“THE WAY OUT”

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 507, 9 November 1928, Page 5

“THE WAY OUT”

Or “HEMING’S PROBLEM.”

By

H. Maxwell.

CHAPTER XV (Continued).

“No. clear, no; that can’t be true.” “It must be true, mother. Roger Is being made a victim aud scapegoat. And he has done nothing. He did not lull Mary Bars tow; and he did not sell naval secrets. He has been cruelly punished for what he didn't do, and he is to go on being punished because it doesn’t suit the Government, of which father is a member, to have these matters thrashed out in public. It’s an intolerable injustice; it's horrible —a horrible infamy.” “My dear child, you can’t believe your father capable of . . ” “I don’t know what to believe about him. Yesterday—this morning I thought him perfect; now' I don’t know. He doesn’t want me to marry Roger, he doesn’t care what happens to him. I guessed it when he was urging me to break off the engagement. He pretended he didn’t wish it. It was hateful listening to him. Now I understand; he knew this was coming, and he was trying to make me think he didn't know. Who am l to believe? Who is going to help me?” “I will help you. dear.” and Rady Elizabeth held out her arms to the girl. , _ ... But Cicely was in a mood of wnia revolt, and did not respond. “Why were you so anxious to hurry on the wedding? Why? Tell me, she challenged her. If her father had deceived her, why not her mother too? “Surely, Cicely, you are not being lair to me.” “You had some reason, mother, a secret reason, and 1 want to know r it. And Lady Elizabeth tried to answer and couldn’t; she tried to meet the girl’s piercing gaze and couldn’t; and so she took refuge in gentle reproof and stately displeasure. “This is unworthy behaviour to me, Cicely. I will talk to you when you have more command of yourself, w T hen you are sufficiently calm to know you’re saying.” Cicely laughed and w r alked out of the room. Heming came in soon afterw r ards, and said to his w r ife: “I suppose Cicely has told you she has decided to break it off with Roger?” “Yes, she has told me.” The placid tone of the answer agreeably surprised Heming, who had expected indignant protest. “I am convinced it’s- for the best. Elizabeth, it was her own spontaneous notion.” “Edward,” she intervened, “I suppose if Roger’s ticket-of-leave were cancelled for any cause the Admiralty hardly consider it worth while to proceed with the inquiry into the Blatter of the stolen plans?” “Naturally they would be less keen about it,” he replied; “but why?” He marvelled at the irrelevance of her question. And then she told him Mrs. j Eerrers’s news. CHAPTER XVI MR. ALEXANDER STONE Cicely’s wild anger at Roger’s treatment was aggravated by her own sense of shame at having deserted him. She could not rest; she had to . ° something immediately. She realised now that Roger’s safety, Roger’s OV0 » Roger’s rescue alone mattered;

that Roger was all in all to her. And she also realised she could depend upon nobody but herself to help him. It was no use seeking counsel or advice elsewhere. So she determined to force the Government to do him justice by enlisting on her side a voice to which they had already been compelled to listen. It was Cicely’s definite resolve to tell her story to the editor of the “Wilchester Gazette.” At half-past six she arrived at the “Gazette” offices, having walked the two and a-half miles into the town; the walk had served to calm her uerves without weakening her purpose; on the way she had carefully rehearsed what she intended to say. “I want to see the editor,” she said at a small window, on which was painted th*e word “Inquiries,” just inside the shabby doorway. “What name?” queried a shockheaded youth. “Say, Miss Heming—Sir Edward Conway-Heming’s daughter.” In five minutes Cicely was inside the editor’s room, facing a big, bearded man with a bald head, who, rising brusquely from a desk heaped with a semingly hopeless litter of papers, received her with a prolonged stare of fierce surprise, then abruptly pointed to a chair and invited her to sit down. “I’m Alexander Stone, the editor. You want to see me?” he said, glaring like an ogre. “I’m Miss Heming. Last week you published something about me and my father and Mr. Roger Temple to whom I’m engaged to be married.” “We didn’t attack you; we were sorry to have to drag your name in: our columns are open to your firends if they wish to reply, but I may as well tell you at once we are not going to stop.” His demeanour was truculence itself; his expression extraordinarily fierce. “I’ve come to ask you to go on with it,” said Cicely, quietly. Mr. Alexander Stone leant back in his chair, blew his nose, and growled:

