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Show WOMAN hog Author of -GheAMTEUR CRACKSMAN, RAFFLES. Etc. o laUSTKATlONS T O. JRg. XSRS J CHAPTER XIV Continued. 13 Toye cocked his head at both question ques-tion and answer, but inclined it quiek-. quiek-. ly as Cazalet turned to him before proceeding. "I went in and found Henr Craven lying in his blood. That's gospel it was so I found him lying just where he had fallen in a heap out of the leather chair at his desk. The top right-hand drawer of his desk was open, the key in it and the reat of the bunch still swinging! A revolver lay as it had dropped upon the desk it had upset the ink and there were cartridges lying loose in the open drawer, and the revolver was loaded. I swept it back into the drawer, turned the key and removed it with the bunch. But there was something else on the desk that silver-mounted truncheon and a man's cap was lying on the floor. I picked them both up. My first instinct, I confess it, was to remove re-move every sign of manslaughter and to leave the scene to be reconstructed into one of accident seizure anything any-thing but what it was!" He paused as if waiting for a question. ques-tion. None was asked. Toye's mouth might have been sewn up, his eyes . were like hatpins driven into his head. The other two simply stared. "It was a mad idea, but I had gone mad," continued Cazalet. . "1 had hated hat-ed the victim alive, and, it couldn't change me that he was dead or dying; that didn't make him a white man. and neither did it necessarily blacken the poor devil who had probably suffered suf-fered from him like the rest of us and only struck him down in self-defense. self-defense. The revolver on the desk made that pretty plain. It was out of the way, but now I saw blood all over the desk as well; it was soaking into the blotter, and it knocked the bottom out of my idea. What was to be done? I had meddled already; how could I give the alarm without giving myself away to that extent, and God knows how much further? The most awful moment of the lot came as 1 hesitated the dinner-gong went off in the hall outside the door! I remember remem-ber watching the thing on the floor to see if it would move. "Then I lost my head absolutely. I turned the key in the door, to give myself a few seconds' grace or start; it reminded me of the keys in my hands. One of them was one of those little round bramah keys. Jt seemed familiar to me even after so many years. I looked up, and there was my lather's Michael Angelo closet, with its little, round bramah keyhole. I opened it as the outer door was knocked at and then tried. But my mad instinct of altering every possible pos-sible appearance, to mislead the police, po-lice, stuck to me to the last. And 1 took the man's watch and chain into the closet with me, as well as the cap and truncheon that I had picked up before. "I don't know how long I was above ground, bo to speak, but one of my father s objects had been to make his retreat sound-tight, and I could scarcely scarce-ly hear what was going on In the room. That encouraged me; and two of you. don't need telling how I got out through the foundations, because you know all about the hole I made myself my-self as a boy in the floor under the oilcloth. It took some finding with single matches; but the fear of your neck gives you eyes in your finger-ends, finger-ends, and gimlets, too, by Jove! The worst part was getting out at the other end, into the cellars; there were heaps of empty bottles to move, one by one, before there was room to open the manhole door and to squirm out over the slab; and I thought they rang like a peal of bells, but I put them all back again, and apparently . . nobody oyerheard in the scullery. "The big dog barked at me like blazes he did again the other day but nobody seemed to hear him either, i got to my boat, tipped a fellow on the towing path to take it back and yay for it why haven't the police got hold of him? and ran down to the bridge over the weir. 1 stopped a big car with a smart shaver smoking his pipe at the wheel. I should have thought he'd have come forward for the reward that was put up; but I pretended pre-tended I was late for dinner I had In tewn, and I let him drop me at the Grand Hotel. He cost me a fiver, but I had on a waistcoat lined with notes, and I'd more than live minutes in band at Charing Cross. If you want to know, it was the time in hand that gave me the whole idea of doubling back to Genoa; I must have been halfway half-way up to town before I thought of It!" He had told the whole thing as he clways could tell an actual experience; experi-ence; that was one reason why It rang so true to one listener at every point. But the sick man's sunken eyes had advanced from their sockets in cumulative cumu-lative amazement. And Hiltjjn Toye laughed shortly when the end was reached. "You figure some on our credulity!" was his first comment "1 don't figure on anything from you, Toye, except a pair of handcuffs M a first Installment!" Toye rose in prompt acceptance of the challenge. "Seriously, Cazalet. you ask us to believe that you did all this to screen a man you didn't have time to recognize?" "I've told you the