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

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8357, 14 February 1907, Page 2

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

By R. Norman Silver, thor of "A Double Mask," "A Daughter of Mysb ;>• /• "Held Apart,' ••Ihe Golden Dtuarfetc.

CHAPTER XXX. —Continued. " suprintendent whispered to the inspector, and the latter came to the weeping women. ; "On your own confession, Winifred Lavenden," he said, and his deep tones trembled unsteadily, "it is my duty to arrest you on the charge of causing Ihe death of James Garside, otherwise James Garth, on the night of the twenty-second of March." Winifred Lavenden raised her head. "You want me to come now?" she asked simply. The Inspector assented almost inaudibly. Winnie disengaged herself from her halffainting sister, and, blinded by her own tears, relinquished herself to her Btern guides. As they passed out into the hall a footman was opening the entrance doors. Some one stepped in. It was Edward Agnew, 'and Winifred Lavenden felt that she was face to face with an agony worse than death. With a cry of joy he sprang toward her. The inspector intervened. "This lady is our prisoner, sir!" he said. Agnew stared amazedly. "Your prisoner?" he repeated. "In Heaven's name, of what is she accused?'' "Of murder!" said a voice. Constance Istria had followed the detectives out into the hall. It was she who had spoken. Agnew's glance travelled from Winnie to her three grim guardians, from the detectives to Constance Istria, and back again to Winnie. Her expression struck him with a vague terror; a thousand hints of tragedy in the bitter-sweet of their past came back to him ominously. ■ "It is impossible, impossible!" he cried. "My darling, say you are innocent!" Winifred Lavenden bowed her head as her guides drew her gently toward the open hall doors. "I—l cannot," she answered, brokenly; "I am guilty!" Edward Agnew stared amazedly after the retreating figure of the woman he loved. She did not glance back at him, but, surrendering herself to the two detectives and their chief, roassed into the chill night air. One of" her guides whistled shrilly, and a foui'-wheeled cab drew up to the curb in frcnt of the house. A moment more, and it had driven lumberingly off. The footman, who had opened the hall dcors for the young lawyer, closed them slowly; curiosity and bewilderment stamped upon his usually stolid countenance. He had heard the answer of Constance Istria to Edward Agnew's horrified question, and the words "Of murder" rang dizzyingly in his ears as he went out of the hall to carry his sensational news below stairs.

Constance Istritf- watched him go with a cold and thoughtful smile. She knew that the Lavenden secret was a secret no longer, that the telegraph wires would bear it far and wide, that the press would blazen it forth in the blackest of type, and the public find in it a new and startling thrill.

Agnew roused her from her brief absorption. He had come close to her, and his eyes, burning with a strange and terrible fire, seemed to penetrate to her very soul. "What ghastly riddle is this?" he faltered, and his voice was so deep and hoarse that it was scarcely recog nisable, "You heard what she said, that she was guilty?" Constance Istria played with a bracelet on her slender wrist.

"The riddle is a riddle no longer," washer answer; "the unhappy girl has just been arrested on her own confession. She murdered Garside—to get back a marriage certificate from him, it seems. Apparently he was her husband, and she wanted to suppress all trace of the marriage!" Agnew turned away; he could not bear that Constance Istria should see his face. She contemplated his bowed and averted head with cruel satisfaction.

"You see, I advised you well, my poor friend," she said. "You were about to ruin your whole career for a worthless, a dangerous woman, who, to be able to entrap you in safety, committed this crime." A shiver ran over the lawyer, and he confronted her again.

"I do not, I will not believe it," he resolutely answered. "Guilty or innocent, I will not believe her capable of that." He stopped, a sound of hysterical weeping had come to his ear. He looked past Constance Istria into the library, and saw Julia Lavenden. Lost to all but her own grief, she lay. half-fainting, upon a couch, shattered by the convulsive sobs that had begun to shake her. Edward Agnew .strode into the library and bent over her. Ash? entered the room George Merival£ stole out of. it. The lawyer did not notiqe his presence or his departure. '

"Lady Lavenden," he cried, "for Heaven's stake, tell me what has happened." Julia Lavenden started up, and clung to him. "You!" she exclaimed. "Oh, yes! you will help us, you will stand by her—you are her only friend in all the world! She did not mean to kill him, just to get back the certificate, and save us from the exposure he was threatening."

