The Japanese Parasol

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1016, 5 July 1930, Page 23

The Japanese Parasol

COPYRIGHT

PL'BI.ISHFD BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

Elliot Bailey

Author of " Mr. B«Tj(toa'» Uums«M.‘* “ TTho C*.rap<i«n TXi'i A Powerful Mystery Story, Superbly Told.

! CHAPTER XI. (continued.) ! j Realising all at once that it was blocking her farther progress, she 1 skirted the railings with the inten- | tion of continuing across the fields, • but presently, as she passed the teri mination of the little wood, and its | other flank came within her view, she I stopped short with a catch of her j breath and drew in under the shadow | of the overlapping trees. ! She was now within sight of the solitary gate in the wood’s protecting j barrier, and passing through it was j the figure of a man. Even in the dusk she recognised the tall, lithe form, his white turban standing out in sharp contrast to the surrounding gloom. It was the naj tive she had met that morning in | Oolonel Winthrop’s drive, and he j still carried the basket with which ! he had been burdened then, i For a second only was he visible, j like some half-seen spectre of the j night, and then he had slipped | through the gateway into the conceal-

ing trees. A moment more or less in the j ocean of time is often productive of j strange results. An instant before ; the girl appeared, a glance right and j left had assured the dark-skinned man ! that he was unobserved. It was with j that impression that he began to ! press forward noiselessly into the I wood. j Gwen hesitated. Her first idea ! was that the intruder must be tres- | passing. Then she remembered that j the gate in the railings teas invari- | ably kept locked. That meant that 1 the plan must possess a key. Why should he have one, and whence had jhe obtained it? f | Had Grange Hall not been upward |of a mile away, and that morning's j episode not have happened, it is ] probable that she would have hur- ! ried off to acquaint Colonel Winthrop of what was taking place in the copse. But it was likely that by the time she got there and back the man would long ago have vanished, nor, : under the circumstances, did she wish |to meet the colonel again so soon. ! She was thus left to act upon her own resources.

Prudence, perhaps, should have bade her continue on her was’ and leave matters as they were, but in some ways Gwennie Bourne was a girl of unusual character. Fear had little place in her make-up, and she had ail a woman’s curiosity. That stealthy entrance into the wood intrigued her. It savoured of mystery, and mystery of late had been present in full measure. Suppose that, by a little observation, she could gain some light that would help to pierce the veil. With no very definite plan of action in her head, therefore, she moved swiftly over the grass toward the gate, and when she reached it she found that it had not been relocked. That fact decided her. Without stopping to heed the cooler counsels of reason, she, too, slipped inside. It was darker in the wood than she had expected, and, momentarilj-, the prospect of pushing further amopg the trees brought her to a pause. It was the first time, remember, that she had ever entered the copse, and its sinister associations began to make themselves felt upon her spirit. She was within an ace of turning back. But then the latent obstinacy in her nature reasserted itself. The conviction grew stronger that what she had seen had some bearing upon the bizarre series of events of which the finding of Violet Chichester had been the first. She listened; there was no sound of the man she was stalking. Something in the nature of a track seemed to open amidst the undergrowth. She moved slowly forward, and, with little inkling whither she was being led, took the way to the pagoda. But to her at the time it appeared that she was merely wandering aimlessly among the trees, and her eventual sudden emergence upon the clear ing gave her something of a shock. It was here, at this very spot, she recalled, that John Milton had met his death. The thought shook her steady nerve, and made her give some heed at last to the insecurity of her own position. And then, in a flash, excitement had her again in Its grip, and she forgot her growing apprehension at the sight that was clearly afforded. Her eyer* accustomed to the dim light beneath the trees, were able to take in every detail of the scene—one almost incredible in the evening twilight of an English wood. On one side of the clearing the white-turbaned native she had followed squatted on his haunches, his whole attention fixed upon the basket which he had placed before him on the ground. It was this absorption, no doubt, which prevented his hearing Gwen’s —to native ears—by no means noiseless approach. One thing was certain—-he had no idea that he was overlooked.

