THE BANNANTYNE SAPPHIRES

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 774, 21 September 1929, Page 28

THE BANNANTYNE SAPPHIRES

BY

FRANK HIRD

FOR NEW READERS Gervase Daynesford, head of an oldestablished firm, is ruined on the day before he is taking- into partnership Ouy Meredith, the orphaned son of an old friend. Guy is engaged to Patricia, Daynesford’a only daughter. On the same evening they are to attend a ball given in their home by Henry Bannantyne, a wealthy cousin of Daynesford’s, and his wife Alice. During the ball Alice Bannantyne is attacked by a headache. She asks Patricia to help her put away her sapphire necklace in a secret safe. T“ e safe requires two people to work It. On his return from the ball Guy discovers that Daynesford has committed suicide. All Daynesford’s property has gone with the exception of some Mexican holdings, which are considered valueless Guy thinks otherwise, however, and tries to borrow the £3,000 which, must be paid before the holdings can be worked. He tries Bannantyne and then Maxwell Wryce. a young friend of his, but they both refuse. He receives a message rrom a man called Manuele Leofalda, who offers him £5,000 for the entire property. Guy tells Patricia the position and she says she will try to borrow- the money. The following day she returns with £3,000. _ . , . v. She refuses to tell Guy who lent her the money. Ouy eventually sells the propertj to Leofalda for £50,000. He tells Bannantyne, who does not seem to be pleased. CHAPTER X.—(Continued.) Mrs. Bannantyne gave an exclamation ot dismay. "Oh, no,” she cried, "Not until these people have gone. Patricia, dear," she pleaded, “go and make some excuse to Lady Templeforth. Say I’m ill —anything. I can't sit and talk and pretend nothing has happened. Get rid of them all as soon as you can, and then tell Henry I want him. I know so well what he'll say,” she sobbed. Mrs. Bannantyne had not underestimated her husband's anger. Patricia never forgot the scene in the Louis Seize boudoir half an hour later. After Patricia had made the conventional excuses for Mrs. Bannantyne’s absence, the guests had gradually drifted away, leaving the Wryce brother and sister. Meredith and herself alone in the winter garden. “What’s this about Alice being ill?” Bannantyne inquired, coming in through the big double doors from the hall. "Half the people have been asking me to say good-bye to her. Has she got one of her heads?” “She's in her room, and wants you,” Patricia told him. He strode to the end of the winter garden and went into his wife’s sitting room. "Poor Alice, those headaches, I; hoped she was getting over them —” | Julia Wryce was saying, when the sitting room door opened and Mrs. Bannantyne called out in distress: , "Patricia! Patricia! come here!” Patricia found Bannantyne stand- i ing in the middle of the room, the ; sham wooden book in his hand. As ; she entered Mrs. Bannantyne closed,

the door and stood with her back against it. She was very white; her eyes dilated with fear. “Henry won’t believe me!” she said, an unusual high note in her voice. “He says w-e can't have put the case back properly on the shelf.” Patricia looked at Bannantyne. His stolid; rather heavy face was crimson* his eyelids were flickering up and down, the back of his neck, which bulged slightly over his collar, was crimson, too; the red ran up into a little point behind each ear. This last was a storm-signal known to everybody who was intimate in the Bannantyne household. It showed his anger was.beyond control. "How else can you account for it? How else can anybody have known w-here the necklace was kept?” Mrs. Bannantyne shivered. Her husband’s voice was shrill and rasping; another sign that he was losing control. I Henr}’ Bannantyne's outbursts of j temper had alw’ays aroused an irni patient contempt in Patricia, much I as she liad liked him. When anj’thing | went wrong she considered he always ! held his wife in some way responsible, and invariably wreaked his annoyance on her. But this was too much. “You are mistaken. Henry,” she said, trying to hide the indignatiqn she felt. “I myself saw- Alice put the necklace in the box and shut down the lid. She gave me the case. I put it back on the shelf and pushed in the rod as she told me to. When the cupboard door vas shut you couldn’t possibly tell that one of the sham books had been moved.” I “In that case, somebody must have | known how to get at the case—how to work the springs. Have you told anybody?” | “No, I haven't.” * * * Bannantyne spoke so brutally that, involuntarily, his wife stepped back as if he were going to strike her. “No. Henry, never to anybody except Patricia.” Mrs. Bannantyne put her hands to her throat. “It’s dreadful! It’s all too dreadful!” she wailed. “It’s damned mysterious!” said Bannantyne. He got up on the chair which still stood by the edge of the open cupboard door. “Give me the rod.” lie commanded. Mrs. Bannantyne took the rod from the table where Patricia had thrown it down and handed it up to him. “Now- the case!” Bannantyne put the sham book on i the shelf, then pushed in the rod. j There was a click as it reached the ■ end. “That’s all right,” he muttered, ; looking along the unbroken line of j books. “And that’s exactly how we left it,” j said Patricia. J