THE SOLUTIONS OF RADFORD SHONE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8995, 4 December 1907, Page 2

THE SOLUTIONS OF RADFORD SHONE.

BEING NARRATIVES BY OFFICERS OF THE CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION DEPARTMENT, AND OF THE PROVINCIU, POLICE., IN RESPECT OF DEALINGS WITH THE EMINENT EXPERT, Mil RADFORD SHONE.

CoMMUNMCATKIi To'.'will l-Drn'.l) HV

[Published By Spkcmai. Aurangement.]

[All Eighth Rksivßved.]

CHAPTER V.—Continued

From the maid he had. turned his attention to the other inmates of the Abbey, but without being ableto connect any cf them directly with the robbery. Di'rrct- e.idence noc being available he hai searched for that of toe circumstantial kind, and had elicited the fact that the governed of the younger children, Miss Madeline Percival, had a lover in the impecunious son of the vicar of the parish. The young people had recently become engaged, but without any prospect of an early marriage. There was, of course, no proof of the crime in this, bur. it had fixed the attention of Shone on Miss Percival, and from his own showing he must have handled her pretty severely—so much so that the girl seemed to have lost control of her temper. Though he didn't say. so, I ascertained afterwards that she had called him' all kinds of fool, which must have been galling to a person of his eminence. Compensation, however, was in store for him, from the mouth of the very next witness he examined— Lupin, the French tutor. This individual, pressed hard by Shone, had furnished, with every diow of reluctajci, a clue confirming the expert's suspicions. Two nights.previously he had been sitting late at bis bedroom •window, after putting out his light, to smoke a final cigarette. Suddenly he had seen a man, whom he had recognised in the moonbeams as Harold Sterling, the vicar's son, creep from a Bhrubbery, and station him:self under Miss Percival's window in the opposite wing. In a little whi]e Lupin had seen the governess open | her window softly and, throw down a small parcel, with ' vyhich young Sterling made off. /. ' -. ! , "And what more do., you want?" Shone demanded, rolling his eyes as if he suspected me of collusion with the thiaves. •'"'..' "Getting warm," I admitted, none too readily; for,l (iked Harold Sterling, and had sympathised with his lack of prospect—still more with the cause. lie had thrown up a good billet in the City to go but to the war with the Yeomanry, and had not been reinstated., , "Warm!" Shone flung at me with a sniff of contempt. "1 call it conclusive. Well,l had the governess in to explain matters to the Duchess. The minx met me with a flat denial of the truth of Lupin's story. "I'sent over for young Sterling and confronted him with the Frenchman in the presence of the Duchess. Martin and I had to fling ourselves on him to prevent his flying at the tutor's throat. And then her Grace tops it all by believing the precious pair of lovebirds, refuses to prosecute, and orders me to begin, all over again. And now," Shone added, after an impressive pause,, "this morning Lupin is found hanging in the old ■'wall, and willy-nilly you' have to come into the business. A clearer case of murder for the double motive of revenge and of putting out of the way an inconvenient witness never came my way." It is noc for a police-officer to express opinions, but if I had spoken my mind I should have been bound to admit that on the face of it things looked pretty black against the vicar's son—for the murder, as apart . from the robbery. For, knowing the boy as I did, I thought it possible that he might have been betrayed into a violent deed of revenge for a false Recusation against his sweetheart and himself in respect of a mean theft, of which they knew themselves innocent.

"Well," saiii J, "it is my duty to see the body fust, and the place where it was found. Then, just as a matter of official form, 1 shall have to verify the evidence which you have collected." Muttering something about "infernal red tape." Shone swung himself I off the table and, followed by his J portly henchman and myself, led tl e j way to the stable where the remaii s of the tutor h;d been temporarily] housed. The doctor, who had come , out on a motor-car, had already fin-1 ished his examination, and met us on | the threshold. His first statement] was important. He had viewed the ! body at half-past ten; life had then been extinct for over eight and less than ten hours, proving that death must have; taken place between midnight and two in the morning. ' 'No need to dwell on the next gruesome five minutes. We were all glad to reach the sunlit stable-yard agsin. Shone, in his eagerness to lead the way to the well,, stalked ahead with Martin panting at his heels, Dr. Rentoul and I bringing up the rear. This arrangement enabled ma to put a whispered question to my old friend the" doctor, and to receive his whispered reply—"The immediate cause of death was strangulation —not a broken neck." "Did he ask yoj that?" I murmured under my breath, with a jerk of my thumb to the hurrying figure ahead. The doctor cocked his eye at me sidewifs, shaking his head and making a w/ face. "Not he," he replied in the undertone. "Too big for such a mere detail, I expect." We soon came to the orchard, in the far corner of which, amid a tangle of nettles and crumbling brickwork, stood a windlass over the old well. The place was all trampied by the searchers, who had rushed to the scene when one of their party had raised the alarm that the 1 op; had run out from the drum and that something heavy was at the end. On the ground, just as it had been cast aside, lay the nCose that had been cut from'the dead man's neck the moment the body had been hauled up. The rope having, been severed with a knife, the knot was intact. I was examining it with interest, when Shone uitered a' shrill little cry:

