The Nets of Fate

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 339, 26 April 1928, Page 5

The Nets of Fate

SERIAL STORY

By

OTTWELL BINNS

CHAPTER X.—Continued. John Lancaster’s wife stood there in a quandary. Then she looked toward an open door that led to a large conservatory. A moment later she moved toward it, followed by Dorian Paxton with an evil smile on his handsome face. Without speaking she led the way to the further end of the conservatory to a seat overhung by feathery palms and sat down. Dorian Paxton seated himself by her side. There were other people in the conservatory, but no one was near them, and when she had marked this fact, Jocelyn looked at her companion. “Well?” she asked. Dorian Paxton had obtained his opportunity, but found it rather difficult to say what he wished. He began atumblingly. "Before I tell you—a—the unpleasant—er —facts which have come to my knowledge, II should like to say that I—a—am thinking of your interest alone. Nothing but that could induce me to say what I am going to, and which I regret I—“I am willing to take that for granted,” Jocelyn interrupted. “Please tell me what you have to say, Mr. Paxton. I do like being kept in suspense.” “It concerns your husband, and, as I said, through him, yourself, and possibly your brother’s interests are involved also.” “My brother’s!” “Yes! It is quite a family affair, as you will see in a minute or two.” He paused, and took from his pocket a cigarette case. “Do you mind if I smoke?” She shook her head and he lit a cigrette, blew out a long stream of smoke and then continued. “You may remember the occasion of our last interview when you informed me that you expected to be married to another man, and perhaps you may recall that you did not then inform me of the name of the happy man. I only learned it for certainty when it was too late, or I should have sought this interview sooner.” He paused, waiting to see if she would speak, but as she remained silent he resumed. “On that afternoon after leaving you I went to my chambers, and there I found a man waiting for me. He was an inspector from Scotland Yard.” Again he paused and shot a glance a her face. It had grown white with apprehension, and with a gleam of satisfaction lighting his eyes he continued. “He had come to see me about that man Bierstein, who was murdered at No. 7, Carlow Gardens.” Jocelyn Lancster started, and he saw that the fan in her hand was shaking; but he continued remorselessly. “Naturally, I was surprised, until I learned that the discovery of an old letter of mine, found among Bierstein's papers, had led him to the conclusion that the murdered man and I were friends, and that, being at a loss in his search for the guilty one, the man had come to see if I knew if Bierstein had any enemies who might be responsible for his death —” “I was able to assure him that Bierstein had probably many enemies, but that I could think of no particular one who would do what had been done. Other things within my knowledge I kept to myself, as, for instance, that J'our brother was at No. 7, Carlow Hardens on the night of the murder, that he stayed some hours —” “You are wrong there,” she interrupted him, “Pat did not stay. It is true that I left him there when I want to the Harding-Harding's, and that I called for him on my return. Hut he was not there. As 1 learned afterwards he had returned to Lancaster Gate almost immediately. That j ran be proved. He could not haw.; hurt the man Bierstein, for the medical evidence showed that he must hat' o been alive long after Pat had calle d. I thought of all that which you are hinting, but I know that Pat is as innocent as you are yourself.” “I am glad to hear that,” answered Paxton slowly, “and not for a mfjment “° I question it, but it only gives a more serious aspect to one of the other things that 1 suppress/.*!, and j

