“THE MONEY SPIDER”

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 66, 20 March 1935, Page 10

“THE MONEY SPIDER”

SERIAL STORY

(By

Marie Connor Leighton.)

CHAPTER XX.— (Continued.)

He had started the gramophone on i the Canadian dance, and in the next moment he himself was dancing. There wag. a clear space of carpet in the middle of the room, and he used it to dance as he danced at the cabaret show at the fashionable westend hotel—except that now he danced alone. Fascinated in spite of herself, Clementine followed with amazed eyes the marvellously skilled and graceful movements of this man who believed that he was holding her fate in hip. hands; the man with the too abundant blue-black hair, the too-fine j Spanish eyes, and the sinuous Spanish • figure that was almost womanish in its ’ curves. To an ordinary girl this feast of masculine grace that his dancing gave might have been dangerously charming—so charming as to awake love in answer to his own. But to this girl it could make no difference —except that his unexpected genius startled her. And she never dreamed that in dancing to her he was dancing to win two millions of money. The tune of the gramophone slopped. Raphael Tanza’s marvellously clever steps stopped with it. He slid to Clementine’s side afid suddenly caught her in his arms. “You won’t be fool enough to cry out now,’’ he said. “It won’t suit you Io make a noise that can be heard in the street. Well. I have shown you | enough of my talent for you to see that. I can make the name of Raphael Tanza known all over the world as the name of a great dancer if I choose. And 1 would choose to do it for you. Your eyes have made me love you madly. It’s such a madness, this love, that I don’t know myself for the same man as the Raphael Tanza who went into the Sandra Restaurant that night without having met you. But this, very madness of love will make me merciless. I shall profit by what I know, my girl. You’ve got to marry me within twenty-four hours or else take the place in the dock of that other young woman who has been wrongfully committed for trial in your name.” “Then you may make up your mind to pul me in the dock—for I certainly shall not marry you.’’ She was struggling Io free herself from the close clasp of his arms. “Let me go.” she half appealed to him, half commanded him. Even as she struggled she was striving not to show her intense shrinking from his touch, lest any sign of it should make him violent. “You have no right Io hold me, Raphael Tanza—and that is not the way to make me do what you want me to do. Let go instantly, and then unlock the room door.’’ “You’d like to treat me as you treated Spurier, wouldn’t you?” Under the shock that these words gave her, Clementine ceased for an instant to fight against his close enfolding of her in his arms and the nearness of his face to hers. And his grip >of her was tightening yet more when a sound from below made him release her as suddenly and sharply as if some powerful invisible hand had wrenched his two hands apart and his j arms from about her. Tne sound had been four knocks on the floor, given from underneath it in rapid succession and in a peculiar order. Clementine saw that Tanza’s face had taken on a new . pallor that had an farming tinge of greyness in it. “Where's that knocking?” he asked. “In the tlat below this one,” she told him. He laughed uneasily. “It sounds like a particular knock always associated with a certain wellknown private detective called Darcy Darkin,” he said. “I had it described to me orny last night. Who is in that basement flat?” “I don’t know who Is there now.” Clementine saw that a new fear had come Into his insolent eyes. He took the door key from his pocket, put it in the lock, and opened the door. Before going out he looked back to her. “Come to the Sandra Restaurant at ten o’clock to-morrow morning and you will be brought in a car to a place where I shall be waiting for you. We shall be married at once, and then I take you quietly away beyond reach of the police and of prying detectives till the Spurier trial is over. You shall be safe—absolutely safe—and happy. But If you don’t come to me you must take the consequences—which will be either death or twenty years’ in prison. Remember—ten o’clock to-morrow morning.” Clementine, listening from the middle of the room, heard him slip softly along the hallway and open very cautiously the front door of the flat. She heard no sound of the shutting of the door, so she Judged that he had left it open. Stealing out to see, she was met by Darcy Darkin. “You heard my knock all right, as you opened the door for me so promptly,” he said. “It was a great convenience to me to have your friend Garth’s key this morning, as I didn’t want to be seen entering this flat. I’ve got a feeling that there are two or three spies about. There’s a lot more in this Spurier affair than meets the eye, and every move I make has to be made secretly.” He walked with her into the sittingroom and Clementine, looking at him there in the strong, though curtainveiled. light, saw that he was still unshaved and bore traces of a hard night’s work. “You had better give it up, Mr Darkin.” she said in a voice that had a note of desperation in it. “Whatever you believe, it must have been 1 who killed Jerome Spurier. You will not be able to prove that any other revolver was used than mine—or. rather the one 1 took from the cabinet drawer.” “What about this?” the detective asked. And he took something from his pocket and held it out to her. GHAPT-EB XXL Sapphires and Diamonds. The “something” that he held out to her was a bullet. “I found it in the oak panelling of the supper room at Redstone Place, nearly opposite the spot where you must have sat at supper with Spurier,” he told her. “The Scotland Yard men are not to be blamed for missing it, because it had gone into a corner, where the oak carving was very heavy, and you had to look closely to find any signs of it. Besides. it has lu he said for the official

