Show W 0 I 1 N E 5 T author of AMATEUR Ke CRACKSMAN 4 RAFFLES ett etc IV fey 0 AWERS copyright Co 0 0 OS CW Z SYNOPSIS cazalet on the steamer kaiser fritz ah homeward ox neward bound from australia cries out ut in his sleep that hen henry ry craven ven who t ten en years before had ruined 11 his Is f father ther kind and himself Is dead and finds that hilton toys toye who shares the stateroom stater pom with hini him k kiowa aws craven and also blanche r a farmer neighbor and playmate when the dally daily papers co come aboard at southampton toye reads that craven has been murdered and calls calla cazalens Caza lets dream second sight bight lle he t thinks hinks of doing a little amateur detective work on tha case himself in the train to town they discuss the he murder which was corn com knitted at cazalens Caza lets old home toye hears from cazalet t bat scruton who had been cazalens Caza lets friend and the scapegoat for cravens dishonesty has been released from prison cazalet goes down the river and meets blanche CHAPTER IV continued 1 I 1 wonder walo ali 0 ca can have done itt it so do the police and they dont to look ok much like finding out it must have been for his watch and money dont you think and yet they say he be had chad so many enemies leol cazalet kept silence but she thought he winced ot of course it must have been the man who ran out of the drive she concluded hastily where were you when it happened sweep I 1 somewhat haars hoars hoarsely ely he was was recalling the mediterranean moie movements ments of the kaiser fritz when at the first mention ot of the vessels name he was firmly heckled sweep you dont mean to say you came by a german steamer 1 I do if it was the first going and why should I 1 waste a week besides you can generally ge get a cabin to yourself on the german line so why youre hero before the end of the month said blanche well wella I 1 call it most unpatriotic but the cab cabin to yourself was certainly some come excuse that thai reminds mel me he be exclaimed 1 I haan hadn it to myself t all the liay way there was another follow fellow in with me from genoa and the last night on board it came out that he knew you who can it have been toye his name was hilton toye an american man oh bu but I 1 know him very well said blanche in EL tone both strained and cordial hes great tun fun mr toye with his delightful americanisms and the perfectly delightful way he says them cazalet puckered like the primitive man inan he was when taken at all by surprise and that anybody much less blanche should think toye of all people either delightful or great fun was certainly a surprise to him it it was nothing else of course it was nothing else to his immediate knowledge still he was rather ready to think that blanche was blushing but forgot it if indeed he had been in a fit state to see it at the time that she had bad paid himself the the same high compliment across the gate on the whole it may be said that cazalet was ruffled without feeling seriously disturbed as to the essential issue which alone leaped to his mind where did you meet the fellow he inquired with the suitable admixture of confidence and amusement in the first instance at Eu gelberg Engel engelberg bergi wheres that only one of those places in switzerland where everybody goes nowadays tor for what they call winter inter sports she me was not even smiling ut at his arrogant ignorance she w was a s merely explaining pla ining one geographical point and another of general information A I 1 close observer might ha have ve thought ler her a almost anxious lot to identify herself too closely with a popular craze 1 I dare say eay you mentioned it said cazalet but rather as thou though gh he was wondering why she had not 1 I dare say eay I 1 t everything wont go into an annual letter it was the winter before last I 1 went out with betty and her husband 1 and after that he took a place hero yes then I 1 met him on the river the following summer and found hed got rooms in one of the nell gwynne cottages it if you call that a place 1 I see but Bui there was no more to see there never had been much but now blanche was standing up and gazing out of the balcony into the belt of singing sunshine between the opposite side of the road and the invisible river acres away why shou lAnt we wego go down to littleford and get out the boat it if youre really going to mackean make an afternoon of it T she said but you pu simply must see martha first and while ashes milking making herself fit to be seen you must take something tor for the good of the house ill bridgit bring it to louon you on a lordly tray she brought hini him siphon bottle a silver biscuit box of ancient memories and left jeff him alone with them coq some little time for the young mistress ini stress like her her old retainer in another minute was simply dying to make inake herself more presentable yet when she had done so bo and came back like enow in a shirt and skirt just home bome from tho the laundry laundr yi she saw that he did not see the difference his devouring v eyes phozie neither snore more nor ass aas but lie be had also devoured every biscuit in the box though he had begun by had lunched in town and ana stuck to the fable still i old martha had bad cnown own him all ail his life but be best at at the period when he used to cometo come to nursery tea at littleford she declared i she would have known him anywhere as aa he was but she simply recognized him in that photograph with his beard 1 T I can see where its been said martha looking hira him in the lower temperate zone but im so BO glad youve had it off mr cazalet there you are Blan Blanch chiel le crowed cazalet you said shed be disappointed but marthas got better taste it that sir said martha earnestly nestly its because the dreadful man who was seen running out of oe the drive at your old home he had a beard its ita in all the notices about him and put me against them and makes me glad youve you ve had yours youra off blanche turned to him with too ready a smile but then she was really not such a great age as she pretended and she had never been in better spirits in her life you hear sweep I 1 c call i all it rather lucky for you that you were but just then she saw his face and remembered the things that had bad been said about henry craven by the gaza caza lets friends even ten ted years ago when she really had been a girl CHAPTER V an untimely visitor she really was one still for in these days day s it Is an elastic term and in blanches case there was no apparent