“What’s that you say?” “I’ve come to tell you the truth about Mr. Temple, whose fieket-of-leave was cancelled to-day; he has been re-arrested and taken back to Dartmoor,” said Cicely. In an instant Alexander Stone was all attention. He was a shrewd man, with a big heart and a rugged nature, the father of a large* family, and a born fighter. He was too big a man for the “Wilchester Gazette,” and he only came to be there because his domestic responsibilities and narrow means compelled him to take the first job that offered; it was for that reason he had never been able to win to London. The Conway-Heming scandal had brought his name prominently to the front after years of drudgery; it gave him his first chance of rising from the ruck, and he was doggedly determined to make the most of it. So woe betide the girl if she were trying to bluff or coax or cajole him, as he believed she was; he was ready to crush her with brutal plain-speaking when the actual purpose of her visit was disclosed. Yet her manner was so simple and frank, her looks so forlorn and pitiful, that, to steel his heart her he had to think his hardest of his wife and family and their hundred and one necessities. “Dartmoor is the best place for him; he ought never to have been released,” said Alexander Stone. “If you’ll kindly wait until you’ve heard my story. . . .” “I expect I ought not to let you tell it,” came the gruff rejoinder. “Did your father send you to me?” “My father? No. It is because he won’t help me I have come to you.” “Oh, indeed,” said the other suspiciously. Did she expect him to believe that? Yet her statement was made so quietly and convincingly that he had much ado not to smile encouragement; and it was only by vividly recalling the fact of his having had to refuse his youngest daughter’s request for money to buy a new pair of shoes that very morning that he was able to scowl and frown at Cicely. “Please listen,” she went on; “my father won’t help me to obtain redress for Mr. Temple, because the facts, if disclosed, would damage the oGvernment.” “How do you know that?” “I know it because there is no other possible reason. My father knows that Mr. Temple was unjustly condemned for the killing of Mary Barstow; yet he allows him to be ser« back to Dartmoor to complete his sentence. It’s infamous.” “You understand what you are saying, Miss Heming?” “Perfectly. I assert that the Government, in the hope of preventing the reopening of the Barstow case and the naval secrets case, has reimprisoned Mr. Temple.” “Who did kill Mary Barstow?” “Raymond Compton.”

“Do you mean your father has proof that Raymond Compton killed Mary Barstow?” “Yes.” "And that he is deliberately suppressing the proof?” “Yes. it comes to that. Dr. Carstairs has assured me in my father’s hearing that Mr. Temple Is innocent of the crime, which was actually committed by Raymond Compton.” “What, had Dr. Carstairs got to do with it?” “Dr. Carstairs supplied Compton with the drug with which Comptou poisoned Mary Barstow. He admits it; he makes no secret of It; he will tell you the same if you ask him.

Compton must have given some plausible reasou for wanting the drug. I'm not suggesting for a moment that Dr. Carstairs was an accomplice in the crime.” “No,” murmured Alexander Stone, “no”; then again, “No.” He was aghast with amazement. The information on which he had based his famous article had reached him originally in the shape of an anonymous letter, of which he had obtained confirmation by discreet-in-quiries at police headquarters, where he had his own special and secret channel of news. Was Dr. Carstairs his anonymous correspondent? He knew nothing of Carstairs except as a newly-arrived resident, already a familiar figure in the town, reported to be on terms of intimacy with the Heming family. And if Carstairs were his anonymous informant, what a vista of sensation was opened up!

Stone felt lie was on the track of a mystery, which, if properly handled, would make his previous editorial coup pale into insignificance by comparison with it. “Who is this Dr. Carstairs?” he asked explosively. “He was in prison with Mr. Temple. He had a dispute with his partner about fees, and his partner accused him of theft, but he was a friend of father’s before that,” was the ready answer. “Ay-ay,” said Alexander Stone, yawning, though he could scarcely contain his excitiment; "anything else to tell me, Miss Heming?” "Only about Raymond Compton’s murder. You hinted in your article that Mr. Temple murdered him. Jane Finlay, who lives close by, will swear that she found Compton lying dead on the path before Mr. Temple entered the wood.” “Br-r-rum! ” said Alexander Stone, screwing his bush of a beard into a twisted tuft of hair, and pulling it rapidly first with one hand, then with the other. “Br-r-r-rum,” he repeated, and cleared his throat; “anything else. Miss Heming; anything else?” “You know about the Westmouth dockyard plans and the letter signed X.Y.Z.?” “Yes, I know about that.” “Then I think I’ve told you everything.” “Yes—yes.” Cicely rose, and Stone went on pulling at his beard, hand over hand, as if he were tugging at a bell-rope, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. His imaginative ardour had carried him away. Cicely had ceased to exist for him. He was visualising his great coup, mapping out a plan of campaign, fitting together the pieces of the puzzle, tracing out the ramifications of the mystery. He was lost in a labyrinth of speculations, at the end of which he saw himself seated in an editorial chair in Fleet Street, his wife resting on a sofa at home while servants did the housework. his daughters revelling in a positive orgie of new shoes, new stockings, new coats and skirts and blouses, new everything. It -was a Vision Splendid. translated into actuality by the fervency of his fancy, for Alexander Stone, like all courageous people, was an invincible optimist. Then he suddenly said: “B-r-r-rum! B-r-r-r-rum! Br-up!” and again became aware of Cicely, who was holding out her hand to say good-bye. “Don’t go yet, Miss Heming.” He wanted to be just the shrewd, sharp, cautious editor, but was horribly embarrassed and handicapped in the role by the tender pity and sympathy he felt for Cicely. When he ought to have been thinking only of liis paper and his great coup and himself, he was thinking mainly of her and how to help her. Probably there was too much human weakness about Alexander Stone for him ever to be a great success. (To be continued.)