The Man who Paid

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 306, 17 March 1928, Page 20

The Man who Paid

(%y

Pierre Costello

Author of •• A Sinner in tsraeJ,** ** Tainted Lives,” *' The Money Master,” Etc.. Etc.

SYNOPSIS OP PREVIOUS CHAPTERS. CHAPTERS I. to lII.—On a stormy February evening:, amid the Black Mountains of Wales, a man, drenched to the skin, after more than two hours of steady climbing, finds hospitality in a cottage where an old man lives, with his daughter John Venetian is a venerable, whitebearded old man, imbued with communistic and humanitarian ideas. These he’ has consistently taught to his daughter, Grace, the heroine. The stranger is Norman Rivett, the hero, who has travelled in Africa, and has not been in England for nine years. Norman Rivett makes a quick wooing, and the couple are married exactly a week after her father s death. Settling her father's affairs, and being busy with her own nuptials. Grace has at last some breathing time when husband and wife reach Weaveham. Rivett engages a suite in the hotel. A few days after, in the evening, Grace dresses for dinner and goes to the reading room. Coming out she encounters a dark-haired man who speaks to her, giving his name as Paul Dacre. After some preliminary remarks this man informs her that her husband murdered his first wife ten years ago. CHAPTER V.—Continued. “No! Oh, no! I don’t want to hear. What is the good?” -You would rather judge me unheard!” Justice had boen one of her father s gods. She looked at him with a stoical gaze, gathering all her forces together against the horror that she was about to hear. Not the least of it. though she did not know it herself, was the thought that there had been another woman in his life. Rivett spoke very shortly and to the point. He made no attempt to gloss' over the ugliness of the incident that had sent him into exile. *My wife had refused to live with me lor three years. She never lost an opportunity of shaming me before the world. She made my life a hell. She went about blackening my name, putting my friends against me, carr> - ing on her intrigues in open defiance, making me a laughing stock and a scandal everywhere. At last I was desperate. I found her with the man she had left me for. She taunted me to the last. I was quite mad ” He looked at Grace, and a hungry flame leaped into his eyes. “I am prepared to believe you were mad when you killed her,” she said. “The man—her lover —recovered. He died five years later.” “Ah! You tried to kill him, too! She hid her face in her hands “Dacre did not tell yoi that? “No. I did not give vim time. I would not listen to him.” “It seems to me you listened to him long enough.” She did not answer. She was overwhelmed by this knowledge that but for chance, two lives might have been laid to his door. „ . •That is all the story, he said. “What do you want to do?” She stole a glance at his face. It was cold and challenging. “Do you want to leave me at once ; he went on.

’ “I —l don’t know,” she faltered. “I —I have married you.” “You have scruples—you take everything so seriously. You have promised to take me for better or worse.” There was the faintest echo of mirth in bis strong, compelling voice. “You must tell me what you want to do.” “Oh, I don’t know!” she said, again. “Will you let me decide, then? I will not importune or trouble you in any way. We will go abroad as we had planned. We will cause no scandal in that way. Perhaps, in time, you will be led to see things a little differently.” “Never”—she cried, passionately. “Never!” “Very well. You shall do exactly as you please.” “I have nowhere to go.” She broke down and cried like a child. His voice softened. “Come with me, then. You will be quite safe. We axe —just friendly strangers, if you can bring yourself to bo friendly. If not, then we are strangers altogether. And the moment you want to go, you are free. We will leave for the South to-mor-row. My business is done.” The rest of the day she spent alone. She realised that she was to spend all her days alone. It was overwhelming. She could not fathom it. From these first four glad days of blinding joy. of rapturous companionship; from the surrender of her whole self to this mighty passion that he had awakened in her —to blank, dreary, horrorhaunted loneliness. Mrs. Michael Lowson called on her, and brought her some lovely flowers and hothouse fruit. The good lady expressed herself in terms of goodnatured envy. “You lucky creature. Going to the South of Italy on a honeymoon with that perfectly lovely man!” Grace gave a little laugh of sheer misery. What was the spell that a murderer could cast over these women who would shrink in horror themselves from hurting a fly? The world seemed upside down to her Everybody must know that old story. Were she and her father alone in their ideas? Had society only condemnation for those whom the law condemned ? She did not see her husband until just before dinner. She had been packing. She was tired and she felt

