want of foresight, in the shape ,of a long term of imprisonment. Nobody could take their place. Attwood himself was admirable in the subordinate part of following out instructions, but he lacked initiative and invention, he could carry out but he was unable to plan. Of course, if he bad possessed a grain of commonsense, he would have put by a considerable portion of his ill-gotten gains for a rainy day. The card-table having swallowed every farthing of the surplus above his ordinary expenditure, he found himself stranded. In these depressing circumstances, his thoughts immediately turned towards Mrs Winterton. Here was a woman whose security and peace of mind depended upon the benevolent attitude of two men, the husband whom she had treated so scurvily, and himself. Pearson was in clover for life, leading the kind of existence which he preferred. Why should not his halfbrother, the first to discover the secret, derive some benefit from his knowledge ? He had made himself acquainted with the contents of Hugh Winterton’s will. His supposed wife would always enjoy a considerable income, for many years a very large one. Out of her opulence she could afford to help generously a fellow sinner who had fallen by the wayside. And perhaps, in his Secret heart, he was not disinclined to quit the fife of crookdom with its everpresent risks for a comfortable annuity from a woman who was so much indebted to him for his previous forbearance.

Mrs Winterton responded fairly promptly to his appeal, sending him the remittance he asked for. He did not judge her to be naturally a generous woman to others, although she was lavish enough to herself, begrudging nothing to satisfy her own whims and comfort.

No doubt she was considerably disgusted at finding that in order to preserve the sinister secret of the past, she would have to maintain another pensioner in addition to the one with whom she was already burdened, but she showed no trace of this feeling in her letter. Like a wise woman, she

apparently so well adapted to its home on the mud-bottom of the sea, an environment that alters little, that it has remained since the remote Cambrian period unchanged in a changing cuter world. The Sea-mats (Bryozoa) patching the stones contain thousands.of little animals, hardly.more advanced -h:m coral polyps, in their separate limestone cells.

bowed to the inevitable without indulging in futile recrimination." There was one passage, however, in her letter which occasioned Attwood considerable disturbance. ” Please remember, if you should accidentally come across Pearson, ' that this affair must be kept entirely.., .‘between ourselves. For some reason, he is \*ery ill-disposed towards you. . From a few remarks he has let. drop, he seems to bitterly resent your having kept him in the dark for so long, conduct on your part which I, of course,, appreciate. If lie knew what I. am doing, I am sure he would strongly oppose it. would use his best efforts to prevent

Of' course, this first application was not the only one. Time after time, Attwood’s incurable weakness for gambling induced him to spend this hush-money at an alarming rate. Still Mrs Winterton, feeling, doubtless, that there was no way out of the hopeless situation, responded more or less satisfactorily to his appeals. Occasionally she sent him something less than he demanded, remarking querulously that he was taking too unscrupulous- advantage of his knowledge, and making life very difficult for her.

(To be continued.)