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Show We THOUSAND!! I WOMAN whoS Author of T5KeAMMEUR CRACKSMAN, i RAFFLE5, Etc. ILLUSTRATIONS fey O. FRWLZN AWER5 V CQPyR IGHT -g- CH POBB3 -yEBRfl-. CCWPAT-J SYNOPSIS. Cazalet. on the steamer Kaiser Fritz, homeward bound from Australia, cries out in his sleep that Henry Craven, who ten years before had ruined his father and himself. Is dead, and finds that Hilton Hil-ton Toye, who shares the stateroom with him, knows Craven and also Blanche Macnair, a former neighbor and playmate. play-mate. When the daily papers come aboard at Southampton Toye reads that Craven has been murdered and calls Cazalet's dream secofid sight. He thinks of doing a little amateur detective work on the case himself. In the train to town they discuss the murder, which was committed com-mitted at Cazalet's old home. Toye hears from Cazalet that Scruton, who had been Cazalet's friend and the scapegoat for Craven's dishonesty, has been released fiom prison. Cazalet goes down the river and meets Blanche. Toye also comes to see her and tells Cazalet that Scruton has been arrested, but as he doesn't believe the old clerk Is guilty he Is going to ferret out the murderer. Cazalet and Blanche go to Cazalet's old home and meet Mr. Drlnkwater of Scotland Scot-land Yard. Cazalet goes with Drlnkwater Drlnkwa-ter to the library where the murder was -ommltted, shows him a secret passage he knew as a boy, and leads the way through It. In town Toye, talking with Cazalet about the murder, suggests finger prints on the weapon found in the secret passage as a means of trapping the murderer mur-derer and succeeds In securing a print of azalet's hand. CHAPTER VI I J Continued. Cazalet excused himself with decision. deci-sion. He had a full morning in front of him. He was going to see Miss Macnair's brother, son of the late head of his father's old firm of solicitors, and now one of the partners, to get them either to take up Scruton's case themselves, or else to recommend a firm perhaps more accustomed to criminal practice. Cazalet was always apt to be elaborate in the first person singular, either In the past or in the future tense; but he was more so than usual in explaining his considered consid-ered intentions In this matter that lay so very near his heart. "Going to see Scruton, too?" said Toye. "Not necessarily," was the short reply. re-ply. But it also was elaborated by Cazalet on a moment's consideration. The fact was that he wanted first to know if it were not possible, by the Intervention of a really influential lawyer, law-yer, to obtain the prisoner's immediate release, at any rate on ball. If impossible, impos-sible, he might hesitate to force him-elf him-elf on Scruton in the prison, but he would see. "It's a perfect scandal that he should be there at all," said Cazalet, .as he rose first and ushered Toye out into the lounge. "Only think: our old gardener saw him run out of the drive at half past seven, when the gong went, when the real murderer must have been shivering in the Michael-Angelo Michael-Angelo cupboard, wondering how the devil he was ever going to get out again." "Then you think old man Craven begging his poor pardon was getting out some cigars when the man, whoever who-ever he was, came in and knocked him on the head?" Cazalet nodded vigorously. "That's the likeliest thing of all!" he cried. "Then the gong went there may even have come a knock at the door and there was that cupboard standing open at his elbow." "With a hole In the floor that might have been made for him?" "As it happens, yes; he'd search every inch like a rat in a trap, you see; and there it was as I'd left it twenty years before." "Well, it's a wonderful yarn!" exclaimed ex-claimed Hilton Toye, and he lighted the cigar that Cazalet had given him. "1 think it may be thought one if the police ever own how they made their find," agreed Cazalet, laughing and looking at his watch. Toye had never heard him laugh so often. "By the way, Drlnkwater doesn't want any of all this to come out until he's dragged his man before the beak again." "Which you mean to prevent?" "If only I can! I more or less promised prom-ised not to talk, however, and I'm Bure you won't. You knew so much already, you may just as well know the rest this week as well as npxt, if you don't mind keeping it tr yourself." your-self." Nobody could have minded '.his particular par-ticular embargo less than Hilton Toye. He saw Cazalet off with a smile that was as yet merely puzzled, and not unfriendly until he had time to recall Miss Blanche's part in the strange affair of the previous afternoon. Say. weren't they rather intimate, those two, even if they had known each other all their lives? He had it from Blanche (with her second refusal) re-fusal) that