Sentenced to Death

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 57, 30 May 1927, Page 14

Sentenced to Death

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Louis Tracy

Author of “ The Long Lane of Many Windings,” “ One Wonderful Night,” “ Love and the Aces,” “ The To\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 OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS. CHAPTER l. — A young officer, Antony Blake learns that he has not many I months to live. He arrives at a part of i Regent’s Park, where a pony and ; governess car are stationed. A vivid flash of lightning causes the pony to bolt. As Antony Is walking, two men overtake and rush past him, one tall and thin the other short and fat. The rotund runner falls, picks himself up and tears along. Antony notices a dagger in the grass. He reaches a small wooden hut. A girl is sheltering there. She tells him she was to meet her uncle, who was driving a pony in a governess car CHAPTER Ll.—Blake takes her to uer Home. Her name is iris Hamilton. Soon after he is again in the Park and he finds the dagger. The first item that catches his eye in the night's paper , is "Tragedy in Regent’s Park Supposed Murder." An other paragrapii details how Dr. Ensley Jones found a long-bladed dagger in the body of the dead man. its description 'allies with the one in Blake's possession He taxis ro the nearest police station and tells his story. Blake finds himself practically under arrest, suspected of complicity in the murder of Robert Lasting - ham. CHAPTERS 111. to XI. —Blake sees the tall thin man at Albert Gate, and after sending a note to Furneaux, follows him in Soho. Detectives join him and they succeed In finding the haunt of the criminals. The fat man walks in and is caught. An American crook threatens Blake over the telephone. Blake attends a dinner of detectives where the mention c? the name of “Natalie Gortschakoff” strikes terror into one of the guests. News comes of a fight between the police and a gang at Blake’s house Blake himself has another heart attack when he is on his way to Iris He goes to the fiat with a detective and Mrs Hamilton is arrested for complicity in the murder Natalie rings up Blake and he agrees to take luncheon with her. He is blindfolded and taken in a car to Natalie’s home where the villainess receives him graciously Injudiciously he drinks some vodka and loses consciousness He wakes up in Hamstead Heath. From observations he made in the house he is able to lead detectives there and a raid is made. But Natalie has disappeared. CHAPTER XII—In Blake’s diary Natalie has written a warning. Iris, who is supposed to have gone abroad, calls to see Blake and the young people discover their love. Iris explains how it was she came back to London. In the train her mother met Natalie Gortschakoff and on arriving at Dover she sent Iris back again. She finds a certificate of her birth which proves that ‘‘Mrs. Hamilton’-’ is not her real mother. Anthony and Iris then go to dinner with the detectives, and it is explained that Iris’s father was a diplomatic servant in Cairo. Both of her parents are dead. Iris and Blake decide i to get married in spite of the death sentence which is hanging over the man.

CHAPTER XIII. — (Continued). “Don’t fall into that error, Mr. Blake,” said Sheldon seriously. “Those blackguards avoid all possible risk. They take their victims unawares. And that is why we don’t want to corner Mademoiselle until we are sure of grabbing the whole gang. If she is arrested, and her followers are at liberty, they will kill in sheer wanton - ness. Terrorism is their fetish. If you mean to marry Miss Hamilton at an early date, for Heaven’s sake watch your step in the meantime!” “I think she must have managed her life rather badly,” said Blake. “Why didn’t she marry this unfortunate fellow years ago? She is not bad lookhave been quite capable of filling the position his wealth warranted. At that a thought struck Iris. “Has anyone told you that he was really rich?” she said. “No. It seems to be taken for granted generally.” “Perhaps he has made a will, and my supposed mother may be mentioned in it, which explains exactly why she sent me back to London. He may even have provided for me, and that accounts for the lawyers telling me just now that I must return to Queen Anne Street without fail after the funeral.” “Oh, have they done that?” “Yes. You’re not vexed dear, are you? Won’t it be nice if we have a few hundreds a year all our own? Then you needn’t work at all, and we can go to the country, and keep dogs and chickens, and a cow. I would just love to have a cow. I adore their beautiful, pathetic eyes. Is it wicked to ramble on like this” while going to a funeral? But I cannot help it. And I’m sure to weep again at the graveside." She wept, beyond doubt —broke down completely, in fact. Blake had to support her for some distance when the ordeal was ended. Many people, mostly strangers, had gathered in the cemetery. Some were employees in Lastingham’s City office, others domestics in his house. Not a few were journalists, while a score or more were curiosity-mongers. Standing unobtrusively on one side was Sheldon, and Blake was certain that three motorcyclists grouped at the main entrance were policemen in plain clothes. The two were about a hundred yards from the mortuary chapel, where the

cars awaited them. Iris was recovering from the shock of the first funeral she had ever taken part in, and was walking more confidently as they neared the chapel. Still, her head was bent, and she held a handkerchief pressed to her eyes, since no woman cares to be gazed at critically when tears are streaming down her cheeks. She paid no heed to her surroundings, therefore, but she could not fail to hear the man by her side utter a queer, gasping sob, while a convulsive clutch on her arm, followed instantly by his collapse to the ground, told her that something alarming and dramatically sudden had happened. Her first thought was that Tony was suffering from a heart attack, and she dropped to her knees almost as quickly as he fell. Then she saw, and the first miracle of that memorable day took place, because she did not faint. He had pitched iorward on his face, and the handle of a knife was sticking out from the left centre of his back, exactly as the knife had been lodged in Lastingham’s body six days earlier in Regent’s Park. Unhappy Iris! Her blood seemd to freeze and her brain to refuse its comprehension, and she tore frantically at the knife and drew its many inches of steel out of her lover’s body. The sight of the frightful-looking weapon with its ominous stain seemed to stir her to heights of undreamedof passion. “Oh!” she cried, pitifully, raising the dagger above her head so that all might testify to the horror of it. “Oh, see what they have done to my Tony! Oh, see.” Someone caught her by the shoulders and took the weapon from her grasp. The bystanders were startled anew by three pistol shots, at a little distance, but that same Doctor Ensley Jones who had made the first professional examination of the earlier victim, and had attended the funeral, owing to his connection with the case, drew all eyes in that place back to the tfiagic spectacle at their very feet.

