In The Flashlight

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 614, 16 March 1929, Page 22

In The Flashlight

By

Bernard Rowthorne

Author of “The Jewels of Sin,” “The Shadow of the Yamen,” Etc., Etc.

SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS. CHAPTERS I. & ll.—Carston and Melford are seated in the saloon of a yacht. Carston is threatening Melford with the fact that Otto Freedlam is still alive, and is anxious to learn the whereabouts of his old-time partner, Owen Oldstairs. Melford, driven into a corner, admits tacitly that he is Owen Oldstairs. Margaret, his daughter, comes for a book, and departs almost immediately. Carston makes it plain that, as the price of keeping Melford’s real identity secret, he must be allowed to marry Margaret. The girl’s father tells Carston about Noel and Donald Mayhew. How that both brothers loved Margaret, but she loved Noel. He went to German East Africa, and three months later was reported missing. They are in a ro»ugh sea, and while the men arc talking there is a violent lurching of the vessel. The second officer comes to say that the propeller shaft has snapped. There is great danger of driving into Corrievrechan Race, with Jura ahead. The men take to the boats. Melford is terrified, but Carston shows a manly frpnt, procuring life-belts. Carston and Margaret get away in the first boat. This is wrecked. Carston, a strong swimmer, saves both Margaret and himself. They are thrown on to the wet sand of ari inlet. CHAPTERS 111. & IV.—Carston carries the unconscious Margaret Melford as he tries to find a place of shelter. When she returns to consciousness he still insists on carrying hen They crouch for a rest behind a stone wall. Then they resume their journey. Margaret still being carried. They are hospitably received by an old highlander and his wife. The old farmer goes to the shore to investigate, but only comes across the bodies of three sailor lads, and a boat, battered to pieces. Margaret makes her appearance after a night’s rest somewhat refreshed. She is about to hear a proposal from Carston when the guid wife enters with the breakfast tray. Carston, looking out of a window, tells Margaret that her father is coming across the fields. She rushes to meet him, with Carston at her heels. CHAPTERS V. & Vl.—One of the men saved with Mr. Melford was the yacht’s captain. He relates his story of the shipwreck. Carston approaches Melford again on the subject of Margaret. Afterwards father and daughter discuss the matter, but Margaret still loves Noel Mayhew. A week later Donald Mayhew finds Margaret Melford taking his mushrooms. He is about to propose to her when they are interrupted by Carston. Carston manages to get rid of Donald, and, after trying to find out how they stood to each other, he tries to blacken Donald’s character with regard to his share in the disappearance of Noel Mayhew, his own brother. Margaret declares she will never believe it, never! CHAPTER VII (Continued.) “No, you have not said it in so many words. But your attitude betrays the fact Your manner, your tones are an accusation, if not your actual words. There must be something else to account for your attitude, something that I ought to know, which I demand I shall be told.” k ‘Yes!” said the girl, simply. “There is something else, something which you did not tell the court-martial.” “Ah!”

The exclamation broke from Mayhew almost involuntarily and his face was deadly white, while there was an expectant look in his eyes, as he faced the girl and waited for her to speak. “Mr. Carston said that you did not inform the court-martial of the fact that you were Noel’s heir; and that if you had done so it would have put quite a different complexion on the affair.”

As she spoke she watched her companion closely, and saw him flinch, while a look of something very like despair came in his eyes. For quite half a minute he stood without speaking, staring away across the fields, a set look on his face. Then he turned to her. “Margaret,” he said hoarsely, “you do not believe —” “The particular accusation is not a matter of faith,” interrupted the girl. “It is a simple matter of fact. Did you inform the court-martial of the fact that you were Noel’s heir?” “No,” he answered quietly. “Why not?” “Because there was no need.” “You knew perhaps that it would have made a difference in the finding of the court?” “It might have done,” he agreed, patiently. “Though I beg of you to remember that 1 was exonerated on the facts.” “Yes!” she cried, almost distraught. “Yes! That is what Mr. Carston said. But this one thing which might have made a difference you kept back. Why did you do that?” “Because I did not want the question raising at all, because 1 knew how ready blackguards like Carston would be to suggest evil motives, and how

some man of evil mind would make this very scoundrelly suggestion of Carston's.”

The girl looked at him in surprise. “You admit that?” she cried. “You own that it was in your mind at the time?” “Yes,” he answered. “It was almost inevitable that it should be. This is not a charitable world; and when 1 had to face the court-martial, I was forced to consider all eventualities. I expected to. be questioned upon the matter, but no question was asked, and ” “Cut you did not tell them?” “No! Why should I?” The girl stared at him distractedly, the suspicion deliberately sown by Carston blazing in her heart. “Oh,” she cried. "I do not know why you should; and I am afraid to think why* you should conceal it!” “Margaret ” he began, and laid a hand upon her arm. “No!” she cried. “Do not say any more. I must think. I —Oh, I do not know what to believe!” Before he could speak or divine what she was going to do, she turned stviftly and began to run across the field. “Margaret!” he cried after her, without making any attempt to follow her. “Margaret!” But the girl did not look round; and with a bleak look on his face he stood watching her until she was out of sight.- Then he turned and stared In the direction in which Carston had gone, and into his eyes came a flame of indignation. “I might have expected it,” he murmured aloud. “But when T meet Carston, I will make him eat his ■words, or The threat went unfinished, but a

