THE GREEN SHADOW

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 962, 3 May 1930, Page 24

THE GREEN SHADOW

By

HERMAN LANDON

Copyright by Publio Ledger

CHAPTER XXIII. Aclele’s brows went up a little. In a moment she understood. Dale, with bis usual thoughtfulness, must have left instructions at the garage when he brought the car back after his spin. She felt a little awkward before the maid's discreet look of bewilderment. “Thank you, Marie. That’s all.” The maid withdrew. Adele drew on her gloves and went out to the waiting car. She felt a little Quaver as she sat down at the wheel. Of a sudden, her adventure loomed dark and awe-inspiring. She threw In the clutch, heard the soft humming of the engine, and her spirits seemed to bound with the.exkilarant rhythm of the machinery. What was it Dale had iiad said —that he would never be far away, that lie would be closer to her than she imagined? A tingle of excitement swept her nervousness away. She thought of her father, and the thought was an added stimulation. Pood, darling dad! It gave her a feeling of satisfaction to think that, if there were dangers ahead, she was braving them for him. She had been foolish and frivolous lpng enough. Now she wanted to be true blue. From Upper Fifth Avenue she drove to 34tli Street, then swung west and turned into Broadway. An exciting sense of expectancy took hold of her as she joined the mad, churning, jostling procession that crawled along in the glare of the white lights. Crowds were pouring out of the theatres, jamming the sidewalks and flowing over into the street, a long undulating stream of faces. Electric signs wiggled crazily, motor horns blared, traffic whistles shrilled, tile whole thoroughfare was a rigadoon of brilliance and din. And it thrilled Adele to think that in this clamouring, glamorous hurlyburly there was probably a pair of eyes looking clandestinely at her. She could scarcely move now. The car crawled only a few paces at a time, then stopped. At one of these stops she glanced quickly back. She had an impression that the door in the back had opened, then quickly closed again. She looked into the tonneau, but no one was there. The jam cleared, and she crept forw’ard, but she could proceed only a few yards before a red globe flashed a stop signal. She was wedged in a tightly massed legion of motor-cars. Waiting, she glanced out over the welter of traffic. Forty-eighth Street. It could not be long now. A green signal flashed, and the legion charged forward. Something flickered through the air and caught against the inside of the windshield. Her heart gave a little bound. She proceeded to the next stop, then unfolded the missive. “Grant’s Tomb,” was all it said» AVith a puzzled air she tore the note to bits while she waited for the signal to proceed. It seemed a strange rendezvous that Dr. Moffett had designated. Again she was slowly squeezing

her way through the crawling mass. Soon she turned west into Riverside Drive. The congestion ceased; she could go a little faster now. Presently the grey, ghostly masses of a monument loomed against a horizon studded with lights. She slackened her speed. Dimly she saw a grey figure a short distance ahead. A hand reached out and made a signal. She stopped, and the greyclad figure slipped into the seat beside her. “Oh, it’s you!” spoke a voice in well feigned surprise, and Adele instantly thought of a masked face ahd a figure in tinsel armour. “Isn’t this lucky? I’ve been standing here holding out my hand till the muscles ached, hoping some kindly soul would take pity on me and give me a lift.” “Which way?” Adele asked, looking into a fair face framed by blonde curls. It was rather an attractive face, except that the mouth was a little too tight and belied the guileless blue eyes.

