THE SOLUTIONS OF RADFORD SHONE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 9010, 20 December 1907, Page 2

THE SOLUTIONS OF RADFORD SHONE.

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

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CHAPTER IX.—Continued

"Goad evening, sir," began the mala visitor, a dissipated looking fellow with a husky voice. "I and the missis have had a stroke of luck by which you can benefit if you'll make it worth our whiio—two thousand quid, in fact, to go abroad with." The female visitor, a coarse-feat-ured, Hebraic woman, took up the parable. "Wa should never trouble you again., and the kid would .never be heard of," she put in. "The fact is this blamed old country is too hot to hold us, and we are in a hurry to cross the 'ditch' to New York."

"I really don't understand, you extraordinary people," murmured the gentleman of the house, his hand intuitively seeking the bell. "Don't go too fast," said the first speaker. "We have got old Tressilian's boy, and taken a sight of trouble to get him, planting a nurse on 'em, hiring the opposite house and all. Now, isn't it worth your while to do a deal—on the basis of a total disappearance of yours truly and the young 'un as well? It occurred to us, through living near and hearing that you were a needy toff, that we might be mutually useful. So we just worked up the scheme." The owner of the house rose slowly from his chair and with a swift jerk of his hand seized the man by the collar. "You infernal scoundrel!" he said. "So that is the secret of my little cousin's disappearance, is it? You thought I was fair game for a dirty bargain and subsequent blackmail. You have come to the wrong shop, my son; I'm going to send for the police." * I sprang through the window. "I'll save you the trouble, Mr. Weyland," 1 said. "Here, Jem, you take the woman," indicating the female intruder to my constable. "But—but—but" spluttered Shone, who had followed us in, "this is Weyland," and he pointed to the scowling fellow of whom I had relieved his original captor. "No, Mr Radford Shone," I said quietly. "This gentleman here, who has just given him into my custody, is Mr Ralph Weyland. Having had the honour of serving under him in the Coldstreams ten years ago, I thought from the first that you had bungled it. And I haven't even to thank you for finding the boy, for my own clue would have done that."

"Delighted to see you, Hammond. I rememher vou well; but I'm in a bit of-a fog," said Mr Weyland, shaking me by the hand. "What does it all mean?" "It means that Mr Radford Shone has jumped to too many conclusions for absolute accuracy," I replied. "When Lord Tressilian called him in to find the boy, he pitched on you as the most interested party. Conclusion one. Then Lord Tressilian told him that you lived at Acacia Villa, Lime Grove, and «n Shone earning round her to pry about, Lime Tree Villa, Acacia Grove, when he saw it on the gate, was near, enough for a genius with his mind made up. Conclusion two. 1 was in a fog myself till I made a few inquiries this afternoon and found out the real name of your house-Acacia Villa. And this soi-disant Captain Masterman I recognise as Denver Joe, an American 'crook' for whom we have been Idoking for a long while." "By George," Captain Weyland cried, "it all conies of having to live in a suburb of umbrageously narred streets and houses. Lydia, dear, Mr Radford Shone looks ill; get him a glass of wine." CHAPTER X. THE BAYS WATER BOARDING* HOUSE. Cheltenham Road, Bayswater, is an eminently respectable thoroughfare, composed mostly of private residences. From end to end there is no such thing as an '* Apartment" card to be seen over its spotless fanlights or in its neatly-curtained windows; but there area few boarding houses of a superior class, all priding themselves on looking more private than the really private abodes next door or over the way. The most favoured of these establishments was kept by a Mrs Lorimer, an officer's widow, whose prosperity had never been in doubt since her daughter Ida grew to years of discretion. And discretion is a sorelyneeded asset for a pretty girl whose business in life it is to aid her mother in making boarders feel at home. For if the process is overdone there is always the risk that seme male "pay ing guest ? ' may make himself too much at home, with disastrous results.

