“The Japanese Parasol,”

Wairarapa Daily Times, 11 October 1929, Page 7

“The Japanese Parasol,”

(Copyright).

CHAPTER XX.-—Continued

Whereat, callous though he was, he was conscious of being stirred bv something akin to shame. The generosity that could absolve him as she was doing was almost beyond his understanding. With his inward knowledge of his guilt, he would have preferred her to utter the reproaches so many would have done. Then all at once she did regard him in almost startled fashion.

"This happened this afternoon?” she cried. "But Cowham is SU miles

away, and —” '‘l am hero quickly? I admit it. As soon as I struggled ashore, I was able to borrow dry clothing and a car. 1 drovo straight to Bichester, to report the disaster to the police there, and then came on here. Speed limits had no meaning for me this evening —under the circumstances. I do not think the authorities will press any charge against me for speeding, even if my number has been taken. I had to break the news to you before it reached you, without warning, through : other channels. ” “ Yes,” Gwen agreed slowly, “I see it was very good of you.”

But she was thinking. Without realising it, Winthrop had over-reach-ed himself. Dimly as yet, but with promise of greater clarity, it seemed to the girl that one of his statements did not tally with his present appearance. Not. that she disbelieved him — but, as if emanating from her halfformed thought, there came to her a queer conviction that things were not so bad as he had painted. On the face of it, his story bore out little hope that Hugh and Lucas were still alive, and yet, deep down in her, she found herself cherishing this hope. licr next words voiced it. "Colonel," she Said impulsively, "I

can't explain it —but somehow 1 feel that you are mistaken. I think I should know it here”—she placed her hand upon her heart —"if Hugh were dead. But, in spite of what you say, I don’t feel that, now that the first shock of fear is gone. On the contrary, something whispers to me that he is alive. I want you, until it is proved one way or the other, to take the brighter view, and hope with

me. ’ ’ Winthrop’s face darkened. This was precisely the view he did not wish to take, and Gwen's calm announcement of it disturbed him. With a knowledge of women that was far greater than his neighbours suspected, he had learnt that their intuitions were not to be despised. But if the girl’s present one were correct —if Hugh and Lucas, or even one of them, had escaped—then the colonel was lijeely to find himself in a very tight

place. He began to wish he had made a little more certain before leaving the reef —though there had been subtlety in the move that had left natural forces to accomplish the work of destruction. Still, ho was perturbed, and the fact showed in the roughening of the soft voice of condolence he had hitherto employed. "Better not be too sanguine,” he insisted. "Tho certainty, when it conies, will be all the worse.” Gwen was shaking her head, with

a stubborn adherence to her point of view, when Mrs Bourne’s quavering voice lessened the tension. L’p -to now she had not spoken, and it almost seemed as if she had not taken in the purport of Winthrop’s news. But apparently she .had. “I’m going to bed, my dear,” she announced, as . she gathered up her knitting. “As I was saying when the colonel arrived, all these dreadful occurences are too much for me.e I’m sure I don’t know what we arc coming to. Show the colonel out, Gwen, when he has to go, and don’t disturb me till the morning. Dear me, that poor Mr Lucas and that poor Mr Monro —I feel very distressed.” She fluttered away, and, metaphorically speaking, Winthrop shrugged his shoulders. He began to understand what had induced her daughter to con-' suit him about Hugh in the first place. “I, too, must be going,” he declared, and Gwen rose. Her thoughts were still revolving round that vague doubt that his recital had aroused. “I’ll come .with'you as far as the garden gate,” she told him. “There’s something I want to ask you. ’ ’ Winthrop nodded. Her decision had anticipated the very request he had been about to make. He, also, wanted her to accompany him outside — meant, in fact, by hook or by crook, to get her there. “Better put on a cloak,” he suggested, “ you ’ll find it a bit chilly. She did as he proposed, and, shutting the front door quietly behind her, walked down the garden path beside him in a silence that showed that she was marshalling her thoughts. Not until ho had opened the gate, and they were both just outside, did she speak, and then it was in a tone that was grave and measured. “There’s one thing that you said a little while ago I want you to explain, Colonel,” she began. “At present, it doesn’t seem (o fit in—who’s that?” They 'vvero the last words she uttored—that strident question of alarm. They were hardly past her lips, when a shadow detached itself from the nearby darkness, and at the instant of its appearance Winthrop seized her and pressed his huge, gnarled hand across her mouth. She fought and struggled vainly, but not a cry was allowed to escape. The newcomer es-