"Here corries your prisoner, super- ! intendent. He means bluff, by the j look of. him; but I have given you ; your case." j From a wicket-gate in the orchard hedge a young man in flannels and straw hat was coming towards us The blue wreaths from his briar pipe framed a sun-browned face, tense with something more than curiosity. it was Harold Sterling, and I could have wished him anywhere else just then. "Morning, Foster," he said in his breezy way as he reached us. "Glad to see a responsible officer at last. What do you make of Lupin's latest achievement? Hanged himself from remorse because he'd brought a false charge against honest folk, eh?',' Shone kept nudging me, whispering quite audibly: "In fairness you ought to warn him that anything he says will be used " "At my trial for theft and murder, eh. Mr Radford Shone?" the young man interrupted him. "I don't think so, if Superintendent Foster is the same keen old fox of a Foster I've' known since I was a boy. Possibly there will be a police-court case of assault if you are not very careful." J "Come, come, Mr Harold," I I interposed. "You won't make matters easier for any of us by talking that way. I'll have a private chat with you presently. Just now I want to look at this well." I could see that Radford Shone was inwardly fuming at my not acting on the strength of his information and arresting young Sterling there and . then. But, taking no notice of him for the moment, 1 closely examined the brick parapet round the well, and peered down the circular shaft as far as the daylight served to show the walls of the abyss. Both on the surface of the parapet and in the interior of the well the bricks were uneven with age, but there were no traces of recent displacement, as there would have been had there been a struggle on the brink. I drew Shone aeide and pointed this out to him. He smiled superior. "My good sir," he said, "I never suggested that there was a struggle on the top. I.maintain that the noose was placed round the deceased's neck up here in the orchard, and afterwards pulled ,ight. He was probably dead when he was thrown over." I gazed round rather helplessly, for the trampling of the search-party had destroyed any possible traces of a struggle in the long grass, and Shone's theory took the' force out of an argument which I had been hoping to twist favourably for Mr Harold. "Here, you. Is there any water in the well?" 1 demanded of a couple of stablemen who had lounged up. "Hasn't been any for years," was the leply. I thought for a minute, and then I went and looked at the rope on the windlass. It was old, of course; but, being protected from rain by a wooden hood, it was sound enough. I unwound the end a few feet and looped it into a slip-not. Shone's jealous eyep watched my every action. "Going to hang yourself?" he asked in the sneering tone that must have made him a friendless man. "I am going down the well," I answered him curtly. "Ard you, Mr Sterling, will be good enough to lower me with a clue regard for my wife and family. It will keep you / from being quarrelsome while I am below." "But," protested Mr Rtulford Shone, glancing significantly at the uniformed constable who had now stabled his horse and joined us, "are you not ?" He made a motion as of putting on handcuffs. "Not yet," .! said shortly. "There is no evidence of murder against anyone. I am going down to look for it. Now then, Mr Sterling, stand by to lower me, please, and let it be very slowly." Fitting the slip-knot under my : arm-pits I waited till Sterling had ! taken his place at the windlass, and I then swung myself over the brink. I ' had a box of wax vestas in my hand, j and lit them in succession as I sank | lower and lower into the gloomy depths. The shaft was very narrow, and all marks on the decaying brickwork were plainly visible, even by the light of my feeble illluminant; but there was no sign of any great disturbance till I had reached a point forty feet down. There my macch shqwed me several blanks on both j sides of the well, the gaps in the walls gleaming red at the mossgrown edges, as though the bricks had been recently broken by violence, and had been hurled into the abyss below. 1 ' (To, be continued.)