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Show WOMAN f iiS : Author of 'Ghe AMATEUR QAA6MAN. ; 2AFFLE5. Etc. 1 IllU5TIION5HT O.JRVaa3P J SYNOPSIS. 6 H i Cazalet, on the steamer Kaiser Fritz, ' Ihonu'wuv.l hound from Australia, cries (out In ills sleep that Henry Craven, wlm ken years before had rulneil his father lan; himself, is doiul anil rimls that Hil-'Mn Hil-'Mn Toye. who shares the stateroom with film, knows Craven and also Hlanche Macnair. a former neighbor and nkiy-Imate. nkiy-Imate. When the daily papers eomo Aboard ut .Southampton Toye reads that jCraven has been murdered and ealis Cazalet's dream second slht. He thinks kit doinK a little amateur detective work km the ease himself. In the train to town thev discuss the murder, which was roiti-pnitted roiti-pnitted at Cazalet's old home. Toye hears ! i'rom Cazalet that Seruton, who had been Cazalet's friend and the scapegoat for i Craven's dishonesty, has been released ifrom prison. Cazalet goes down the I Sriver and meets Blanche. Toye also 1 pmes to see her and tells Cazalet that pcruton lias been arrested, but as he doesn't believe the old clerk Is Kutlty he : ns Koinff to ferret out the murderer. I Cazalet and Blanche go to Cazalet's old J liome. j CHAPTER VI Continued. j "Every inch of it!" he said bitterly. )"But so I ought, if anybody does." "But these rhododendrons weren't here in your time. They're the one .improvement. Don't you remember ,how the path ran around to the other iend of the yard? This gate into it iwasn't made." "No more it was," said Cazalet, as fthey came up to the new gate on the bright. It was open, and looking ithrough they could see where the old ( ;gateway had been bricked. The rhodo dendrons topped the yard wall at that point, masking it from the lawn, and making on the whole an improvement of which anybody but a former son of the house might have taken more ac-count. ac-count. He said he could see no other change. But for the fact that these windows were wide open, the whole place seemed as deserted as Little- J ford; but just past the windows, and flush with them, was the tradesmen's door, and the two trespassers were barely abreast of it when this door opened and disgorged a man. The man was at first sight a most i incongruous figure for the back prem- i ises of any house, especially in the j country. He was tall, rather stout, i very powerfully built and rather hand some in his way; yet not for one mo-,ment mo-,ment was this personage in the picture, pic-ture, in the sense in which Hilton Toye had stepped into the Littleford , " picture. "May I ask what you're doing here?" he demanded bluntly of the male intruder. in-truder. "No harm, I hope," replied Cazalet, smiling, much to his companion's relief. re-lief. She had done him an injustice, however, in dreading an explosion when they were both obviously in the wrong, and she gTeatly admired the . tone he took so readily. "I know we've no business here whatever; but "May I Ask What You're Doing Here?" He Bluntly Asked. It happens to be my old home, and 1 only landed from Australia last night. I'm on the river for the first time, and simply had to have a look around." The other big man had looked far from propitiated by the earlier of these remarks, but the closing sen-tences sen-tences had worked a change. I "Are you young Mr. Cazalet?" he Ml cried. Ol "I am, or rather I was," laughed r i Cazalet, still on his mettle. : "You've read all about the case i then, I don't mind betting!" exclaimed the other with a jerk of his topper to ward the house behind him. ' "I've read all I found in the papers j last night and this morning, and such i arrears as I've been able to lay my j hands on," said Cazalet. "But, as I ! tell you, my ship only got in from Aus tralia last night, and I came round all the way in her. There was nothing In the English papers when we touched at Genoa." "I see, I see." The man was still looking him up and down. "Well, Mr. Cazalet, my name's Drinkwater, and I'm from Scotland Yard. I happen to be in charge of the case." "I guessed as much," said Cazalet, and this surprised Blanche more than anything else from him. Yet nothing about him was any longer like the Sweep of other days, or of any previous previ-ous part of that very afternoon. And t this was also easy to understand on I reflection; for if he meant to stand by the hapless Seruton, guilty or not guilty, he could not perhaps begin better bet-ter