The Jpanese Parasol

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1018, 8 July 1930, Page 5

The Jpanese Parasol

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CHAPTER XVI.

One thing the C.I.D. man did. which neither of the others knew. He dispatched a brief note to the Yard, and the answer, received on the morning of their departure, caused him to smile with grim anticipation. The run southward through the beautiful Surrey and Sussex scenery, made in ideal weather, proved all that Winthrop said it would, and no involuntary s-top marred the smooth devouring of the miles. The peace of evening brooded over Cowham when they came to it, the swelling bosom of its creek flashing back the last rays of the sinking sun. An hour or two later that gleaming sheet of water would be but an expanse of reedy mud. but as it was, Lucas and Hugh saw the quaint place —its houses almost dabbling their feet in the water at their doors —absolutely at its best. It was indeed lovely and restful beyond the telling, and Lucas heaved a sigh. He for one, would have been content to spend many days in those sweet surroundings, forgetting the cares and sordid happenings of his calling. But none knew better than he that Sunday would witness his “unexpected” summons back to Town.

In spite of the sound sleep engendered by their motor drive, all three of them were awake early next morning, and a dip in the creek, once more at full tide, soon swept away the latent effects of their slumber. The colonel revealed himself as a powerful swimmer, to an extent indeed which called forth Hugh’s expressed admiration. He himself was but a modest Performer, and Lucas had to confess to scarcely swimming at all. The colonel was inclined to be a trifle vainglorious over his accomplishment. “Swum ever since I was three years old,” he puffed, as they dried themselves on the shore. “Useful accomplishment—never know when it will »e needed. Had thoughts of trying the channel in my younger days, but never seemed to get the opportunity.” I’d certainly give anything to swim J*® !' ou >” Hugh said enthusiastically, hut a quarter-mile is about my limit.’’ "A quarter-mile,” Winthrop echoed thoughtfully, “just about across the creek.” “Just about,” the lad laughed, “and then I’d be sorry to have to come back.” “Oh, well.” the soldier said, “it’s la rgely a matter of practice, given a Ce ~ ain Proficiency.” They were all in high spirits as they dressed. Hugh was manifestly bearing up well over his enforced separation from Gwen, even if now and then ?s e . n reßret did enter his mind that 'he girl was not with them. It only needed that, he thought, to render owham a paradise indeed. Lucas, tno. had lost his air of preoccupation, '■‘engrave, and that ill-omened spiney, seemed very far away, and for he time being he deliberately dismissed them from his thoughts. As for Winthrop—he had become a again, and his brown muscular ody was that of a young man in his prime.

Now for breakfast, you fellows," ® cried, as he swung his towel across “Bit of a novelty for

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“you to cook your own, eh, Monro?” “Oh, I've done it before,” the latter laughed. “Had a. hit of camping-out in my time, you know.” With jest, and count.er-jest, the meal was prepared, and Lucas's brov: was drawn into puzzled wrinkles as lie surveyed their care-free host. An involuntary doubt regarding certain of his imaginings assailed him. As breakfast progressed, the wea ther, which, like the day before had been bright and sunny, began to change. The sun went in, and a thin, whitish mist obscured the at mosphere. Winthrop glanced through the window.

“Hope we're not going to have one ofr those confounded sea-fogs,” he muttered. “They’re rather prevalent down here. I don't want the day’s programme spoilt.” “Nor I,” Hugh cordially agreed. “What is the day’s programme, by the way?” he added. “Well,” the colonel replied. “I thought that after breakfast —when the youngest member of the party has washed up—we’d go and have a look at my motor-launch, the Firefly. She’s over in the boat-house yonder, and I’m rather proud of her. After that, w'e can take things easily, and I'll show you round the village, which is.rather quaint. This afternoon we might drop down the creek in the launch to the open sea, getting bach in time for supper on the evening tide. Tomorrow we can fish. How’s that?”

“Couldn’t be better,” Hugh declared. “What do you think, Lucas?” ‘The same as you, my lad,” —hut he did not add that tomorrow there would most certainly be no fishing for him. He wished there could be. Cowham had cast its spell on him, as on others who first make its acquaintance.