In his left hand the girl saw that he held something that had the appearance, at a distance, of a leather bottle —and was, in fact, exactly that. His right hand was empty. He was quite motionless, his eyes upon the basket. For what seemed to Gwen an age, nothing else happened, and then all a* once the native gave vent to a low but distinct hiss —and immediately from the mouth of the basket there reared itself a long, swaying, menacing shape that made her gasp. She knew well enough what it was, one of the most deadly reptiles in the world, the dreaded cobra of India. For an instant the hooded head of the snake poised in iiid-air, threatening and maliguaut. Then, with a movement indescribably swift, the man's thin, brown arm shot forward <nnd his unoccupied right hand grasped

its neck at the very moment that the snake itself appeared to strike. Indeed the watching girl felt certain at first that the cobra's fangs must be imbedded in his other baud —and then she saw liow man's skill had outwitted reptilian cunning'. It. was the little leather bottle that had been the recipient of the infuriated snake’s attack. Fascinated, Gwen realised well enough what she w r as witnessing—the deliberate extraction by a snakecharmer of the venom from the deadly poison glands. For what purpose? Even then, she asked herself the question.

Possibly, under the stimulus of her excitement, she made some involuntary movement, for, with a sudden sweep, the native thrust the cobra back into the basket, clapped on the lid, and stared round suspiciously. Hardly daring to breathe, she stood stock still. She did not need telling what discovery might mean to her. She was in the position of one who witnesses forbidden rites. The knowledge of the penalty that she might ’be called upon to pay had already begun to sap her courage. Finally, as if reassured, the snakecharmer allow r ed the tenseness of his attitude to relax. He peered closely into the bottle, and Gwen saw him shake his head, as if dissatisfied with the contents. Then once again his brown hand shot out, and tipped the lid off the basket.

The former proceeding was re : enacted. A second time that malevolent head, with Its darting tongue, raised itself aloft; a second time its keeper’s hand hovered to seize it as it struck, and guide its fangs to the receptacle designed to receive the poison. Rut on this occasion the drama had a different ending. It may have been a momentary carelessness, born of the ease of long usage; the slightest wandering of attention, caused by the vague suspicions to which he had been a prey just before; the minutest miscalculation of hand and eye. Rut, Whatever it was, it spelt tragedy—tragedy stark and irrevocable. As before, the snake struck —Struck, perhaps, a shade quicker than usual in the rage engendered by its unceremonious bundling, back into the basket—as before, that Jean brown hand darted out to grasp its neck—and this time grasped the empty air. Faster than Gwen’s eye could follow, the cobra reached its objective. There came a shriek of fear and agony, and the brown man sprang to his feet, hurling from him the reptile whose , fangs had pierced his forearm. Then he spun round, staggered a few paces ! and fell—to squirm in dreadful fashiou : on the ground. So much, transfixed with horror, j Gwen saw, until a rustling in the i bushes near her, which she believed | might be the now invisible Snake, struck terror to her very soul. With I a strangled cry she broke from her j concealment and fled in blind panic j across the clearing toward the i summer-house, which in some vague, j nebulous fashion seemed to offer her | sanctuary from that writhing thing of death. She stumbled up the steps, and dashed to the furthest confines of the circular room. Crouching there, her straining eyes upon the opening, she saw the cobra’s head rear itself above the steps—and then, in that moment of her extremity, nature failed her. She sank dqwn fainting, and the snake slid silently toward her across the floor. CHAPTER XII. Sitting alone in his first-class carriage of the Thames Valley train, which he had chosen in the hope that he might be left undisturbed, Detec-tive-Inspector Walter Lucas ruminated on the result of his visit to the museum. The pencilled notes and plans he had copied from the books w-ere on his knee, and has jaws worked mechanically as he read -through them again and again until he could literally have repeated them, and drawn the plans from memory. Then he placed them in his pocket-book, with almost reverent care, and leant back with closed eyes. Hugh was waiting for him at Hengrave station, for the inspector had good-naturedly promised to let. him know if anything eventuated from his search. Coming along, Lucas had asked himself generally why he had broken his almost invariable rule of working and had taken this young man, partially at least, into his confidence in preference to seeking the assistance of one of his subordinates at the Yard, and had had to confess that there was no very good reason save his instinctive liking for the lad. Later, no doubt, it would be necessary to call in another trained helper; but first of all he wished to be more sure of his ground. “Well,” Monro asked, when they were clear of the station, “any luck?” “A certain amount,” the C.I.D. man admitted. “The book, of course, was there, and I found it—interesting.”