“Good God,” he cried. “What are we coming to? This dagger is precisely similar to that which killed Mr. Lastingham.” However, the doctor did not allow the dramatic instincts of the Celt to hinder his surgical skill. Bidding someone take care of the lady, and another to telephone for an ambulance from the cemeteiy superintendent’s office, he slit open Blake’s clothes until the wound was bared. Then, improvising a swab from a handkerchief, he pressed it firmly over the cut. itself not so ghastly in appearance as those unacquainted with such deadly thrusts might expect. Some blood was welling forth, but the swab stopped that. An almost more terrifying sight was the steady stream issuing from Blake’s mouth. The undertaker suggested that the seemingly dying man should be carried into the chapel. "No,” said tne doctor. "Let him lie here until the ambulance arrives. He will be suffocated if moved now. Get that poor girl away. This is no sight for her.” But the “poor girl” refused to go, being of the breed which does not

yield when the strain comes. She could cry her heart out when moved by the solemn words of the burial service, but she could meet every emergency when her lover’s life was at stake. She actually put her hands under Blake’s forehead, and lifted his face an inch or so above the gravelled path. Then the day’s second miracle was witnessed, though none regarded it in that light. The flow of blood slackened, and ceased —yet Blake lived on. Those trying moments were punctuated by loud volleys from the exhausts of three motor-cycles, and by the sharper staccato barking of automatic pistols at rapidly increasing distances. By the time the ambulance arrived Sheldon appeared. He persuaded Iris to gp with Lastingham’s legal representatives in their car. She did not realise then that the senior member of the firm had promised to look after her in his West End house. “Oh, Mr. Sheldon,” she said. “Why did they do it? Have they no mercy? Do they spore no one?” Her tfroken voice was so sorrowladen that the hardened officer of police found it difficult to reply. Under the sheer stress of the effort he spoke savagely, vindictively.

“At any rate, if Mr. Blake dies, his murderer is dead already. That is my atonement for the blunder which may have cost that poor lad his life.” Sheldon was not doing himself justice, but his spirit was sore within him. He had to be rated soundly by his departmental chiefs before he could be brought to admit that nothing short of an armed phalanx could have saved Blake from that murderous attack. The newspaper reports which appeared that evening and next day gave thoroughly accurate accounts of what took place. After recapitulating the story of the Regent’s Park crime and describing the incidents of the actual interment, one of these statements, written by an experienced journalist, an actual eye-witness of events, reads: The chief mourner was Miss Iris Hamilton, a ward of- the deceased banker, and she was escorted by Mr Antony Blake, to whom, it is understood, she became engaged quite recently. Toward the close of the ceremony she yielded to a woman’s natural emotion, and Mr. Blake had to support her until the cars drawn up near the mortuary chapel were reached. The young couple were the first to move away from the grave, all others waiting there in silent svmpatliy. Thus, they led a small procession of some fifty people, nearly all

men, among wiiom, though known to very few, was Detective-Sergeant Sheldon, of the Criminal Investigation Department, as he has had special charge of the police inquiry into the Lastingham murder. The mortuary chapel stands in the central avenue, about one hundred yards from the main gate, which itself bisects the boundary wall, some three hundred yards in length, running north and south by the side of Cemetery Road. This wall, ten feet in height, is practically unscalable, but the devilish ingenuity of a man determined to commit a cold-blooded crime had provided against that obstacle—had, indeed, apparently turned it to his advantage. As the party o t mourners approached the chapel, a similar though smaller group converged on the same point from another part of the ground. It has been ascertained beyond doubt that all those in the second group, except one man, the criminal, had been attending the funeral of a local tradesman. It was, therefore, a terribly successful ruse that the murderer should attach himself to a gathering wholly unconnected with the obsequies of Mr. Lastingham. He thus escaped notice altogether when he might have been observed by sharp eyes stationed there for that very purpose—the detection of suspicious persons, while there was no apparent reason why he should not be following one of the two converging paths. The reporter then dealt with the actual stabbing, and Iris’s outcry, together with the measures adopted by

Meanwhile, running swiftly, the murderer, now known to be a discredited doctor, a native of Birmingham, who has not practised his profession for some years, and has gone under an alias as Paul Alexis Andrews, made for the extreme south-west angle of the cemetery. His line of flight had been well chosen. After the first few yards there was absolutely no chance of his being intercepted. Moreover, not one in twenty of those in the vicinity was aware that the wretch had plunged a dagger up to the hilt in Mr. Blake’s body. But the one man in whom such knowledge was a vital factor if a dreadful and callous crime .should be avenged, Detective-Sergeant Sheldon, saw the attack. He was some distance away, perhaps thirty yards, when the blow was struck and Mr. Blake fell. In the result the fugitive had some twenty yards’ start of the detective. Andrews, giving him the name by which he is best known, probably did not anticipate so ready a pursuit. Again, neither he nor his confederates, waiting in a fast car at the point in the side road just outside that part of the wall toward which he was running, counted on the presence at the cemetery gates of three motor-cyclists of the “flying squad” attached to Scotland Yard. Those men, though unaware of the actual cause of the sudden hubbub, realised that Sheldon was chasing some man with good reason, and, as shall be seen, took their full share in a grim business. (To be concluded to-morrow.)