Yet after breakfast, when he and Hugh were alone for a few minutes, he broached for the first time the reason why he had pressed the latter to accompany him. “In a sense,” Monro,” he said, “you are my collaborator. Tomorrow', I shall have a message from the Yard — In fact, I have arranged to have it which will necessitate my leaving here at once. Now, w 7 ere I alone, Colonel Winthrop would —and quite naturally —no doubt insist on driving me back in the car, which, between ourselves, is just what I want to avoid. It is imperative that I go by myself. But, with you here, he can hardly spoil your holiday, too, and, if necessary, I want you to protest strongly against being dragged away. I can then take the train from Bichester. leaving you and him to follow on the arranged day, Monday—by which time, I hope, my object will have been achieved. Hugh nodded. “I understand. I mustn’t ask you, I suppose, what you intend to do?” “You wouldn’t be told, if you did,” was the blunt rejoinder. "Time enough for that when I have proved, or disproved, certain possibilities.” "All right,” the younger man laughed. ’Til act on the cue you’ve given me.” Then, in more serious vein, he added: “You know I’d do anything to help lay Milton’s murderers by the “And that,” Lucas said, "I sincerely hope we may be a step nearer doing when I see you again.” The colonel’s return put an end to the conversation, and they followed him out to the boat-house —a picturesque wooden erection on piles, between which the water swished at high tide —to be shown the Firefly. She proved to be a white-painted handsome craft, last-looking and with rakish lines, and Hugh showed that he was all agog to test her. "Can’t, we run out to sea with her

now on the falling tide?” he suggested, but Winthrop shook his head. “No, my impatient young friend. That would mean returning at low water, with about a hundred yards of mud to wade through before reaching land. Wait a bit—l promise you that the voyage will exceed all your anti cipations. Now let’s go along ami inspect the church, Saxon and Norman combined, with a complete Saxon lower. and the tomb of Canute’s daughter. Interesting building.” As they wandered round it, Winthrop discoursed learnedly on architecture, and, to tell the truth, somewhat. bored his hearers, who were much more enthralled by the general situation of the village and its clustering cottages. Yet the time passed quickly to the early lunch, and they hardly noticed that the morning mist was beginning to take on a distinct, semblance to a fog.

Winthrop though was optimistic. “It’s often like this here.” he said, “when its perfectly clear at sea. Anyway, we’ll start —young Monro there will scalp me if we dou’t!” Only about two hours of the ebb were left when they started, and already the difference in the creek’s appearance was very marked. Flat mudbanks now extended where before had been water of surprising clearness, and between them comparatively narrow channels held what was left of the falling tide. In one of these the Firefly had been taken out of the boat-house and moored, but they had to cross the mud on duck-boards before they could reach her, and Hugh was able to picture how little water at all there was at dead low tide. But they were aboard at last, running easily downstream with the current into the wider reaches of Bichester Harbour. As they advanced, however, the mist grew thicker instead of thinner, blotting out all view of the banks, and presently Lucas voiced his perturbation. “Aren’t you afraid of running ashore on a sandbank. Colonel?” Winthrop laughed. “Not I,” he said confidently. “I know every inch of this harbour; explored every square foot, of it iu fine weather and foul. We’ll carry on. I still hold to my forecast that it will be clearer outside. You don’t want to turn back, do you, Monro?” “Heavens, no.” said Hugh, who was enjoying himself immensely, “not for any money. It wouldn’t matter much if we did hit a sandbank, would it?” "Only about four hours’ wait till we floated off again,” the other answered sardonically. “However, you needn’t worry—-I’m not going to put her on the sand.” Assuming that their pilot knew more about the local weather probabilities than he did, Lucas said no more, and, with her engine performing perfectly, the Firefly glided on, until at length, calm though it was, they felt beneath her keel the heave of the deeper water of the sea—and then, in triumphant vindication of her owner’s prophesy, the mist lightened, the horizon opened out to at least a mile, and a pale sun made manful efforts to pierce the veil of vapour overhead. “Told you so,” Winthrop ejaculated. “As I say, I can read this bit of coast, like a book.” “Queer how these summer fogs originate,” he went on. “Some of them are pretty bad, I can tellyou.” He glanced round him,' and Lucas thought he noted a certain strained expectancy iu his eyes. • It made him wonder at the time whether the colonel was as confident as he strove to sound. For an hour and a-half, or more, they cruised about, Winthrop explaining that he wanted a certain amount of water to flow with the turning tide into the harbour and creek before starting the seven-mile run back to Cowham from the harbour mouth, and they were some way out to sea when, almost without warning, the misfortune happened. Ahead of them was a wall of what even Lucas’s unnautical eye told him was fog, although the air immediately around them was clear enough. He had been watching it uneasily for some time, in spite of the fact that Winthrop was treating it with great apparent contempt. And all at once it rolled forward

