"The Sapphire Riddle,”

Wairarapa Daily Times, 16 February 1937, Page 7

"The Sapphire Riddle,”

CHAPTER XII (Continued). Pieces of stone whizzed among them from the hand of an invisible marksman, who knew his job to a nicety. Whenever a. confused officer stopped to cast about for Sotheran’s tracks—vvliizz.z and a thumping missile would more than likely land on his unfortunate body or going so close and being so dangerous, cause that officer to duck down into the nearest place of sheltei. Where the stones came from was evident. Sotheran, in his flight, was not sending them. . . - hut little Joseph Eccles wheeling his way behind the mist, to link up with the young farmer, was playing this havoc. . Yells and execrations again then thud crump —thud from unerring rocks: a whistle blasting here, and hoarse order coining from there, each contradictory, each confusing . • • un. Eccles, like the superior “game” they flighted, got away scot free Avith all the tale of his damaging tactics unavenged. Eccles’ tactics Avere a masterly covering of Sotheran’s retreat. Never for one moment did he turn from his mam purpose of getting the younger man into the secret security of the lurking place he kneiv as being concealed behind the quarry front. , . Suddenly the rain of stone ceased. Suddenly there was a hush and an alarmed period-of Avaiting for Avliat happened next. The police were completely demoralised the prey they s-ought had defeated them, hands down. They could not knoAV of Avhat « Avas taking place beyond/; the pool . . could not see how Eccles silently gained on Sotheran, and, still silently, ushered him into a deft place of the rocks, guided him down a sort of shaft,— turned lum to the right, then turned him to the left —and said: • ~ “Noav my lad,- thank the Lord. You ’re safe; as safe as houses here! ” Then the old man turned and grinned at a slim and girlish form Avliick stepped out of shadows. “Ah,” lie muttered, “so you got my message —h?” A voie ansAvrd him, calmly: “Ys, thank you Eccles, I got your message . . . here I am. . Sotheran felt his hot and puffy hands caught in the grasp of soft and very cool ones. Women’s hands AVithout a doubt. Then Joe Eccles said: “Well, Ave’ve done it! They’ll never find us here in a month of Sundays!” And the voice of Ursula Brunskill said: , , ~ “Larry —Larry darling! Oh, tell me, they haven’t hurt you much, have they'? Larry! Hold up—Larry!” Queer; how the devil had he got- into this great quiet- cathedral? Laurence Sotheran tried his best to remember. . . Hoav had he managed to leave that milling and rioting, that storming and stamping and blood-liungry beastliness on the hillside for this serene place of pillars and cold and musical airs? HoAV had the transition been effected? Hoav the deA-il had Ursula got here? He recalled that he had left her at the farm —lioav had she appeared, like - an angel, at this juncture? “Larry—darling!” “Darling” . . he smiled. He liked that word .. . darling .. . Then the earth seemed to explode and a gieat light shone and Laurence Sotheran Avas unconscious in an instant. CHAPTER VIII.

The discomfited police gathered together and took counsel, also balm for their many wounds. Emergency dressing packages were ripped open and bandages applied as they talked. “A hell of a fellow —that!” The winded sergeant let a chuckle creep into his voice, a gleeful note of pure admiration. “Six feet one in his socks, fourteen stone if an ounce and, what a brute of a punch! Ye gods!” The inspector was undeistood to make some remark, but since it was moie nearly allied to the grunt of a pig, the officers let that pass. “Split nty blasted nose to the bone j y

“I clouted him, anyway, with unpeg. Bet he ’ll know it afore the night ’s out!” “Oh, glory, what an eye! Fourteen stone, sergeant? . . . More like forty! And so the medley went on.. Half angrily, half grudging of admiration; after the fashion of Sergeant Jefferson,, the constables discussed the splendid fight for many a minute. “Did any of you men see where Soth'eran got to, at the finish? < ‘ No, sir, ’ ’ came the chorus. “Haven’t you any idea, Sergeant?”

“Sorry, sir, I haven’t.” Jefferson faced liis irate superior—the braided gentleman at whom he had, so recently and alarmingly, been flung. “That old servant, Joo Ecclcs, kept on yelling to him to go a certaain way, and, as you saw, even in the middle of all that scrapping, he went that way—but beyond the fact that the pair of ’em vanished beyond the quarry pool . . . sorry sir, can’t say!” Inspector Magerison ordered several of the later arrived officers to put on their lamps. Then, in the fierce incandescence of ten electric bulbs, he formed a party to scout around the pool. “Search for footmarks.” “Y’sir!

They searched. But the feet of men have not the force required to leave impressions on solid rock. That ras the path beyond the pool; that ras th quarry face. . . . and that was the area all about the spot where last the fugitives had been in view: solid and timeglazed limestone. No—nothing could be done in this way.

“If only we could get hold of that hound of Sotheran’s,” the Inspector mused, “we might get along. It would certainly search its master out.” “That’s an idea, .sir,” agreed the sergeant. “Saw it down at the bungalow as we

(Published by Special Arrangement.)

