THE BANNANTYNE SAPPHIRES

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 783, 2 October 1929, Page 5

THE BANNANTYNE SAPPHIRES

iftj BY FRANK BIRD ~ jl -a— „Ar, -AA 4r -V..V 1 JjL'X'

CHAPTER XXIX. Meredith then had his doubts about kitchen. This was built out at ri Sht angles to the end of the dining* loom, its windows looking on to a small courtyard in front of the villa j'Dd the hall door. Actually the kitchen with the domestic offices and tour hedrooms above them formed a detached wiug of the house, the only communication being a door in the dining-room, hidden by a tall leather screen. There was a door into the kitchen l ng from the courtyard in front of fne house, but, so far as the house itself was concerned, nobody could get nto the kitchen, the other offices or “ e hedrooms above unless they went uirough the dining-room. _*he kitchen, the larder and all the "-her domestic offices were as innoof any possible hiding-place for !*h*en jewels as the rest of the house. J-J" the four bedrooms above, three ere shut up, the furniture in each °om being piled up on the bed and °vered with dust-sheets. The i rth was Santo and Maria's room. Patricia suggested possible trapdoors in the floors, leading to secret hiding-places below. But all the 001,5 » both upstairs and down, were

1 of red tiles which shone from Santo s ! daily polishing', and had a solid, unbroken surface —not a crack or a cranny anywhere. . On the second morning alter Maria and Santo had gone into Ajaccio, Patricia thought she had made a discovery. In a narrow passage leading from the kitchen to the offices 'she noticed a small door. It -was locked. It was the only locked door in the whole house. . But the next morning, when they hurried to the kitchen wing after Maria and Santo’s departure, they found this door wide open. It opened into a small wine cellar, with rows of bottles lying in iron bins which went from floor to ceiling- Here, again, was no possible hiding-place. * * * Flaxton's villa was on the other side of Ajaccio, standing on a spur of the foot-hills that rise Immediately behind the port and the basin, where the French torpedo boats and submarines lie in long lines, like slumbering solidly of stone, long before the time Napoleon was born, and with the small windows you find everywhere in the old Corsican houses; so that even on

the day of brilliant sunshine wvhen Patricia and Guy went there for lunch the rooms were in semi-darkness. “You’ll find the place very gloomy after the Villa Varato,” Flaxton said at luncheon, “but people who live on the island all their lives are so broiled in the summer in the modern villas that they have to rush to the mountains to keep cool. I can stay here all the year round, if I want to, in comfort.” He paused, then added; “And this year it’s just as well I can. It would have gone pretty hard with poor Jacques if I had been away.” “I’ve been thinking of him ever since you told us his story,” said Patricia, “and the more I think the more sympathy I feel for him. I really do hope he gets away. Do you think he will?” Flaxton’s usually bright eyes were suddenly clouded with trouble. “I paid him a visit yesterday,” he said, “and it is only a matter of hours before the ring of gendarmes gets him. They’re closing in and he can’t break through unless —” He stopped, his eyes fixed intently on Meredith. “Unless what?” asked Guy. “I help him—and I can’t do it singlehanded. Yes, I’m afraid he’ll be caught—and within twenty-four hours.” “And can’t you get help?” Patricia inquired anxiously. “Not from a soul here,” replied Flaxton with a shake of his head. “Yes, he’ll be caught—unless you and j your husband help me.” Patricia and Meredith sat staring | 1 at the plump little man in amazement, j j “But what on earth can you mean?” | cried Meredith. “There’s too much for one person J

