Miss MIDAS

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 134, 8 June 1931, Page 14

Miss MIDAS

By

NORMAN PENLEY

(Author of •* The Loveless Isle,” etc.)

CHAPTER 111. A Night Call. It was raining, and a broken gutterpipe was enjoying itself imitating Niagara Falls. Constable Lewthwaite pushed the bicycle out of the shed at the rear of the police station with the air of a man who has subordinated every natural feeling to a sense of duty. To be turned out at 2 a.m. into a torrential rain with an objective on the Cumberland fells, six miles from the station, was just the kind of situation in which his army discipline and policeman’s philosophy triumphed over the flesh. As lie pushed the cycle round to the road in front of his grey stone house, a lattice window opened and a chintz curtain at once leaped out to join the capers of the wind and rain. The constable heard the complaint of the under-exercised window frame, and looked up just in time to sec his wife’s hand recapturing the truant curtain. “How long are you likely to be, Join ?” “Danged if I know, I couldn’t make much of that message. Likely the wind was upsetting the wires. But there’s no need for two of us to get wet. . . T'was just like this that night we had that shooting business over Scaw Beacon. Hope there’s no bullets flying around on this job.” He gave the inside pedal a preliminary push with his foot as he paused for some expression of alarm and solicitude from his wife.

All that happened was the familiar creaking of the window. The hinges had almost finished their complaint when the frame was pushed outward again. “Did you remember to turn out the scullery gas?—you left it burning on the night of the shooting.’* “Thee get back to bed and stop fratching,” was all the constable said, as lie adjusted himself in the seat and lowered liis head against the driving

In point of strict fact, Constable Lewthwaite did leave the scullery gas burning; but as his spouse watched him eating a belated breakfast, she had not the heart to rebuke him then. He was tired out, and lie had been wet to the skin, as was betokened by the items of uniform and underwear with which the kitchen was garlanded. He was obviously having difficulty in preventing his eyelids from closing as he straightened his knife and fork upon his plate. “Rum’s good to drive out the cold, but it alius makes me sleepy. I*ll be getting up to bed. “If that young lad from the ‘Courier’ comes round, tell him he can got details from the Cottage Hospital at Shap; but if he must know something more, tell him P.C. Lewthwaite saw the job through himself, with the help of only two farm lads. And he’s certain to ask if the deceased was local chaps. Well, they’re not. Both from near London. Where’s that bit of paper?” He reached to the mantelpiece. “Here you are. Here’s one: Douglas Melbourn, Fendlesliam, Surrey. T’otlier’s on the other side. They were evidently going to Scotland to shoot, judging by gun cases in the back of the vehicle, which was an Austin saloon. “But bo careful not to say aught else. Inquest is the right time for that. Now I'll finish me sleep.” The constable ambled wearily away. Upstairs, before committing himself to the newly-made bed, he drew the curtain across the window. It was still raining. Water was gushing noisily from the broken guttering. Why couldn’t the sergeant give him permission to get it repaired, lie mused as he lay down. So much red tape. Red tape . . . red blood . . . horribly smashed, those two chape. . . CHAPTER IV. Saving a Mind. The Harley Street man had prescribed Paris, and to Paris old Janies Melbourn was taken, but the treatment was not a success. True, lie had passed the stage when he alternated between fury and deep depression, between a bitter railing against his creator and sleepless, speechless brooding. But lie luid passed from that condition before he left England, and he had moved mechanically and sullenly from train to Miip, from hotel to motor car, from the Bois to the Boulevard—wherever he was tactfully piloted by lvis patient daughter, James went, but always like a prisoner pacing a prison yard. “You must get his mind ofl it,” the Harley Street man had told Heather. So easily said. “Paris should certainly help,” the mental specialist had added. “For one who, like your father, has so seldom been out of the country, a foreign city has a thousand and ono things to arrest attention and take the mind olf present obsessions.”

