HER DAY OF ADVERSITY

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18182, 15 June 1927, Page 15

HER DAY OF ADVERSITY

“ STAR’S ” NEW SERIAL

(By

MRS PATRICK MacGILL.)

If thou faint in the day of adversity thy strength is small."— Proverbs.

“THE FELLOWS DEAD.’’ It had all happened in the space of half a minutae, and, when Carol recognised David Murray, her nerves, keyed to breaking point for so long, suddenly gave way, and she screamed —the wild, uncontrolled, screams falling on the quiet night with ear-piercing shrillness. “Fetch Carslake —lie’s a doctor. Run, damn you—don't stand there like a post! Stop that confounded noise —here, somebody clap a hand over her mouth—we’ll have the whole neighbourhood round." Carol heard her employer’s low, nut urgent, excited voice; she felt a hand —it was Bundy’s—press so firmly against her mouth that her soft lips were braised against her teeth, and before she finally lost consciousness she heard the somewhat foppishly affected voice of Carslake. the rising young nerve specialist, who was also an inveterate gambler, say with horrible distinctness, “ The fellow’s dead. His temple struck this piece of marble at a very jaasty angle.” Chapter VUI. (continued). "Please don't. Mr Lester,"' said Carol quietly* and quite fearlessly, for her brief frtay in such a house as Jacob Stone's had taught her much, and she knew that there was no need to fear this particular “guest”. She touched his arm, raised pleading eyes to his. That touch, brief as it was, brought to him with overwhelming force the consciousness of her alluring young- beauty, her nearness, her femininity; his passion was like a mighty river in spate. He held out strong-, love-hungry arms, ; and enfolded her within them as easily as if she had been a tiny child. Love loaned the usually backward tongue, aiitj, within hearing of the negro jazz band to which his late companions were still dancing, Harvey Lester made the proposal which was to have such tragic results. **Dear little pal, I've loved you from the/very first moment of meeting you,” he said, holding Carol in his arms in such a way that she was compelled to lock up into his fine, eager young face. “I don't know what circumstance Compelled you to come to this beastly ! place, and I don’t want to know, kiddje. All I know is that I've seen the . loathing for it growing and growing in your eyes, and I want to take you away from it all, and make you forget. It's a wide world—we’ll have a look at it together, Carol. Will you marry me now—at once ? I won’t ask any questions—all T want is the chance to prove my love.” The man’s eyes were burning, glowing with passion; in his ever-tightening arms Carol was as helpless as if she had been the little white moth to which he had likened her a few minutes earlier. Neither heard the garden gate open and softly close again. Neither saw a tall man’s form stride up the path, and, guided by the low murmur of words in a masculine voice, make his way to the rocker}-, and there, for one moment, as the moon shone full into Carol’s white face, revealing her in Harvey Lester’s amis, stand as if transfixed. Then with a cry which was more like the snarl of a -wild animal than thta of a human being, the newcomer drove his fist full into the eager, impassioned face of the young lover, and the next moment Harvey Lester was lying still on the garden path, an ugly wound in his left temple from which the blood was flowing as freely as if \ a tiny tap had been turned on. Chapter IX. “IT RESTS Y7ITH YOU.' Carol came up slowly from the sea of ink into which she seemed to have fallen, and wondered why her throat felt as if it were filled with warm cotton wool that tickled and annoyed her every time she tried to get her breath. It was not until she looked down at the crumpled, crushed ruin of a frock that recollection, and consequent realisation, came. No film actress could ever hope to achieve for screen purposes such a vivid, meinorj'-.searing expression of horror as that which settled like a mask on, the fair young face of the girl who was remembering, bit by bit, with ghastly accuracy the scene which had taken place in Jacob Stone’s garden in the early morning hours—for it was now full daylight, and the sunshine was penetrating the chinks between the heavy velvet curtains which had been drawn across the window. Apart from the horror that stared nakedly from hef eyes, Carol’s little face was livid with cold, and her teeth chattered as her body shivered beneath the eiderdown which she pulled closer and yet closer about her terror-chilled body. With sickening, clarion-like clearness, she recalled Dr Carslake’s mincing voice, suddenly sharp and serious, as he said, “ The fellow’s dead. His temple struck this piece of marble at a very nasty angle.” Once again she felt somebody place a restraining hand over her mouth, and all her recollections were in a mad, chaotic whirl, beating and beating in upon her brain like the wings of imprisoned birds, making reasoned thought impossible, when a tap sounded upon the door. Carol tried to say “Come in,” but the hot cotton-wool sensation in her throat prevented her from uttering a sound. Only her young eyes, with that terrible expression of haunting dread, looking out of her marble-white face, told Jacob Stone, who entered, that she was awake. Stone, m bh» way. was as sad to look upon as Carol, but the terror in his beady eyes, putty-coloured face, and drawn lips, was not provocative of the least thought of sympathy. His hands were in his pockets as he crossed the box of a room with a couple of strides, and stood by the couch, looking down at the piteous spectacle that Carol presented. A single glance was sufficient to convince him of the fact that he could not hope to talk to Carol in her present condition. And he badly wanted to talk. Me pulled out a brandy flask. “ Here, take a nip of this,” he said, holding the silver mouth of the flask to Carol’s lips. She shook her head and turned aside; but Jacob Stone twisted her face round with a none too gentle hand, and forced a fair quantity of the burning liquid down the unwilling throat. “ Confound it, you and I have got to have a talk, and this is the only stuff that will help you to listen. You’ve done me too much harm to allow of mv- standing any more damned nonsense. The tone in which Jacob Stone spoke was such a gross insult that it acted in almost as stimulating a fashion as the brandy. Resentment whipped a colour into Carol s cheeks, and she even opened