that is that Bierstein and John Lancaster were on tlie worst of terms with each other.” Jocelyn Lancaster was startled, and cried protestingly, “but I do not see—” “Allow me to continue,” Paxton interjected, “and I shall be able to make it clear. When a murder is committed, particularly when it is a mysterious one like that at Carlow Gardens, the first thing the police look for is motive. In this case the motive exists if the police only knew it. Bierstein and Lancaster were bitter enemies, and the cause of their enmity was a woman. You will have heard of her, no doubt, perhaps seen her, for Vera Vanity is one of the most popular actresses in London.” He stopped for a moment as he caught the look on her white face, then he continued rapidly. “There was some sort of relation between Bierstein and the actress —what I am not prepared to say, while latterly society gossips have made very free with her name and Lancaster’s. It is even said that he runs the Medoc Theatre ior her benefit. But you see where the motive comes in. And there is another question which you might ask Lancaster himself, and that is, why did he send your brother to Africa before your marriage?” “But he has not sent —” “I assure you that he has; for I had i it from Pat himself. And I think I. know the reason, and it shows tlra duplicity of which Lancaster is ca£> able. Your brother thinks that Lane af jter wishes to help him to fortune, :ir ai is very jubilant over it; but the t<* al fact is that Lancaster is provi .fling himself with the necessary ? /capegoat.’ “What do you mean?” asked Jocelyn with faltering voice. “I mean that John Lancaster probably knows of your brother's visit to Carlow Gardens, and that he has sent him away so that, in tlj/3 event of the police obtaining knowledge, etc., of the matter that I have se t before you, suspicion may be diver ted from himself; for your brother left England the day after the mu'/dier of Bierstein, and to police eyes it will look remarkably like flight, a nd will form a proof of guilt. Lancaster knows that and so—” “I will never beliet it, never!” cried Jocelyn, passic mately. “John Lancaster could never do such a thing. He is—” “Just like any otlier man who is hard beset! Self-pr eservation is the first law of nature.’ * CHAP’PER XI. Jocelyn Lancas ier was stunned by the things w’hic? x her old lover had set before her, they seemed so hideously possible, and for a moment or two after Pax’ ion’s cynical interruption, she sat. quite still, without speaking. T lien in a toneless voice she asked, “ Why did you tell me these things'/ Why did you not tell them to the police?” “The police! My dear Mrs. Lancaster, ho-v / can you ask? As I explained to you in telling you of these things, I am thinking solely of your welfare; in keeping them from the police I am actuated by the same motive. Besides, I am not an informer.’" “But you have no evidence that my husba’jd was at Carlow Gardens on that r fight when Bierstein was killed?” “I have not said I have none,” answered Paxton promptly, “and I am not a policeman. I have not gone abOAit trying to find any; yet, nevertheless, I know sufficient to indicate the quarter where such evidence might be found.” The dismay of absolute conviction showed on Jocelyn Lancaster's face. She rose slowly to her feet. "I think I must go” she said. “I am not feeling very well. What you have told me has been a great shock to me.” “I was afraid it would be,” said Paxton, with simulated concern. “But before you go, I should like to make a suggestion to you.” And what is tha±?” “It is that you should not say anything about these matters to your hus-

band for fa little while. I may be utterly rai/jtaken in my conclusions —-I wish X »could think I were, but X am afraid 'I am not. It will be comparatively easy for you, however, to find OJ at the facts. If you wait you will p ossibly learn the truth without the ir ulgar method of direct attack. A man. who carries a crime on his conscience is sure to reveal it by some lifctl e indiscretion sooner or later. Wait un t il you have something more than my suspicions to go upon. I repeat on ce more that my sole thought in sfjtting them before you is your wel--11 are. If they are shared by others find there are developments, you are in a measure prepared now.” “Yes,” she answered wearily. “Perhaps what you suggest is the wisest course. I will consider it.” She turned to leave. “Please do not accompany me. I would rather go ajone. I shall return home at once.” She walked slowly out of the conservatory, and Dorian Paxton watched her go. There was a malicious light in his eyes and a sneer on his face. "I think,” he whispered to himself, “that there will be trouble for someone in that quarter.” The next few days were days of unutterable misery for Jocelyn Lancaster. Her husband had been called to Germany in connection with his vast business interests, and being left alone, she was able to review all that Dorian Paxton had told her. As she did so, her suspicion waxed and waned. At one moment she was convinced that all he had hinted at was true, and the next moment she told herself that it was quite impossible that a man apparently so upright and downiright as John Lancaster could be guilty of such a crime, or that ha could stoop to such duplicity as to prepare to make a scapegoat of her brother Pat. More than once she wondered if, from beginning to end, the whole thing were an invention of Dorian Paxton’s.

He had no cause to love her husband. He himself had said so, and had owned that they had not been friendly. At that last interview before her marriage when she had given him his dismissal, he had left her with a half-spoken threat upon his lips. It was true that apparently he had recovered from his chagrin, that in telling her of his suspicions he had from first to last protested that it was her welfare that he had in mind, but suppose it were not so, suppose ” Thus her mind worked in a w-eary round, no certainty anywhere, nothing but suspicions destroying her peace of heart without giving anything to fix upon, to hold to, and of which she might say. "This at least is truth.”

