“HE WHO FIGHTS”

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 74, Issue 114, 16 May 1931, Page 10

“HE WHO FIGHTS”

§™ tat a. s . T( ? ra '

(BY

LORD GORELL)

CHAPTER XXIX (conitnued). Frayne lit a cigarette and stood i few moments In perplexity. He ha< given his word and he could not g( hack on it. hut on reflection the request that had been made to him dowt the telephone sounded very strange If ft were genuine, it was very inter estrng—some one else there at th< bungalow on that eventful evening: nt wonder the fellow “had fear. ’ It i were not genuine—but, strange as i was. it must be: Frayne could conceive of no object in it whatever If s hoax. His curiosity was awakened after all. the night was young. I would amuse him to pursue this queei adventure. And if the voice wert not Madame Anatole's, or if it wen Madame Anatole having a game will: him —no, that was absurd! Whai could she, or any one. have to gain 1>: it? He was going to get at the trutt. of the fatal event that had so wrapper Itself about him. He returned to the lounge, but fount the ladies had already gone up to bed That settled It. He would not havt to evoke questions he could not answer. He would fulfil his promise ant at breakfast next morning either have something really interesting to tell or enjoy a laugh against himself. He put on his hat and overcoat, and wenl out. The directions he had been given were enough in the main, and he had not walked much since coming to Paris. It was a keen, dry night; he decided to make his way on foot, and started off unconcernedly through Ihe gaily lighted streets at a good round pace. Presently he was in difficulties as to his course, but carried t>n with a young man’s love of finding his own way in unfamiliar places, and at last entered the little street the name of which he had been given. His way now was plain; he walked along, feeling particularly fit and cheery, looking at the numbers. Here was the house, No. 201—rather mure respectable than he had anticipated from the description of the fear of the man he was going to see. He passed through one of the little courtyards characteristic of Parisian dwellings, and then stood a moment in uncertainty. Whom was he going to see? A high-class burglar or what? The dwelling seemed elegant and respectable, a block of little flats, the •woman had said, the one he wanted ■was on the second floor to the left. Greatly intrigued, Frayne mounted the stairs. It was all very quiet: he had seen no one in the street or court-yard: he met. no one on the •tairs. Here was the apartement he pought. Slightly to his surprise the door was ajar, but he was thinking too much of the Interview ahead tc concern himself particularly aboul that. Probably his man was awaiting him and expected him to walk straighl in: he would not. If Frayne’s communicant were genuine, be desirous of drawing attention to an English •visitor. Not reasoning ciosely bui following the line of least resistance Frayne pushed the door open anc •walked in. It was dark in the tinj hall, but a light showed under the door to the right. Having come s< far, Frayne no longer hesitated. Ht opened this and stepped forward cogitating his brain for the most suitable French words of explanation. He found himself in a small, sparsely furnished, very ordinary room, considerably In disorder. The door of a large cupboard lay open, yawning upon emptiness within: a chair was overturned, the table-cloth on a square table In the centre of the room had been dragged askew, fllngtag crockery and a tumbler in a broken heap below it; a carafe, unbroken b}

its fall and still holding a little water, lay on its side beside the heap on the floor. All this was sufficiently strange, but Frayne had eyes for none of these things. He did not see lying n a far corner, open-bladed and still wet with blood, a large knife: his attention was riveted on one sight alone. On a basket-work chair, stretched and writhing in agony, with ine great hand pressed spasmodically his neck from which the blood was pouring down in rivulets over his lingers, was a large man. Frayne was brought up suddenly aghast at a sight at once so terrible and so unexpected. The man in the chair turned his eyes wildly with a convulsive shudder of breath towards the newcomer, and Frayne gave a strangled cry. The face of the man was in some respects dissimilar to that of his recollection and it was now ornamented by a small, trim moustache, but Frayne bad been in too close and unforgettable conflict with it ever to be unable to swear to 11. There could be no mistake: be *BB gazing into the fierce, but dying •yes of Mr Mortimer Brown! CHAPTER XXX. The Dog And The Bone. Madame Anatole had spoken the truth and mor© than the truth: she Lad sent Frayne not merely to a man. bat to tli© one m’an on earth who really knew what had happened at the bungalow below Great Tor after Frayne had looked him into the bedroom. That was the first thought that emerged out of th© shock that battered against Frayne’s mind as he appalled at the dying man. Then M Brown s condition came home to him and he realised that his old enemy fc-ss helpless and could do uo personal pioience pity rushed in; the man was a tr-riculent brute and a murderer, but h*• bad come to his lust moments of egoafead existence. The feeling was •mphß.fte«d when with a struggle itrown forced the hardly articulate gaso of “ Water! firayo© east o swiff g-grjep around •/xl saw the upset carafe. he stooped picked it up. and held it tn the suf-’ Carer's lipa, and then put it .b.A.n on tn© table. “ What's happened? ’ }.* asked. * What can I do for you ? ’ Nothing; done for: gasped Brown. “Queer jour turning up.'' 1 was told 1 should find some one here who could tell me what r«aliy happened at the bungalow that »ght.” “Who told you?” , “ Madame Anatole.** "Ah.”’ A g*«p for breath; then