“It’s a lovely evening for a drive,” Joan suggested. “Suppose we cross over to the Grand Concourse.” Adele nodded and set the car in motion again. There was a keen, exhilarating breeze, and it seemed to blow all misgivings out of her head. For a while her companion chatted brightly, then lapsed into silence. Now and then she glanced back. When the Grand Concourse was reached she suggested New Rochelle. Soon they were leaving the city behind them. They drove through slumberous and aristocratically quiet suburbs. No sooner was one town reached than Joan suggested another. Briskly the car hummed its way through the dusky stillness of Mamaroneck. Rye and Port Chester. As she guided Che wheel with an expert touch, Adele’s face grew a little taut With perplexity and a thin wedge of anxiety. There seemed to be no end to the Itinerary which her companion was so casually pointing out. And what was awaiting her at the end of the journey? Would Dale be there, or had something happened to detain or mislead him? She dismissed her anxieties with a toss of the head and inhaled deeply of the keen, invigorating night air. The landscape grew more sparsely settled. They traversed shadowy jungles and long, dark stretches of open land. They had just left Greenwich behind them when ’Joan urged her to slow down at a cross road. Adele glanced at the mile indicator. They had come only thirty miles, although it seemed much longer. Ahead of them stretched a long, winding ribbon of State road Crossing this was a narrower dirt road extending in either direction into thick woods. Again Joan leaned out and looked back, and then she pointed to the woodland on the righ-hand side of the main road. With a faint stab of trepidation Adele swung the car toward the heart of the black jungle, it bounced and slithered as it left the macadamised highway, then righted itself. The headlight flung a sharp glare into the woods, as if to explore secrets that might lie hidden ahead. “Almost there now,” said Joan. “Where?” Adele asked. Her companion laughed a little. “I think the place was once called Cedar Dawn. It’s a stupid name, for there are no cedars-—only oaks and pines. But then names don’t mean anything most of the time." "Does Dr Moffett own it?” “Yes, but that’s another name that doesn’t mean much. It’s an old estate that’s gone to rack and ruin. Dr Moffett picked it up for a song a tew yars ago. It was a whim. He didn’t expect ever to use it, but now ” She paused and glanced back again "I think we are safe now. I didn’t know,” and she turned her head and gave her companion a shrewd, smiling glance, “but what somebody might try to follow us.” “Who?” “Oh, you can never tell. Mr. Dale, for instance.” The steering wheel slipped l’or an instant in Adele’s hand. “Careful,” Joan cautioned. “This road is full of bumps.” Adele remembered something. Dale, too, had cautioned her against bumps. Vaguely she had sensed a hidden meaning in his words, but she felt sure there was no such veiled significance in what Joan had just said. “But I don’t think Mr. Dale win bo able to find us now,” her companion added lightly. “He is clever, but there are those who are cleverer.” The remark sounded a little ominous to Adele, but it left only a fleeting impression. "A really clever man,” she rejoined oracularly, “sometimes permits an opponent to think that he is the cleverer of the two.” “And you think that is what Mr Dale is doing. Well—maybe. We’ll see.”

The road narrowed. There were frequent turns and rocky places. The woods, an impenetrable mass of dark ness save where the headlights cut their blazing oath, gr»w thicker and more tangled.

Suddenly Joan laughed—a clear, full-toned laugh of sheer amusement "Funny about Wambley! ’ Adele felt a tinge of surprise. Her companion seemed to have the most amazing sources of information. “What’s funny?” she countered.

Joan laughed again. “The way you and Mr. Dale trussed the poor man up and put him in a room in the attic. Oh, dear! But you can’t see the joke, of course. Maybe you will some day.” It sounded very mysterious to Adele. Pretending unconcern, she drove doggedly on. The task of guiding the car over the ruts and the long, snarled roots that stretched across the road required nearly all her attention. The headlight glare fell on a tottering sign.

"Only a mile and a-half now,” Joan announced. A little tremor, partly trepidation and partly sheer excitement, ran down Adele’s back. The road was becoming almost impassable. On the sides rose huge, scowling boulders The woods looked a little threatening in their shroud of blackness. She set her jaw firmly against the little horde of fears snapping at her nerves “That’s the spirit,” Joan remarked. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.” Adele tosed her head in exasperation. Her companion seemed to have an uncanny knack of reading her thoughts. “You will like Dr. Moffett,” Joan assured her, “He has a pleasant,

kindly voice, and—but I forgot. You have already met him.” A small shiver rau through Adele. What a weird meeting it had been! A voice speaking out of a green illumination! “Yes, but I didn’t see his face.” The other girl regarded her fixedly. “No, and I hope for your sake that you never shall.” Adele stared at her for a moment, and the wheels slithered into a deep rut. “What do you mean?” Joan laughed nervously. “Dr. Mot fett doesn’t like to be seen by people That is, he doesn’t like to be seen in his role of Dr. Moffett. In his other role, he doesn’t mind. Lots of people have seen him in that other role.” “Have I?” asked Adeld after a moment’s deep thought. “Yes, but you didn’t imagine he was Dr. Moffett. If you should ever see and recognise him, then—then look out!” Her voice was edged with a note of dread that gave Adel 6 a faint chill In her mind she ran over her list ot acquaintances. Oue of them, if her companion were telling the truth, must be Dr. Moffett, but which one? She could think of no one who seemed to fit the role. “But there isn’t much danger of that,” Joan went on reassuringly. "Dr. Moffett is too careful.” They fell silent. Adele’s thougnts rau a twisted course, but time after time she came back to Joan’s warning as to what Would happen to anyone who should see and recognise Dr. Moffett, It was only a vague hint she had thrown out, but the very vagueness of it caused Adele’s imagination to picture it as something horrible.