BY / JOHN H. FOR.TESCUE, (Author of “The Chain.”)

filed past,” Inspector Magerison Avent on. “It certainly ought to prove useful, if Ave only manage to get hold of It. . . - Any of you felknvs got a special talent for handling dogs—eh? Any of you think you' could rope in that beast that Sotheran had Avith him, doAvn there ? ’’

■ Noav Inspector Magerison Avas Avise m liis generation. He kneAA r —none better —that some of these Derbyshire men Avere living Avonders at the game of dogdecoying. A second sense, or an inbred trait of the liillmen from whom they sprang, made them marvellously clever at handling and luring dogs. Not a “killer” could Avork for long among the sheep scattered all .over the lonely fells; not a stray could Avalk about the streets of the local toAA-n. . . but these officers Avould find a Avay to “clean it up. ’ ’ As, in fact, most countryside police contrive to “clean up” canine actfvities.

“Think I might try me hand,” came a sloav broad A r oice. The Inspector stifled a grin. This Avas the felloAV he had angled for. “Wi’out boasting, sir, I might say as lioav it’d be a clever’n to get past me.” “Ah, yes Longtharm! The very man! ” Right enough there: Longtharm Avas the very man. He came of a family of kennelmem and huntsmen and kneAV his job from A to Z. “Very well, Constable, take two others Avith you. . . and get Sotheran’s hound. ’ ’

“Chain Lady’s its name,” an officer put in. “Aye, I knoAA-s its name Avell enough. . . . .” Longtharm sloAvly surveyed his mates. “I’ll take Nicholson and Smirthwaite if I might, Inspector.” Magerison nodded. Longtharm was again a unit -of extremest value. With uncanny prescience ho had picked the two “toughest” and most tireless of his colleagues —and, one with a grievance. It happened that Smirtlnvaite Avas the tall and sineAvy personage Avho had taken Sotheran’s elboAV in his throat.

“Right! Off Avith you then. Be as sharp back as you can.” “As though,” Longtharm softly groAvled to his pals, “a dog can be picked up in fiA r e minutes out o ’ fifteen thousand acres of stuff like this!” And, A-iciously, he kicked at a tussock of ling. “Get out on it, you great lump,” Nicholson twitted him. “I’ll bet a level bob you knoAV to a trivet Avliere to lay hands on the beast.” Longtharm grunted and laughed softly. “Nay, Harry lad, I’m noan betting. “I’A'e an idea ...”

Ursula Brunskill was nursing Laurence Sotlieran .... not in a “cathedral” as his sinking wits had informed him, but in one of those huge stalagmitie caverns which are to be found in profusion all along the Pennine Chain from the Peak to northernmost Northumbria. It was a vast a*nd queerly resonant place, lit by a vagrant moon glow that filtered down through an abandoned lead-mine shaft. The floor of the shaft was finely and resiliency laid with silver silica sand; leaping rills and a solemn black lake of water were beyond this margin. Eccles had known of the cave for years. He had stumbled on it —and its secret of entry —when first he came 'to live in Derbyshire. And, in his mo(rose and Ishmael-like way, he had used, lit as a hermitage. In the course of I time, book by book, rug by rug, blanket and oil-stove following camp-bed I parts and oil, he had succeeded in f urI nishing quite an encampment by the 'side of its sullen midnight tide, j And now, with water from that lake, I with linen and towellings from Eccles ’ 'stores—to say nothing of hot water, I sugar and some of Henry Mortimer s I oldest cognac—appropriated from the Carlton Lodge cellars —she strove to bring him ease and sleep. “If he ’ll only waken, once, and look around him a bit,” the sage old man told her “he’ll drop off as sound as a bairn, and lie’ll sleep the clock round. If he doesn’t waken .

“Wliat —oh, what do you mean, Ecclesl” Joe Eccles removed his pipe and pointed with its stem to the ugly contusion showing across Sotheran’s scalp. “Well, lassie, if he doesn’t —we’ll ha’ to bide by it!”

He looked gnome-like in the thin radiance of a candle and the reflected glittering of the moon. “We’ll ha’ to give him up to the police. For, Miss Ursula, either lie’s just gotten a crack wliat’s put him to sleep or lie’s gotten a fractured skull. It’s no good mincing matters —that’s how I look at it.” “But surely, a policeman’s truncheon couldn’t hit so hard as all ” Eccles laughed bitterly. “Why, they fought like a pack of savages, the whole boiling on ’em. Think of it —one agin eight—and then eight as liell-mad as ever men could be, Sotheran infecting ’em like a mad wolf sends a pack mad! . . . Aye, it wor a mighty to-doment, but I’m ’fraid it s going to turn out bad.” For a while the frightened girl sat in silence, tears slowly dropping from her cheeks.

Then: “And—and to think that lie’s no more to be blamed than—than I am! Hunted like this—smashed up—a fugitive —a criminal in the eyes of the law . '. . and as innocent as a babe.” She clenched her hands about the pathetic bundle of her wet handkerchief. “Oh, it makes my blood boil ” (To be Continued).