CHAPTER XVII.

Te Aroha News, Volume III, Issue 153, 8 May 1886, Page 4

CHAPTER XVII.

THE MYSTERIOUS HOUSE. On the hilly ground that overlooked the | wharf of Billy rose a narrow and crooked ascent, that bore the rather inelegant name of the rue Bizet. Ihe immense work that has nearly renewed this part of the town has left but a fragment of the street, almost inaccessible to carriages, and we can scarcely give an account at this time of the curious situation of the few houses that were formerly there ; but to most of these rather miserable buildings were attached large gardens. A few, particularly in the upper part of the street, presented a better appearance, and some of them might even bo supposed to be inhabited. The finest, or rather the largest, of these houses— for it seemed very badly kept — dcarcely showed its solitary front through the bushy trees. No one had ever been seen going into this deserted place but the gardener, paid by the year to take care of the grass and rake the walks— two things he did very badly. Besides, this man knew nothing of the owners of the house, merely going for his wages to a notary in the neighbourhood, employed by the proprietor to pay him. This neglect had lasted so long that no one in the neighbourhood suspected a mystery. The oldeet inhabitants remembered vaguely having heard formerly of a cabal of conspirators that the police had surprised there ; but it was an old story, almost iorgotten, in 1847, and the passers by did not even stop to examine the broken blinds and worm-eaten doors. Nevertheless, early one morning, a few hours after the tragic end of the English woman, a man was walking before the rusty gate on the rue Chaillot, seemingly agitated by violent and conflicting feelings ; at times starting off with rapid strides, as if decided to leave the place, then returning to the door again, and looking at the house with glowing eyes. This early pedestrian was no other than Jottrat. After the painful and overwhelming revelations of Susanne, the police officer had suffered from cruel perplexities, as, before knowing the secret of Toby's birth, he had organised the most severe superintendence and watch around the house where the accomplices of De Noreff were hiding ; the precautions taken being of such a kind that it would be impossible for them to escape. But now he reproached himself bitterly for having been so skilful, and was seeking to undo his work with as much ardour as he had used in accomplishing it, — for, in this father's heart, horror for the precious scoundrel had given place to an affectionate indulgence for the misguided son. To save Henry, tear him from his accomplices and punishment, escape with him to some distant country, *ould be henceforth his only aim. Indifferent to all the interests that had employed him for the last month, indifferent even to the providential vengeance that had already struck Susanne and De Nbraff, Jottrat's paternal love, bringing out all hie faculties and energy, soon conceived a plan that he wished to put in execution immediately. ! For two , reasons, eince his adventure in the cave, Jottrat bad not given any signs of life to the police officers ; the first, drawn from the events that followed the miraculous" preservation of his life; the other connected with the calculations of his employment; not wishing to appear before the chief officers of the police until he could give up to them at the same time all the authors (until now not discoverable) of the mysterious murder of the Boie de Boulogne, He employed, to aid him in bis expedi-

tion, flen no longer officially employed by the fdministration, and remunerated them liberally. _ As these men were devoted to Mo, having unlimited confidence in hie juigment, he based his plan upon the fortunate circumstance that permitted hind to- act without giving any account of hie movements ; and, therefore, nothing pre J vented him from entering alone in the garden and coming out of it again with his son, makingsomepretextto his subalterns for doing so, and never re-appearing. The difficulty was not there, although he musi have great courage to risk going alone te this retreat ; but, when there, oould he per suade Toby to leave his accomplices, and gc with a man he must necessarily distrust' besides, he could not make hinself knowt to him before De Noreffs widow withoul compromising all. But it was absolutely necessary to find an expedient, and Jottrai was seeking one in hiu agitated walk along the rue de Chaillot. Suddenly he seemea te have found it, for he passed his hane through the bars of the gate, and, pressing it upon a spring, the gate opened, and hi went in, T/.e day was dawning, but the stars still shone in the sky, and the uncertain glimmei of the movning lighted dimly the great bare trees of the silent house. Jottrat went along a wide walk, bordered by cypresstrees ; all the details of his kidnapping by De Noreff coming back to his mind. He recognised perfectly the place wherothey had forced him to come down from the carriage to tie his hands and bandage hie eyes ; but from the gate to the house the distance was too short to coincide with the length of the way that he had been taken through the darkness. He now understood that he must have been carried that nighi to the extreme end of the garden, and thert must be then a building there that led te the subterranean cave. When Jottrat arrived before the house, he walked around it, and soon saw that he had not been mistaken, as the garden extended to the end of the declivity ; at the furthest end, and at rather a long distance, there was a building of mean appearance, There, doubtless, was the entrance to tht subterranean cave, that probably extended under the wharf, as the cave where he had been imprisoned faced the Seine. But, for the moment, the mo?t difficult thing to divine was where the guilty ones were hid. Were they in the house where his spies had seen them going in, or had they sought refuge in the safer retreat oi the cave ? Jottrat thought that the only means to assure himself of it was to £»o boldly to the door of the house ; afterward, if necessary, to the cave, flattering himseli that Lumilia Ludloff and Toby would not recognise hinj. As for the pretended naval officer, who was no other than one of the Russian agents of De Noreff, he was su.'e that he had never met him. He thus had some chance of introducing himself, under the pretext of bringing a message, and, at the same time, to take Toby aside, and persuade him to go with him. Jottrat, giving a last glance at the house, went up the moss-covered steps, and, raising an enormous knocker, struck it. The blow resounded for a long time, as if the sound was lost in the deserted rooms of an empty building. Jottrat listened attentively, but no answer came from the interior, although be thought for an instant he heard a slight cracking sound above his head, but, looking up, saw nooning. At the momeut he was about taking hold of the knocker to strike a second blow, a window-shutter was half opened on the first floor, and a gun passed through it. Jottrat did not suspect the danger, but it seems there is a mysterious instinct that warns a man exposed to a violent and sudden death — the same magnetic influence that a person feels when gazed at by one he does not see. Mechanically, he pressed himself against the door, the lintel of which half shielded him It was time. The gun was fired, ani the ball that certainly would have killed him on the spot only reached his shoulder. Thrown down by the violence of the shock, Jottrat, while falling, raised his head, uttering a cry of grief —having just recognised, behind the half-opened window shutter, Toby's fuce, "Parricide !" he murmured ; " ah ! there is nothing: left for me but to die !" The miserable groom burst into a ferocious laugh while looking at him. Placed as an advanced sentinel by his accomplices, who had taken refuge in the cave, and seeing Jottrat, whom he knew perfectly well, as he had met him in his master's house he thought he would be able to get rid of a spy with impunity. (lo be Continued.)