THE SOLUTIONS OF RADFORD SHONE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 9013, 24 December 1907, Page 2

THE SOLUTIONS OF RADFORD SHONE.

[Published By Special Arrangement.]

[All Eights Reserved.]

CHAPTER X.~Continued. There was a slight delay, then there opened to me a Hindoo gentleman in European dress—the very image of that other whom I had left an hour ago lying dead in the Bayswater boarding-house. If anything had needed to emphasise the impossibility of it being the same man it was the momentary gleam of alarm that flashed in the black, beady eyes of the individual before me. "Mr Chunder Dass?" I said, this time interrogatively, as I stepped past him into the room. "Yes," he faltered, following me in after one despairing glance at the door. "What is your business with me sir?" ''You are the Mr Chunder Dass who boards at Mrs Lorimer's in the Cheltenham Road, Bayswater?" I "Have I rot admitted it?" he said, forcing an oily smile. "I hope that you have nothing very serious against me, Mr Police-officer. What is it that you require?" I could see that he was hoping that I had called on the tenant of those chambers on soma trivial matter, in ignorance of what had happened at the boarding-house, and that having transacted my business I should quickly take my leave. My reply, therefore, must have come upon him like a thunderclap. "I want you to come back with me to Mrs Lorimer's and explain to me why you tied a piece of yellow silk round the bolt on the door of Mr Chunder Dass', : bedroom."* He gazed at me out of his large, soft, melancholy eyes like a terrified hare, then, as they often do, collapsed utterly. "No, no, no! anywhere but there! Take me to prison and I will confess, but not therel-oh, not there!" he screamed at me. * * * ,'#.';+ * So it turned out that Mr Radford Shone was too precipitate in attributing the murder of the law student, Chunder Dass, to Miss Ida Lorimer's fickle behaviour towards her mother's j boarders. The crime had its root in a more sordid passion than Mr Jack Kentish's calf-love for his landlady's pretty daughter—in no less than the greed of a .younger brother for the inheritance of an elder. The wretched creature upon whom my grip fell while,, he was,rummaging among the papers of the kinsman he had slain had journeyed to England, • unknown to his victim and to his relatives in India, in order to remove from his rjattr the brother who stood > between him and a fortune. * Ram Lall—such was the murderer's name—had been lying close in Soho for six ; weeks before he had completed his preparations by a careful study of his brother's habits both at his boarding-house and his chambers. He had then, just as I had surmised, gained access to Chunder Dass' bedroom by scaling the portico and entering by the window, his Oriental

cunning prompting him to tie the ' strand of silk round the.bolt in order to induce the ? belief that the criminal was an inmate of the house. If he could have foreseen, when engaged in that nefarious act, that the first person he would mislead thereby would be s " the eminent expert," he would have been more confident of immunity than was justified by events. ~/ That nignt certain routine duties in connection with the case took me to Mrs Lorimer's again. When T approached the house a luggageladen hansom was at the- door. In the hall Radford Shone and Martin were putting ori their ,J overcoats amid a fire of-chaff from their late fellowhoarders, who had evidently read of

the arrest in the evening papers, ■and had made the place too hoc- to hold them. "Ah, Inspector," a delighted old

colonel grinned at sight of me. "We are losing our distinguished detective, Mr Shone.is going back to Gower Street to practice the science of door-bolting from the wrong side in his own diggings." "Doing a bolt, eh, sir?" I could not resist saying as the departing guests went scowling down the steps to the cab.