her mouth to voice what she felt, but Jacob Stone cut in, anticipating her intention. “No need to ask if you remember what has happened to young Lester through that accursed fellow that s keen on you?” Carol, sickening, shuddered. All the fictitious courage imparted by the unaccustomed stimulant departed in a single moment of time. Jacob Stone bent down and thrust his heavy jaw forward, almost into the young face, and in a low voice, which was almost in a whisper, answered his own question. " He’s lying dead upstairs—killed by your lover 1 ” The horrible silence which succeeded his words would have delighted the soul of a dramatist if it had occurred in a theatre as the result of his art. The voice in which Carol Oliver broke the tension might have belonged to an old woman, weary with worldsorrow, whose soul was on the rack, as she asked. “Where is Mr Murray?” Jacob Stone shot her a peculiar look. “ He's in the house, too,” he said, and waited to see the effect of his words. It was exactly what he expected. Carol jumped up from the couch as if some magic had galvanised her into a different being. David was in the same house! Before she quite realised her action, she had her hand on the handle of the door. “ Let me go! Stand out of the way, I tell you 1 ” she cried, stamping her foot. But Jacob Stone flung the light little body aside as easily as if he had been handling a baby. “ Sit down, and listen, and if you’ve a grain of sense, you’ll do a§ you’re told,” he said, savagely. “It rests with you whether David Murray swings or whether he goes scotfree,” were the next words which the amazed girl heard. THE BRIBE. Carol could only look: it seemed as if her tortured brain must soon give way tinder the strain that was being placed upon it. As a matter of fact, although she had heard, she had not yet fully grasped anything except that David was in the house, and her immediate, supreme desire was to be with him. “Mr Stone, if it is a matter of the money that is owing to I am sure that Mr Murray will—” Jacob Stone cut across the breathlessly spoken sentence, and his voice was raised a little as he spoke. “Money? A matter of money, did you say?” The thick lips parted and stretched in a ghastly travesty of a smile. “There’s no money that can buy a man off the scaffold, my girl, and the sooner you realise that the sooner we’ll understand each other. Sit down.” Hardly knowing what she did. Carol obeyed. It was Carol who broke the ensuing silence, purposely imposed by Jacob Stone, who wanted the fact of David Murray’s guilt to penetrate her consciousness. The hoarse tone of voice, the livid features, and horrow-filled eyes of the young girl told him that his plan had succeeded. “Do you mean that you are going to send for the police—that David will be tried for murder?” asked Carol, leaning forward and staring up at the man’s uncomely face as if it fascinated her. Jacob Stone made a strange clicking sound with his tongue, and gave an emphatic nod, but his eyes avoided Carol’s as he made reply. “That’s the size of it,” he said shortly. “But as I have already told you, whether I give him up to justice or not rests with yourself,” he addcd_ slowly, sitting down beside Carol and taking one of her cold, little limp hands in his. “With me?” There was a sharp, upward inflection in Carol’s usually rather quiet voice, due to the sudden clutching sensation at her throat, which she experienced. She jerked away the hand that Jacob Stone held and placed it across her throat, feeling a pulse beat beneath her fingers like some tortured living thing. “Listen, Carol. Hero, don’t shrink away like that. Damn it all, I’m not poison,” as the slightly young body shrank from the aim that was placed around it. “To begin with, do you want to see poor Lester’s bod}'? It’s upstairs in my bed room. If you do Bundy will take you up.” He ey'ed Carol keenly as he spoke, fully expecting the effect which his words produced. “No—no—good heavens, no!” cried Carol wildly. “All right, though it isn’t a very terrible sight. Just a bruise on the temple, that’s ail. It was an unlucky spot to hit.” Carol shuddered. She could hear the love-thrilled voice of the young Colonial begging her to let him take her away across the sea, far from London and such -associates as Jacob Stone and his kind. “It’s just sheer luck that it is possible to hush the thing up, though there’s a big risk attached to it, mind you—a risk for me, I mean.” Jacob Stone paused to let his words sink in. When Carol grasped them, she looked up with a new light in her eyes. “Is—is such a thing possible?” she , breathed, rather than said. Jacob Stone nodded, and, getting up, commenced to pace the tiny room, all the while that he was speaking, avoiding Carol’s agonised eyes. “In young Lester’s case, just possible,’’ he said, in a curiously matter-of-fact voice, considering the subject of their conversation. “He told me quite a lot about himself,” he continued, pausing in his walk to look out of thew indow, which commanded a view of the garden. Carol fixed here eyes on the broad back, and waited, v ailed for the words I which were to mean David’s immunity from arrest, from standing his trial for taking the life of a fellow creature. She had never been inside a court of justice in all her life, and knew' next to nothing about the law, but, like most other girls, she hadfoll° wec * the course of famous trials in the newspaper's, and, recollecting them, shrank, terrified from the prospect or David Murray being in a like position. Jacob. Stone was speaking again, and the white-faced. girl on the couch brought her mind back with a jerk from the contemplation of dreadful crimes about which she had only read, to listen to the man who could find a way of escape for him whose life now seemed infinitely more precious than her own. (To be Continued).