in ghostly fashion, and enveloped : them completely. One moment thev [ were on a palely sunlit sea, the next, j plunged into a thick density which hardly allowed them vision of their own boat’s length. Slowly they pushed through this, and found no outlet. Indeed, the muffled - syrens of distant ships seemed to spell that it was of considerable extent, and suddenly the detective sat up in active alarm. To his ears had come the sound there is no mistaking—the beat of surf on the rocks—and, taking into consideration the fog’s deadening effect, he kqew they must be very near. “I say. Colonel—” he exclaimed, and then stopped short, in an astonishment that matched Hugh’s own petrified amazement. Colonel James Winthrop was sitting very still, and in his unwavering hand, covering both his passengers, was the grim outline of his big revolver. CHAPTER XVII. “Sit still, Lucas!” Winthrop said j ominously, as the detective made an ; involuntary movement. “You and 1 are going to have a little conversation before I settle this matter for good and all. Very convenient, this fog. Lends such ail air of privacy to our discussion. The C.I.D. man made no reply, but he was thinking hard as he gazed into the black muzzle of the colonel’s revolver. He was bitterly conscious of his own weapon locked away iu his bag back in the bungalow. He knew, too, that Hugh was unarmed, for he had admitted not having brought the spare pistol Lucas had lent him that evening in the thicket. But wtflit rankled most with him at, the moment .was the thought that he had been outwitted. For some time past, especially since his discovery of the book in the Museun;. and again after that “shadow-play” on the colonel’s study blind, he had harboured certain ideas, certain suspicions which already amounted almost to certaity, though he had as yet no opportunity of proving them, regarding this apparently above-board and straightforward soldier. His view of the invitation to Cowham had been that, for reasons of his own. Winthrop had wished to get Hugh Monro and himself away front Hengrave for the time being. He strongly suspected that he meant to formulate some excuse which would give him the opportunity of slipping back to Grange Hall for a day while ostensibly leaving them to carry on with their short holiday, and it was to counteract this expected move that he had arranged for his own recall—partly so, at any rate. But now it seemed to him that Winthrop must have had a far deeper, more sinister purpose when issuing that invitation, an impression which thfi colonel promptly proceeded ta bear out. “Listen, Lucas,” he went on, and his usually suave voice had a twist in it that almost amounted to a snarl, “I’m not going to w r aste words. How much you’ve guessed, or think you’ve guessed, I don’t know, but what I do know is that you, and that boy there, have become meddlesome —and I don’t stand for meddlers in my affairs.” "So you intend to dispose of us as you did Milton?” the detective interjected. Winthrop’s face darkened. “1 intend to dispose of you—yes, but whether I did or did not dispose of Milton is beside the question. Charming word of yours, Lucas—dispose. So much more subtle than, let us say, murder.” “Glad you think so,” the Scotland Yard man muttered, “though it amounts to the same thing.” He was watching Hugh as he spoke, and his face took on a warning frown. Monro had thrown off the stupefaction that had accompanied the colonel’s abrupt removal of the mask and he was glaring as if to hurl himself at the throat of the man who had made no denial to Lucas’s insinuation that he was the murderer of his friend. But none knew better than the detective how one false move could jeopardise, or destroy, whatever slender chance there was of turning the tables. “Steady, lad,” he murmured beneath his breath. ! He could not, however, altogether ! curb the youngster’s impetuosity. | “What do you mean, Colonel Winj throp?” Hugh cried, his face white, i his voice shrill, in his agitation. “Do j you mean you did kill Milton?”

