Sentenced to Death.

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 33, 2 May 1927, Page 14

Sentenced to Death.

by

Louis Tracy.

Author oj ” The Long Lane of Many Windings," “ One Wonderful Night " " Love and the Aces," 4 * The Tol>en," &c., &c.

(Copyright for the Author in the United States and Canada by Edward J. Clode, Inc., New York. All other rights reserved.)

SYNOPSIS OP PREVIOUS CHAPTERS. CHAPTERS I. to lI.—A young officer learns from a skilled physician and an equally clever surgeon that he lias not many months to live. An operation is out of the question. One of the valves of the heart is clogged and nothing less than a miracle can save him. The patient, Antony Blake, leaves the house in Harley Street and wends his way to Regent’s Park. He experiments on his heart by stepping into the roadway at a critical moment, but survives various vituperations and receives warning from a policeman. He arrives at that part of the park where the pony and governess car are stationed which: had passed through Harley Street during his interview. The stout driver has vanished. The threatening thunderstorm breaks just as Blake enters the park proper. A vivid flash of lightning causes the pony to bolt. As Antony is walking, in a drenched condition, two men overtake and rush past him, one tali and thin, the other short and fat. The rotund runner falls. The other continues his pace. The fat man picks himself up and tears along. Arriving at. the place where the man had fallen Antony notices a sharp-pointed dagger shining in the grass. He picks up and examines it, finally flinging it into the long grass fringing the shrubbery. He reaches a small wooden hut. A girl is sheltering there Another thunder-clap drives her further back. He shelters there also. Another vivid flash reveals each to the other. He sees a slender, prettv girl; she sees the fine type of British officer, her senior by a few years She has also seen the two men. He tells her that the fat man is coming back again. He feels sure that the man is seeking for his dagger. The girl tells him she was to meet her uncle, who was driving a pony in a governess car. Antony tells her it has gone, but not that the pony bolted. The two leave the hut, turning to the leflt instead of to the right. Had they turned in the opposite direction they would have been seen by the one man fated to become their deadlv enernv. though known to neither The man hails a taxi and offers to take the girl home. CHAPTER ll.—(Continued). “No. My hearing is good, and my sight, too. The lanky individual who raced the fat man across the Park is hanging about a bit higher up the road. I don’t want him to take special notice of me, which he might do after having had a good stare at you. He has spotted us already, as he is watching this gate. . . Yes —that’s a nice, obedient little girl. Lean well back. Don’t let that chap see your face. . . Now I can explain matters a bit. I believe those two blighters are no better than they look. They were up to some mischief in the park. The tubby scoundrel has gone back to search for a dagger which shot out of its sheath when he fell after a col-

lision with the lad now trying to catch a glimpse of us. They were running along the path I was on, and would hardly pay heed to me now as I pass, but, as I found the dagger and hid it, and mean to get it later, I’m keeping out of the picture for the moment. You, of course, are not in evidence at all where they are concerned.” The girl, not in the least afraid of being in a taxi alone with one who told such a queer story, was alarmed nevertheless, and showed it. “Do you think they meant to harm anyone?” she said tremulously. “I don’t quite know what to think. The more 1 review the circumstances the more I am convinced that the police should examine that knife and be supplied with fairly accurate descriptions of its owner and his companion.” He did not add that now, reviewing the circumstances at leisure, he was puzzled to account for the sudden appeaarnce of the men in the first instance. The path took off from no other point than the wicket near which he left the pony and cart. When he returned there he had looked up and down the Inner Circle Road, which was absolutely empty. It was literally impossible, therefore, that the pair should have overtaken him so quickly from that direction. Whence then, had they come? Obviously, having suppressed his knowledge of the bolting pony, he did not go into these details. Oddly enough, however, the young ladyseemed to be reassured by a statement which he knew was incomplete. “Was that why you were so silent after we left the hut?” she said. He looked at her again with a frank smile which she found infectious, because she smiled, too. “Yes, he said. “I admit a sort of half-baked suspicion that you are annoyed with me. At last I know why. Please forgive me. I have a silly habit of concentrating on one thing to the exclusion of all else, and the antics of those two rascals worried me. Of course, it may all be the stupidest kind of mare’s nest, but, if anything comes of it you might like to hear. Shall I send you a line? My name is Antony Blake, late of the 12th Lancers, but now, and for a few months to come, a person of ample means and nothing to do.” The girl hesitated, if only for a fraction of a second. “It would be interesting,” she agreed, extracting a card from a tiny handbag attached to Ijer left wrist. He read: “Miss Iris Hamilton,” with the address she had supplied already. “That’s my place,” he said, nodding towards a house opposite Lord’s Cricket Ground. “B Flat, which a musical friend of mine says equals A sharp. He thought the inference was funny, too. Do you?” “Perhaps he was only being rude." “Oh, no. He’s just one of those silly asses who cackle at their own moth-eaten jokes. . . Do you ever go to Lord’s?”