she was not, and never had boon, engaged. And a fellow who onlj wrote to her once In a year-still, year-still, they must have been darned Intimate, In-timate, and this funny affair would bring them together again quicker than anything. Say, what a funny affair It was when you came to thing of it! Funny all through, it now struck Toye; beginning begin-ning on board ship with that dream of Cazalet's about the murdered man, leading to all that talk of the old grievance against him. and culminating culminat-ing in his actually finding the implements imple-ments of the crime in his inspired cf-rorts cf-rorts to save the man of whose inno-cencj inno-cencj he was so positive. Say, if that Cazalet had not been on his way home from Australia at the time! ' Like many deliberate speakers, Toye thought like lightning, and had reached this point before he was a hundred yards from the hotel; then he thought of something else, and retraced his steps. He retraced them even to the table at which he had sat with Cazalet not very many minutes ago; the waiter wait-er was only now beginning to clear away. "Say, waiter, what have you done with the menu that was in that toast-rack? toast-rack? There was something on it that we rather wanted to keep." "I thought there was, sir," said the English waiter at that 'admirable hotel. ho-tel. Toye, however, prepared to talk to him like an American uncle of Dutch extraction. "You thought that, and you took it away?" "Not at all, sir. I 'appened to observe ob-serve the other gentleman put the menu in his pocket, behind your back as you were getting up, because I passed a remark about it to the head waiter at the time!" CHAPTER IX. Fair Warning. It was much more than a map of the metropolis that Toye carried in his able head. He knew the right places for the right things. He gazed critically criti-cally at his boots. He was not so dead sure that he had struck the only man for boots. There had be?n a young fellow aboard the Kaiser Fritz, quite a little bit of a military blood, who had come ashore In a pair of cloth tops that had rather unsettled Mr. Toye's mind Just on that one point. Captain Aylmer had said he would like to have Toye see his club any time he was passing and cared to look in for lunch. He had said so as though he would like it a great deal, and suddenly Toye had a mind to take him at his word right now. The idea began with those boots with cloth tops, but that was not all there was to it; there was something else that had been at the back of Toye's mind all morning, and now took charge in front. Aylmer had talked some about a job In the war office that enabled him to lunch daily at the Rag; but what his job had been aboard a German steamer steam-er Toye did not know and was not the man to inquire. It was no business of his, anyway. Reference to a card, traded for his own in Southampton Water, and duly filed in his cigarette-case, cigarette-case, reminded him of the Rag's proper prop-er style and title. And there he was eventually entertained to a sound, workmanlike, rather expeditious meal. "Say, did you see the cemetery at Genoa?" suddenly inquired the visitor vis-itor on their way back through the hall. A martial bust had been admired ad-mired extravagantly before the question. ques-tion. "Never want to see it again, or Genoa Ge-noa either," said Captain Aylmer. "The smoking-room's this way." "Did you say you were there two days?" Toye was cutting his cigar as though it were a corn. "Two whole days, and we'd had a night in the Bay of Naples just before." be-fore." "Is that so? I only came aboard at Genoa. I guess I was wise," added Toye, as though he was thinking of something else. There was no sort of feeling in his voice, but he was sucking his left thumb. "I say, you've cut yourself!" "I guess it's nothing. Knife too sharp; please don't worry, Captain Aylmer. I was going to say I only got on at Genoa, and they couldn't give me a room to myself. I had to go In with Cazalet; that's how I saw so much of him." It was Toye's third and separate independent in-dependent attempt to introduce the name and fame of Cazalet as a natural topic of conversation. Twice his host had listened with adamantine politeness; polite-ness; this time he was enjoying quite the second-best liqueur brandy to be had at fjie Rag; and he leaned back In his tnair. "You were rather Impressed with him, weren't you?" said Captain Aylmer. Ayl-mer. "Well, frankly, I wasn't, but it may have been my fault" "I was only going to ask you one thing about Mr. Cazalet," Toye said, "and I guess I've a reason for asking, though there's no time to state It now. What did you think of him, Captain Aylmer. on the whole?" "Ah. there you have me. 