I had not been five minutes in the house before I came to the conclusion that some such breakdown in Miss Ida's programme had been the cause of my being hurriedly sent for from the poiice-3tation by the constable on the I eat. As the message contained the On inous word "murder," 1 need not say that my footsteps did not lag. On entering the front door, I found the whole place buzzing like a hive of beer. White fuces peeper] out fit the dining-room, whence the smell "of coffee and bacon told of an interrupted breakfast; from the drawingroom rcross the hall came the suppressed -murmur of women's voices, whi'e a louder commotion on the firstfloor lauding indicated the centre of disturbance.

Running upstairs I found the constable surrounded by a little knot of persona who all seemed eager to fill with their own surmises the notebook which as a matter of form he held in lis hand. At that moment; Dr. VVinthrop, a local practitioner, well-known to tie, emerged from an opin bed-roc m door.

"Yes, the poor fellow is quite dead," he said, addressing a comely, middle-aged woman dissolved in tears, adding, as he caught sight of me, "Ah, here is Inspector Burke! Just step inside here, Burke, please, and jou too, Mrs Lorimer. It may save time if we put our heads together." The weeping landlady and I followed him into the room, where, so calm and peaceful, lay the silent figure on the bed that it was difficult to believe that anything was wrong. But drawing aside the bed-clothes, the doctor disclosed the dreadful fact that the motionless figure was lying on sheets saturated with blood, which had evidently welled from a punctured wound over the heart. The body was that of a dark-skinned Oriental, dressed in silk pyjamas, the jacket of which the doctor had disarranged to make his first examination. "Roughly speaking, he's been dead about five hours, which puts the crime at four o'clock this morning," said Winthrop. "He must have been struck in his sleep and killed instantly. The absence of a weapon puts the theory of suicide out of court, even if it were surgically tenable, which it is not." "But," wailed Mrs Lorimer with clasped hands, "the door was bolted on the inside. We broke it open to get in when he did not come down to breakfast. How could anybody have got in?" The doctor shrugged his shoulders. "That is for Inspector Burke to say," he replied shortly.

For the first time I removed my eyes from the corpse and let them, range round the room, which was a fair-sized one, with a window facing towards the street. The window was open hy about three inches at the top, Mrs Lorimer explaining, in answer to a question from me, tha*: it was the dead man's custom always to sleep with the window in that state. Going over to it, I saw that it was highly improbable, though not actually impossible, than an entrance could have been effected by that route, in full view of the road and the houses opposite as it was.

"Tell me as briefly as you can what ; you know of the deceased, his habits and associations," I said, turning to the landlady. Mrs Lorimer's account of her late boarder was enlightening as far as it went, but somehow it left, the impression on my mind that she was holding something in reserve. The lifeless clay on the bed was that of Mr Chunder Dass, u young Hindoo barrister, who had been over in England for the purpose of studying law at the Middle Temple. He had bevn well supplied with money, and being i of a generous and sociable nature had I been a favourite with the other boarders.

"With the gentlemen, madam, or with the ladies?" I interposed.

The question seemed to cause Mrs Lorimer some slight embarrassment. "With both," she replied after a moment's hesitation. "With the ladies most, perhaps. He was very musical, and was more often in the drawingroom after dinner than in the smok-ing-room with the men." At this point, I became conscious thnt some of the boarders congregated on the landing were gradually pressing into the room,'and I raised my voice rather sharply to bid them stand clear of the doorway. They 'most of them obeyed—all but a tall spare man with curious protuberant eyes and a stout, stupid-looking individual in a loud check suit, to whom the former was whispering, regardless of my injunction. "Come,sir! Be so good as to stop outside," I said peremptorily. "I cannot have the general public in here at present." The spare man surveyed me with an insolent stare. "So you class me with the general public on an occasion of this sort, do you, Mr Inspector?" he said in a high-pitched squeaky voice that reminded me of a bag-pipe. "It is Mr Radford Shone, the celebrated private detective," Mrs Lorimer whispered tome hurriedly. "He is boarding here with his friend while hi<* rooms- in Gower Street are being re-painted." (To be continued.)