than by getting on good terms with the police. But his ready tact, and in that case cunning, were certainly cer-tainly a revelation to one who had known him marvelously as boy and youth. "I mustn't ask questions," he continued, con-tinued, "but I see you're still searching search-ing for things, Mr. Drinkwater." "Still minding our own job," said Mr. Drinkwater genially. They had sauntered on with him to the corner of the house, and seen a bowler hat bobbing in the shrubbery down the drive. Cazalet laughed like a man. "Well, I needn't tell you I know every ev-ery inch of the old place," he said; "that is, barring alterations," as Blanche caught his eye. "But I expect this search is narrowed, rather?" Rather, said Mr. Drinkwater, standing still in the drive. He had also taken out a presentation gold half-hunter, suitably inscribed in memory mem-ory of one of his more bloodless victories. vic-tories. But Cazalet could always be obtuse, and now he refused to look an inch lower than the detective-inspector's detective-inspector's bright brown eyes. "There's just one place that's occurred oc-curred to me, Mr. Drinkwater, that perhaps may not have occurred to you." "Where's that, Mr. Cazalet?" "In the room where the room itself." Mr. Drinkwater'e long stare ended in an indulgent smile. "You can show me if you like." said he indifferently. "But I suppose you know we've got the man?" CHAPTER VII. After Michael Angelo. "I was thinking of his cap," said Cazalet, but only as they returned to the tradesmen's door, and just as Blanche put in her word, "What about me?" Mr. Drinkwater eyed the trim white figure standing in the sun. "The more the merrier!" his grim humor had It. "I dare say you'll be able to teach us a thing or two as well, miss." She could not help nudging Cazalet in recognition of this shaft. But Cazalet Caza-let did not look round; he had now set foot in his old home. It was all strangely still and inactive, as though domestic animation had been suspended indefinitely. Yet the open kitchen door revealed a female form in mufti; a sullen face looked out of the pantry as they passed; and through the old green door (only now It was a red one) they found another bowler hat bent over a pink paper at the foot of the stairs. There was a glitter of eyes under the bowler's brim as Mr. Drinkwater conducted his friends into the library. The library was a square room of respectable size, but very close and I dim with the one French window closed and curtained. Mr. Drinkwa-! Drinkwa-! ter shut the door as well, and switched on all the electric lamps. The electric light had been put in by the Cravens; all the other fixtures in the room were asCazalet remembered them. But the former son of the house gave himself no time to waste in sentimental senti-mental comparisons. He tapped a pair of mahogany doors, like those of a wardrobe let into the wall. "Have you looked in here?" demanded de-manded Cazalet. "What's the use of looking in a cigar ci-gar cupboard?" Drinkwater made mild inquiry. "Cigar cupboard!" echoed Cazalet in disgnst. "Did he really only use it for his cigars?" "A cigar cupboard," repeated Drinkwater, Drink-water, "and locked up at the time it happened. What was it, if I may ask, in Mr. Cazalet's time?" "I remember!" came suddenly from Blanche; but Cazalet only said. "Oh, well, if you know it was locked there's an end of it." Drinkwater went to the door and summoned his subordinate. "Just fetch that chap from the pantry, Tom," said he; but the sullen sufferer from police rule took his time, in spite of them, and was sharply rated when he appeared. "I thought you told me this was a cigar cupboard?" continued Drinkwater, Drink-water, in the browbeating tone of his first words to Cazalet outside. "So it is," said the man. "Then Where's the key?" "How should I know? I never kept it!" cried the butler, crowing over his oppressor for a change. "He would keep it on his own bunch; find his watch, and all the other things that were missing from his pockets when your men went through 'em, and you may find his keys, too!" Drinkwater gave his man a double signal; the door slammed on a petty triumph for the servants' hall; but now both invaders remained within. "Try your hand on it, Tom," said the superior officer. "I'm a free-lance here," he explained somewhat superfluously super-fluously to the others, as Tom applied himself to the lock in one mahogany door. "Man's been