THE SOLUTIONS OF RADFORD SHONE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8992, 29 November 1907, Page 2

THE SOLUTIONS OF RADFORD SHONE.

BEISG NARRATIVES BY OFFICERS OF THE CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION DEPARTMENT, AND OF THE PROVINCIAL POLICE, IN RESPECT OF DEALINGS WITH THE EMINENT EXPERT, MR RADFORD SHONE.

Communicated to ami i-nrran uv IEEADON Illlili.

[Published By Special Arrangement.]

[All Eights Reserved.]

CHAPTER IV.—Continued.

The little woman bustled off to the kitchen, and by the tirre I had got my boots off and my slippers on, the rashers were sizzling in front of me. The life of a rural policeman has its consolations, even when the principal young lady of the village is in the hue-and-cry list, if you've got a few like my Sue. It isn't only that she was the .best of housekeepers. Though I never let on to anybody, least of all to her, she was really a sort of partner, supplying the brains while I supplied the muscle. Many is the scrape she has saved me from when I have wanted to run in the wrong chap on what I thought was clear evidence; many a time has she given me the wink in the matter of robbed hen-roosts when I couldn't find the ghost of a clue. But this case that had been occupying me for so many hours was different from the petty larcenies and "drunks" that made up my common round and daily task. On the previous day, Miss Viola Dickenson, only daughter and heiress of old Peter Dickenson, the retired millionaire and ironmaster up at the Grange, had disappeared from the face of the earth, leaving behind, however, a tolerably clear indication of her whereabouts, as it seemed to me, in a sunshade that was found floating ir. the mill-streain. Seeing that there had been trouble between her and her father about young Doctor 1 think that ninety-nine village constables out of a hundred would have jumped at the same conclusion as I did—that she had drowned herself for love. "And whose might this long head be, that's so cocksure you're wrong," Sue asked, when I had satisfied my hunger and lit my pipe. "The Superintendent from Rockington, I reckon?" "The Super is of the same mind as I am," I replied. "No, it's a greater that he—a Mr Radford Shone, from London. Mr Dickenson telegraphed for him this morning, and he's been making inquiries all the afternoon. I never heard of him before, but they tell me he's a masterpiece at clearing up mysteries." "Private detective!" snorted Sue contemptuously. "Low fellers, and most of 'em humbugs." Now the butler at the Grange had painted such a glowing picture of Mr Shone's doings, and he himself had given me the impression of being such a very superior person that I felt bound to take up the cudgels in his behalf. "He doesn't call himself a private detective, but an investigator and an expert, in crime," I answered meekly. "Same thing," snapped my better half. "Never mind what he calls himself. Tell me what he's done.""He has ferreted out that Doctor Gray was away up in London all yesterday, and he says that Miss Viola isn't dead at all, but that she ran away of her own accord to join the doctor and get married—after chucking her parasol into the stream as a blind," I replied. My wife, who had resumed her sewing, poised her needle in the air and stared at me, speechless for fully a quarter of a minute. ~ But thojgh her eyes were on my face they seemed quite blank, as if they were looking inward. I couldn't rightly read whether" she agreed with , Shone's view or mine, or whether she had started one of her own. Then she put down the frock she was making for our little Gertie, asleep upstairs, and folded her hands in front of her on the table. "I want to know all about it—rigl.t from the beginning," she said. "E:pecially how this Mr Shone went to work, and how he came to form his opinion " To some extent I had to go over old grcund, for of course Sue was aware of what had happened up to my going to bed very late the night before. On the morning of the previous clay Miss Viola had left the Grange at ten o'clock, after telling her father that she was going to call on Mrs Vince at the mill, who was ailing. She had started off with a basket of things, apparently in high spirits, but at lunch had not returned, and after waiting an hour, Mr Dickenson had sent down to the mill to see if she was still there. The rnes.senger had returned with the news that she had not been there at all. .. Old Peter Dickenson, kind-hearted but short-tempered, had fumed and fretted for another hour, and had sent all his male servants, stablemen, groun s, and all, out to scour the country. At six o'clock, just as it was getting dark, one of the men had come back with the sunshade, which he had discovered in the stream, stuck in some rushes about three hundred yards below the mill. At that I had been at once sent for, but from the lateness of the hour and lack of daylight it was little that I could do beyond calling at the mill ,and ascertaining from Vince, the miller, that Miss Viola had never reaci. r there. His missis, he said, who v.."? mortal bad with pleurisy, had been wondering why she hadn't been. There was no more to do but to arrange for dragging the stream as soon as it got light, in- the road from the Grange to the mill ran alongside it for some distance, and it was reasonable to suppose that the young lady had fallen in and been d.owned. She had always been keen on wild flowers, and there was a sight of for-get-me-nots on the steep banks that might have tempted her to lean too far over. I kept my thought of suicide to myself, there being ro evidence. So far Sue knew all about it, but she pricked up when I came to that day's doings. Goinpc to work at dawn, .1 had at first set the drags to work, and had then made a systematic

