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Show STIOKANDIB I WOMAN W.HOIMNG Author of -GheAIWEUR CRACKSMAN. RAFFLES, Etc. ILLUSTRATIONS fey O. TFCsVliN JVTVERS I SYNOPSIS. 7 Cazalet, on the Bteamer Kaiser FritB, homeward bound from Australia, cries out in his sleep that Henry Craven, who ten yeara 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 second 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 Cazalot that Scruton. who had been Cazalet's friend and the scapegoat for Craven's dishonesty, has been released from prison. Cazalet Koes 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. Drinkwater of Scotland Scot-land Yard. Cazalet goes with Drinkwater Drinkwa-ter to the library where the murder was committed, shows him a secret passage he knew of as a boy. CHAPTER VII Continued. "Oh, that was as easy as pie; I'd often explored them. Do you remember remem-ber the row I got into, Blanche, for taking you with me once and simply ruining your frock?" "I remember the frock!" said Blanche. It was her last contribution to the conversation; immediate developments develop-ments not only put an end to the further fur-ther exchange of ancient memories, but rendered it presently impossible by removing Cazalet from the scene with the two detectives. Almost without with-out warning all three disappeared down the makeshift trap-door cut by one or them as a schoolboy in his father's floor. She hardly even knew how it happened. hap-pened. The little place was so small that she never saw the hole until it had engulfed two of the trio; the third explorer, Mr. Drinkwater himself, had very courteously turned her out of the library before following the others. And he had said so very little beforehand before-hand for her to hear, and so quickly prevented Cazalet from saying anything any-thing at all, that she simply could not think what any of them were doing nnder the floor. Under her very feet she heard them moving as she waited a bit in the hall; then she left the house by way of the servants' quarters, of course without holding any communication with those i mutineers, and only indignant that Mr. Drinkwater should have requested her not to do so. It was a long half-hour that followed for Blanche Macnair, but she passed it characteristically. She turned her wholesome mind to dogs, which in some ways she knew better and trusted further than men. There was a dog at Uplands, and as yet she had seen nothing of him; he lived in a large kennel in the yard, for he was a large dog and rather friendless. But Blanche knew him by sight, and had felt always sorry for him. The large kennel was just outside the back door, which was at the top of the cellar steps and at the bottom bot-tom of two or three leading into the scullery; but Blanche, of course, went round by the garden. She found the poor old dog quite disconsolate in a more canine kennel in a corner of the one that was really worthy of the more formidable carnivora. There was every sign of his being treated as the dangerous dog that Blanche, indeed, had heard he was; the outer bars were further protected by wire netting, which stretched like a canopy over the whole cage; but Blanche let herself her-self in with as little hesitation as she proceeded to beard the poor brute in his inner lair. And he never even barked at her; he just lay whimpering with his tearful nose between his two front paws, as though his dead master had not left him to the servants all his life. Blanche coaxed and petted him until un-til she almost wept herself; then suddenly sud-denly and without warning the dog showed his worst side. Out he leaped from wooden sanctuary, almost knocking knock-ing her down, and barking horribly, but not at Blanche. She followed his Infuriated eyes; and the back doorway door-way framed a dusty and grimy figure. Just climbing into full length on the cellar stairs, which Blanche had some difficulty in identifying with that of Cazalet. "Well, you really are a Sweep!" she cried when she had slipped out just In time, and the now savage dog was still butting and clawing at his bars. "How did you come out, and where are the enemy?" "The old way," he answered. "I left them down there." "And what did you find?" "I'll tell you later. I can't hear my Toice for that infernal dog." The dreadful barking followed them out into the yard, and round to the right, past the tradesmen's door, to the verge of the drive. Here they met an elderly man in a tremendous hurry an unstable dotard who instantly abandoned whatever purpose he had formed, and came to anchor in front of them with rheumy