THREE MEN AND A MAID.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9032, 20 January 1908, Page 2

THREE MEN AND A MAID.

CHAPTER Vl.—Continued. On to the Greyhound on his left he went, and past it to the arcade on its sou'-.h wall stretching down the alley, under which, all alone, stood Marjone awaiting him—Marjorie—gloved and hatted, ready to go with him, wondering why he was late, her trunks smuggled out of the hotel to the station by connivance of Hannah

and her aunt. By a sideward look clown the alley Philip saw her. In her sudden distre:s it seemed to her that he had forgotten her—he seemed hardly to recognke her for a moment, his stare was fo fixed and glassy. Nor did he stop. When she, in her awe or surprise made a step to follow him, he stretched out his letf hand backward at her to stop her with

such an aspect of gloomy warning in bis l<sok as her heart likened to the » gaze of lost mortals, nor ever forgot to her dying day. In spite of herself shs was struck rigid by it, for that forbidding hand was as peremptory as a law of fate, and she saw him disappear round a corner toward the railway with no more power to stir after him than if his" fiat had turned her into stone. She stood there, wan and immovable, until she heard the puffing of the departing train, and the rumble of its wheels. Feeling deeply now her loneliness of heart, and a darkness that rolled about her like a shroud, her head dropped little by little, she put her face into her hands and wept passionately, pitifully, mourning the shattering of a dream.

CHAPTER VII.

OVER THE BODY

All that night the Squire did not return to Edenhurst. and in the morning, by nine o'clock, from the housekeeper's room to the stables, questions began to arise. James Courthope, too, was not at home, but his whereabouts were known. At Alionby, seven miles distant, the first hunt-ball of the season had taken place the night before. Thither he had gone, and there had passed the night; nor was it till eleven,in the forenoon that he came riding slowly at a walk up through the park with a mounted groom behind him, carrying his valise on the pommel. Robert Courthope should have, gone to that ball, too, and had been greatly missed.

Before James could alight, he had heard the news—the Squire had not slept at the Court, had not Deen there to breakfast—in a word, the Squire was gone, and none knew whithei*.

It became noo". James sent a man to make inquiries at the Greyhound and the railway station —no news. ,

Then, about one o'clock, a group of five small boys, with Felix, the idiot,, towering ungainly in the midst of them, ran up' the park through the north-west gate; for Felix, a grown man, was playfellow with the smallest boys, and often, if any one met him crying, and asked him what was the matter, he would reply that the boys had been refusing to play with him, and had left him desolate. These restless spirits, having wandered into Lancault Church, were now running back quicker than they had gone. Cnancing to meet a woodman as they pressed toward the Hall, they cast upon him the blighting statement that the Squire lay stiff dead in "T' Owd Church."

And lie there he did, in grim truth, with a long, slim sword sticking up straight out of his heart, like a reed of steel sprung out of him. Within another half-hour the thing was all abroad. Hudston thrilled it to York, and York to London, and London called back that this crime was greatv and mortal. The red Squire lay on his bed, all his scarlet changed to everlasting jaundice now, and by his side stood P. C. Bates, of Hudston, and others with heaVy looks, while Hudston threw dust on its head, for the man had been loved. At the Greyhound, Marjorie Neyland, who was unwell and in bed, on hearing of it, somehow sighed and fainted —she could not have explained to herself quite why, and Hannah, white and dry-lipped, pleaded that she must tend her sister and not be disturbed.

Men's minds were so stunned with sorrow and dread that the questions of how and why hardly at first found room for themselves, and the day, a Friday, passed in mourning; but by the Saturday morning it was being whispered everywhere that Philip Warren had murdered the Squire, and by one o'clock, when a jury of Hudston farmers and shopkeepers had viewed the body, then lying in funeral pomp under its pall in ths Court library, all the world was agog with but one interest-the quest into the guilt and whereabouts of the assassin.

