A Runge in to the Unknown

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 289, 27 February 1928, Page 5

A Runge in to the Unknown

*SSIL

• Charles. D. .Leslie.

CHAPTER Xl.—m GROSVENOR PLACE “I was coming downstairs, using the front stairs," the housekeeper stated with elaborate preciseness, “and the time was half-past eleven by the clock on the first floor landing, it had just struck, and just before that I'd neard Big Ben striking the half-hour, the wind being westerly, and we always hear it then, when, at the last turn before one reaches the hall, I met Lady Doulton coming up, and it gave me such a start that I backed against the wall." “How was she dressed?" inquired Lord Boulton, as the housekeeper momentarily paused for breath. “In the dress and hat which she left in, my lord. I said, ‘Your ladyship!’ just like that." Mrs. Parr paused dramatically. “She said, ‘Ah, Mrs. Parr; everything all right?’ And she didn’t wait for an answer, but continued, ‘Please go to my bedroom, and fetch that small scent bottle with the gold stopper on my dressing-table, and bring it to my sitting-room,’ and with that she walks on upstairs, I following and saying nothing, it not being my place to nu'ike comments. “I went up to the second floor, leaving her ladyship on the first floor, and switched on the lights, and found the scent botth?, and I lingered a minute looking round to see that all was as it should be, for, of course, I expected her ladyship was stopping the night; and then I went to the sitting-room and found her ladyship, sitting quite calmly, waiting, and she said. ‘Ah, thank you, Mrs. Parr,’ and removed the stopper and put the bottle to her nose and then she put it in the little wristbag she carried, and rose, and nodded, ‘Good night,’ she said, and began to | leave the room." 1 “ ‘Your ladyship,* I calls out, ‘aren’t you stopping?’ ! “ ‘No.’ she says shortly, not turning I her head. “ ‘But, but,’ I stammers, and she pauses and says, ‘l’ve told Baldwin to inform his lordship of my visit, and with that out she goes, and I, so taken aback, I couldn’t say or do anything. And then I heard the front door bang and goes downstairs, and there was Mr. Baldwin ’’ Francis interrupted her. “On your oath, was it my wife you Sa 'o'n my Bible oath, your lordship." Lord Doulton looked at Baldwin. “Indeed, Master Francis, it was her ladyship." , , _ _ . „ “A flesh and blood ladyship, said Mrs. Parr half sadly, the idea of Lady Boulton’s wraith coming to the house having crossed her mind. “I mind I gave her the scent

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bottle her fingers touched mine. Oh, she was real, my lord, there’s no doubt of that." “Bah! I wasn’t thinking of ghosts. Wasn’t it someone else disguised—ah,” Lord Doulton moved swiftly to the door, “come with me, both of you,” he said, and hurried to the pretty little sitting room on the first floor, which was peculiarly Lady Doulton’s. He switched on the lights, and seated hims€;lf before the dainty escritoire Here Eva wrote most of her correspondence, and perfunctorily checked the housekeeper’s accounts. She had no passion for housekeeping herself, and Mrs. Parr by tactfully giving her to understand that she fully recognised her authority, was allowed a free hand. The old butler and the middle-aged housekeeper arrived to find the master of the house sitting before an open drawer in the escritoire. “The cheque book’s gone," he cried, “it was here after Eva left. That woman who has been here has taken it!"He happened to know that Eva, having a knack of always losing her keys, preferred to leave the drawers of her escritoire unlocked and keep her cheque book in a corner of one of them.. Her jewels her husband took care of. There was in her dressing room a desk where private correspondence was kept, but that was usually unlocked. Lady Doulton was one of those happy people who have no secrets to hide. She had left everything unlocked when she vanished. Francis had not condescended to search her correspondence and papers, but he locked up the writing desk in the dressing room and kept the key, and looked for the cheque book in the escritoire. It was in the drawer, and there he had left it. And now it was gone. “Yes, my lord, that’s what she came for,” declared the housekeeper, “now

I think of it I’m almost certain I saw 1 something green in her ladyship’s wrist bag when she put the scent bottle in it. But it was her ladyship herself, not somebody in her clothes.” Lord Doulton drummed on the escritoire, shaken by the woman’s positiveness. It had occurred to him that she had no particular love for his wife, so why should she lie about her, especially as the lie was so meaningless? “How was her ladyship dressed, my lord, when you saw her?” demanded Mrs. Parr. Poor Baldwin stood looking on in silence, the situation was beyond him. At the query Lord Doulton threw up his head sharply; he could hardly say off-hand how Eva was dressed when he saw her in Mrs. Dickson-Dickson’s concert room, but he vividly remembered the yellow Cloak she wore as she entered the taxi. He recalled the night Etfa first wore it. They were dining at a restaurant tete-a-tete, and doing a theatre later. When his wife appeared in it there had been a little scene. He had criticised the cloak. It was too striking, daring. The sort of cloak an actress or a lady unrecognised by society would wear. Not suitable for Lady Doulton. Eva had hotly contested the point and exercised all her feminine wiles in talking him over, promenading the hall in it, and daring him to say it was impossible. He had given way under protest, as husbands of pretty wives invariably do; anything and everything suits a young and beautiful woman. Later in the evening he had reluctantly confessed, the first shock of it over, that it suited her. “She was wearing that yellow opera cloak she bought some months ago," he said. “What’s become of it?” Mrs. Parr, of course, had nothing to do with Lady Doulton’s clothes, but being of the same sex took a warm interest in them. She replied at once. “Her ladyship took it a while back when she spent a couple of nights at Mrs. Tourmaline’s house. And I ■ haven’t seen it since." ; “Mrs. Tourmaline!” cried Francis, striking the desk with his fist and : springing to his feet. “She’s in this plot. She lied to me to-night when ; she said she knew nothing of Eva. ; Whistle up a taxi, Baldwin." ■ Then, remembering the time, he hurried from the room, preceding the old butler, and snatching a hat from the L stand in the hall, he was still wearing . his covert coat, dashed out of the » house. He was furious with himself { for not having guessed Mrs. Tourma- . line had lied to him earlier in the [ evening. Of course that was where . Eva was. One of them, at least. For unless his servants were lying, theie , were two Lady Douitons in London ; that night. He would go to Mrs. Tourmaline’s house and ring and knock ■ until he gained admission. The wide open space before Hyde Park Corner was as deserted as a desert, in the midst the equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington stood like a sphinx, brooding on the march of evolution. Francis strode across it a solitary moving figure in a world of inanimate nature. He reached Piccadilly and turned up Down Street, meaning to take a short cut into Berke-

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