eyes and twitching twitch-ing wrinkles. L "Why, If that isn't Miss Blanche!" he quavered. "Do you hear our Roy, miss? I ha'n't heard that go on like that since the night that happened!" Then Cazalet introduced himself to the old gardener whom he had known all his life; and by rights the man should have wept outright, or else emitted a rustic epigram laden with wise humor. But old Savage hailed from silly Suffolk, and all his life he had belied his surname, but never the alliterative libel oh his native county. He took the wanderer's return very much as a matter of course, very much as though he had never been away at all, and was demonstrative only in his further use of the East Anglian pronoun. "That's a long time since" we fared to Bee you, Mus' Walter," said be; "that's a right long time! And now here's a nice kettle of fish for you to find! But I seen the man, Mus' Walter, and we'll bring that home to him, never you fear!" "Are you sure that you saw him?" asked Blanche, already under Cazalet's Caza-let's influence on this point. Savage looked cautiously toward the house before replying; then he lowered his voice dramatically. "Sure, Miss Blanche. Why, I see him that night as plain as I fare to see Mus' Walter now!" "I should have thought it was too dark to see anybody properly," said Blanche, and Cazalet nodded vigorously vigorous-ly to himself. "Dark, Miss Blanche? Why, there was broad daylight, and if that wasn't there were the lodge lights on to see him by!" His stage voice fell a seoul- chral semitone. "But I see him again at the station this very afternoon, I did! I promised not to talk about that you'll keep that a secret if I tell 'e somethin'? but I picked him out of half a dozen at the first time of askin'!" Savage said this with a pleased and vacuous grin, looking Cazalet full in the face; his rheumy eyes were red as the sunset they faced; and Cazalet drew a deep breath as Blanche and he turned back toward the river. "First time of prompting, I expect!" he whispered. "But there's hope if Savage is their strongest witness." "Only listen to that dog," said Blanche, as they passed the yard. CHAPTER VIII. Finger-Prints. Hilton Toye was the kind of American Ameri-can who knew London as well as most Londoners, and some other capitals a good deal better than their respective citizens of corresponding intelligence. His travels were mysteriously but enviably en-viably interwoven with business; he had an air of enjoying himself, and at the same time making money to pay for his enjoyment, wherever he went. His hotel days were much the same all over Europe: many appointments, but abundant leisure. As, however, he never spoke about his own affairs unless un-less they were also those of the listener lis-tener and not always then half his acquaintances had no idea how he made his money, and the other half wondered how he spent his time. Of his mere interests, which were many, Toye made no such secret; but it was quite impossible to deduce a main industry in-dustry from the by-products of his level-headed versatility. Criminology, for example, was an obvious by-product; it was no morbid taste in Hilton Toye, but a scientific hobby that appealed to his mental subtlety. And subtle he was, yet with strange simplicities; grave and dignified, yet addicted to the expressive expres-sive phraseology of his less enlightened enlight-ened countrymen; naturally sincere, and yet always capable of some ingenuous in-genuous duplicity. The appeal of a Blanche Macnair to such a soul needs no analysis. She had struck through all complexities to the core, such as it was or as she might make it. As yet she could only admire the character the man had shown, though it had upset her none the less. At Engelberg he had proposed pro-posed to her "inside of two weeks," as he had admitted without compunction compunc-tion at the time. It had taken him, he said, about two minutes to make up his mind; but the following summer sum-mer he had laid more deliberate siege, in accordance with some old idea that she had let fall to soften her first refusal. re-fusal. The result had been the same, only more explicit on both sides. She had denied him the least particle of hope, and he had warned her that she had not heard the last of him by any means, and never would till she married mar-ried another man. This had incensed her at the time, but a great deal less on subsequent reflection; and such was the position between that pair when Toye and Cazalet landed in England Eng-land from the same steamer. On this second day ashore, as Cazalet Caza-let sat over a late