The Fatal Climb

NZ Truth, Issue 1196, 1 November 1928, Page 7

The Fatal Climb

testing and distracted m the closed AVhippet car, he speeds on.

Papamoa to Rotorua is forty-one miles, and surmising that they left about 5.30 p.m., they would pass through the latter town about 10.15 p.m., or thereabouts.

Rotorua to Hamilton is about eighty miles, which would bring them, through there about 1.15 a.m. or 1.30 a.m.

Hamilton to Mercer, forty-one miles as near as can be, and they pass through' there about 3 a.m. or a little later. • '■

Allowance has to be made for the change of tyre somewhere on the journey, but where that took place, cannot be said. .

There remain another forty-odd miles to be covered, m which is the Razor Back — the deviation was not open — and so they arrive m the vicinity of Auckland just after dawn, or even a little later.

■ It is likely that there was more than one stop on the wild and agonizing journey — at least, we can believe it was for Elsie, who may have become actively annoyed long before Panmure was reached.

'On nearing- the city, the brute at the wheel turns to the right at Otahuhu, and takes . the concrete road which links that town with Panmure. The store there opens at 7 a.m. or thereabouts, and the question is: Had the man, by professing repentance and regret, coaxed the doomed girl into a quieter frame of mind, and . did he — out of the money he had stolen, having stopped, the car — purchase some small refreshments, among them some "Minties" m the bag on which was Yeafman's brand, and which was later found close to the scene of the crime? <? It is a big thing to ask of any memory to cast back a couple of weeks and identify an early-morning purchaser of some small, every -day commodity which has a ready sale. In any case, this man, who knows the district so weli, finally having stopped the car near the gate which was the gate of Death to her — induces Elsie to step out into the early morning sunlight. .

For surely he did not have the audacity to carry her limp body from the road to the place where it was eventually' found two hundred yards or more away?

No, "Truth" prefers to assume thsft he cajoled the unhappy and distracted girl—still wearing the clothes m which she had done the final household duties of the day on that calm and peaceful evening— -into the broken ground of the paddock.

No doubt he said they had better talk the whole matter over; she was "m for a penny, m for a pound," and if she found herself m a quandary, how much greater was his? . ' ,

He. had driven a car which did not