A SENSATIONAL CASE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9190, 12 September 1908, Page 2

A SENSATIONAL CASE.

CHAPTER XXVl.—Continued. He had promised to have the house which Linley had entered watched; and, after a little further consideration, lie engaged an agent from a private detective office to undertake the task. Hugh gave the man a description of Linley, and commissioned him to follow that gentleman if he should leave the house with a lady. He was to report progress on the following evening. At the end of the next day the detective duly called uoon him, and his statement, made with the help of notes, was as follows: "The gentleman whose description you gave me, short, slender, very fair hair, complexion and eyes, left the house, No. Street, at eleven o'clock this morning, ace mpanied by a lady. The lady was rather tall, dark-haired, and was dressed in a black silk dress, a long black mantle "lined with gray silk a close-fitting black hat trimmed with small black and gray feathers, She wore a thick black veil. "I followed them. They walked for a short distance, then took a hansom and drove to the city. They got out at the office of the Royal Britannia Life Insurance Company, where they stayed for about an hour. On coming out, they got into the hansom and drove straight back. About an hour after that, at three o'clock, the gentleman came out of the house by himself, carrying a travelling-bag. He got into a hansom, drove away and did not return." Hugh had heard enough. He felt sure that the woman whom the detective had seen with Linley was not Netelka, but 'a woman whom Linley had induced to personate his wife; and it was evident that his object was to effect an insurance on his i wife's life without her knowledge. The matter had now assumed such a serious aspect that he again called 0:1 Lady Kenslow, and told her of the investigation he had just made and the result. Lady Kenslow listened attentively and grew very pale. She affected, however, to be annoyed at Hugh's officiouaness; and, on learning that he himself had not seen the alleged personator of her niece, she affected to believe that it was NetelKa herself whom the detective had seen with her husband, and very curtly desired that he would make no further invesvieations without consulting her. "It is quite unheard of,'.' she said rising majestically as a hint for him to retire, "that people should have their private affairs pried into by people whom they don't concern. I beg that you will take no further steps in this matter. If you do, 1 shall feel it my duty to warn Mr HitHard that nis movements are being watched by—a friend of his wife's." She said these last words with such disagreeable significance that Hugh, blushing Violently,' hastened to add, in a voice full of suppressed anger: "The inquiry was not made on my account; I intsituted it at the earnest request of a lady who seems to be more anxious for her friend than if she were a relation." "'Your sneers are quite thrown away upon me, Mr Thorndyke," said Lady Kenslow, with an air of superb indifference, as he bowed himself out. But, as soon as he was gone, Lady Kenslow's face became clouded with anxiety. Faithful to her code,-she still dreaded the scandal of ah exposure more than anything. But, knowing the trouble into which Linley had already got himself through an insurance company, she could not help seeing that Hugh's suspicions were correct, and she perceived the necessity for immediate action. She thought, however, that a word from her would be enough, and she sat down without delay to write to him. She did not make any unkind insinuation, but, mentioned that she had heard accidentally that Netelka had been insuring her life, and warned him that in view of his "unfortunate experience" in insurance business, it was waste of money to have anything more to do with such matters, gj Then Lady Kenslow sighed, feeling that she bad done all that was necessary, as she rang the bell and told the footman to post the letter at once. Hugh Thorndyke, meanwhile, had left the house in a very uneasy state of mind. He could not feel as contented as Lady Kenslow professed to be about Netelka, and yet upon what grounds could he interfere? He felt rather inclined to go to Wimbledon next day to tell Jem what he had seen. This half-fledged rreature had just the impulse and daring which his years and his experience made impossible for him, and he had a half-supemitious feeling that she might jump to a way out of the difficulty which his slower and more cautious and masculine mind could not conceive. A sudden turn was, however, given to all his thoughts by a telegram Which ho had found awaiting him when he returned to the hotel where he had been staying. It contained a summons to the <2eath-ued of his mother, and necessitated an immediate journey to the | north of England, where, in a remote district among the Yorkshire moors, his father's vicarage wt'a situated. Here his mother's illness-", which ended in her oaath, and meeting the old friends whom he had not seen since his return from Africa, occupied his time inr.l his thoughts almost to the exclusion of Netelka and her husband, until they were recalled to his ■thought* in at. abrupt and unexpected manner. Hugli had property of considerable extent Mid valu°, and was )o Iteii u' !i> i in his old neighbourhood as a "great match." In spite, 1 here fore, of the sad errand on which he hail tome he was forced to see a good deal of his old neighbours, who expressed their sympathy on every

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By FLORENCE WARDEN. Author of " The Lady in Black," "An Infamous Fraud," "For Love of Jack," "\ Terrible Family," "The House on the Marsh,"

possible occasion. After his mother's death he was obliged to remain at the vicarage for a little while, being one of the executors of his mother's will. Besides, although he had let hia house, and was satisfied with the management of his agent, there weje many details upon which that personage was glad of an opportunity of consulting him. So Hugh, against his will, found himself detained in Yorkshire for five or six weeks. He had been forced into accepting an invitation to afternoon tea at the house of some very old friends, I when one of the daughters, who had entertained a preference for Hugh which was an open secret, and who had been very jealous of Netelka in the latter's maiden days, found an opportunity of referring to that lady with much malice. They were sitting just inside the open French windows of a long, low-ceilinged, old-fash-ioned drawing-room, where pap;ermache tables and potpoum bowls recalled the faded and insipid elagances of life of a far-off age. Maude, who was on the borders of thirty, but who had retained the youthful appearance of eight years back, as many girls do in the placid existence of the country, handed him his tea with a rather pinched little smile. "By the way, Hugh, what did you think of poor Netelka Askew's matrimonial venture? Dreadfully sad, wasn't it?" Hugh started. "What, you know all about it up here, then?" "Why, of course. The trial came on at the Liverpool Assizes last year. "The trial!" exclaimed Hugh, turning almost purple. "Yes. Didn't you hear of it? The papers over here were full of it. It was 'The Trial of Linley Dax' on the fences wherever one looked." Hugh was struck dumb. The Dax murder trial had reached even South Africa, and he was familiar with most of its details. For a moment he sat quite still, staring at his teacup without uttering a sound. Then he put it down abruptly on the table and stood up, looking out at old Mrs Linthorpe, in the rusty black satin he remembered fifteen years ago, trying to induce her fat pug to run. He felt the blood rushing to his head, and suddenly wondered whether Maude thought he was going to have a fit of apoplexy. JHe looked at her. She was quite pleased with herself for having made a palpable hit. "I wondered whether you'd heard. I thought you would be interested to hear it," said she. Interested! This was the bucolic view of things. "We've never been able to find out," pursued Maude placidly, "what has become of her. As for him, the people thought, you know, that he waa lucky to get off. How horrid for her, poor girl, to be married to a murderer, wasn't it?" At lasc Hugh could speak, but it was in a hard, mechanical tone that he answered: "Yes, I don't suppose it's pleasant. I—l must be—must be getting back to the vicarage, Maude, or I shall keep the vicar waiting lor dinner." But Hugh did not go to the vicarage to dinner. He was no sooner outside the gates of the house he had been visiting than • he made up his mind to go up to town by the seven | o'clock train to Brierfield Junction; he was full of remorse for having neglected Netelka, and crazy lest the interval which had elapsed since he left Londqn had been ratal to her. (To be continued.)