breakfast in Jer-myn Jer-myn street, Toye sent in his card and was permitted to follow it, rather to his surprise. He found his man frankly frank-ly divided between kidneys-and-bacon and the morning paper, but in a hearty mood, indicative of amends for his great heat in yesterday's argument A plainer indication was tho dowD right yet sunny manner in which Cazalet Caza-let at once returned to the contentious topic. "Well, my dear Toye, what do you think of it now?" "1 was going to aBk you what yon thought, but I guess I can see from your face." "I think the police are rotters for not setting him free last night!" "Scruton ?" "Yes. Of course, the case'll break down when it comes on next week, but they oughtn't to wait for that. They've no right to detain a man In custody when the bottom's out of their case already." "But but the papers claim they've found the very things they were searching for." Toye looked nonplused, non-plused, as well he might, by an apparently appar-ently perverse jubilation over such intelligence. in-telligence. "They haven't found the missing cap!" crowed Cazalet. "What they have found is Craven's watch and keys, and the silver-mounted truncheon trun-cheon that killed him. But they found them in a place where they couldn't possibly have been put by the man identified as Scruton!" "Say, where was that?" asked Toye with great interest. "My paper only says the things were found, not where." "No more does mine, but I can tell you, because I helped to find 'em." "You don't say!" "You'll never grasp where," continued contin-ued Cazalet. "In the foundations under un-der the house!" Details followed in all fullness; the listener might have had a part in the Uplands act of yesterday's drama, might have played in the library scene with his adored Miss Blanche, so vividly viv-idly was every minute of that crowded crowd-ed hour brought home to him. He was not so sure that he had any very definite defi-nite conception of the foundations of an English house. "Ours were like ever so many little tiny rooms," said Cazalet, "where I couldn't stand nearly upright even as a small boy without giving my head a crack against the ground floors. They led into one another by a lot of little manholes tight fits even for a boy, ".i mm m ji 1 M I "They Haven't Found the Missing Cap!" Cried Cozalet. but nearly fatal to the boss policeman police-man yesterday!" Hilton Toye, edging in his word, said he guessed he visualized but just where had those missing things been found? "Three or four compartments from the first one under the library," said Cazalet. "Did you find them?" "Well, I kicked against the truncheon, trun-cheon, but Drinkwater dug it up. The watch and keys were with it." "Say, were they buried?" "Only in the loose rubble and brick-dusty brick-dusty stuff that you get in foundations." founda-tions." "Say, that's bad! That murderer must have known something, or else it's a bully fluke in his favor." "I don't follow you, Toye." "I'm thinking of finger-prints. If he'd just've laid those things right dovfS, he'd have left the print of his hand as large as life for Scotland Yard." "The devil he would!" exclaimed Cazalet. "I wish you'd explain," he added; "remember I'm a wild man from the woods, and only know of these things by the vaguest kind of hearsay and stray paragraphs in the papers. I never knew you could leave your mark so easily as all that." Toye took the breakfast menu and placed it face downward on the tablecloth. table-cloth. "Lay your hand on that, paJm down," he said, "and don't move it for a minute." Cazalet looked at him a moment before complying; then his fine, shapely, shape-ly, sunburnt hand lay still as plaster under their eyes until Toye told him he might take it up. Of course there was no mark whatever, and Cazalet laughed. "You should have caught me when I came up from those foundations, not fresh from my tub!" said he. "You wait," replied Hilton Toye, taking the menu gingerly by the edge, and putting it out of harm's way In the empty toast-rack. "You can't see anything now, but if you come round to the Savoy I'll show you something." "What?" "Your prints, sir! I don't say I'm Scotland Yard at the game, but I can do it well enough to show you how it's done. You haven't left your mark upon the paper, but I guess you've left the sweat of your hand; if I snow a little French chalk over it, the chalk'll stick where your hand did, and blow off easily everywhere else. Say, come round to lunch and I'll have your prints ready for you. I'd like awfully aw-fully to show you how it's done " (TO BE CONTINUED.) |