facts." "Well, I guess you'd better tell them to the police." Toye took his hat and stick. Scruton was struggling from his chair. Blanche stood petrified, petri-fied, a dove under a serpent's spell, as Toye made her a sardonic bow from the landing door. "You broke your side of the contract, Miss Blanche! I guess it's up to me to complete." "Wait!" It was Scruton's raven croak; he had tottered to his feet. ' "Sure," said Toye, "if you've anything any-thing you want to say as an interested party." "Only this he's told the truth!" "Well, can he prove it?" , "I don't know," said Scruton. "But I can!" "You?" Blanche chimed in there. "Yes, I'd like that drink first, if you don't mind, Cazalet." It was Blanche who got it for him, in an instant. "Thank you! I'd say more if my blessing bless-ing was worth having-irbut here's something that is. Listen to this, you American gentleman: I was the man who wrote to him in Naples. Leave it at that a minute; it was my second letter to him; the first was to Australia, Austra-lia, in answer to one from him. It was the full history of my downfall. I got a warder to smuggle it out. That letter was my one chance." "I know it by heart," said Cazalet. "It was that and nothing else that made me leave before the shearing." "To meet me when I came out!" Scruton explained in a hoarse whisper. "To to keep me from going straight to that man, as I'd told him I should in my first letter! But you can't hit these things off to the day or the week; he'd told me where to write to him on his voyage, and I wrote to Naples, but that letter did not get "You Broke Your Side of the Con tract, Miss Blanche." smuggled out. My warder friend had got the sack. I had to put what I'd got to say so that you could read it two ways. So I told you, Cazalet, I was going straight up the river for a row and you can pronounce that two ways. And I said I hoped I shouldn't break a scull but there's another way of spelling that, and it was the other way I meant!" He chuckled grimly. "I wanted you to lie low and let me lie low if that happened. I wanted just one'man in the world to know I'd done it. But that's how we came to miss each other, for you timed it to a tick, if you hadn't misread me about the river." He drank again, stood straighter and found a fuller voice. "Yet I never meant to do it unless he made me, and at the back of my brain I never thought he would. 1 thought he'd do something for me, after all he'd done before! Shall I tell you what he did?" "Got out his revolver!" cried Cazalet Caza-let in a voice that was his own justification justifi-cation as well. "Pretending it was going to be his check-book!" said Scruton. through his teeth. "But I heard him trying to cock it inside his drawer. There was his special constable's truncheon hanging on the wall silver mounted, for all the world to know how he'd stood up for law and order in the sight of men! I tell you it was a joy to feel the weight of that truncheon, and to see the hero of Trafalgar Square fumbling with a thing he didn't understand! un-derstand! I hit bim as hard as God would let me and the rest you know except that I nearly did trip over the man who swore It was broad daylight day-light at the time!" He tottered to the folding-doors, and stood there a moment, pointing to Cazalet with a hand that twitched as terribly as his dreadful face. "No the rest you did the rest you did to save what wasn't worth saving! sav-ing! But I think I'll hold out long enough to thank you Just a little!" He was gone with a gibbering smile Cazalet turned straight to Toye at the other door. "Well? Area't you going too? You were near enough you see! I'm an accessory all right" he dropped his voice "but I'd be prin cipal if I could instead of him!" But Toye had come back into the room, twinkling With triumph, even rubbing his hands. "You didn't see? You didn't see? I never meant to go at all; it was a bit of bluff to make him own up, and it did, too, bully!" The couple gasped. "You mean to tell me," cried Cazalet, Caza-let, "that you believed my story all the time?" "Why, I didn't have a moment's doubt about it!" Cazalet drew away from the chuckling chuck-ling creature and his crafty glee. But Blanche came forward and held out her hand. "Will you forgive me, Mr. Toye?" "Sure, if I had anything to forgive It's the other way around, I guess, and about time I did something to help." He edged up to the folding-door. folding-door. "This is a two-man job, Cazalet, the way I make it out. Guess it's my watch on deck!" "The other's the way to the police station," said Cazalet densely. Toye turned solemn on the word. "It's the way to hell, if Miss Blanche will forgive me! This is more liks the other place, thanks to you folK. Guess I'll leave the angels in charge!" Angelic or not, the pair were alone at last; and through the doors they heard a quavering croak of welcome to the rather human god from the American machine. "I'm afraid he'll never go back with you to the bush," whispered Blanche. "Scruton?" "Yes." "I'm afraid, too. But I wanted to take somebody else out, too. I was trying to say so over a week ago, when we were talking about old Venus Potts. Blanchie, will you come?" (THE END.) |