Even now it was evident that he ! found the idea nearly incredible, as ; well he might, seeing in what light he had always regarded the retired soldier. Winthrop shrugged his shoulders. “I am not here to handy words with either of you,” he said roughly, “but let me point out that the slightest movement will bring a bullet through you as sure as I sit here. Not that I have any desire to do so, save as a last resort. To use the word again, I have something up my sleeve more —subtle than that.” “Well?” Lucas rejoined. His hand was on Hugh Monro’s arm, and it gripped like steel.. “You’re a clever detective, Lucas,” the sneering voice proceeded, “hut not quite clever enough—hardly, if ] may put it in that way, sufficiently careful of your own skin. Otherwise ! you would not he in your present j dilemma. I confess, however, that when I brought you down here I ! hardly hoped that the fates would play into my hands as they have done. But the mist this morning gave me my cue. I began to foresee the fog that has now embraced us—it won’t lift. Lucas, so base no hopes on that. “Which brings mo to my plan. You heard it. just now—you can hear it still, if you listen—the sound of breaking waves. It is a reef, a reef which at the moment is just awash, but which in half an hour’s time can harbour no living soul. It is on that reef that I mean to pile the Firefly—a regrettable necessity, but one justified under the circumstances. That reef is two miles from land, a hopeless swim for either of you, if you survive the impact. Shouting will not avail you—coasters give those rocks a wide berth. I calculate that fivo minutes after you have been marooned you will be swept off by the rising tide. Found drowned’—what an excellent verdict.” With the cessation of the mocking ! voice, Lucas sat very still. Even at that grim moment he found the reflection that he must be at grips with one of the world's arch-criminals an interesting one, hut he could wish that the dice were not loaded so heavily against him. His active imagination pictured something that Winthrop had forborne to mention when they reached the reef-—a blow from a pistol butt is not so very different from a blow from a rock. At all events, a coroner's jury was not likely to mark the difference. Oh. well, it would make drowning easier. Thicker than ever, the fog pall wrapped round them its clammy folds, and all at once Winthorp restarted the engine, which he had cut off while they drifted. In a half-circle the Firefly swept round, and then headed straight, for that muffled sound of breaking seas. Lucas felt Hugh's bods’ stiffen beneath his hand. “Wait,” he whispered, “that is all we can do —wait.” CHAPTER XVIII. The crash when it came was terrific. One moment they were scurrying along through the fog, Hugh and Lucas sitting with tautened muscles amidships, each contemplating in his mind the forlorn hope of throwing himself at the ruthless figure with its levelled revolver in the stern; the next, the launch’s bows rose high out of the water, there was the smash of the impact, a shock that hurled them from their seats, and then the plunge into the grey, mist-wreathed oiliness of the sea. For Hugh, that is—for Lucas there was the dim consciousness of a blow, just such a one as he had been contemplating, and then oblivion. Rising to the surface after his iuvoluntary plunge, Hugh felt the graze of a rock, and then another, and painfully, like a fly pulling itself back from the edge of the treacle it has incautiously approached, he hauled himself on to the reef, whose irregular, flattish top was scarcely six inches above the water. There he found Lucas, lying where he had been dashed bodily from the boat. Of the latter, or of her owner, there was no sign, and he concluded that the Firefly, burdened with the dead weight of her engine, must have sunk like a stone. Bending over Lucas, he saw that he w T as insensible, a nasty combined cut and bruise over the temple showing xvhere his head had struck the rock, and as Hugh went down on his knees beside