reason why it should ever cease to apply or to be applied by every decent tongue except her own much the best tennis player among the ladles ladies of the neighborhood she drove an almost unbecomingly long ballat golf and acid never looked better than when paddling her old canoe or punting in the old punt and yet this wonderful september afternoon she did somehow look even better than at 5 1 0 V 01 7 1 1 10 10 or where did you meet the fellow he inquired either or an of those congenial pursuits and that long before they reached the river in the empty house bouse which had known her as baby child and grownup grown up girl to the companion of some part of all three stages she ebe looked a more lustrous and a lovelier blanche than he remembered even of old but she was not really lovely in the least that also must be put beyond the pale of misconception her hair was ws beautiful and perhaps her skin and in some borne lights her eyes the rest was not it was yellow hair not golden and cazalot would have given all see again as in the oldest of old days but there was more gold in her ber for so the sun hild bad treated it and there was even hint or glint in certain lights be it repeated of gold mingling with the pure hazel of her eyes ayes but in the dusty shadows of the empty house moving movin glike like a sunbeam across its bare boards standing out against the disco discolored walls in the place of remembered pictures not to be compared with her it was there that she was all golden and still girl T they poked their noses into and th they ey had a laugh in every corner and BO 80 1 out cut upon the leafy lawn shelving abruptly to 0 the river river last of all there was the summer schoolroom over the boat bouse quite apart from the house itself scene of such euch safe yet reckless revels in its very aura late Victor victorian lanI it lay hidden bidden in ivy at the end of a now neglected path the bow win wid dows overlooking the river were framed in ivy like three matted majied whiskered dirty happy faces one with its lower jower sash propped open by a broken plant pot might have been grinning a toothless welcome once leading spirits of the place cazalet whittled a twig and wedged that sash up alto altogether geiber then lt he dut himself on the hie long legs mr ff side eide but his knife bad reminded dod him of hie ble plug tobacco and his plue tobacco look him as straight back to the bush as though the unsound floor had bad changed under their feet into a magic carpet 11 you simply have it put down t to 0 th the e mans mails account in the station b blohs k nobody keeps ready readi money up at the bush not even the price of a plug like this but the chap im telling you about 1 I can see him pow now with his great red beard and freckled flats fists he be swore I 1 was charging him for halt half a pound more than hed ever had we fought for twenty minutes behind the wood I 1 had to turn in till I 1 could see again you dont mean tiit that h he Blan blanche chei had looked rather disgusted the moment before now she bhe was all truculent suspense and indiana uon tion beat mo me he cried good lord no but there was none too much in it fires died down in her hazel eyes lay lambent as soft oft moonlight flickered d into laughter before hei he had bad seen been the fire im afraid youre a very dangerous person said blanche youve got to lo be he assured her ber its the only way dont take a word from anybody unless you mean him to wipe hta his boots an on you I 1 soon found that out id have given something ti to have learned the noble art before I 1 went out did I 1 ever tell you how bow it was I 1 first came across old venus venua potts 7 he had told her ner at great length to the exclusion of about every other topic in tho the second of the annual letters and throughout the series the inevitable nameon venus potts had bad seldom dom cropped up without some allusion to that homeric encounter but it was well worth while having it all over again with the intricate and picaresque embroidery of a tongue far mightier than the pen hitherto employed upon the incident poor blanche had almost to hold her nose over the primary cause of battle but buethe the dialogue was delightful and cazalet himself made a most gallant and engaging figure as he sat eat on the sill and reeled it out twenty minutes later and old venus potts was still on the magic tapis though cazalet had dropped his boasi boasting for a curiously humble eager and yet ineffectual vein old venus potts he kept ejaculating you help liking him and hed fied like you my word isais wife nice blanche wanted to know but she was looking so intently out her window at the opposite end of the bow to cazalens Caza lets that a man of the wider world might hive have thought of something else to talk about out her window she looked past a willow that had been part of the old life in the direction of an equally cyp typical acal silhouette of patient a anglers anchored in a punt they had bad not raised a rod between them during all this time that blanche had been out in australia but as a matter of fact she never saw them since vastly to the credit of cazalens Caza lets descriptive p powers she was out in australia still nelly potts he said oh a jolly good sort be awful pals should we said blanche just smiling at her invisible anglers 1 I know you would he assured her with immense conviction of course she cant do the things you do but she can ride my word so she ought to when ashes lived there all her life the rooms arent much but the verandas are what count most better than any rooms she was still out there cultivating nelly potts on a very deep eranda though her straw hat and straw hair remained in contradictory evidence against a very dirty window oa 0 i the middlesex bank of the thames it was a shamo shama of the september sun to show the dirt as it was doing not only was waa there a great steady pool of sunshine on the unspeakable floor put but a doddering reflection from the river on the disreputable ceiling cazalet looked rather desperately from one to the other and both the calm pool and the rough were broken by shadows one more impressionistic than tb the other of a straw hat bat over a stack of straw hair that bad not gone out to australia yet and of course just then a step sounded outside somewhere on some gravel confound those caretakers what were they doing prowling about 1 I say blanchie Blanch lel he blurted out 1 I do believe like it out there a sportswoman like youl you I 1 believe take to it like a duck to water TO BE CONTINUED |