drinking. I should say. He'd better be careful, because I don't take to him, drunk or sober. I'm not surprised at his master not trusting him. It's just possible that the place was open he might have been getting out his cigars before dinner but I can't say I think there's much in it, Mr. Cazalet." It was open again broken open before many minutes; and certainly there was not much in It, to be seen, except cigars. Boxes of these were stacked on what might have been meant for a shallow desk (the whole place was shallow as the wardrobe that the doors suggested, but lighted high up at one end by a little barred window of its own) and according to Cazalet a desk it had really been. His poor father ought never to have been a business man; he ought to have been a poet. Cazalet said this now as simply as he had said it to Hilton Toye on board the Kaiser Fritz. Only he went rather further for the benefit of the gentlemen from Scotland Scot-land Yard, who took not the faintest interest in the late Mr. Cazalet, beyond be-yond poking their noses into his diminutive di-minutive sanctum and duly turning them up at what they saw. "He used to complain that he was never left in peace on Saturdays and Sundays, which of course were his iifil 811 "You Ought to Have Been a Burglar, Sir," Said Mr. Drinkwater. only quiet times for writing," said the son, elaborating his tale with filial piety. "So once when I'd been trying to die of scarlet fever, and my mother brought me back from HastingB after she'd had me there some time, the old governor told us he'd got a place where he could disappear from the district at a moment's notice and yet be back in another moment if we rang the gong. I fancy he'd got to tell her where it was, pretty quick; but I only found out for myself by accident. Years afterward he told me he'd got the idea from Jean Ingelow's place in Italy somewhere." "It's in Florence," said Blanche, laughing. "I've been there and seen it, and it's the exact same thing. But you mean Michael Angelo, Sweep!" "Oh, do I?" he said Berenely. "Well, I shall .never forget how I found out its existence." , "No more shall I. You told me all about It at the time, as a terrific secret, se-cret, and I may tell you that I've kept it from that day to this!" "You would," he said simply. "But think of having the nerve to pull up the governor's floor! It only shows what a boy will do. I wonder if the hole's there still!" Now all the time the planetary detective de-tective had been watching his satellite satel-lite engaged in an attempt to render the damage done to the mahogany doors a little less conspicuous. Neither Nei-ther appeared to be taking any further interest in the cigar cupboard, or paying pay-ing the slightest attention to Cazalet's Caza-let's reminiscences. But Mr. Drinkwater Drink-water happened to have heard every word, and in the last sentence there was one that caused him to prick up his expert ears instinctively. "What's that about a hole?" said he, turning round. "I was reminding Miss Macnair how the place first came to be " "Yes, yes. But what about some hole in the floor?" "I made one myself with one ol those knives that contain all sorts of of things, including a saw. It was one Saturday afternoon in the summer holidays. hol-idays. I came in here from the garden gar-den as my father went out by that door into the hall, leaving one of these mahogany doors open by mistake. mis-take. It was the chance of my life; in I slipped to have a lo'ok. He came back for something, saw the very door you've broken standing-ajar, and shut it without looking in. So there I was in a nice old trap! I simply daren't call out and give myself away. There was a bit of loose oilcloth on the floor " "There is still." said the satellite, pausing in his task. "1 moved the oilcloth, in the end; hawked up one end of the board (luckily (luck-ily they weren't groove and tongue), sawed through the next one to it, had it up, too, and got through into the foundations, leaving everything much as I had found it. The place is so small that the oilcloth was obliged to fall In place if it fell anywhere. But I had plenty of time, because ray people had gone in to dinner." "You ought to have been a burglar, sir," said Mr. Drinkwater ironically. "So you covered up a sin with a crime, like half the gentlemen who go through my hands for the first and last time! But how did you get out of the foundations?" (TO BE CONTINUED.) i |