search of the bank to try and find traces of the spot where she might have slipped. Mr Dickenson, pretty nigh frantic, was there from the first, and the Superintendent, to whom I had sent a message overnight, arrived soon after; but not a trace of any disturbance of the bank could we find. The men with drags did no better, and after breakfast, Mr Dickenson decided to wire to London for this Mr Radford Shone, of whom he had heard great things. In the meanwhile the search continued on land as well as under water, for I did not omit to. inquire in the village, and also at the railway station, for news of the missing girl. When at last, a little after midday, Mr Radford Shone appeared on the scene, he was good enough to compliment me in a patronising way on these inquiries, which, he said, would save him trouble. For from the first I could see that Shone believed that Miss Viola had neither been drowned by accident or intention, but was voluntarily absentirg herself. He came to this conclusion after his interview with Mr Dickenson, at which he had doubtless learned what was common knowledge in the village—that Miss Viola and Doctor Gray had been courting in defiance of old Peter's wishes. The young doctor, a pleasant-faced, genial fellow, had set up a practice in the place a year before, and had not only stolen our bonny Miss Viola's heart, but by his cleverness and popularity had annexed a good proportion of the practice of old Doctor Cartheytf, who had so far been the only medical man. It was known that old Carthew was so enraged at the loss of his patients that he hated his rival bitterly, and it was the last drop in his cup when Doctor Gray was called in to supplant him as medical attendant at the Grange. But, though Mr Dickenson's gout disappeared, and he swore by the younger practitioner in his profes-' sional capacity, he would have none of him as a mate for pretty Viola, giving both the young people tu understand that his heiress was destined for a higher match. Having made his money in trade, the old man had hankerings after the peerage, and had marked down a suitable husband for his daughter in Lord Crayleigh, of Crayleigh Priory. The girl" was equally firm on her side, continued to meet her sweetheart, and was barely civil when the lordling turned up at the Grange. After hearing this, or as much as Peter chose to tell him. Shone spent no more time by the mill-stream, but started off into the village with a sort of hanger-on he'd brought with him, and who is keeping a record of his cases to put in a book. ,When Shone and this chap Martin came back to the water-side, they had a palaver with Mr Dickenson, and the old man called me over. "Constable Vanstone," he said, and he was that angry his voice shook as he pointed to the punt, "you can stop that farce of drag-nets and grappling iron. My daughter has bolted with that scoundrel Philip Gray. Mr Shone has discovered that he went to town yesterday by the 8 50 slow from here, and isn't back yet. She must have walked to the junction and caught the noon express and joined him." "Can't Doctor Gray's housekeeper throw any light on it, sir?" I asked. "Can't or won't," said the angry old man. "Says she doesn't know when to expect him back. Mr Shone is off at once to trace him in London." And with my description of their hurrying off to get the dogcart for the station, and of my determination not to relax our effort? in the stream, my narrative of the day's doings came to an end. For quite a while after I had finishea Susan remained perfectly still, except that she kept drumming the table with her finger-tips. Then she looked across at me and jerked out in that snappy way of hers — "You're a bit of a muggins, William*'Vanstone, but you're not such a muggins as this here Shone. Your sticking to the stream after he'd gone hot-footed after a trailed herring shows that. Eut you're neither of you right. Let me think a little." She scowled at that table, drumming away like mad, and then she raised her head. "What sort is this Radford Shone, anyway?" she flung at me. (To be continued.)