Actually, Auld Rabbie Watt could have prescribed better for James; Auld Rabbie who learned years ago that salmon fishing was the only form of activity that could make James Melbourn forget the city and the school triumphs of his clever son. But Auld Rabbie had been dead these six years, and James, more than once, since that terrible day when the policeman came with the tragic news ot Douglas’ fate on the Cumberland fells, had wished that he might join Rabble. Even for Heather, Paris had few delights, for to the shock of Douglas’ death had been added the care of a father whose mind was hovering in the weird borderland which divides sanity from madness. Gone, too, was any immediate prospect of her engagement to Gerard. So the delights of Paris were, to her, dead sea fruit which turned to ashes on the lips. She was even unconsious of the admiration that was provoked bv her beauty in a setting of sombre black. Ono day obi James, for one brief period of lucidity, showed an interest in life. But it was not flattering to* Paris. The city of light hid not dispelled the Cimmerian gloom in which lie had been wrapped for nearly six weeks. “Must we stay here, Heather,” he had said one afternoon when the tea had proved particularly unpalatable. “ Just as you like, daddy. Have you any other place in mind?”

“Torquay,” he answered abruptly, and surprisingly. Surprisingly because, so far as she knew, he had never been to Torquay. Thus it was that, without telephoning to Harley Street, or without consulting the French specialist to whom the ease had been assigned by his London colleague, Heather had their baggage packed and with a business-like efficiency born of their recent troubles, made all the arrangements for tlxeir return to England. James, as he eat in the Pullman ear at the Gave du Nord, was suddenly made aware of his daughter's new acquisition. She chattered briskly in French to the hotel porter who had seen their baggage into the train, checking up the various items, and calculating the man s tip with an exactness that appealed to James’ financial instincts, numbed though they were by recent events. He watched her, too, as she sorted the contents of her bag, putting aside passports and tickets, counting and separating French money from British, folding notes and totting up expenses in an absurdly small notebook. Ho had, many tfines, begged to be allowed to manage such affairs, and slic had allowed him to handle them; but, at the critical moment, he had not the remotest idea what he had done with the money, his power of calculation, even, deserted him; he was miles away, in the city, or on the Cumberland fells with Douglas. But that small episode in the Pullman car proved to be a seed sown in a mind that was like a field that had been devastated by an earthquake. Much was to come of it. Three days later when, after a leisurely crossing of London, they were seated in a garden, on a hillside overlooking Torbay, the seed began to germinate aided by a curious fertilising agency. - Old James had scanned the morning paper as perfunctorily as usual. Heather had watched him closely to see if the city news had recovered its appeal for him; but no, he passed over the page with nothing more" than a glance at the headlines. Consequently, she was surprised to see him, half an hour later, retrieving the paper from beneath his chair and obviously searching for something. Discreetly, she passed behind him, when he had found what he sought, and she noted the column he was reading. It lieid a familiar type of story, topped by lines like these: “Handsome Woman Heads £200,000 Enterprise.” “Former Typist Becomes Managing Director.” That was all she noted, except that the accompanying portrait was just what one would have expected—a bleak, expressionless face, horn-rimmed spectacles, characterless nose and lank hair. She was round-shouldered, too. But it was that report which was responsible for an inordinately lengthy letter which went to Gerard Huntingdon that night. The most interesting parts of it, of course, had no reference to the snub-nosed gill, but the portion which opened the new chapter in Heather’s life, contained these sentences: “Of course, it is perfectly absurd for daddy to think that I can replace poor ohl Douglas in the city; but he seems quite convinced —mudly convinced, in fact —that what that snub-nosed creature has done, I can do. “It is really unbelievable what a difference this idea has made in him. He is abnormally normal this evening, if you know what I mean. Ho js so much recovered that I am almost frightened by the change, although it is all to the good. ... So you may picture me up in Lombard Street, a mistress of finance. Absurd? Mad? ... Of course it is, Gerry, but that’s my role in the near future. We must both of us be patient. Just remember that perhaps daddy’s reason depends upon our playing up to him in this strange farce. . . . Next week should see us back in town again. I have ’phoned the doctor and he’s all in favour. llow I am longing to see you., (To be continued dally.)