hard look mingled with the bleakness on his face, and his jaw was set with determination. CHAPTER Vill. About the time when Margaret Melford had run to meet her father, as, saved from the sea, he came across the sodden cotter’s field in Argyleshire, a British surgeon stood beside a cot in the military hogpital at Nairobi, in East Africa. He was looking down on the emaciated form of a young man who, for the moment, was wrapped in profound slumber, and after watching his paKent for a moment, he turned to a bronzed young lieutenant of a native corps. “He’s had the blackwater fever, and it’s something of a miracle that he is still alive; but.l think we shall pull him through, now.” “I’m glad of that,” said the lieutenant simply. “It was no end of a job getting him here. You know who he is?” “No,” answered the surgeon quickly. “Do you?” “Yes' He’s Noel Mayhew of the Nairobi Rifles.” “The man who was in command of (.he party that was annihilated down Kenya way?” asked the surgeon with mounting interest. “Yes! How he escaped he doesn’t know, indeed he appears to have no recollection of anything that’s happened during the last three years. There’s the scar of an old wound on the back of his head that may account for that. I got what account of him I could from the chief of the village where we found him, but ” “Where was that?” Interrupted the surgeon. “Walguru, down Onyango way, a frightful sort of hole, crawling with fever. We’d been marching through a sodden forest for days, a place that might have been the very wood of death itself. It was so deadly silent that it got on my nerves, and even my blacks never spoke in a tone above a whisper. One or two men were down with fever, and I was dosing myself with quinine until my head spun, for T was pretty certain that if I went down badly the whole expedition would go to pieces. We were all in a state of jagged nerves and worried to death with tiny leeches that got on the men’s legs, when suddenly through the utter stillness there sounded the roll of a tom-tom that brought us up all standing, so utterly unexpected was it.

“If It hadn’t been that the men had heard it, too, I should have said that I was suffering from some sort of hallucination. for in the death-like quiet

of that stinking forest one heard all sorts of sounds in one’s head, sounds that had no external reality, you understand.” “I know,” said the surgeon.

“Anyway the tom-tom was real enough, and as we had not stumbled on a village for days we began to shape a course in the direction from which the sound came. Presently we stumbled on one of those forest tracts, green as grass, made by the padding feet of generations. We followed it, and about four in the afternoon came on one of those bushman villages that you find all over the shop in this country. It was set in a rough clearing, and had a stockade of pointed stakes, a puerile sort of thing, that a score of English schoolboys could have rushed out of hand. As things turned out there wasn’t any need for that sort of thing, for as we marched toward the stockade, a man naked, but for a wisp of grass round his middle, saw us, and ran Inside and in a jiffy the place was just a shrieking Bedlam, and before we reached the gate, out of it came a withered old black, and dropping on all fours literally crawled to my feet. Abject wasn’t the word; and it was easy to guess that the Huns had been there—-—”

“They were pretty ruthless in their government,” broke in the surgeon. “They were swine,” said the lieut-

enant with some heat. “I’ve seen things that they did—women’s backs half flayed with whips of rhinoceroshide, children who ” “I know,” interrupted the other. “Tell me about my patient, Corfleld.” “Right-o!” answered Corfleld with an apologetic laugh. “I was forgetting that you were out here all through, the scrapping. Well, the long and short of the business was that we went inside, the old savage hopping at my side, and talking fifteen to the dozen, and gesticulating like a monkey that had chewed the wrong sort of nuts. He talked the dialect that I wasn’t familiar with, but suddenly I gripped a couple of words that were like words used down in the M’ssente district, and that could mean nothing else than ‘white man.’ I listened more carefully after that and then guessing the old boy was trying hard to tell me something, I halted the boys and made them listen to what he was saying, in the hope that one of them would get'the hang of it. “I had luck. One of the boys tumbled to the patois instantly, and after a minute he shouted out. “ ‘Bwana, he say there be a sick white man in his village, for whom he has cared like a mother—a white man with trouble in his head, who has been here many moons. “ ‘A white man,” I gasped unbelievingly, ‘in this hole.’ “X looked round the abject place. It was incredible to me that any white man could elect to stay there; and I was guessing that it must be some crazy German missionary, when the old heathen at my side gave a shout, and pointed with skinny forefingers. I looked in the direction he indicated. Out of one of the huts had reeled a skeleton-like figure, with nothing on but a waist-cloth, and a battered pith helmet. He came toward me, stumbling, shambling, a sort of frightful scare-crow to look at; and as he came nearer I saw that though he was baked brown by the sun, he was a white man; and the next minute I knew he was an Hnglishman, for, as he caught sight of my uniform, a light of intelligence came in his vacuous eyes, and he shouted like a man delivered from hell. “‘Thank God!’

“A second later he collapsed, and sprawled in the dust like a dead man, and X thought his number was up. But it wasn’t. After a bit he revived, but it was two days before he was able to tell me who he tvas; and then he couldn’t tell me how he’d got to that forsaken hole, while all that the old chief could tell me was that ages ago the man had appeared suddenly out of the forest, possessed by a devil, that had only recently left him; that he had been very sick, and that he had been there ever since. (To be Continued)