Hugh regarded him quizzically. He realised at once that his companion had, no intention at present of divulging what precisely it was that he had discovered, and, wisely, he made no attempt to pump him. He guessed that, if he thought it expedient, the other would tell him in his own good time. “The next step?” lie hazarded, “What is that, to be?” “The same as last night,” was -the prompt reply, “I’m going up to the copse again. Oh, you can come, too, if you he added, as he saw the shade of disappointment. ’which crossed Hugh’s features at his use of the personal pronoun. “You'll think I've got a mania for that belt of trees, Monro. Well, perhaps I have, but this time I propose to visit it at a different hour —midnight seems too fashionable a period for my purposes. Can you be ready in, say, two hours? Daylight will be failing then.” “Of course, I can,’> was the eager response. t “Winthrop rather upset your plans last night, didn’t he?” “To some extent, yes. On the other hand, he may possibly have furthered them.” And with that enigmatic statement Hugh had, perforce, to be content. Thus it came about that ten minutes I after Gwen had ventured into the wood i in the wake of the white-turbaned

stranger with his burden ot ill-omen i the man she loved and the detective I also reached the gate. A hedge j which divided one field from another j had prevented their seeing her in the j distance, and Lucas gave a little mut-j ter of disgust when he observed the j gate to be unfastened. “Good heavens,” he growled, “is I someone here again? Are we never to I get, this place to ourselves?” He hesitated for a moment, as ifj debating whether to postpone their expedition to another time, and then j shrugged his shoulders. “Oil, well,” he said, “we’re here, so I suppose we might as well go in.” Knowing their way far better than the girl, they made much quicker progress through the undergrowth than she had done, and they were already close to the clearing when that dreadful' scream rang out which-denoted the snake-charmer's doom. For an instant they stopped, appalled, and then simultaneously broke into a run. But when they emerged from the bushes all was already, over for the wretched man. The swift poison, racing through his veins, had done its

deadly work. They were within an ace of stumbling over his Inanimate body. Going down on his knees at his | side, Lucas enveloped him with the beam of his flashlight. “My God!” he murmured softly. “My God!” A man who has died from cobrabite is not a pretty sight, and Hugh felt physically sick as he regarded this fresh victim, whose end was, to both of them, for a moment, another mystery. Gazing into each other's white faces, for even Lucas’s iron nerves were not proof against this sudden shock, it seemed to them as if this piece of ground must be accursed. Beyond speech himself, Hugh waited for the other to take the lead. And then, while the seconds ticked by in a silence so profound that they felt they could hear the very flutter of the wings of death, from the gloom of the nearby pagoda there came the , short, sharp crash of a pistol shot, followed by another, shivering the unnatural quietude into a thousand phantom pieces whose fall seemed to mingle with the echoes of the shots. The spell was broken. His own weapon drawn, Lucas leapt for the entrance of the summer-house, Hugh close upon his heels, and in the damp interior of that lonely building the torch showed up a curious scene. | Revolver in hand, Colonel Winthrop | was bending over Gwen’s still form, 1 and on the floor, still wriggling and | squirming in its death agonies, was jGhe headless body of a monstrous snake. CHAPTER XIII. j Hugh’s first agonised, thought was j for the girl. With the remembrance ; of that dreadful object outside in his | mind, he tore across and went down : beside the colonel, who had pillowed ; her head on his arm—and immedii ately, with unutterable thankfulness, j he realised that his fears were un- ! Pale she w as, with the pal- | lor of one visited by overwhelming | terror, but even as he arrived she opened her eyes, and, seeing him bending over her, instinctively her hand sought his. “Hugh,” she murmured, “Hugh, ! dear.”