In this state of mind, sick of the gaieties of the season, which had suddenly become a mockery of her secret misery, she fled from London to the beautiful country home in Dorset. which her husband had bought before their marriage. There she made a discovery which increased her suspicions, and gave them a touch of ceitainty.

She was gazing listlessly at the curios in the hall, of which she had not previously taken much notice, having only been at the house for a crowded week-end, when her attention was arrested by two long sticks or •whips made of some kind of hide which was almost translucent. She took one down from the wall and examined it. It lay in her hand with perfect balance and it had the flexibility of india-rubber. But

good sheets for single beds. it was not india-rubber, it was leather of some kind, and as she looked at it she realised that it was a whip of foreign manufacture and design. She lifted it, and made it swish through the air. Again she raised it, and as she did so a door leading to the servants’ quarters opened, and a Kaffir page boydressed in “buttons” —a protege of her husband’s, stepped into the hall. At the sight of her with the whip raised as if to strike, the boy stopped dead, and a look of utmost terror came on his face. His eyes rolled wildly, and all his frame trembled visibly. “What is the matter, Loba?” asked Jocelyn in surprise. The boy looked at the whip of translucent rhinocerous hide, and in a flash she understood. He was afraid of her, afraid of the instrument in her hand. She gave a little laugh. “Come here, Loba,” she said, in a kindly tone. The boy accepted the invitation with a dubious air, shuffling toward her in manifest apprehension, his eyes fixed on the thing she held in her hand. “Why are you afraid, boy?” she asked, gazing at him curiously. The boy jerked his head a little. “The sjambok, missa. I not like it.” Sjambok! As the black boy spoke the word Jocelyn Lancaster started, and then looked curiously at the whip in her hand. “Sjambok!” she said. “Is this a sjambok?” Jocelyn looked at the boy again. He was still watching her with scared, apprehensive eyes. A thought flashed into her mind and she gave it outward form. “Have you ever been beaten with a sjambok, Loba?” “Yes, missa.” “Who did it?” she asked sharply. “The baas one time. Before that a Dutch transport baas.” She looked at the boy and then glanced from him to the whip once more, many thoughts galloping through her brain. “It would not be very nice, I should think, Loba—you may go, boy.” Loba scuttled away in a manner which betrayed a conviction that he had had a very narrow escape. At another time Jocelyn would have laughed at the ludicrousness of it, but now she scarcely noticed it. Carrytreated to the library, and sat down ing the sjambok with her she renear the fire with the whip still in her hand. Her face wore a perplexed, apprehensive look, and terrible suspicions were running through her mind. “It can’t be,” she whispered to herself, “it can’t be! And yet ” She remembered the police surgeon’s testimony that Bierstein be-

Known to cure in three weeks. fore his death had been soundly thrashed probably with a sjambok,, and here was a sjambok—perhaps the one which had been used on that fatal night. But it was unbelievable that her husband could have stooped to murder. All that §he knew about him cried out against the conclusion. Then once more doubts asserted themselves. “After all,” she said thinking aloud, “how much do I know about him? He has lived in wild places, places where the laws of neither God nor man are respected, where men hold their own lives and the lives of others cheaply. He has thrashed Loba with a sjambok, and Loba is but a boy!” The memory of his self-sacrificing courage on the night of their first meeting, of his chivalry on the occasion of their second meeting rose up to combat the conclusion to which suspicion pointed. But she shook her head thoughtfully. “There are two sides to every man, a good side and a bad side. I have not seen the bad side, and Dorian said, Dorian hinted, that he knew that John had been at Carlow Gardens the night that Bierstein was murdered.” She broke off her soliloquy as a new thought came into her mind. “Suppose it were he? Suppose he knows that I ” Her eyes, staring in the fire, had an absent look. She was thinking of the unknown man whom she had seen silhouetted against the window as she staggered out of that house of murder, the man who, as she had always thought, had carried her to the brougham and had given Hawker instructions to drive her home as quickly as possible. Was that unknown man, John Lancaster? It was more than possible, and as the conviction of that possibility took shape, she cried out in anguish: “Oh, what shall I do? What can I do?” For the present she could do nothing, and she spent three miserable days alternating between hopes and fears, now tormented with suspicions, then brushing them aside as mere phantoms of the mind that fuller knowledge would utterly destroy. But on the fourth day she remembered something—something that took her to town post haste, taking the sjambok with her. When she arrived home she went straight to her dressing-room, and, dismissing her maid, began to ransack drawers and boxes in a hurried fashion, but she did not find the thing she sought. When she had finished she stood in perplexity, then remembered. “Yes,” she said aloud, “it must be there. In the box I left at Lancaster Gate. I will fetch it. I will make sure.” She rang for her maid, who when she appeared was unable to conceal her amazement at the disorder of the room. “Tindall,” she explained, “I have been looking for something which I thought was here. I have just remembered that it is in a box which I left at my aunt’s house. I am sorry to give you trouble, but please tidy up this mess. lam going out for a short time.” “Yes’m.” She motored to Lancaster Gate to find that her aunt was away from home, but securing the box she hurried back again, and when the box was carried to her room she unlocked

