ROSAMOND’S ORDEAL

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 456, 18 May 1932, Page 12

ROSAMOND’S ORDEAL

By

Author of “In Apple Blossom Time,” “Threads of Life,” “Love Set Free,” etc.

L. G. MOBERLY,

CHAPTER XX. Pleil to the Rescue. The touch of that clammy hand; tin way in which it slipped lifelessly froir her own hand; the ominous silence oi that dark form whose outline she could now dimly discern, lilled Rosamond afresh with dismay. Her first impulse prompted her to run down the lane, anywhere out of reach of this unseen terror But something greater than blind impulse kept her from unreasoning flight. She knelt down upon the rutted surface of the lane, and passed her hands lightly over the prostrate figure. A man lay there, of that she soon became aware; a man who was unconscious, or she was afraid to utter even in thought, and she stooped closely over him.

“Are you hurt?” she said, her own voice echoing weirdly in her ears and making the all-surrounding stillness more dreadfully still. “Can you tell me who you are? What lias happened?” But when her own voice died away, no other voice answered her. Even the faint groaning of which she had first been aware had ceased; the silence about her seemed like something she could acutally feel. Once more she spoke. “Has something happened to you?” she asked, saying her words loudly and clearly, but the same ominous silence followed. The form lying at her feet made no sign; uttered not the faintest sound.

Rapidly calculating the distance to the nearest house, Rosamond concluded that to make her way with all speed to Wayside. Cottage would bring help most quickly —and rising to her feet, she ran down the lane as fast as the many ruts and holes would allow. More than once she stumbled; once she fell heavily, picking herself up with a sense of being shaken from head to foot; two or three times she found herself rushing into one or other bank in the darkness. But at last, after she had —so it seemed to her —been running, and stumbling and falling for hours and hours, she came otit by the back gate of Wayside Cottage, and rushed, panting, into the house.

Mrs. Folkard come out of the kitchen, angry words on her tongue; words which were checked at the sight of the giri’s horror-stricken face. “Someone is lying unconscious or —or dead in the lane,” Rosamond panted out. “We must send —we must get help ”

“'Gracious heaven,” Mrs. Folkard exclaimed, thoroughly aroused. “I’ll go along to James Harting’s cottage and see if he’s back from the village. You wait by the front gate, and stop any passer-by.”

She was off almost before she had done speaking, and Rosamond went obediently to the gate, snatching up as she passed through the kitchen, the lantern with which they always visited the kennels in the evening.

Night had fallen by now- The main road, a faintly shimmering ribbon of white, stretched to right and left of the gate, and as far as the girl’s eyes could pierce the darkness, there was no sign upon it of vehicle or pedestrian. Neither was there any sound but the sighing of the wind in the trees opposite, and the occasional barking of the dogs behind the house.

“If only someone would come—if only someone would come!” Rosamond found herself actually saying the words aloud, as she stood leaning against the gate in tense anxiety, the lantern swinging from her hand. * Before her mind was the picture of the dark lane; the rustling hedges; the inanimate form whose clammy hand had slipped so lifelessly from hers, and in spite of all her selfcontrol, she shook from head to foot, clinging to the gate to steady herself. A man driving a small car rapidly in the direction of Treadway saw her standing there, the light of the lantern dimly illumining her face; and before she could put up a hand to hail him, he had brought the car to a standstill, and sprung from it to her side. ’ “Why—Miss Tranbv what is wrong?” It was Neil Hobart who asked the question’, as he looked with concern at her shaking form, and white face. “Are you waiting for somebody?” “I was waiting for you—for anybody,” she gasped out, please, will you come quickly and help? Someone has been hurt in the lane. Mrs. Folkard has gone to fetch James Harting, her garden man—but please come quickly with “Of course I’ll come, straight away. If somebody’s hurt had we better take some brandy, or something?” Rosamond nodded, and flew back into the house, emerging quickly again with i a brandy flask. “Mrs/Folkard always keeps this in the sideboard in case of accidents,” she said. “Now, come. I will show you . where the man is. I—T found him.” “You found him? You poor little thing.” Hobart put a hand through her arm and realised that she was still shaking. “Stay here and let me go and look for the poor chap.” Rosamond shook her head. ' “No. I know just where he is, I will • come and show you. We mustn’t lose a i minute. I’m not even r.~re whether he Hobart held her arm more closely—a wave of tenderness sweeping over him, as the lantern’s rays fell again upon her white frightened face, and showed the horror in her sea-blue eyes. Heavens! How sweet she was, this blue-eyed girl—how gracious, and how sweet. He had thought so, ever since that first afternoon when he had caught sight of her at Treadway station. Now he was sure of it! And she was as ■ plucky as she was sweet! So his thoughts raced on. as he and Rosamond made their way across the main road, and into the darkness of the lane, that plunged downwards between I pine woods. Even with the lantern light the going was different, and progress slow; and Hobart, who had taken the lantern from the girl, constantly swung it to and fro to find the object of their search. “There he is,” Rosamond exclaimed suddenly, when they had reached the bottom ‘ of the lane,’ where the hedges were highest, aryl the darkness most intense. “There he is, right in the centre of the road!” Hobart held the lantern low down, and stooped over the figure in the roadway, drawing back almost at once with a share exclamation. “My God.” he cried. “Mv God!” He tried to swing the lantern upwards again, before Rosamond had seen what he saw. But she had stooped when he stooped, and the lmht fell full upon a dead man’s face; the face of a man whose identity was unmistakable. The girl stood unite still for an instant, frozen horror in her eyes. Then she said ; in a terror-stricken whisper: “Denis —it is Denis. Why is he lving there —all crumpled up—and—dead?”