A moment or two later, seeing that she had shaken off her faint, they lifted her from the floor between them to the stone seat of the pagoda. Roth stood so that she -would not see that writhing thing upon the floor, whose movements now* were little more than spasmodic jerks of muscular contraction, and Hugh turned to Winthrop. “You saved her, sir?” he whispered. “You saved her from —that?” The colonel nodded. He, too, was pale and more moved than Hugh would ever have believed this gaunt, self-contained man could be. Yet ! when he bent liis gaze on the youngster his face wore an aspect, that left the other disturbed and puzzled. Except that he could see no reason for it, he would have said that it was a look of enmitj r . “Yes.” he muttered. “I saved her from that.” All this time Lucas had been standing silent. He had made no attempt i to assist with Gwen, but while the others were engaged his eyes had taken in every nook and cranny of the summer-house, and finally, from the ghastly reptile on the ground, they dwelt on Winthrop himself. “Colonel Winthrop,” he said, and his tone was curt and frosty, “I should be glad to have your account of what has been happening here. . There is a dead man outside—dead, I can guess uow, from snake-bite—and here I find —this,” and the wave of his hand wap comprehensive. Leaving the fast recovering Gwen to Hugh’s ministrations, the colonel turned to Lucas. “I should say,” he remarked, “that Miss Bourne would be likely to give you a clearer account, since she was here before I was.” “That is a question we* can discuss later. I want your version—first.” Hugh was surprised, and somewhat nettled, at the inspector’s brusqueness. For himself, he was only conscious of a feeling of supreme gratitude toward the rnau whose accurate aim must have saved Gwen from the fearful end of the miserable wretch outside—he shuddered at the prospect. He, too, was all agog to hear what had brought her and the colonel there, to hear anything that -would shed light on these fresh amazing happenings, but he saw no reason why Lucas should be —almost offensive. But Winthrop did not seem to take umbrage at the Scotland Yard man’s attitude. “Very well,” he said slowly, “I will tell you all I know—it isn’t much. I had just entered the copse when I heard a cry, and rushing in its direction saw that native twisting on the ground. Looking round, I was just in time to spot that brute of a snake sneaking in through the doorway, realising at once what had happened to the native, and knowing the folly of leaving a cobra at large—for there Is no limit -to their activities, they can swim rivers like a fish—l followed with the intention of putting paid to its account.

“To my horror, directly I got inside, I saw Miss Bourne lying insensible against the wall, and the cobra making straight for her. I fired twice, and, thank heaven, I did not miss—one bullet would have been enough. I stopped over Miss Bourne, and it was then that you and Monro entered.” “How did Miss Bourne come to be in the summer-house?” “How can I tell you?' I never set eyes on her until I entered. I say once more —thank heaven I did.” There was no mistaking the genuineness -of Winthrop’s emotion on that point, and it found an echo in Hugh's heart at least. He was about .to express something of the kind t*o -the colonel when Lucas forestalled him with another question. “What are a native and a cobra doing in your copse?” (To be Continued on Monday.)

ALICE MASARYK

“CROWN PRINCESS” OF A REPUBLIC A PRACTICAL IDEALIST Dv. Alice Masaryk, like her father, the first President of the new Czechoslovakian Republic, is a practical idealist. She has turned her first nebulous dreams of social welfare for her country into concrete realities. She has imbued the women of her country with the ideal that the home is the centre of all national inspiration. "A nation can be no better than its! homes” is the slogan of her practicalas well as her spiritual endeavour. | In all, 60,000 houses have been built' by the Czecho-Slovakian Government! since the war to cope with the inevi-! table housing problem that faces every; country as a consequence of war. The i Red Cross, with Alice Masaryk as its! guiding spirit, has taken ou the re- j I sponsibility of “settlement” work : among these new- communities. The ! houses are built of native materials and are adaptations -of the native architecture. Bata, the famous Czech shoe manufacturer, or shoe maker, as he likes to be called, rents such houses, which he has built in his model village around his factory, to his workers for a weekly rental that varies from 2s 6d to 3s 6d. When asked for a definition of social work Alice Masaryk replied: “I I don’t know w-hat it is. Isn’t it everyj thing that has to do with life? Colour, air, beauty, work, pure water, cook- ! ing, sewing, playing—-our little houses j typify it all. They build badly—dampness, bad sanitation, shabby | imitation. We want the farmers to see a home as the farmer should have it; we are trying to show them a family centre, a home for the children who will make the new Czechoslovakia. AA’e had to begin with the hospitals—we couldn’t see them suffer- —but We want to integrate life; ! to make the home express the beauty of the nature in which they live and work; to divorce picturesqueness from inefficiency. It is upon and within and about the home especially that we centre our endeavour.” In Czecho-Slovakia there are 125 . schools training girls for housekeeping and industrial professions. The ! activities of each of these institutions j is animated by Alice Masaryk's ideal of simple living and high thinking applied to the home and the social ! life of the working people.

