The Green Bungalow

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 404, 12 July 1928, Page 5

The Green Bungalow

BY A POWERFUL WRITER.

bY

Fred M. White.

Author of " The Crimson Bind.” " The Cnrdinal Mothfix" The House on the River." &c.. etc.“

Synopsis op previous chapters. m£?^ > ?', ERS 1 and 11 -—Hilton Blythe. birth and breeding, accomplished - and card-sliarper, has lived on wits for many days at a stretch, and \fo^« vvc ?. ' experienced man. At the aft o P°bta.n Hotel, Brighton, he sees, in il« an _ interva l of three years, a lady ha« « Vender * an< * recognises that Nettie p-.,, qaite , grown up. With her is a man, eXDecSf 16 /’ * latel Y come into an unlovArc d f , ortu ne. They commune as that "k a ? d are happy. Roy tells her as bought a steam yacht, and la vYTL * 50 yachting with Shute. Nettie who Jr 13-1 s^e is amanuensis to Shute, ShnrcE° Ssesses the Green Bungalow at tnorru« aven * and tbat she goes there most Roy replies that he is due Bbi*p evening to play poker along iovpp, P l est Andrew MacGlendy. The ferie-ht^, and proceed to the East *> n Links where they sit down lev ”=ii After nine o’clock Harvriclc <a on MacGlendy, at 201 Bruns- * q u are - Pre£ t and Shute are alSnoriho, re ‘ . The four men motor to ?ar ar ,4 Ven beach. They dismiss the make tv, a^k to the bungalows. They Varda ,A e l r way to a building a hundred loea th« B u apar t from its fellows. Shute ’ow. t>® honours at the Green Bunga•Koy has already bought two packs

of cards at Weston’s. They play poker for «JJ 50 rises. Harley wins all along, the line. MacGlendy drops out after a while, and stands watching the others, lie accuses Harley of playing with marked cards, which Roy strongly repudiates. MacGlendy further accuses Harley of concealing the ace of spades in his pocket. Hoy, confounded, puts his hand in his pocket and draws forth the ace of spades. He swears that he never put it there. CHAPTER lll.— Continued. Mind, I made no attempt to conceal it; I laid it on the table, and then you can imagine what happened. You see, unfortunately, they were my own cards the cards that I bought from Weston’s in Castle Square yesterday. L had taken them with me to the bungalow, and I broke the twine on them and tore off the covers myself. The suggestion was that I had very cunningly opened both packs beforehand and doctored them, after which I had replaced the covers so carefully that they appeared to be intact. Heaven

only knows how the whole thing was managed, but there it was. I had been caught cheating at cards, with two marked packs provided by myself, and I had won a lot of money from one of my very best friends. What could I say, Nettie; what could I do? I proclaimed my innocence, I swore that there must be some mistake here, but I hardly dared to suggest that I was the victim of a plot. You see, I was dealing with men of high repute, one of them being my oldest friend. You wouldn’t suggest for a moment that Prest had anything to do with It.”

“Oh, no,” Nettie said. “Such an idea is unthinkable. Mr. Prest is a gentleman.” “And my rival,” Harley said, with a queer smile. “But I ought not to have said that. As a matter of fact, Walter Prest was the hardest of the lot. So far as Macglendy and Shute were concerned, they were quite satisfied to accept an apology from me, and an admission that I had done wrong. I was grateful for the way in which they behaved, but Prest was as hard as iron. You know what a keen soldier he is, you know how fanatical almost he is with regard to the honour of his regiment. Of course, he was most fearfully cut up, and in a great state of agitation, but, though he was quite willing that the matter should go no further, he was firm on the fact that X must send in my papers and resign the membership of ail my clubs. As an officer in the Guards, he declared that he could do no less. He wanted to shake hands with me afterwards, and advised me to go abroad in the yacht for two or three years, until the thing was more or less forgotten. And, upon my word, Nettie, I was so broken up that I almost agreed. As I sat there with my miserable thoughts, it seemed to me that, at any