CHAPTER XL THE WIRELESS TELEGRAM. When I entered the Chief's office in response to an urgent summons 1 found that busy man engaged with Mr Thomas Sutherland, the Chairman of the Flower Steamship Company, which,owned one of the most important of the fleets of Transatlantic mailboats using the port of Liverpool. "This is Inspector Kellaway, whom I propose to detail——" the Chief was beginning, but Mr Sutherland stopped him with a wave of his hand. "Kellaway and I are old acquaintances," he said. "There is no officer to whom I would rather have the interests of the Company committed." "Then I can go straight to the point, ' said the Chief, who was never one to waste words. And, turning to me, he continue.!—"A wireless telegram has been received by the Flower Steamship Company from the captain of the Escholtsia, now in mid-ocean, to the effect that last night an enormous robbery.of negotiable bonds, involving a probably fatal assault upon the owner of the securities, was committed on board. There is no trace ol the thief, though, of course, both ho and the stolen property must still be on the ship. I want you to hurry across to Queenstown, board the liner there, and come on in her to Liverpool, doing all you can during the short voyage to take hold befo , "> the p issengers have left the shir."

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

COMMUNICATED TO and edited by HEADOM HIM.

"Very good, 3i'r; but some of them would be leaving her at Queenstown," I suggested. "That has been foreseen and provided for," replied the Chief. "Instructions by wireless have already been sent to Captain Attlee to allow no one to go ashore at Queenstown. As soon as the tug has taken off the mails the steamer will eoire straight on here."

"You will understand, Kellaway," Mr Sutherland.put in, "that it does not pay a steamship company to have this sort of thing happening on board their vesseH If you are instrumental in recovering the property we shall be happy to give you a suitable reward, though the owner will probably go us one better in that respect. He is !Vr Jacob van Schuyler, a prominent financier of New York." Such were the meagre particulars but tempting inducement with which I started for Holyhead to commence my journey to Dublin, and thence across Ireland to join the Escholtsia at Queenstown. It was winter time, and when 1 reached Holyhead the dirty weather gave promise of an unpleasant • crossing, which was by no means belied when I boarded the packet. I myself am a good sailor, out such a sea was running out in the Channel that we hadn't been out ten minutes before the stewards were in request among the sea-sick travtllerp. It may have been hard-hearted of me, in my own immunity from the miserable malady to be amused by the misfortunes of others, but my sense of humour was compelled to yield to the sad plight of two of the worst sufferers. They appeared to be fellow-travellers —a tall, spare man of middle age and a very stout man, with a fair, stupid, moon-calf face, much younger than the other. So long as the packet remained at the landing-stage they swaggered about with thi air of ancient, mariners, using nautical terms for the edification of bystanders, but no sooner did the vessel begin to pitch in the heavy sea outside than disaster swooped upon them.

The stout man was.the first to collapse, and he received but scant sympathy from his companion as he sat groaning in a corner. The tall man chaffed him unmercifully in a nasty, sarcastic way, advising all sorts of ridiculous remedies. But retribution was at hand. The tall man suddenly turned green and subsided into his friend's lap, whence he rolled limply to thi deck and lay there in sorry case till I propped him up alongside the other. So they remained for the rest of the passage, and when they staggered ashore at Kingstown, a more bedraggled and dilapidated couple it would have been impossible to imagine.

I was not destined to have seen the last of these two human wrecks, though when I next caught a glimpse of them on the platform at the North Wall railway station they had regained some, if not all, of their jaunty demeanour. Doubtless a visit to the refreshment rooms, from which they were emerging,- had proved a restorative. They got into the train by which I was travelling, though not into the same compartment, and I dismissed them from my mind as intending passengers by one of the liners calling at the great port of arrival and departure for which I was bound.

Even now, however, I had not done with the two victims of the wrath of St. George's Channel. On arriving at Queenstown I found by due inquiry that the Escholtsia was not expected till early the following morning; so, having arranged with the agent of the Flower Line to be taken off to the steamer in the tug that went for the mails, I went to the Queen's Hotel and engaged a bed for the night. What with a stormy crossing and the tedious railway journey, I had had a tiring day, and I was not sorry to sit down to a bit of dinner in the coffeeroom. I had hardly disposed of my soup when in walked my pair of sea-sick heroes of the morning. (To be continued.)