blind and stupid with loneliness and grief. He came in, very quiet, bedraggled and soaked with rain. After greeting her he went straight to his room to change. Dinner had been ordered in the sitting-room. Grace wore a black frock. Pier face was white as paper. They, sat down in silence. Soup, fish, meat, game were placed before them, and taken away all but untouched. They made trivial conversation for the benefit of the waiters. Rivett drank wine sparingly. He looked as tired as if he had come from a battlefield. When they were alone, he looked at her and said suddenly—- “ Grace, were you ever in Weaveham before?” “Of course I was,” £>he answered. “We lived here.” “I don’t mean that. By yourself.” "Yes.” Pier voice halted ever so slightly. “I was a teacher in a secondary school at Denbury Road for a year. My father allowed me to come. I wanted to do something.” “When was this?” “Two yeare ago, I went back to Wales because my father grew worse, and needed me.” “Did you know a young man called Frank Moody?” She nodded her head. Speech came with difficulty to her. “Did you see a great deal of him?” She nodded again. Her face was shadowed as if with some bitter memory. Rivett’s voice struck her raw nerves like a \vlii*p. “P’rank Moody was the person I was fondest of in the world,” he said. "When I left England, ten years ago, he was twenty-two. Pie was more brilliant than anyone I have ever known. He was a scientist who had done the most prodigious things for his age. Pie would have been one of the most brilliant chemists of his generation if he had lived. While 1 was in Africa, 1 learned that lie had taken to drink, and other dissipations and died by his own hand. I learned that it was a woman who had driven him to it, a woman with whom he fell madly in love, and who led him on, and then threw him over and sent him to his shameful death. To-day, here in Weaveham, I have learned that that woman was you.” CHAPTER VI.—THE COUNTERCHARGE. A look of amazed horror spread over Grace Rivett’s face. She looked at her husband in the utmost agitation. “What can you mean?” she breathed. He looked back at her with accusing eyes. “Do you deny that you knew Frank Moody?” "No.’* “Do you deny that he was madly in love with you?” “I do not think he knew what love was.” she said in a low voice. “Ah!” He'caught her up with mocking hostility. “Now you abuse him. He committed suicide because of you. and now you run him down. He didn’t know what love was! He only knew enough to kill himself because you threw him over, and he couldn’t live

without you. That’s very feminine, Grace. But I didn’t think you were feminine in that way.” For a moment anger had flashed into her clear eyes, but it gave way at once to a numb look of bewildered horror. Pie was sitting in judgment on her. He believed that she had led Frank Moody on to make love to her and then thrown him over and sent him to ruin and death. He could believe that of her. In his eyes the cold scorn that a man would feel for such a woman as he took her to be. But how could he believe such a -thing of her? “W/ho told you this?” she asked him. She was quite mistress of herself. The shock of this discovery had braced her. “I went to visit Moody’s grave,” Rivett answered, “and on my way back I called on Professor High field, his teacher and master, who had written to me at the time of his death. In his letter he had given no personal details, but to-day he told me the* story of Moody’s downfall and suicide, and he said that the cause of it was a school teacher of the name of Grace Venetian. Tie' showed me portions of Moody’s diary; the outpourings of his mind when it had already become unbalanced. Your name was on every page. You obsessed him.” She flushed hotly and her eyes blazed. She was, after all, a creature of spirit and courage. “It is monstrous!” she said. Rivett’s eyes blazed back into hers. “You think my sin unpardonable,” ho sn id, coldly. “The slaying of the body. What about yours—the slaying of a soul! There is blood on your conscience, Grace, if not on your hands.” She sprang to her feet. Hot words rushed to.her lips, but she forced them back. She stood there, panting, her hands on her heart, her whole being a-quiver with passionate challenge. Her husband’s eyes rested on her sombrely—on her vivid youth, her white, flame-like beauty, her clear, brave, boyish eyes, her warm, dark head. “I deny your right to condemn me,” he said, “It is pure hypocrisy when you turn from me in horro.r.” “No!” she said. “No!” “Then what is it? Plave you any excuse, any explanation ? Do you deny that you sent Frank Moody to ruin and death?” “No!” Her voice echoe<,l through the room with startling effect. Then she could control herself no longer and ran to the door and into her bedroom. The tears of reaction overflowed and stained her cheeks in a hot and bitter stream. No, she would not deny this hideous accusation, although it was utterly untrue. That he could think such a tiling of her was the blow that finally beat her spirit to the very earth. After this slie felt that she would never care about anything again. CTo be Continued.)