rate, you might believe me ” “Oh, I do, I do,” Nettie cried. “I know that you are incapable of anything of the kind, and, even if it were true, then I would stand by your side and look the whole world in the face. We should be quite happy somewhere abroad, say South America, and we could see the world in that new yacht of yours. But then, you are innocent, Roy. I am convinced that you had nothing to do with this vile thing, and I am sure you will agree with me, when I say that this dreadful thing must be faced, and the truth brought to light.” Nettie spoke with a white, set face, and the suggestion of a tear in her eye, but the lines of the little mouth were firm enough, and Blythe gently applauded her decision as he sat quietly at the writing table watching every change of expression. “Now, that is just exactly what I expected you to say,” Roy replied. “It makes me almost happy to hear you speak in that way. And you will be glad to hear that I refused to spend the rest of my life under a cloud, as I

decline to accept your offer. I am not going to marry you and take you abroad, and leave scandalmongers to think that there is some guilty secret. I refused to entertain the suggestion, and said that I should fight for my honour to the bitter finish. God knows how it is to be done, but there is no other way. And Prest was quite decent about it—he said the would give me a month to think it over, meanwhile, nothing would be done, and nothing would be said. I had half agreed to take Shute and Macglendy yachting with me, and perhaps I shall now, but this trouble has to be faced.”

“Of course, it has,” Nettie said warmly. “Do you think that there is anything wrong with these men? I don’t mean Mr. Prest, but the other two. Isn’t it possible that they have some design upon you—some reason for getting you into their hands? I feel in a mood now to suspect everybody. Oh, let’s go outside and talk it over, I can’t breathe properly here.” Blythe sat at the writing table after they had gone, turning what he had heard over in his mind. He had found something which he had more or less expected to find, and he was trying to see some way out of this tragedy into the light. “I think I have heard something like it before," he muttered to himself. “Now, where have I heard of, or read about, a plot like this? It seems so familiar. Now, I wonder — ah! that’s' it. It’s exactly the same thing over again. Now, what on earth is the name of that book, and where did I read it I shall have to find out, of course, and it’s any money that

Shute has a copy. If he has, then so much the worse for him.” CHAPTER IV.—BLYTHE TAKES A HAND. Andrew Macglendy had dined comfortably and well in his luxuriously appointed house, 201 Brunswick Square, and sat the the dinner table smoking a choice cigar and drinking his coffee. Opposite him was his wife, a handsome woman, though somewhat faded, with grey hair, and a dead white face, and possessing about as much vitality as an automatic figure. There was something almost grotesque in the way she moved, when Macglendy spoke to her, and the look of almost abject terror on her face when he addressed her. For the rest, she was tall and slim, most exquisitely dressed, having the air and manner of one who, at some time or another, has known what it is to move in good society. But all that was warm and human had been ground out of that unfortunate woman years ago by one who, in every sense of the word, was her lord and. master. Those who knew declared that Mrs. Macglendy was well-born, and that she was closely connected with more than one aristocratic family. She was supposed to have come to her husband years ago with a comfortable fortune of her own, but that had long been squandered by an extravagant husband, who

now, to put it bluntly, more or less lived upon his wits. Time was, when this woman had been young and full of life, and very much in love with the man considerably below her, and with whom she had run away, to the great scandal of her friends, who, from that moment, refused to recognise her existence. It had been somewhat of a romance in its way, but the romance was long since dead and forgotten, and it i 3 no exaggeration to say that the poor, unhappy creature, went in daily fear of her life. She knew, only too well, through bitter experience, what kind of a life Andrew Macglendy was leading, for, in that brutal, good natured way of his, he made no secret of the fact. She had known times when she had gone literally hungry, and times when she was living in a sort of dazzling splendour, as she was just then, at Brunswick Square. This was one of the brighter intervals, but if Mrs. Macglendy had been consulted, she would have preferred those dark weeks of poverty. Meanwhile, she sat there, beautifully dressed, in that grotesque semblance of a wax doll, with her eyes turned towards her husband, as if to anticipate his slightest wish. “Well,” he said presently. “Well. What do you think of it?” Isn’t this a pleasant change from the last logdings we had in Paris? And there you sit, without saying a single word, like a death’s head at the feast, when you might be enjoying this spell of good fortune of ours. There, for Heaven’s sake, don’t start crying.” (To be continued.)