'On the whole' is just the difficulty." said Ayl-mer. Ayl-mer. answering the straight question readily enough. "I thought he was a very good chap as far as Naples, but after Genoa he was another being. I've sometimes wondered w hat happened in his throe or four days ashore." "Three or four, did you say?" And at the last moment Toye would have played Wedding Guest to Ayl-mer's Ayl-mer's Ancient Mariner. "Yes; you see. he kuew these German Ger-man boats waste a couple of days at Genoa, so he landed at Naples and did his Italy overland. Rather a good idea. I thought, especially as he said he had friends in Rome; but we never heard of 'em beforehand, and I should have let the whole thing strike me a bit sooner if I'd been Cazalet. Soon enough to take a hand-bag and a toothbrush, eh? And I don't think I should have run it quite so fine at Genoa, either. But there are rum birds in this world, and always will be!" Toye felt one himself as he picked his way through St. James' square. If it had not been just after lunch, he would have gone straight and had a cocktail, for of course he knew the only place for them. What he did was to slue round out of the square, and to obtain for the asking, at another old haunt, on Cockspur street, the latest little time-table of continental trains. This he carried, not on foot but in a taxi, to the Savoy Hotel, where it kept him busy in his own room for the best part of another hour. But by that time Hilton Toye looked more than an hour older than on sitting sit-ting down at his writing-table with pencil, paper and the little book of trains; he looked horrified, he looked distressed, and yet he looked crafty, determined and immensely alive. He proceeded, however, to take some of the life out of himself, and to add still more to his apparent age, by repairing repair-ing for more inward light to a Turkish Turk-ish bath. Now the only Turkish bath, according accord-ing to Hilton Toye's somewhat exclusive exclus-ive code, was not even a hundred yards from Cazalet's hotel; and there the visitor of the morning again presented pre-sented himself before the afternoon; now merely a little worn, as a man a it w.i "Did I Tell You I'd Any Friends There?" will look after losing a stone an hour on a warm afternoon, and a bit blue again about the chin, which of course looked a little deeper and stronger on that account. Cazalet was not in; his friend would wait, and in fact waited over an hour in the Uttis hntnge. An evening paper was offered to him; he took It listlessly, listless-ly, scarcely looked at it at first, then tore it in his anxiety to find something he bad quite forgotten from the newspaper end. But he was waiting as stoically as before when Cazalet arrived In tremendous spirits. "Stop and dine!" he cried out at once. "Sorry I can't; got to go and see Bomebody," said Hilton Toye. "Then you must have a drink." "No, I thank you," said Toye, with the decisive courtesy of a total abstainer. ab-stainer. "You look as if you wanted one; you don't look a bit fit," said Cazalet, most kindly. "Nor am I, sir!" exclaimed Toye. "I guess London's no place for me in the fall. Just as well, too, I judge, since I've got to light out again straight away." "You haven't!" "Yes, sir, this very night. That's the worst of a business that takes you to all the capitals of Europe in turn. It takes you so long to flit around that you never know when you've got to start in again." "Which capital is it this time?" said Cazalet. His exuberant geniality had been dashed very visibly for the moment. mo-ment. But already his high spiritB were reasserting themselves; indeed, a cynic with an ear might have caught the note of sudden consolation in the question that Cazalet asked so briskly. "Got to go down to Rome," said Toye, watching the effect of his words. "But you've just come back from there!" Cazalet looked no worse than puzzled. "No, sir, I missed Rome out; that was my mistake, and here's this situation situ-ation been developing behind my back." "What situation?" "Oh, why, it wouldn't Interest you! But I've got to go down to Rome, whether I like it or not, and I don't like it any, because I don't have any friends there. And that's what I'm doing do-ing right here. I was wondering if you'd do something for me, Cazalet?" "If I can," said Cazalet, "with pleasure." pleas-ure." But his smiles were gone. "I was wondering if you'd give me an introduction to those friends of yours in Rome!" There was a little pause, and Caza let's tongue just showed between his lips, moistening them. It was at that moment the only touch of color in his face. "Did I tell you I'd any friends there?" The sound of his voice was perhaps less hoarse than puzzled. Toye made himself chuckle as he sat looking up out of somber eyes. "Well, if you didn't." said be, T guess I must have dreamed it." I.TO BE CONTINUED.) |