it, and, bade Tindall unpack; it, whilst she sat watching her. Presently, a silver box in the form of a book came to light. “Oh, that is what I want, Tindall.” She stretched out her hand to receive it, but somehow missed her hold, and the box falling to the floor flew open, throwing out that which it held—a neatly folded silk handkerchief of a large size. “I am sorry, ma’am.” Tindall stooped to pick up both box and handkerchief, and as she restored the latter to her mistress there was a half smile on her face. “What are you smiling at, Tindall?” she asked rather sharply. The maid coloured. “It was the handkerchief ” she stammered. “It is Mr. Lancaster’s —I’m sorry, ma’am; I mean no offence, but it seems odd to find it here among your things.” Her mistress disregarded the explanation. Her eyes were fixed upon the handkerchief, and there was something in her face which provoked the maid's curiosity, and when she spoke there was an odd note in her voice. “How do you know it is Mr. Lancaster's?” “Begging your pardon, ma’am, but it's the monogram. There’s no mistaking it, because the L is rather a funny one, being made of twisted snakes. We were talking about in the servants’ hall the other day.” Jocelyn stared at the odd monogram with apprehensive eyes. “You—you are quite sure, Tindall?” she asked in a faltering voice. “Quite sure, ma’am!” Her mistress' rose suddenly to her feet. “You need not trouble to unpack

the box further,” she said. “I have found what X wanted, the rest can ; wait. But I want you to find me I another of Mr. Lancaster’s handker ; chiefs and bring it to me.” “Yes’m! ” The maid still lingered. Her mistress looked white and ill, and she was afraid that she was going to faint. But Mrs. Lancaster effectually dispelled that idea by saying in a peremptory tone: “Please do as I wish you at once, Tindall, and when you have found it bring the handkerchief to my bedroom.” “Yes’m.” Tindall departed without further delay, and her mistress moved slowly toward her bedroom, swaying as she walked. Her face was very pale, and her hands were trembling. There was a fire in the room, and near by a cosy chair. She dropped into it, and sat staring into the flames. Presently the maid returned, bearing in her hand a second handkerchief. Jocelyn took it, almost without looking at it. “Thank you, Tindall,” she said listlessly. “You may go now. I shall not need you.” Tindall departed, and as soon as the door closed behind her, Jocelyn Lancaster's listless air disappeared. Quickly she set the two handkerchiefs side by side on her lap, the corners with the monograms uppermost. There could be no question as to the identity of the monograms. Each L was made of a pair of twisted snakes. And the handkerchief —the one which she knew for her husband's, and the other which she had found at No. 7 Carlow Gardens on the night of the murder —were identical in texture and quality. She shook them out and put one over the other.

They were of the same size also! Her suspicion became conviction. With a low cry she let the handkerchiefs fall into her lap. “Then he was at Carlow Gardens that night, and ” The sentence was aot finished. With her face indicative of great anguish, she stared into the fire with tragic eyes. “Is Mrs. Lancaster in, Tindall?” The speaker was Jocelyn’s husband, but newly returned from the Continent, and eager for news of his wife. “Yes, sir. Mrs. Lancaster is fh her boudoir. She has not been out of the house these two days, and I don’t fancy she is very well, sir.” “Not very well!” John Lancaster’s face betrayed his concern at this news. “Has she had the doctor?” (To be continued).