“I’ve not been there this year. My brother used to take me, but he is in South America now.” “There’s a jolly good knock tomorrow—Yorkshire v. Middlesex. Is it frightfully forward if I ask you to come along about eleven? I’ll be waiting at the gate—my own gate, I mean—and I’ll take you in. I’m a member.” “I can hardly do that can I,” she said rather markedly. Miss Iris Hamilton did pause then, at last, lifting her eyes to his in utmost candour. “No. I suppose not, now that I think of it,” he said. “Dash it all! I’m not acquainted with any lady in London whom I know well enough to ask her to meet you. Can’t you bring your mother, or an aunt, or a sister? This is my last chance of seeing' such a match, it’s rather tiring being alone all day.” “Are you leaving England soon?” “Yes—for good—in six months —possibly much less.” He imagined that his tone was quite casual, but a woman’s ears are tuned to fine cadences, and some vibration in his voice caused Iris to change her ground. “It’s rather absurd, isn’t it, that I should be glad of you.r company in a lonely hut in Regent’s Park, to-day, and refuse to bfe seen with you among ten thousand people, to-morrow?” she said, blushing at her own daring. “I’m not positively certain of being free in the morning, but, if I am, and the weather is fine, I’ll come along at eleven, on condition that you promise faithfully not to wait longer than five minutes. . . . And, now, would you mind halting the cab at the corner. There’s an inquisitive old maid who sits all day behind a curtain in the next house to ours, and she’d be only too pleased to see me accompanied home by a strange young man.” “Y'ou mean, I hope, a young man who is a comparative stranger?” Each was rather taken with the other, and, in such conditions, any banal quip passes as humour. They parted like old friends. The girl wondered whither Mr. Antony Blake was bound within six months, or less, and decided to find out next day should they go together to the cricket match. The man, reading her ingenuous thought, smiled grimly as he re-entered the taxi. When Miss Iris Hamilton’s harmless inquisition began he must be ready with some plausible story of unavoidable journeyings far a-field. Soon after five o’clock, while debating the ever-present problem of cloth-

ing, he looked out through a bedroom window at a blue and cloudless sky. The storm, violent enough while it lasted, had passed for the time, and there was every indication of a fine evening. That decided him. He slipped on a dressing-gown, asked his elderly housekeeper to bring in a cup of tea, and sat down to review his finances carefully. In another hour he would dress for dinner —a pleasant custom which, especially in these recent days of public malaise, seemed to banish care for a few hours, at any rate. Then he would stroll across the park, pick up the dagger, and wrap it in some corrugated cardboard and brown paper. Probably, about nine o'clock he would call in at Scotland Yard, and report the incident to the authorities. He reasoned that the present delay was advisable. It was highly improbable that the fat man would make a cast wide enough to discover the lost weapon. If he did, it would take some time. In any case, the search would hardly continue for nearly three hours. Blake adhered to his programme. He had been taught steadfastness in the army. If one made a plan it should be followed rigidly unless circumstances came to light which necessitated a change; else why trouble about plans at all ? In this instance there was no apparent call for any deviation. So, about seven o’clock, he was in the park once more. Watching his opportunity, he walked straight to where the dagger was lying, and had it rolled in a strip of cardboard before it was well clear of the ground. As he rose he felt that stab of pain in his heart again. Rather defiantly, having completed an innocent-looking package with a piece of twine, he filled and lighted his pipe. In Marylebone Road he took a taxi to the “Rag,” where he dined with a couple of men still in the service. To them he related that part of his afternoon’s experiences which affected the storm-scared runners in Regent's Park. Their curiosity was aroused, so he sent a waiter to the cloak-room for his parcel. One of his friends, who was by way of being an authority on such matters, recognised the weapon as being of Levantine design. “This thing was forged and ground somewhere east of Malta, probably in Athens,” he said. “The stain at the tip of the blade is Nux Vomica, a vegetable poison, intended to ‘mak* siccar’ as the Scots phrase has it. Of course, you will handle it carefully in any

conditions, because a mere scratch with the point might mean death. What will you do with it?” “Take it to Scotland Yard, of course.” “Save yourself the trouble, old bean. They will only refer you to your local detectives. The Albany Street police station looks after the Inner Circle. I know, because I was pinched there once for exceeding the speed limit.” “Dash it all, that’s the wrong side of the map for me! I live in St. John’s Wood.” “Well, look up the nearest one in the telephone directory. And —hold on! let me stick the business end of this bodkin into a cork. Don’t forget to tell the bobbies what I said about the brownish-green stain. I’d like to hear more of this business if you are brought farther into it.” Blake’s friends were bound for a theatre, so he played bridge for an hour. Then, thinking to consult the weather forecast before driving home, with a call at the St. John’s Wood police station on the way, he glanced through the day.’s news bulletins, which, by that time, about half-past nine, were fairly extensive. And this was the first item which caught his eye: TRAGEDY IN REGENT’S PARK—SUPPOSED MURDER. The Metropolitan police are investigating an extraordinary discovery made to-day on the Inner Circle Road, Regent’s Park, during the height of the thunderstorm which burst over London at four o’clock. A gate-keeper at the Botanical Gardens saw a pony attached to a governess-car galloping along the road from the east. The animal was nearly spent, so the assumption is that it had travelled at least the full extent of the Circle, and it stopped quite readily when the man ran into the road and faced it. At first he was under the impression that the vehicle was empty, but, when he caught the pony’s head and had succeeded in quieting it, he found that a man's body was lying between the seats. The attendant, whose name is Hopkins, called for assistance, and speedy examination showed that the presumed driver was dead, while letters and other memoranda taken from his pockets revealed him as Mr. Robert Lastingham, a financier long connected with commercial undertakings in Egypt and Syria, whose city office is in Old Jewry, and private residence in Queen Anne street, W.I. At first, judging from facial discoloration, the employees of the Botanical

Gardens believed he had been struck by lightning—a quite possible explanation, as several trees in the park were shattered, and a boat-house completely wrecked during the storm, but Dr. Ensley-Jones, who was detained in the Gardens by the sudden downpour of torrential rain, soon ascertained that the unfortunate gentleman had been stabbed through the back under the left shoulder-blade. Death could not have occurred many minutes before

Hopkins stopped the runaway. The body was removed to the Marylebone Mortuary, where a detailed examination will be made to-night. Meanwhile a butler and valet in Mr. Lastingham’s service have identified the dead man beyond doubt v'To be Continued.)

The leading attributes of the Scot are brains and modesty.—Professor W. M. Calder.