Her mother was an American — Charlotte Garrigue, of New York. Of his wife, President Masaryk has said: ! “AVithout her 1 should never have j seen clearly either the sense of life j or my own political task.” From both i her parents Alice Masaryk has an inheritance of which she might be justly proud. In 1904 she graduated as a j doctor of philosophy from the Prague I University. Soon after this she went ! on a visit to America. While in Chi- | cago she stayed with Mary McDowell, a leader in welfare work in that city. She acknowledges that she got her first training in social work and her first lesson in sanitation at the University of Chicago Settlement, cleaning up the alleys. A year later she returned to Bohemia, where she endeavoured to persuade the Hapsburg Government to take steps to improve the social conditions of working ] people. But the Government would not j hear of any such innovations. Even j her application to serve as a volun- j teer nurse was refused. Little did they dream that the day would come when, as a daughter of the President of a new Republic formed from vanquished Austria, she would wield a power as great, and an influence far greater, than any of those who had turned down her efforts to bring enlightenment to a nation which for three centuries had suffered under the tyranny of the Hapsburg regime. : But before this was to happen she was to endure hardship and suffering such as is rarely the lot of any woman. During the war her father’s political activities, which sought to free Bohemia from Austrian oppression, placed a price upon his head. AVhen he secretly fled from Austria I the Government sought to make a hostage of his wife. So greatly was ] this woman revered, though, and be-1 cause of her feeble health, no action I was taken against her, hut instead | they took her daughter prisoner, and without accusation or trial of any kind they imprisoned her for eight months In Vienna. Here she rubbed shoulders with and shared the treatment dealt out to common criminals and habitues of the underworld. This experience she even turned to account for the ennobling of her own soul. “No amount of social pathology gives such an insight as this.” She wrote to her mother. “At first I felt horror at the injustice of the gaolkeeper, nausea at the common criminals. God, how unjust. All, all, are human beings, and in each one flickers the divine spark, no matter how miserably small, the flame sometimes is . . . Now I make the decision ... to approach the chalice with my lips, and drink as if it were honey. ... I have given my word not to complain; on the contrary to get the best and most human experience out of my relations here. ... If they free me, I shall live more intensely, and strive humanly, for the best and noblest things.”

At a rumour of her proposed execution strong influence from the United States Government forced her release. The tortuous uncertainty of her husband’Sv fate, her daughter's imprisonment, and the death of one of her sons at the war, completely broke Madame Masaryk’s health. She saw her-husband politically triumphant, but for the five years that she lived duriDg his presidency she was a hopeless invalid.

And now Alice Masaryk and her father, who was the sou of a Slovakian coachman, live in the magnificent old royal castle at Prague. There is the siiirit' of Hus and Komensky in these tM o indomitably brave personalities, who have both approached near to the valley of the shadow of death in vindication of the principles and ideals they held so loyally. And although there is sadness and much tragedy in life for them, Alice Masaryk shares with her father a gift for laughter. To bring enlightenment into the homes, the hearts, and the minds of the poor and ignorant, is the life work of this splendid woman, of whom it has been said that she treads this eat th with the simplicity of a peasant and the bearing of a duchess.