“MAN FROM THE AIRPORT”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 December 1939, Page 10

“MAN FROM THE AIRPORT”

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT. COPYRIGHT.

By

LESLIE BERESFORD.

Author of “Mr Appleton Awakes,” “The Other Mr North,” etc

CHAPTER XII. Ordinarily, in those early morning hours before dawn. "The One-Eyed Moon” would have been a blaze of lights, noisy with music and talk, its atmosphere dense with tobacco-smoke and the smell of spirits. The bartneders would still have been shaking cocktails, and the cooks would have been busy turning up meals which were really very early breakfasts.

The lounges, cardrooms, and terraces would have provided pictures of bored and weary women, their make-up crude on pale and unhealthy faces, trying to kill time, mostly in the company of none too sober young men. But these had been shocked into a sense of realities by the recent police raid and the disagreeable publicity which had followed it. . The road-house, when this morning the advance-guard of day began to dispel the last fleeing shadows of the night, was practically deserted. The frightened night-birds had gone to bed, or were still celebrating in some other spot, not so far suspect by the police. Here, custom had so violently and definitely slumped that the orchestra had left by midnight, only a skeleton staff remained, to serve chance arrivals and people putting up foi- the night; and in tiTc? few lights left on the place wore an air of desertion. Clad in pyjamas and a vivid dressing gown, Emil Luttner surveyed the unpeopled grounds with glowering eyes With his hunched shoulders and for-ward-thrust jowl, he looked rather like a vulture cisiappointed of his pickings. Although, as a matter of fact, the slump in his road-house business was but a small part of his trouble. He was visualising fearsomely .the possible loss of pickings much more vital to him. And his mood was not bettered at all by what the smooth, clipped voice of his companion said to him.

"What does that newspaper-stuff matter, Emil, after all?" said his visitor, that sly little ex-solicitor’s-clerk'. as he swallowed a drink. “We have that all-important document, and there’s nobody to prove that we have it.”

“Colossal idiot!" Emil shook himself violently in his tense fury, which had grown worse and worse ever since chance had brought to his notice the evening paper.

“Do you think that clergyman won’t remember what you looked like, be able to describe you?” he raged. "Why you wanted to commit that silly theft. I never have understood. I sent you down there to verify the existence of that document in the register. It wasn’t in either of our minds that you should lift the thing ” "Now, now —1” interposed the other. "Don’t be so eager to turn on me, Emil. You didn't talk that way did you, when I brought the thing to you? No, no. You said: ‘Clever fellow .Clarence! Wonderfully clever fellow! Now we-, 've got the Accrington millions right in our hands!’ You've forgotten that, haven’t you?" "Listen . . .’’

Emil Luttner leaned towards the other, a threatening hulk. "That would have been all right, you dummkopf, if you hadn’t been found out. Can't you see that this newspaper-stuff makes all tlje difference. That wretched parson is making a fuss ” ‘ls he?” retaliated the other, and took up the paper, pointing to a paragraph in it adding: “It looks as if he didn’t want any fuss. He ” “Wait. Have you asked yourself, Tucker, how the thing came to be discovered?” "Why ask? I suppose the parson happened to take a look at the register, and noticed the thing cut out —" “Wait again. Why should he want to look at that register? You said to me yourself that he told you he hadn’t looked at it for years, never opened the place where it was kept. If so—why has he gone there now?” 'Who’s to know that?” shrugged the other. It’s queer. Just as we were getting away with it ” "If you’ll only believe me, we’re getting away with it easier now than before. This publicity brings the thing out into the daylight so much that the Accrington girl will be forced to pay for the only existing proof, so as to destroy it ’’ “Oh, tell me something I don't know!” fumed the German. "Haven't I talked to her over the phone? She’s coming—is on the way now. But —is she going to pay?” “She must—” 'She must—nothing of the sort, idiot! Supposing it’s a trap? Remember' she’s the only one who knows we have the thing. I don't trust her. We must be prepared for her to try and bluff us "

‘What? Bluff such people, Emil, as you. and me," chuckled the other. “Well, well! She has nothing in writing. has she? Nothing which would oe proof enough to go to the police? Good! And you have the document safely hidden’ where nobody but us can find it ” “Nobody—but me.” corrected the German, looking more vulture-like than ever, and grinning. The little, beady eyes of the other glistened as they regarded the German steadily. ‘Why do you say it like that?” he asked, and lowered his voice threateningly. “I hope you’re not thinking of double-crossing me in some way. Emil, are you?”

The German, shuttering his eyes to hide the apprehensive gleam in them laughed. "Of course not, my good Clarence." he said soothingly. “But all the same.

1 dont thing you should know where the document is hidden until we have had a talk with Paula, and we find if she is willing to pay or not. She sounded very queer, I thought, on the phone—sort of hinting tnat all the talking wasn't going to be on our side."

"Dont worry, Emil! She won’t try any tricks. Sne wants that money. She’s not like that fool out in Newfoundland who turned it down. That fellow Peters ” “Which reminds me,” the German interrupted. “I heard that name this evening, queerly enough. Two men, who took dinner here, were talking. One said to the other, as I was passing by: ‘I think I’ll phone Peters.’ And he went into one of the call-boxes. Peters is an uncommon name ——”

"Oh, pull yourself together, Emil!" chuckled the other. "You’ve got the jitters, surely? Not trying to suggest, are you, that our Peters could be in England? If you’d only been there that night in Newfoundland, and heard how definitely he gave me the birdwell, you wouldn't worry about his being here ” “I don’t know,” said the German. "It might be a good thing if he only were. For then, we’d have two strings to our bow. If Paula didn't pay—he might." "You must be mad, Emil. You ought to see the fellow. You don't know him. One of the strong silent sort. Why, if we tried any trick with him, he’d cut up rough right away. There’d be no hope of a deal. And, anyhow, he’s in Newfoundland still, piloting air-liners, the sap.”