Ti.-tf board-school, where Dr. Craig. e» the coroner, had decided to hold the inquest, could not contain half of those who pressed for entrance. The country-side was keen to hear, and the pressmen who gathered were not merely local, but had come from afar. Several different interests were legally represented, the police by Mr Whitaker of Allonby, James Courthope by Bennett of Nutworth, while the Vicar had mercifully retained Mr Ilardinge, also of Nutworth, to speak for his fugitive nephew. With the Superintendent from Allonby and P. C. Bates was one Inspector Winter, lent to the Yorkshire police by Scotland Yard. The Vicar himsa'f was present as a witness; Mr JJullcn, one of the bench cf conn try magistrates, was there; so was Marjorie, looking as wan as her attire was black, with

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Hannah, and many witncssss from the Hall.

■' The finding of the body was described by two of the boys, for Felix was not called, and then P. C. Bates gave Hie details of his first sight of the dead man.

"There was only one sword on the spot," he said in answer to Mr Whitaker for the police, and he was emphatic that it was sticking almost perpendicularly upward from the breast into which it had been deeply planted. The Squire's hat lay a good way from his head, almost under the east wall, while the body itself lay on its back near the west wall, its feet pointing to the wall. All the pockets of the deceased were empty, but for the watch in his waistcoat and three shillings in a trouser-pbeket. There was no handkerchief, no papers, nothing noticeable about, except part of a loaf of bread, borne crumbs, and the trampled look of the grass and nettles toward the west end. It was only after he had well examined the interior, and was looking about outside, that he found the blood-stained handkerchief produced. Hung up on the external west wall was a piece of board bearing the words: "Any person found damaging this chapel will be prosecuted," and, crumpled up behind the board, he had discovered the handkerchief in question. At once, on opening it, he had seen that it had belonged to the deceased, from the initials "R.C." in the corner; and from the long, narrow character of the blood-stains, he took it for granted that the handkerhchief had been used to wipe blood from some such thing as b rapier. The handkerchief was handed gingerly about among the jury. ' "As to the removing of the sword from the body," ask ad Mr Hardinge, who appeared for his friend, Philip Warren, "did it come out easily? The point did not seem to have fixed itself into any bone?" "It cotne easy enough, sir," answered Rates.

"Easy enough," repeated Mr Hardinge, a large lawyer, with sidewhiskers, and a bullying manner, while the public wondered what he was driving at. "But tell me this — where was the deceased's jacket at the moment when you first saw the body—on or off ?"

"Off, sir." ; "Off!" cried the lawyer, "and is it possible, officer, that you omit so vital a fact from your deposition? Did.you forget to mention it?" "Not so much that I forgot " began Bates. "No, but that the police have a case to make out!" and, while Bates shifted his legs, Mr Hardinge asked again: "Where exactly was the deceased's jacket?" "Against, the east wall, not far from his hat," Bates admitted, amid a murmur of the court. Dr. Lawrence of Hudstron next described the state of the body in detail; it had been dead at least twelve hours, probably longer, at the time of the finding. In addition to the latal stab, there were three others, which he described. The only serious wound had passed clean through one of the left chambers of the heart, and beyond. "And you are sure," asked Mr Hardinge, springing up, "that the other three wounds were inflicted by the same weapon."

"By the same or a similar weapon." "They were not deep wounds?" "No, shallow flesh wounds."

It now began to seem clear that the defence of Philip Warren wasjto take the line that no assassination had been committed, but that the Squire had met his death in a fencing bout, in spite of the damning, fact that only one sword had been found in the church. The witnesses followed each other fast. Davenport, butler at the Vicarage, told of his receipt of the note from Philip by the hand of Felix on the fatal afternoon, asking him to send Mr Warren's small sword. "And you duly sent it?" asked Mr Whitaker of Allonby for the police. "Yes," was the hardly heard answer, followed by a droning of the thronged schoolroom at the pity of that sending. (To be continued.)