Investigators that they didn't see any need to search for another bullet. They’ve taken it for granted that the one that was found in the man’s body was the one that the girl who was alone with him had fired. It’s of the right calibre for the revolver found in th! duck pond ten miles away, and so they found everything fit in quite satisfactorily with their idea of the crime. . But the fact that this is ycur bullet, taken out of the panelling, proves that your shot had nothing to do with the killing of the Money Spider. You were a fool al. handling the revolver. You missed him You said you tried to avoid hitting him in a vital part. Well, you didn't hit him at all.” “But this bullet may be an old one. ■ It may have been in the panelling for i years. There’s nothing about it to show that it was only fired the other night.” “There's a lot in the splintering of the wood to prove that it was only done the other night. Good heavens, my girl, do you think I don’t know what I’m talking about? I wasn’t born yesterday, and I know my job. I tell you, you didn’t touch Jerome Spurier, much less kill him. Somebody else fired at him at the same moment that you fired—and the other person hit him.” “But how is it that I didn’t I hear the second shot?” Clementine cried. “Because, my child, the report of it must have come at exactly the same instant as the report of your own. You told me that the report of yours was very loud.” Clementine moved stumblingly to a chair and sank down in it. “Thank God 1 did not kill him! Oh, thank God! she breathed passionately. Then she leaned forward quickly. “But you will not be able to prove that I am not guilty,” she cried. “Even if you find the other revolver —the one put into the empty motor car waiting outside a house in one of the Hampstead roads—it will not prove it. Nothing can prove it enough to save me, except the finding of the man who is actually guilty.” “Or the woman,” said Darcy Darkin very quietly. Clementine started. “Mr Darkin! Have you seen anything or traced anything that leads you to think that another woman besides myself was there in these private rooms that night—and in those terrible moments when the crime was I committed ?” “Only this.” The detective felt in his inner pocket for his note book, found it and produced from inside its cover a three or four inch long torn strip of white muslin embroidered in ! green and blue. “There’s a little | dressing-room in that private suite of Spurier’s and I noticed that there was • a stoppage in the pipe leading from 1 the lavatory basin. 1 found out that ' the stoppage had only been noticed on the day after Spurier’s death. 1 took out the screw from the bend In the pipe under the basin and among some rubbish that didn’t matter I found this torn slip of muslin. It may mean noining—dud, on tne other hand, it may mean a good deal. It looks as if it had been accidentally torn from the sleeve while a woman was washing her hands in the basin. That’s another thing that the official detectives couldn't have been expected to find." He placed the strip of muslin in his note-book, and then looked at her dark blue walking suit. “You’re dressed as if you expected to go out,” he remarked. “I expect ■ you’re tired of being shut in here. But there’s that Spanish-lookin.-scoundrel always, on the watch. He’s one of the greatest dangers that we have to deal with.” “There’s no need to be on our guard against him any more.” And she told him rapidly everything that had happened from the beginning to the end of Raphael Tanza’s unexpected visit. He looked at her narrowly. “Is the man actually your cousin?’ he demanded to know. “I believe so,” she told him. “H’ml And he was there that night —at Redstone Place —and saw everything that happened. And he threatens you!” He strode to and fro over the carpet—in the middle space where the Spaniard had danced —with angry eyes and with his bulldog jaws grimly set. “We shall have to strike first, before that dancing man gets in h blow,” he said to her as he walked “For you may take it from me, Clementine Holtby, that, cousin or no cousin, lover or no lover, Raphael Tanza is the worst enemy you have in the world.” His striding up and down lasted another five minutes. At the end of that time he stopped before her. "I must get off now to get shaved and brushed up. And must look in at my office. You had better not go out alone, even how. Wait till Dr. Garth comes and go out with him. He’ll know how to deal with the Spaniard if he should come along again I” Then he had gone before she had time to tell him of her more than half-formed resolve to go to Scotland Yard and give herself up. Left alone, she in her turn paced the open space of the floor, where a little while before Raphael Tanza had danced. So she must not go out until Lew Garth came and could accompany her. What did Darcy Darkin think might happen to her if she went out alone? Did he think that Raphael Tanza might try to kidnap her? After a while, tired of pacing, she sat down and took up the morning newspaper again. As yet she had seen nothing in it except the amazing account of Jerome Spurier’s ruin and fraudulent misappropriation of the funds of the great insurance company of which he had been chairman and guiding spirit. She had not even read much about this. The great main fact had staggered her so much that she had not felt herself able to look at the details. Now she would read them and try to understand the exact position in which this man bad stood in those hours when he had entertained her at supper with so much seeming light-heartedness and had most astounding thing of all —asked her to marry him and gone into a frenzy oi rage because she had refused. JTo oe Con tinued.). TAKE A TIP. If you v ant pure, piquant and full-flavoured vinegar of unexcelled quality ask for SHARLAND’S VINEGAR. Sold in bottle or bulk at all stores. — Advt