"The Chains of Bondage."

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10046, 21 July 1910, Page 2

"The Chains of Bondage."

c i BY EMILY B. HEIHEEIRGTOK. 5 / . 7 l# Author of—" His Colleg3 Chum," " Worthina;ton s f w « Pledge," "A JKepensant'Foe," etc. <* I I

CHAPTER IV.—Continued. | I Scarcely daring to breathe, she stole ' noise'essly to the threshold of the J sitti.ig loom door, listening tensely. Her eyes fell on the cheap clock on the mantel. It was difficult to realise that barely more than five minutes had elapsed since the moment of her leaving the room where Gilbert Hardress lay dead; suspense had made the minutes an eternity. Then the knocking echoed again through the heavy stillness; and aim ultaneously her eyes were arrested by something across the room. Ic was not the night breezs through the open window that had stirred the folds of the undrawn curtains. Someone was standing concealed there! For a rroment before her startled eyes the heavy folds had vaguely outlined a man's shape. : .>,..-. Judith had a sudden feeling of eyes furtivt lv watching all her movements thtouuh the screen of the rr.oth-eaten curtains. That conviction swept serosa the terrified woman, while the knock at the door was still echoing in her ears; that ever since her return, throughout her preparations for flight, an unknown watcher had been in hidii'g t'ere, nmtionless, spying on her all i e time! The murderer of Gilbert Hardress, of course, wh<m h r return had disturbed befuje he c.iuld make his escape—that could he the only explanation. Sh" .'tood with wildly beating heart, her dilated eyes riveted on t c curtain that hid the guilty man's face irim her. It was like a new, appalling factor in the situation. The guilty man, whom it was in her power to denounce! It seemed like treachery to the dead man, who, after all, had been her husband to let the chance of bringing his murderer to book go by. At hand there was help, that only waited her summoning—tha icotsteps of the person outside were only just beginning to descend the stairs.

And she felt her nerves snapping under the intolerable strain; the sound of the retreating footsteps suddenly struck her with a terrifying sense of being left alone and helpless with a man guilty of murder. Instinctively, in this new, culminating terror, Judith made a movement toward the door, to call out after the descending figure on the stairs. But at once she checked the impulse, setting her teeth. Ju summon help was to c>urt a publicirv that would wreck all her plans Already she had endured so much —was she to let it all go now? It was like a supreme teat of what human nature can endure that this woman on the verge of collapse, stood list?ning to the retreating footsteps, forcing herself to wait inactive till the coast was clear. And, as she waited, wondering desperately if the terrible drama of this night would never end, r.ot orce did she take her eyes from that intervening curtain, whence, st any moment, a possible danger might threaten her, now that the desperate man behind must know that his presence was suspected, and could not know what it was in the woman's mind to do.

She lived an eternity jn those moments of waiting. No movement from behind the curtain.; the receding footsteps had died away; no sound from below—now was her opportunity!

Judith felt she could not have endured anotner moment; the hurror and suspense would have driven her mad. With a stifled cry, she dashed to the door, pulhrg it to after her. She rushed blindly, like a haunted thing, r'own the staircase. The stairs of the house were deserted; she met no one. With a sobbing breath of relief she ran out into the quiet street. "Mis Hardressl"

Someone twenty yards away from the entrance had caught s?ght of the hurrying figure. But Judith neither turned, nor beard the cry. She hurried bilndly on. With the repction after the prolonged torture of that last crowded half hour she had lived through, that had left its impress en her white, haggard face, a rush of weakness had swept over her; ot ly her dogged purpose kept her from utter collapse. She had yet to get her child away. Long before the flat had yielded up its ghastly secret —as inevitably it must do in the morning when Mrs Whyte would go, as usual, letting he-self in with her key—she and her boy must be far beyond the reach of pursuit. The house, of her husband's relatives', with whom little Gilbert stayed, was not far. Judith"reached it in less than Sen minutes. She tried to calm ht j rseif, to compose her features, be f 6re she knocked; she must not betray a hi-t loat anything was wrong, give them cause for any suspicion. They were possible enemies—people wliO weuld be ranged on her hubsand's side against her.

Shi* knocked once, twice. No answer. Tne house was in darkness, except for a tiny gleam showing through the fanlight. A neighbour came fur ward from an adjoining door. "Yen want Mis Hunt, 'ihi'a out —the.v'ra all out," the wd-

man said, looking curiously at the white face. She knew Judith by sight. "I believe they've gone out to supper with friends, taking the little buy with them. I heard her say they wouldn't be back till late" The news came to the listening woman like a blow. Judith turned away, as if stunned by this unlookedfor rebuff. Now she must wait hours before she could get her boy aw ayhours wasted that might have been of inestimable value in her flight! It was nearly an hour later when Judith, utterly weary after wandering aimlessly through street after street, found herself again near the street where her old rooms were situated. A quiet, little frequented by street usually; but as Judith approached one end of it, realising where her footsteps had brought her, the sound of hurrying feet, the murmurs of excited voices, the jostling of men and boys running past her, challenged her absorbed senses. It was no longer a quiet street. A crowd blocked pavement and roadway—a morbid, eager crowd, that had gathered outside the very building from which she had made her mad flight an hour ago. From the windows on the opnosite side of the road women hung, talking to each other in shrill voices. At the entrance, two policemen stood, keeping back the pressing, swaying crowd, Behind a window on the top story, on which the eyes of countless upturned faces were bent, there were lights moving, and shadows flung on the blind.

The white-faced woman caught her ! breath. The crime had already been discovered; it could only mean that! Discovered hours before she had dreamed of that possibility! The crowd were discu*.:i.. b ' the details with a morbid relish, "it was some one who works there —Mrs Whyte, her name is; I've spoken to her many a time—whu found him, poor chap!" some one was telling a neighbour, in a raised voice. "Seems [she'd gone for something she left* behind in the afternoon. Knocked two or three times, but no one came; so she let herself in with the key."

"Yes; and only a few, minutes beiq"° then she'd seen the dead man's wife cuuie bolting down the stairs like mad," broke in another excited voice. "And she wasn't running to give information; it was a hilt! Not much doubt about that; husband and wife were always quarreling, they say But she won't get far; bet your life they'll have her arrested before the morning!" The white-faced, listening woman on the outskirts of the crowd heard the words and took in their appalling significance. She had been seen Hying from the flat immediately before the discovery of the crime! Even if she came forward and told her story, who would believe it now. She would be arrested on the charge of murder—with what hope of proving her innocence? The desperate woman turned and walked away, her brain reeling. If she had dared, and if her trembling limbs would have let her, she would have run. At any moment some one in the crowd might recognise her, and that would be the signal for her arrest. She was suspected of Gilbert's murder! Innocent though she was, all her actions that night would look like guilt. She was entrapped in the meshes of Circumstance. The crowd was too intent on watching the lighted window, and the moving shadows of ,the police within, tnrown grotesquely on the blind, to heed the woman who walked unsteadily away.

There was a queer, wild gleam, almost like that of a mad woman, in Judith's tyes as she walKed blindly, round the street corner—the reflected agony and deppair of one who has staked all and lost.

This was fate's "curtain" to the drama of the night. Th<i bitter crue'ty ot it! To realise as this distraught woman did realise, in the sudden, swiftly falling blow, that her child was lo3t to her! Unless she were prepared to face inevitable arrest, to be tried on a charge of murder, with circumstances looking hopelessly black pgainst her, how could she go now and claim her boy? Ihe news of Gilbert Hardreßs' tra* gic fate had spread like wild fire; already it would be known through the length and breadth of that street where stie had .knocked in vain at a closed door. TO BE CONTINUED