A light twinkling among the trees made her heart heat a little faster. Another feeling of uneasiness came, but she fought it down. They emerged upon a plain where the growth of woods was less dense, and presently the headlights revealed an iron gate in a tall picket fence. "Cedar Lawn,” said Joan. CHAPTER XXIV. THE BELL RINGS. A shadowy form opened the gate. Adele drove through, and she heard it clang shut behind her. Her nerves quivered at the sound. It carried a suggestion of finality, a reminder that it was now too late to turn hack. Beyond a curve in the driveway she saw a low, rambling, unsightly house with a colonial roof and a row of shutters on the upper floor. It had a dilapidated and unwholesome look, and she quavered a little as she contemplated it. The headlights shone on a scene of decay—neglected flower beds, famished shrubbery, gaunt naked trees, that stood in clusters over the grounds. She felt a little tightness at the threat as she stopped the engine and jumped down. A gasp escaped her as she heard a growl, and saw a black, shaggy form bounding toward her. “Hello, Caesar,” Joan cried. “Come here, old boy.” She petted the animal, then motioned Adele to follow her toward the house. They entered a vestibule, then a wide-low-ceiled room with an immense fireplace, and furniture that looked at least one hundred years old. A crackling log fire projected an agreeable warmth and brightness into a scene that would otherwise have ■been dismal and cold. She went out. Adele stood contemplating the cracking wall, the fissures in the ceiling, the warped and sagging outlines of the room. There was something unsavoury in the air, as if it had been denied the refreshing influence of sun and wind. Of a sudden she felt a little cold, and stepped close to the brightly blazing fire. She started as a door opened. A gaunt, elderly man, stoop-shouldered and with thin wisps of grizzly hair on his head, walked into the room. He held his hands behind his back, and, with bead at a slant, stood and looked at her. He appeared quite feeble and mild-mannered, and would not have impressed her unfavourably except for the expression of shrewdness and subtlety about the eyes. “Good evening, Miss Castle,” said the old man. “I am Axelson.” She nodded slightly. She had heard the name before. She knew that until recently Axelson had been the caretaker of the house adjoining the one in which Mr. Ferryman lived, and Dale had given her the impression that he was very close to Dr. Moffett. Axelson came a litlte closer. He wore faded garments of obsolete cut, that seemed to match th’e antiquated character of the house. “Have a nice ride’” he inquired. His voice was weak, and there was a break in it now and then. “Rather.” Adele was nervous and impatient, but slie concealed her feelings. “It was a bit chilly, though.” “Well, sit here and get warm.” Axelson drew an old archair up to the fire and, after she had seated hersel". stood at the side of the fireplace and peered at her out his near-sighted eyes. “There will be tea and sand wiches ready for you pretty soon.” “Oh. thank you, but I am not hungry. I’d much rather get the—er—business over with and start back.” “There’s no hurry,” said Axelson, smiling in a way which she did not quite like. "This is an old-fashioned house, and we do things in the slow, old-fashioned way. We are not like your friend Mr. Dale. He rushes at everything. One of these days he’ll break his neck.” Her eyes widened in a look of stupefaction and disquietude. An unpleasant leer hung on Axelson’s crooked lips. “It’s better to go slow and play safe,” he added sententiously. “But Mr. Dale is always in a hurry. If things are in his way, he jumps over them. If people stand in his way he pitches them out of the window." He made a wry face and stroked his hips as if they were still sore from a recent painful experience. “That’s what he did to me the other night.” Adele could mot resist a temptation to laugh. Axelson scowled heavily. “You and Dale had it all fixed up for tonight didn’t you?' “What?” she exclaimed, hoarsely. "Oh I know all about it. He told you that he wouldn’t be far away from you. didn’t he—that he’d be closer to you than you imagined?” (To be continued on Monday.)