(To be Continued)

BY ELLIOT BAILEY. Author of "Mr Benson’s Business,” "The Campden Hill Mystery,” "The Mablethorpe Tangle,” etc., etc.

lated to disprove very effectually the colonel’s statement to the girl, had she received it before his visit—as normally she should have done despite all his speed. But that was where the senile frolics of the old man with the scythe came in again. She did not receive it.

It was shortly before eight when Lucas handed the wire over the counter. Now the Hengrave office closed at eight, and although there 'was an official on duty when the wire came through, on that particular evening there was considerable difficulty in finding a messenger to carry it out to the Bournes’ house. Finally, when one was secured, he was the newestjoined telegraph boy, and neither his inclinations nor his mentality exactly fitted him for the job., He set out on the nearly three miles ride on a bicycle, and in half-a-milc had punctured his back tyre, which reduced him to walking. Ten minutes later, he found he had dropped the very message it was his mission to deliver.

A retraction of his footsteps, and a prolonged search with a feeble oillamp, enabled him to retrieve it, by which time he had lost all the love for the job he had ever possessed. Much against tjic grain, he dawdled on, stopping to investigate various night-rustlings in the hedgerows, and pushing his useless bike. Eventually, he was near the house, when, from his point of view, a dreadful though* struck him. Suppose the telegram should turn out to require an answer! Suppose he had to walk all the way back to Hengrave with that answer! Such an appalling contingency demanded consideration, so he sat down by the wayside to give it due thought. The only solatium he could see about this late delivery was the fact that he could cut across the fields to his own cottage when the delivery had taken place—but if delivery meant going back to Hengrave, well, that was another kcttle-of-fish. He “began to be sorry ho had ever looked for the envelope now. It might have been better to have gone home, and confessed its loss in the morning. True, it would have probably have meant the sack, but that did not greatly trouble him.

More than once, he turned the buffcoloured missive over in his hands, tempted to throw it away and stick to the story that he had dropped it, and then from his perch on the bank he saw in the distance Mrs Bourne’s bedroom lignt go- out, which put the house in darkness. That suggested a new train of thought. “Gone to bed,” he muttered, “twould be a pity to rouse ’em.” With which obesrvation he got to his feet again, and ambled on. Beaching the door, he pushed the wire into the letter-box, but forbore to knock or ring. Then, glowing with a consciousness of virtue which had redounded to his own comfort and convenience he trotted home to bed himself.

He was too late to see anything of Gwen or the colonel, or of the colonel’s assistant. That was another of Father Time’s little jokes. It was two boys, bathing in the river, who brought the news next morning—or rather one who raced to the police station while the other stayed by what they had found. “A girl’s cloak,” Supt. Blagdon repeated. “Better go along and have a look at it,” he told one of the constables. Then he returned to the paper he was reading, with a worried frown.

pecially understood his business well, and it was a girl unable to speak or move that they presently lowered to the ground. Winthrop stared down at her grimly. “Take her feet, Larry,” he growled. “We'll carry her-—to the water!” CHAPTER XXI. Eat her Time is a curious old gentleman, and there is no accounting for his pranks. The very person he- favours one moment he seems to have a grudge against the next, and vice versa.

.So it was now. He allowed Winthrop to get ashore and disappeared before the fog lifted, but on the other hand also allowed the mist to dissolve in time to save Hugh and Lucas from a watery grave. He permitted Hugh, with his burden, to reach the shore at the very moment when his strength was exhausted, but likewise saw to it that the colonel should be able to tear along the country roads at a pace which brought him back to Hengrave in almost incredible time. And in the matter of the telegram he appeared to favour Winthrop also. That telegram, it will bo remembered, had been despatched to Gwen by Detective-Inspector Lucas just before calling at the Bichcster police station and denying the report of his own demise. It read as follows: — "Am fit and well. Believe no report whatever of my death. Keep silent. Hugh.” It was a message, therefore, calcu-