to do in twenty-four hours,” replied Flaxton. Meredith and Patricia looked at one another steadily for some seconds; then Guy turned to Flaxton. “You—and anybody who helps you - —-will be running a great risk if you connive at this man’s escape,” he pointed out. “Do you mind telling us ■ exactly why you are so keen on getting him away?” “It’s just a mixture of sentiment and a sense of injustice. Sentiment be- ; because I’ve known Jacques since he was a little boy and always been S 3 fond of him; injustice because I’m absolutely confirmed that the beastly villainy of that man Santo is the reason why Jacques is where he is now —that it was all a trap to be rid of him.” “But why to be rid of him?” put in Meredith. “Do you remember what Grelkin said about Santo?” Patricia asked her husband; and as the detective’s w r ords “I’ll bet they know something” came again to Meredith’s memory he nodded. Jacques, of course, would be far too young to be in any of Wryce’s secrets, and the thought occurred to both Meredith and Patricia that perhaps he had made some discovery which rendered him a danger to the secrets of the Villa Varato. “I must agree with your feelings about that man Santo, Mr. Flaxton,” said Patricia, "although I’ve nothing but my own instinct to go upon. And j I liked Jacques as much as you. Well,” she went on in a matter of fact tone | that surprised Meredith, “if we did | help, what should we have to do?” | “It's like this,” said Flaxton. “I j can manage to get Jacques through j that ring in time. I’m pretty sure. *

Anyway, I’m going to try. But I can’t make arrangements to get him out of the island at the same time. And once the gendarmes find he has escaped and are left with another tw r enty-four hours to find him he’ll be no better off than he is now. “I can get him out of his hidingplace before nightfall and leave him at a place I have in mind. In the meantime I should slip down to Bastia, ■where I can arrange for him to be smuggled aboard a fishing boat. But it’ll take me more than a day to arrange it and return for him and take him down to the coast. If he could be brought to me by car, starting first thing in the morning, it’s a hundred to one chance I succeed.” “And you want us to pick him up for you?” asked Patricia. “If you feel inclined,” said Flaxton. “I wouldn’t ask you to indulge in anything dangerous, of course; you won’t. As strangers on the island —ordinary summer tourists—no one would suspect you of being concerned in a purely Corsican affair like this, and they wouldn’t stop you on the road, as they might me or any of the islanders. It’s Jacques’s only chance,” he finished. Then, to Meredith’s amazement, Patricia cried promptly, “All right, we ll do it!” “Well!” said Meredith an hour later, as they returned to the villa, “do you realise, Patricia, what you have let us in for?” “Yes, and it’s the right thing to do. I never felt so strongly about any- \ thing,” she replied with conviction. • ——- (

"l’m absolutely certain that if we can only have a talk with Jacques we’ll find out more about the Wryces and their villa than all the detectives at Scotland Yard would ever discover.’’ “But it’s against the law, dear, and——” “It’s those people at the villa who are breaking the law and getting off scot free,” retorted Patricia sharply, “and we ought to catch them if we can. If you don't want to be mixed up in it you needn’t, Guy.” Meredith squeezed her arm. “Dear one, don’t be silly. I am as anxious to discover the truth as anybody; but I want you to realise what you’re doing.” “I do; so let’s get busy, Guy. We haven't a minute to lose if we’re going to stick to our programme.” Really all Meredith’s instincts and traditions were against what he privately considered a gross and unjustifiable interference with French justice, but he had given his word, and therefore had to see the matter through. Besides, Patricia was so

obsessed by the idea of saving Jacques that no husband on his honeymoon, and so profoundly in love as Meredith, could have stood out and refused his help. Then, too, there was the keen spice of adventure in the balance against his judgment. So it was a willing, yet unwilling, Meredith who took the wheel of the four-seater open car which arrived in the road below the Villa Varato at four o’clock that afternoon. They had ordered it by telephone from Flaxton’s house. Santo came out and put the suitcase they had hastily packed in the back of the car. “Monsieur and Madame will be j away for long?” the servant inquired, j A sudden thought came to Mere- j dith. Suppose Maxwell Wryce ar-

rived while they were absent? Suppose he did. and “went away, and Santo and Maria said nothin? when he and Patricia came back? The whole object of their coming to Ajaccio would be lost. They could give Grelkin no warning. Patricia was up at the villa, busy with some last packings of a dressingcase. He couldn’t therefore consult her on this possibility—a possibility which had not occurred to either of them. Meredith pretended to examine the engine, wondering what was the wisest thing to say. Santo repeated his question, but j more directly: | “How long will Monsieur and Madame be away?” (To be continued* tomorrow.)