Hobart put the lantern on the ground, and kneeling beside the man in the road felt his pulse and his heart; tried to force through his lips some of the brandy poured out by Rosamond’s shaking fingers. But he knew, and she knew, that their efforts were useless. The man who lay at their feet was dead; and the man was Denis Trevor. In the after time all the hours that followed seemed to Rosamond like some impossible nightmare, in which events succeeded one another with kaleidoscopic regularity, mingled with confused dimness. She and Hobart —the men who presently appeared bearing a hurdle; the doctor —the police—who all came upon the scene in mysterious sequence—were so many figures in a dream. And the centre of the dream was always that still figure lying in the road, his white face gleaming in the lantern’s wavering light. The surroundings stamped themselves upon her mind in curious photographic : fashion. The dark hedges over which the wavering beams of their own lantern, and the lanterns carried by the men, threw great fingers of light; the rutted lane; the figures that came and Went, whispering softly, moving like puppets in a puppet show—these were all parts of the weird dream in which she herself moved and spoke. When, at last, Hobart was able to take her hack to Wayside Cottage, Mrs. Folkard showed a more human side than Rosamond had believed her to possess; and putting the tired girl to bed, gave her a glass of hot milk containing enough brandy to send her into a heavy sleep. That sleep was needed; for when she awakened to another day, she awakened also to the realisation that she was the centre round which the tragedy of the previous night revolved. The police interviewed her; reporters came to the cottage, and wormed from her the fact of her former friendship with Denis Trevor; and everybody knew that it was she who had first discovered the body in the lane. “He was not dead when I first found him. I am sure of that. I could hear a little groan that was hardly more than a sigh, hut he must have died whilst I stood there in the darkness.” This statement she repeated over and over again, both before and at the inquest, and it was patent to the whole world that she was speaking the truth—a truth verified by the medical evidence. Denis Trevor had died as the result of a blow on the head, and the blow had been delivered with such violence that in the doctor’s opinion it could only have been delivered by a person of extraordinary strength.

“If such a possibility existed,” the doctor declared finally, “I should say a blow of this kind could only have been administered by a madman; hut such a possibility does* not exist. We have no lunatic asylum within miles and miles; and no maniac has been found wandering anywhere in the neighbourhood.”

Upon this final note of complete mystery and uncertainty the whole matter for the time remained. Clues were fruitlessly followed; the police were continually putting up hopeful hares, which no less continually subsided again into oblivion; and only one fact finally emerged from the welter of gossip, rumour, evidence and counterevidence. During his sojourn at Treadway Rectory, Trevor had paid frequent visits to a remote farm on the moorland, attracted by Anne Hadley, the farmer’s pretty daughter.

Since his return to London, he had more than once returned to the neighbourhood of Hadley’s farm, to court the girl surreptitiously; and it was indubitably proved that his last visit there had taken place during the late afternoon of the day on which Rosamond had found him. There was no doubt as to the time when he had left the farm; and Anne Hadley herself deposed with sobs that she had seen him off at the gate, and watched him walk across the moorland in the direction of Treadway station.

At that point once more, all clues came to a dead end. Between the moment when Anne Hadley had hade him farewell at the gate of her father’s farm, to that other moment when Rosamond had stumbled against his prostrate body in the lanp, no one appeared to have set eyes on Denis Trevor. How or why he had reached the lane in which he was murdered, no one. could say. His body was laid to rest in the little churchyard at Treadway—the churchyard on the moorland, where, in the summer time a sea of purple heather flows aboirl the grey churchyard walls; and amongst those who stood beside his grave was the woman he had so deeply wronged—lris Martin; and the other woman who had come perilously near to giving him her heart —Rosamond Tranbv; whilst poor little shivering Anne Hadley sobbed heartbroken sobs, as she flung handfuls of flowers upon the coffin.

It was Iris who drew the girl aside afterwards, and comforted her; Iris, who went out later to the moorland farm, and persuaded Anne’s parents to let her find work awav from her familiar surj roundings, and* learn to piece together the broken fragments of her life. y But the mystery of Denis Trevor s death remained unsolved; and the nine days’ wonder was pushed into the background of forgotten things. (To he continued daily.)