A SENSATIONAL CASE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 2999, 23 September 1908, Page 2

A SENSATIONAL CASE.

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

CHAPTER XXXlL—Continued. "Oh, no, indeed I'm not," protested Netelka quickly. "I want to sec again—all of it. I don't want to be shut up alone upstairs." She spoke, not in the old ringing voice, but in plaintive tones of entreaty, which betrayed the state of subjection to which she had been reduced. As Linley paid no heed to her remonstrances, she allowed herself to be led up-stairs to her room. "Don't let your mistress leave the room" said Linley to the maid, as he gave his wife into her charge, as if she were a prisoner handed over from one ward°.n to another. "She is very far from well still, and must not overtax herself. Mind, I depend upon you." The servant thus addressed was an eklerjy woman, who was housekeeper iri Netelka's absence, but who combined her duties in that capacity with those of a lady'a-maid when her mistress was at home. She adored Linley, who having conceived the idea that she might one day be useful to , him, had always treated her to his gentle manners, and not to the curt tones he usually kept for servants. Linley had a disagreeable meeting in store for him, and he wanted to get his wife out of the way before it took place. Harrington Moseley's telegram of the day before had been couched in terms which Linley felt even telegraphic brevity did not justify. He should have to give his partner "a piece of his mind," and he was rather dreading the piece of Harrington Moseley'a mind which he was likely to get in return. Poor Linley wus suffering from an acute sense of personal injury. All his nicely laid little plans for securing a little competence for himself, free from the galling chain of partnership with the Jew, ha J failed, one by one—all, too. through the agency of a heavy-look-ing brute whom he could only despise—Huch Thorndyke. Linley had no conscience; but in its place he had an extra degree of sensitiveness on his own ncount, of tender respect for his own dignity. All these things and more had been jeopardised by the big Yoikshireman, and Linley loathed him to such an extent that : he would have cheerfully foregono a! part of the fortune he promised him- j ; self in crJer to be revenged on that; gentleman for his interference with j his carefully laid plana. j '• "Hallo, Hilliard, is that you? ' j ■ t . , These words, uttered in a by no j ''"means cordial tone, broke in upon j Linley's reverie. Looking up, he |.tr- j ceived the face of the Jew, and ho j made a mental note of the fact that;, his features seemed to increase in i coarseness with advancing years. | Harrington was decidedly more repul- j sive in appearance than on their hrst j meeting. He shuddered slightly as i he answered with a drawl: „ j "Yes, it is I. Surely you can see that for yourself!" j "Dilyouget my telegram? Yes- j terday, I mean?" , "Of course I did, or I shouldn't be j here." , "Well, come in here a minute." The Jew invited his partner in ill- j doing into his own apartment and j turned the key in the lock of the outer one. # I "You've gone and made a nice mess of everything, haven't you?" said Harrington, putting his fact right into that of the shuddering and sensitive Linley. "I always told you your nasty, sneaking insurance arrangements would come to no good. Why, that Thorndyke found you out at once; he was sniffing about the medicine-bottles the other day, and as gord as saying you had poisomd young Waller!" "Well," retorted Linley quietly turning his face away with a gesture of disgust, "what does that matter? I hadn't." Moseley looked at him doubtfully, and Linley made another gesture, expressing weariness. "His illness was pneumonia, as the doctor said." "But it was brought on by your taking him out driving on a wet day, and keeping him sitting for hours in his Wet clothes," said Moseley. "Well, i hud to do the same." The Jew winked significantly. "You're aM strong as a horse," he said shortly. "Besides, you took care to wear a waterproof." Linley made an impatient movement. "I should have been spared all this," he said wearily, "if Waller's constitution hadn't been better than we'd reckoned on. Pray, who would have benefited the -moat, if things had turned out differently? The policy was yours, anrt I should only have got the crumbs." "Then there's another thing," pursued the Jew, changing the subject hastily, "your wife looks ill, much worse than when she went away. I hope you haven't been up to any of your tricks in that quarter?" At this Linley looked up with a frown. "You mind your own business and leavn me to manage mine. My wife* all JiU'ht, only pining for the society of ner dear Gerard. " _ "Well," syid the Jew with a side hng glance, "take care of her, whatever her fanu. •) may be. For as long as peoph think she'rf the ruling spirit here, thev put up with irregularities they wouldn't stand from you or me. You know we've felt the difference since she has been away. That young c-b, Si. P«ttM, has turned quite nasty. He says that since she's making sucu a good thing out of him by lending him money at extravagant rates of interest (that s what he calls a mere modest sixty per cent.!) he expects to have a little more of her society." Linley frowned thoughtfully, but presently replied in a testy tone: g "Well, she's back again now, so he can be satisfied. When is he coming

next?" "I expect him to-night." "All right. We'll let him see her, then. I'll tell her to get ready." Linley was glad of an excuse for leaving Harrington, who on his side was not sorry to get rid of him. When Linley reached his wife's room, however, the housekeeper met him with a scandalised face. "She's gone sir; I couldn't keep her. She's in the drawing-room—-with Mr Waller, sir." Linley nodded, with tightly drawn lips and veiled, furtive eyes. He went down the stairs very softly, entered the drawing-room like a cat, and finding by the passionate voices he heard from the end of the long room that the woman's information was correct, he secreted himself on one side of the arch, which stood where there had once been folding doors, and proceeding to indulge himself in the luxury of listening to an interesting conversation not intended for his ears.

CHAPTER ' t XXXIII. TEMPTATION. Netelka had been of late so meek, so cowed by her husband, that he had not taken into account the possibility of rebellion on her part. The fact was that the appearance of Hugh Thorndyke, the friend of her girlhood, and the scene which had followed, had emphasised for her the enormous difference between Netelka the maiden and Netelka the wife. She had brooded over this when her husband, afraid of the open revolt of to his authority, which Hugh's interference had brought about, had banished her to Hastings so suddenly, on the pretext of her hysterical state indicating a need of change. Left to herself, she had become, just as the artful Linley had expected, lonely, helpless, and easy to manage. When he went down to see her, he was very gentle, very kind, and he succeeded in regaining much of his empire over her mind, and in persuading her that every suspicion concerning him which had been instilled into her mind was baseless or exaggerated. The viait of Hugh and Jem, however, had suddenly woke her from her repose of mind. When, therefore, Linley had proposed their instant return to "The Firs," to refute, as he said, the vile slanders which Hugh Thorndyke was spreading, she had agreed with feverish haste to his proposal, and had passed a miserable afternoon hearing all her old suspicions of her husband rung in her ears, first to the sound of the sea and then to the whirr of the train. Linley was really so much disturbed by Hugh Thorndyke's discovery of his curious domestic arrangements thac he did not pay sufficient heed to the significant silence arid abstraction of his wile. He flattered himself that he should find her as et.sy to manage at Wimbledon as she Inici been at Hastings, and that he had too sure a hold upon her for Hugh's accusations to have much weight. But he underrated his wife's intelligence and took her wilful blindness for stupidity. (To be continued.)