"The Chains of Bondage."

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10077, 26 August 1910, Page 2

"The Chains of Bondage."

V f .» ■» S-'J* £s* CHAPTER XXX.—Continued.

"Oh, surely you must be mistaken —you must be mistaken, Mrs Saxon!" cried Jim. "Why should Miss Ellstree, have burned anything, and at such a time, within a moment or two of Mrs Hood's death? It is "n----conceivable.

"Of course, I don't say positively that she did. I only say I believe she did. And you won't shake my belief, either!" said the landlady stubbornly. Jim crossed over to the fire. A startled look suddenly crept into his eyes. "Look! Why, what's that?" The flames had died ■ down, and tho firo had burned red. The photograph, consumed to a charred mass, lay still whole on the top of the glowing coal, and, as writing may often bo deciphered on a fragment of incinerated paper, so on the charred strip of pasteboard there the outlines of a glfcstly fa:e were faintly distinguishable still, as Jim bent down and looked into the red heart of'the Are —tho face, staring up at - him wierdly through the flames, of the man who eighteen years ago had doi|e so cruel a wrong to his wife and child, and now, months after his own departure from life, had been indirectly the cause of that wronged wife's death. .

"A photograph has been -burned, and burned lately; and it's that of George Craven, the millionaire!" he cried. ,

"Didn't I tell you?" began Mrs Saxon in triumph, "But can Miss Ellstree have hurried if;?. Why should she have burned it P It may have been done before your mother's death, -And the fact that your mother was at the bureau :— —" Jim broke off suddenly to ask "Elsie, do you know if your mother possessed this photograph of George Craven?" Elsie shook her head. "I have never seen it before," she said. Jim tried to lift it out of the fire with the tongs. As he raised the charred sheet, where cue of thecorners had cui'led round with the heat, he saw some writing standing out in letters that the fire had turned white.

He had only deciphered a word or two when the burning photograph fell into flakes of burning ash. But a queer, inscrutable look had suddenly come ino Jim Ralston,s face.

CHAPTER XXXI. THE SECOND WARNING. * "The sooner I get out of the country the better," Herbert Wace said to himself. tie was standing at the open outer door of his flat; on the top floor of the high block of buildings near Victoria Street, his face very white, peering down the stairs.

The staircase was only dimly lighted, yet in spite of the poor illumination, as he crept across the landing and looked down, hfc could have sworn no one was there; besides he could have heard the footsteps. There was no sound of anyone stirring in all the great building. "What does it mean? What can it mean?" Wace muttered to himself.

In his hand he was holding a tiny playing card, the nine of diamonds. A few moments ago' it had fluttered through the slit of the door. He had been sitting in the room that night when the click of the metal cap covering the letter slit had arrested his attention.

It wq(S the Second time that the red warning had come to him, for Herbert Wace had cause to know that the appearance of this card conveyed a threat.

A week ago, coming back to his flat after that first interview with Judith Fairfax, the woman he meant to blackmail, just such a card as that lie now held in his hand had come through the door in an equally mysterious fashion. Wace had opened the door quickly, yet no one was visible or audible., Now a week later the same uncanny trick had been played on him again.

He went back into liis flat with a little shiver, and locked the door. It was disquieting to nerves not very strong to know that mysterious enemies were lurking near, watching him—enemies who came and were gone like shadows.

And the unspoken message of that card was ominously eloquent to Herbert Wace.

At the meeting between Sir Wilfred Ellstree and this man in Judith Fairfax's house, the former had spoken of an evil gang of profession-

BY EMILY B. HETHERINGTON. AuL'ior of—" His Colicg Chun/' " Wortbington'a Pledge," "A Rej.en'snt Fte," eto.

3 <«. — «JS» 8^ al blackmailers in the United States to which Wace hade belonged. This gang of dangerous criminals, that hud at last been broken by the police, when Mr Wace by the narrowest shave had only just "skipped" in time to save his skin, had used this particular card of the pack as the token of their evil guild, which, on a small scale, had emulated the terrorist methods of the Mafia or Camorra. The nine of diamonds had been their warning to men whom they 'were intimidating— a warning repeated three times. After a man had received the third warning, he usually realised that it behoved him to put his house in order to submit; that he had been marked by secret enemies, who were as merciless and uncsrupulous as they were rapacious in their demands. To this gang of blackmailing scoundrels Wace had belonged. Now it looked as if the tables were being turned deliberately upon him; it savoured of mocking irony that the methods of intimidation, whereby he and his fellow scoundrels had struck terror into others, were being directed against himself by unknown enemies. Twice the fatal card had come to him. Herbert Wace ! guessed shrewdly that when the card i made its third appearance ti:oce un- ! known enemies would strike.

The thing was tugging at his nerves. Now, at last, in a sort of tardy retributive justice, he was being made to feel some of the nervous terrors that in the past he had helped to occasion in others. The nearness of these unknown shadow enemies, their apparent invisibility, - frightened him. The presence of the cards proved that they came near to him, to vanish, as it seemed, mysteriously and in a moment. And when had they sent him the third card, the last warn-

I ing ? He thought ,again of the v tragedies that more than once had followed the sending of the red warning the third time. In the case of David Marton, of whom Ellstree had spoken to Judith Fairfax, suicide had followed—the suicide of a ter-ror-stricken man. Was his life aimed at now? Who were these invisible enemies? Herbert Wace could look back during his unscrupulous career and remember many he had injured. But in this case he knew definitely now, as he looked at the second card, that revenge was being planned against him for his share in David

Morton's ruin of years ago. For on

the playing card was written in tiny letters the word "Remember!" and a significent date followed the word—the date on which David Morton, the planter in one of the Southern States, had been driven to take his own life.

"I'll clear out without delay," he said to himself.

He must stay one more day in this flat for certain reasons; after that he would clear out—from here, at any rate—go elsewhere, throw his enemies off the scent.

But not till after to-morrow. Tomorrow he meant to bleed Judith Fairfax for the last time, extol final blackmail, and then revenge himself on Ellstree, whom he hated, by striking at him through the woman Ellstree loved.

Judith Fairfax must come up tomorrow night to his rooms here. He would force her to do that by the power he held over her—force her to fall into his trap.

The thought was in Herbert Wace's mind when lie suddenly recollected that he was still holding in his hand card with red pips. He looked down at it with an uneasy start. Then he tore it savagely into half a dozen scraps, let them fall in a rain through his fingers. On one of the scraps lying on the carpet his eyes saw the written word "Remember!" still voicing its warning. Tlien he laughed. (To be Continued). tor Children's JriacKing vwugh at night, Woods' Gr-afc Peppermint Cure, Is 6d, 2s 6rl. Do you know that croup can be prevented ? Give Chamberlain's Cough Remedy as soon as the child becomes hoarse or even .after the croupy cough appears, and it will prevent the attack. It is a certain cure for proup and has never been known to fail. Sold by all chemists and storekeepers. IMPORTANT TC MOTORISTS.

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