convulsively, “X clever one that J did her husband in—you know that ■ “? was readv lor him: 1 knew he was coining. Pah. he was a fool to come. When you turned up, ho was in the bed-room, dead. I meant to nut it on you if there were questions., “You did; I had to fly for my life. “Ah!’’ A gasp of satisfaction, interrupted by shudders jy pain. Then the dying <-n groaned weakly; his eyes were already glazing, his breath came pantingly wi n horrid chokings. Frayne stared a him helplessly: ought he to run foi assistance? What ought lie to ■ After a moment, Brown moved his head slightly, his lingers tightening on the gaping wound m his neck, th blood pulsating afresh over his Jin gers. A look of pitying contempt distorted still further -his wild and angonised expression: he spoke, heaving out the words, “ Go, you fool I unless you want to swing, fly for your life

again!’’ The effort was too much for turn. His head sagged, his fingers clutched in feeble jerks at his terrible wound; he sank down, Inert and still, a huddled mass In his chair. “ Dead this time at any rate,” was the thought that rose irrationally to Frayne’s mind. Then ail of a sudden he came out of the trance in which he had seemed to live and move since first entering the room and seeing the ghastly form of his dying enemy ir. front of him. Like a touch of liquid air, his own situation burnt itself in upon his consciousness. He was there, alone and in circumstances as secret as peculiar, with the man he had every cause to hale and fear —and that" man lay Delore him, murdered unmistakeably I The deed would bo laid on him, even more unavoidably than before: before that was mischance, this time it was definitely intended !

AU Hie awful bearings of the situation hurtled themselves madly in on him; the last words of the dead man rang in his ears like all the bells of doom. He did not stop to think: he was out of the room and in the little hall, with his hand on the outer door of the apartement In a flash. Then he was forced to pause. The outer door which had been ajar, through which he had stepped leaving it open behind him, was now not only shut —it was locked and the key was gone! His heart went cold; he was trapped, deliberately, awfully trapped! And in the same instant he had further reason for terror: he heard a footstep on the little landing just outside. He was not only trapped, but guarded. It sprang across his brain that, it he had rushed out, he would have rushed straight into captivity, but that was small cause for congratulation. He was trapped in a second-floor flat with a murdered man, and someone was waiting for him to break out at the only egress. Never, even in his wild flight over the moor and his panic In a dingy London suburb, had he known such extremity of despair. The next moment he heard the handle of the door gently tried: he could just see it turn in the halflight. His eyes followed its movement, blankly fascinated. It turned, but the door did not open. Listening, every sense strained to such intensity that the blood surging in his ears was pain, Frayne heard a low. short conference outside. So there was more than one on guard. That ended it. With an internal sob wrenching his very heart, Frayne withdrew step by step, backing directly away down the short length of the little hall away from the guarded outer door. His hand touched the wall immediately behind him; hardly conscious of any plan, he groped on it. without turning. His fingers were checked by a lintel—there was a door there, then, at his back. Not turning, scarcely reasoning, his staring eyes fixed on the outer door straight in front of him, his hand moved across the lintel and touched the door at his back. It was half open; dazedly he pushed It further and stepped back into the darkness of the, room beyond. Something soft, fell without a sound unnoticed to the floor. There was a sharp, sudden crash; the front door yielded and two men stumbled Into the apartement. Without pausing an Instant they spun to the right and dashed for the lighted room, and then Inside It checked, just as Frayne himself had, at the sight that confronted them. In that moment, as their backs disappeared through the door of the sitting-room, Frayne on the impulse of utter despair slipped past behind them straight down the little hail, through the open front door, and gained tho outer landing beyond the apartement; then blindly, madly, he fled down the stairs. A second sooner and he would have cannoned directly into the two new entrants in the little hall; a second later and they must have heard him. His light sweep of feet went by behind them exaclly as the second to enter burst into a loud cry of surprise and horror at the sight of the dead man. Frayne met no one on the stairs: at the bottom he paused for one fraction of a second; he heard no pursuit. He Slipped through Hie courtyard, found himself In the street—it was emptv. In two minutes he was mingling with the crowd still thronging the boulevard three streets away. A very few moments before Madame Anatole had preceded Frayne down the stairs. Her little plan had worked in that she had executed vengeance on a man she execrated and had contrived to provide the law with a vic- : l;>n to Whom she held an irrational i anlipalhy—but it had not worked out i quite as smoothly n s she had intended. | nevertheless. She had discovered by | her own subterranean channels the i fact of her great, enemy's return, his j temporary residence, and his immedi- > a e movements; she had had fhe good | fortune that attends upon persistence i Io notice Frayne’s coinciding visit to Paris, and slie had successfully lured him into the web—he had given her his promise, and, being an English fool, would keep l». But she had under-rated both her own capacity for concealment and Frayne’s independence. I (’£• «on;inu»<L).