The lawyer seized her hands, and looked into her eyes. "Why did she marry him?" he asked. Julia laughed wildly. "She—she didn't," was her answer. "He wanted her to —that was why he was going to betray my marriage with David if I didn't make Winnie do as he wished. He had my marriage-certificate, the

"For Pier Sister's-Sake " was commenced on December 20th.]

only copy left in existence. Winnie went to try and get it back, and and somehow " She piused, shuddering. Edward Agnew supported her to the t couch, allowed her to sink on to it, and then strode toward the door. Constance Istria barred his path. "Where are you going?" she demanded. The lawyer sternly put her aside.' "To the woman I love!" he replied. Constance Istria clenched her white hands. "Fool!; fool! fool!" she said fiercely. ' But Edward Agnew was gone. CHAPTER XXXI. PENETRATES A DISGUISE. "That kit-bag is all my luggage; youc an take it through to the hotel. I telegraphed from Paris for a room." The speaker had stepped out of the Dover train upon one of the platforms at the Charing Cross railway station. He was a tall, powerfullybuilt man, well-dressed in smart garments cat after the Continental fashion. His beard was cut in the "brush" fashion peculiar to the other side of the Channel. His English was rapid and naturally phrased, but uttered with a marked French accent. An attendant porter picked up the bag to which he traveller referred, and bore it toward the hotel entrance. The traveller followed, glancing indifferently this way and that at the groups that thronged the greaterminus.

Gaining the hotel, he ascertained that his rooms had been reserved, registered himself in the name of "M. Laurent," tipped the porter,, and soon after strolled out again intb the busy Strand. It was the late afternoon of a day in May, one of those days upon which London, and especially the Strand, looks its lively, bustling best. But "M. Laurent" did not stay to admire the sunlit activity of the famous thoroughfare, but plunged into a scarcely less famous restaurant, ensconced himself in a quiet corner, and ordered, with a very appearance of leisure, a choice little dinner.

This he consumed with much deliberation, and then sat smoking over a cup of coffee until long after the brightness of the May afternoon, had passed away, and a delicious spring night had settled down over the myriad lights of London. Then, and not till then, did he rise, pay his bill, and re-pass into the open air. " Here he mounted an omnibus that, pursuing the line of the Strand as far as Chancery Lane, there turned northward and made for Islington by the Gray's Inn Road. On the borders of Islington he descended, and, entering Clerkenwell, stopped before the old stucco-covered house the gates of whose rough courtyard were lettered "Peter Crimple."

™ The traveller knocked at the front door and waited fruitlessly; then repeated the summons and waited once more. At length the door opened slowly, and Peter Crimple in person peered out from the unlighted lobby, his heavy brows knitted irritably, his j short pipe gripped between his teeth. »• "What do you want?" he snarled. "If it's a cab, you must go somewhere else. I'm not driving to-day!" His visitor moved up a step higher. "'S-s-st," he murmured. "It's I, Crimple; don't you know me?" Peter Crimple started back, and, taking his pipe from his mouth, motioned with it for the traveller to ener. "M. Laurent" did so, and the cab-driver closed the door. "We can talk in the kitchen," he said; "I'm all alone." And he led the way through the rambling house to the low-ceiled kitchen. It was lit by a . single lamp. A few embers glowed vaguely in the grate, and the shutters were up at the window that looked upon the stable-yard." The cab-driver lingered to shut the kitchen door, and then turned to his visitor. "You were mad to come back, David Garth," he exclaimed. "What gocd can it do?" The other sat down near the table that bore the dimly-burning lamp. On it, in addition, were a glass, a water-jug, and a brandy bottle, almost empty. can't say, Crimple. I came because I couldn't stop out of England. I wanted to learn exactly what had happened, and it was safer to come than write. I saw by a London paper that the trial would be held this week at the Old Bailey. Good heavens! what a ghastly business it all is! I read the accounts of tho Bow Street hearing in the French papers, which treated her as a heroine. Would to Heaven the trial were to be in Paris, instead of London. No French jury would find her guilty." (To be Continued.)