For Her Sister's Sake; OR, THE LAVENDEN SECRET.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8323, 3 January 1907, Page 2

For Her Sister's Sake; OR, THE LAVENDEN SECRET.

By R. .Worman Silver, t - -, of "A Double Mask," "A Daughter of Mystery," "Held Apart," >'The Golden Dwarf," etc.

CHAPTER IV. Peter Crimple stood aghast, and the younger man laughed savagely. "That shot struck home, eh?" he said. "Come, be reasonable. You'll get me some cash?" The cab-driver held the child to him and looked into vacancy. "You've a black heart, James Garth," he answered slowly, "but I won't fight you, for the sake of David's boy. You shall have the money, but not —not now. I've none by me. I'll get it though." "Mr James Garside": shrugged his shoulders. "I can wait a day or tW he rejoined. "By-by for the "-pent. Ta-ta, Matilda, you little spitfire!" He paused and looked at the child again. "David's," he said, thoughtfully. "H'm! Well, good-night!" and'he went out. loungingly. From the open doors of the stableyard he could see a sweep of dark roofs and roadways, sprinkled with lights. He was in one of the side streets on the slopes of the shallow hill that divides Islington and Clerkenwell.

The house from which he had emerged stood almost on the corner of a dusky square. At the foot of the short road that he had entered ran a broader and busier thoroughfare; he walked down into it and hailed a cab.

"Piccadilly," he said, as he got in and sank back upon the cushions to relapse into a profound reverie. At the hub of western London he got down and strolled along to St. James Street.

"Big Ben" was booming midnight from the clock-tower. A few moments more and he'was ascending the staircase of a block of bachelor chambers. An inherent caution had restrained him from giving to a cabman hailed in Islington, after a visit to a personage more or less known to the police, his exact address. As he put his key into the outer door of his own suite, a figure stole forward from a darker side passage. He heard the footfall and looked around. A woman stood behind him, a woman young, but plainly dressed. His eyes sought her face. It was veiled. She raised a hand and lifted her veil. It was Winifred Lavenden.

"You are very late," she coolly observed; "I have been waiting for you an hour or more. You didn't expect we should meet again so soon, did yob?" He thrust open the door, bewildered, and switched on the electric light. Her presence there at that hour was so amazing that he could scarcely believe his own eyes and ears. .

Winifred Lavenden walked in calmly. He shut the door and went to turn on some more of the lights and draw the blinds. The, flat was not large, but it was comfortably furnished in a masculine fashion..

Glancing at his visitor, he found her very grave and self-possessed, a strange little smile on her lips, a curious glitter in hereyes. "This is quite an honor," he said, flinging off his overcoat and pausing before her. "No doubt you felt that we ought to havejan uninterrupted talk together, you and I. Well, lam very much at your service; I always was. And, though I may have spoken a trifle brutally at. Lavenden House to-night, I really hoped you would come to see things in a light that would enable us to discuss them as friends." He was speaking with marked politeness, but, for all that, he was watching her keenly.. Her visit, her calmness, and especially the strange confidence in her bearing puzzled him inexpressibly. "May I hope that we can now return to the matter in question on that basis?" he proceeded. "Believe me, if I have seemed to use rather unscrupulously the hold which circumstances have given me over you, Winnie " ... Winifred Lavenden winced at his caressing utterance of her name. But she said nothing. {jg<isg *', "It is because," he went on, "I have not been able for two long and weary years to forget you, because I am made desperate by the knowledge that I cannot live without you." Winnie sat back in her chair, ignoring the by no means feigned passion of his avowal. "I want to see that marriage'certificate again, "she said. James Garth laughed, "So that is your idea," he ex- - claimed; "to wheedle it out of me, and—presto! destroy it. No, no; it is safer where it is—in my. pocket." Winifred Lavenden rose sharply. "Give it to me," she said, "or I shall not believe a single word you have said about-vabout not forgetting me." The other chuckled. "I have brought you to my knees at\last, have I?" he exclaimed. "I'd have sworn 1 should. But you can't have the certificate, my darling. I'll let/yon » have a peep at it, though." He felt in his coat pocket and brought it out. Winnie extended her hand appealingly. "Please," she said, and there was a spice of coquetry in her tone, "please —Jim!" James Garth was delighted. "By Jove!" he retorted, "I've a good mind to give it to you, for a kiss." He held it within an inch of her finger-tips, and she caught at it. She seized it by a corner, and the stiff paper tore. James Garth would have snatched at the portion in her hand, but recoiled. He was looking into the round, bright muzzle of a revolver. A silver-plated, mother-of-pearl toy, its barrel bent upon him; nevertheless, a stern and silent menace of death.

["For Her Sister's Sake " was commenced on December 20th.]

"Give me the other bit," said Winifred Lavenden. Her voice shook, but there was a grim determination in it. For answer, James Garth darted at her. She leaped back, alarmed. An explosion followed—no louder than that of a drawn cork—and the mirror on the mantelpiece was shattered into a great glass star. The trigger of the revolver was on the lightest of light pulls, and the hammer had fallen, exploding a charge. The bullet had grazed the temple of James Garth, making a crimson stoeak across it. He uttered a fierce ejaculation and grasped her wrist —the wrist of her left hand. Winnie set her teeth and levelled the weapon at the savage face that glared into her own. But her nerves were failing her — her head began to swim. While she and her antagonist stood confronting one another in an awful indecision, something seemed to burst in her brain, her ears rang, everything was blotted out in a kind of mist, and she knew no more. Slowly, very slowly, she struggled back to consciousness. Her eyes opened heavily, and she looked around. Then a stifled shriek broke from her. Hard by, at her very feet, lay a figure in evening dress —a figure fearfully, ominiously motionless. It was James Garth, and there was a small blue mai-k between his brows. He was quite dead. [To be Continued.]