"Besides.” he added. "How could we get anything out of him? How could he claim on a document which has been stolen?” “Couldn’t it be accidentally found, without anyone knowing who had stolen it?” sneered the German, and shrugged. ‘For a lawyer’s clerk, Clarence, you don’t show much imagination. Howevei ■” He rose to his feet.

“I’m going to get some sleep,” he said. “When Paula spoke on the phone, she was leaving almost at once. She should be here before mid-day. You'd better sober yourself up by then, Clarence, for I’ve a feeling we’ll both have to be bright when the lady turns up. Paula’s no fool.” ‘‘She wants that money,” chuckled the other, and lumbered to his feet as well.

Plainly he was far from sober, though not perhaps so muzzy that he did not know what he was doing. Indeed, his little eyes were alert with cunning, showing that —behind the wrinkled mask of his unhealthy-look-ing face—his mind was ceaselessly at work.

“There only one thing I want to say to you, Emil, before that Accrington girl does turn up, and it might as well be said now,” he observed in his smooth, clipped voice. “It’s this. Don’t you try any double-crossing business with me, or it’ll be the worse for you ” “Double-crossing business ?” The German frowned angrily. “What the devil do you mean? Who’s tried any double-crossing business, anyhow?" “Nobody—so far," retorted the other. “But—l've no reason to trust you, Emil, and I don't. I was a bit of a fool to go so far as trusting you with that document, I’m afraid ” "You were in a panic to get rid of it. weren’t you, in case the job was found out?" laughed the German. . “Yes. I certainly was a bit anxious. And, for that matter, I'd reason to be. The job has been discovered. But — don’t let that put it into your head, my fj-iend. that you've got anything on me. so that you get an impression you can twist me somehow over my share of the spoils. You won’t get away with it. Emil Luttner, if you try anything of that sort.”

“I’m not going to try it, I tell you.” All the same, when Emil Luttner reached his room, and had locked himself in. a little smile of crafty purpose lingered for a moment over his lips. He crossed the parquet floor, polished and —here and there —covered by bril-liantly-coloured oriental rugs. The walls of the room were of equally polished wood-panelling of a biegetint. It was all very simple, including the modern furnishings, which glittered with chromium-plate. Nothing here, you would have said, to be hidden. Yet, fitter a moment or two of musing, he crossed to one of the walls, where a writing-table stood. Above this, moving the fingers of his right hand along the panelling, he must have touched something, for the woodwork slipped back suddenly out of sight, and a gap was visible. Within disclosed by the electric, glare, were bundles of papers, some wads of paper money, and a metal box. which last he took out and opened witli a key. He carried the box to a table near the foot of the bed and took from it a slip of paper. Anyone looking over his shoulder would have realised what it was. The entry which had been cut by a sharp pen-knife, from the register at that little Devonshire church. He laughed as he read it again. "You needn’t thing, Clarence, that you’ll get anything approaching what you imagine out of this," he said to himself, and laid the slip back in the box from which he had taken it. As he locked the last afresh, with a chuckle of avarice and amusement, he suddenly noticed that the french windows were uncurtained. He moved towards them, and brought, together some heavy curtains of a deep blue colour. At once they blotted out from sight the windows of another part of the house, from which anyone could j I overlook his room. ' Not that anyone was up. or would be | interested. But Emil preferred to be

on the safe side. He replaced the metal box in the gap, touched the panelling afresh, and the wooden wall presented again its normal and innocent appearance. Having done this, he laid himself down on his bed, and gradually fell asleep. The day was well advanced by the time he had been wakened by a maid with tea. When he nad bathed and dressed and come down into the public rooms of the road-house, lie found that Tucker was already about, eating a huge breakfast. “No signs of the Accrington girl as yet.” Tucker said to him. “She'll be here —any minute now,” the German retorted curtly, and was about to pass on towards , his private office, when the klaxon and purring engine sounded as if his forecast had been correct. “That will be Paula,” he said, and passed on. He discovered, however, that he was wrong. As he emerged on to the terrace, he saw not only that the car did not belong to Paula, but also that she was not in it. Three men clambered out of it, talking together for a moment in undertones, and came towards him. Instantly, Emil recognised two of the men as those who had dined here the night before. The third Emil did not know, nor was he interested in him. He came straight towards the German, saying: “You’re Emil Luttner, I suppose?” “Of course,” answered the German, and laughed. “Im the proprietor here, as most people know ” “The part-proprietor, you mean,” interrupted the other. “Miss Accrington, I believe, has a serious interest in this business.” The German thought quickly, suppressing an impulse to panic. He asked himself if Paula had taken legal advice, and was having him sold up so to regain some of her lost backings. If these three men were, in effect, bailiffs, he did not want any public trouble. He made a gesture towards a door. "Perhaps, gentlemen," he said, "we had better discuss matters in my private office." In that luxurious apartment, he faced them. “What’s the funny idea?” he asked. "I take it that you’re from Miss Accrington ?" "On the contrary," replied the man whom Emil Luttner did not know. "Miss Accrington has no idea that we are here. Permit me, Mr Luttner, to introduce my friends —Mr Dan ©'Corrigan, Mr Pierre de Brissac.” “And your own?" inquired Emil, having nodded politely to the others. “Peters. John Peters," came the terse reply. ■Peters ?" The German gaped, taken aback. The other nodded, smiling. (’To be Cuntinueil )