him and commenced to raise him, he got a fresh reminder of their precarious position. A rather larger swell than usual washed right over the surface of the rock, lapping round the limbs and body of the prostrate man. It was only an inch or two of water, but nevertheless a grim enough earnest of what was to come. Foot by foot, the tide would rise inexorably, rendering impossible all footholds on the reef. A quarter of an hour, perhaps, no more —and then . . . Despairingly, Hugh stared round him, but the fog shut out all vision, and except for the wash of the encroaching sea no sound pierced it, save the harsh, barely-heard cry of some unseen bird. He raised his own voice, and shouted, but the fog seemed to cast back the puny sound in derision. Then, to his delight, Lucas stirred. That lapping wave, probably, had done something to revive him,- and presently, assisted by Hugh, he struggled to a sitting posture. “Hello, old chap,” he smiled feebly, “here we are marooned then. Where’s that infernal colonel?” “I don’t know,” Hugh answered. “Drowned, I hope,” he ended viciously. “Don’t you believe it,” the Scotland Yard man rejoined. “People like him don't drown —they hang!” he finished with a kind of dour conviction. “If only I thought so,” was the fervent reply. “I’d drown happily myself.” “Humph,” Lucas muttered —with rather less conviction. He held his hand to his aching head. “Help me up, old thing,” he added, “I think 1 can stand if you do.” A minute or two later saw him swaying dizzily on his feet, and almost immediately a second wave came curling in across the reef, playing round their boots, turning every crevice into a series of pools and cascading rivulets. Lucas glanced down at it. “Cute fellow, Winthrop; chose his

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time well. We’ll have to get a move J on if we’re to get out of this.” And all at once Hugh was conscious j of a queer ray of comfort. Lucas’s jaws were working over his eternal j chewing-gum —which seemingly even ! the disaster had not made him lose— j and that meant that his mind was j working, too. Nevertheless, it was disappointing suggestion that eventually emanated. "We must shout,” he said, "shout ! like blazes. Someone may be cruis-; ing round, and hear us —so yell like the dickens!” And shout they did. again and again until their throats were hoarse, but no answering hail came through the mist, merely the mocking sound of a syren a mile or two away. The reef was awash now, with no particle of it dry, and each wave as it came along reached to their knees, more than once causing them to stagger on the slippery surface. Soon it would be thigh-deep, its pressure if resistible, sweeping them from their precarious foothold into the depths beyond, bringing culmination to Wiuthrop’s wily ruse. “If we could only swim it.” Hugh i muttered, “but two miles ” “And in which direction do you propose to swim?” the detective asked j him. Hugh was despairingly aware of the j force of the question. It was not only ; a matter of distance. Enveloped in that all-obliterating blanket of vapour, I neither of them had the slightest ide a where lay the shore. To leave the rock might be to swim straight ou _ to sea. Yet leave the reef soon they would willy-nilly. A larger wave than usual made them both grab at one another for mutual support. “Another like that, and we’re done,” Hugh gasped. “Oh, curse Winthrop. curse him!” “Look here,” Lucas said suddenly. “It doesn’t matter to me—two miles or 20 yards. All I can do is about three strokes. But you can swim, Monro. So when—when we get notice to quit don’t mind me. Float round ou your back as long as you can, on the chance of being picked up. Understand?” Hugh nodded. The C.I.D. man’s un-

selfish pluck touched him. “We’’! sink or swim together." he “I’ll manage to hold you up for a bit.' While they had been talking th > had prepared for the inevitable, di - carding their boots and such clothe- 9 as were likely to impede them, and u!l at once Hugh gave a hitter laugh. “Remember what Winthrop said before we started, Lucas—that the trip would surpass our expectation: ? Well, it has, hasn't it?” The detective was about to agree, when, with one of those strange changes of fortune which do actualiy occur. Hugh's words received an added, and startling, confirmation. There came a swift and unlooked-for lightening of the mist, and then, miracles of miracles as it seemed to them, they were in clear air once more, with a blue sky above and a blue set stretching to a far horizon —but without a sail within a hopeless distance. The fog-bank rolled on. and all »' once divulged to them what seemed a greater marvel still—a low shore not a quarter-mile away. Hugh’s strained voice rose , tin a last great shout. “Two miles!” he cried. “Winthrop was blurting. Come. Lucas—over on your back. Keep quite still, even if you get a there yet.” (To be Continued Tomorrow.l