"The Chains of Bondage."

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10082, 1 September 1910, Page 2

"The Chains of Bondage."

CHAPTER XXXIV. —Continued

In spite of bis slim his strength was unusual. For a moment he held her powerless in his grip. Then, as he released her, Judith darted desperately past him into the hall, to the door—only to find it locked and the key gone.

Wace watched her struggles to open it, with a gleam of cruel amusement in his eyes. "You see, I laid my plans pretty thoroughly! That door won t open till Ellsree comes—and he will come when lie gets my mesage ! • I'm going to telephone to him now." And lie walked to the telephone m the hall, and rang up the central exchange. Judith sprang forward, her white face desperate, her wild eyes gleaming. "No, no, you sha'n't! Are you a fiend?" she cried, rushing forward, as if she would drag him away by force from the instrument. "What have I done to injure you? Oh, I'll pay you anything " "No; you can't bribe me!" he said roughly. "I'm as keen as most men on money, but I'm keener still on my revenge; and it's in my grasp now." "A revenge that will strike harder, at a woman who has never injured you, than at the man you .hate!" she wildly cried. "Oh, pretty hard at him too. You see, he loves you." His, words were almost drowned by a heavy peal of thunder; outside the storm was increasing in fury. As he spoke, the desperate woman flung herself upon him, making a call on all her strength to fight to keep him back from sending that message to her lover over the telephone. But her strength seemed to have deserted her; she was helpless in his grip. He flung her off roughly. "You fool!" he said savagely to the half fainting woman, "t.y that on again and I will denounce you as a thief over the telephone!" Judith made no further attempt—what was the use? She was trapped, and as powerless as a bird in a snare; she could only wait for the blow to fall. She felt herself shaking all over. She scarcely had the strength to stand.

She heard Wace speaking into the receiver:

"A*e you Sir Wilfred Ellstree?" The answer, which the desperate woman could not hear, was from a servant:

"My master is not a home. I expect him within ten minutes at most."

"Very well, I'll ring up again in ten minutes."

Wace,, replaced the and "glanced at his watch. "Ten minutes, respite, my lady!" he said.

He took a step tpwards her. Instantly Judith darted fnto the sitting room, and banged and locked the door. As he saw her intention Wace darted .a moment, too ia'te. He beat his fist loudly on the door.

"Open it, I say!" The drink he had been consuming all day was beginning to show its full effect—that and the growing excitement mounted to his brain as he saw his revenge coming nearer. ''Open the door!"

Juhith's voice came to him from within :

"I was not armed a minute ago, but I'm armed now! Dare to • cross this threshold, and I swear that moment shall be your last. It's no idle threat!"

And inside the room, the woman, half demented, stood with gleaming eyes and a glittering weapon in her hand—an Eastern dagger that she had seen hanging on the wall and had snatched down—stood waiting. Judith was dangerous nowj For answer the man flung himself with all his force against the door to burst it open. "Once he has forced it open he shall see that I mean my threat!" the woman whispered to herself. "He shall either give me the key or I shall kill him!"

And the gleam in the white face showed that this . desperate woman would keep her threat. Again Wace flung himself against ' the door, all the savagery in him inflamed by drink afid her defiance ; he felt the woodwork giving, and he laughed as again he " hurled his weight against the yielding barrier. The door gave way under the final impact—flew suddenly open as a heavy peal of thunder broke, immediately above the building as it seemed, with a deep 1 reverberaing crash; and simultaneous a hideous cry like that of a wounded beast in its death agony broke from the man who was carried forward.into-the room, where the white faced woman waited with that glittering thing in her hand by the sudden yielding of the door. And, with that sharp short cry on his lips, Herbert Wace staggered and fell forward with a crash on his face with outflung arms—lay still and motionless, almost before the last 1 echoes of the thunder had died away.

Dead! In a moment the woman's face had changed, as her startled shrinking eyes fell on something—a stream of crimson dyeing the carpet. A strangled cry "broke from her.

In heaven's name how had the thing happened. They two were alone in the fla behind a locked door, yet Herbert Wace lay there at her feet, dead, in the actual moment of forcing the door,

BY EMILY B. HETHERINGTON. Author of—" His College Chum," " .f juilfi o /' " A httj,enl>ant Fee," evo.

with a wound in Lis left side—with a bullet in his heart!

CHAPTER XXXV

HOW DID THE MAN DIE?

To Judith's ears the. echoes of that sharp, ghastly cry still seemed to fill the room, though the man from whom it had broken lay at her feet, with outstretched arms, dead! For a moment the woman stood as if incapable of movement in the grip of the overwhelming shock as she stared down with fascinated eyes at the dead man there, whom in the last hour of his life she had had such cause to liate and fear. At first the shock seemed to numb her faculties; it was almost impossible to realise the full meaning of. the sudden tragedy that had cut blindingly across the terrors of a minute ago. A ceaseless shuddering shook her, as she strove desperately to retain her self-control, to force herself to think.

With an effort, she wrenched her eyes from the terrible, rigid thing on the carpet—stared away from it into the hall. But as yet her limbs refused to obey her eyes; they seemed to have lost the power to move. "You mustn't scream!" Judih kept telling herself, like one repeating a lesson. "You must think what's, to be done; but, above all, you must not scream. If you give way to panic now, you are lost!"

There was no sound from outside. Judith stood with straining ears, half wondering that she did not hear the hurried rush of footsteps outside—that the tragedy had not proclaimed itself outside the limits of these four walls in which the strange stilnesls of death brooded, broken only by the faint muffled roar of London that canae' up faintly from the street below.

What was she to do ? Her thoughts seemed beyond the grip of her control ; she could not pin them down to that vital question. She found them straying away to the mystery of how Herbert Wace had Come by his death. It could only have been a shot that caused that wound; otherwise, she must have seen his assailant as the door burst open, and the hall was empty. And the winged death must have come to him in the very instant when Waco's final effort burst open the door; he had shouted out to her a moment before. And if a shot had killed him, how had the shot been fired.

Wace had said that they were alone in the flat. Moreover, she had heard no report; but that might have been drowned by the heavy peal of thunder ; it was possible enough that her ears had failed to sunder the two sounds, in that moment of acute tension, as she stood with that glittering weapon in her hand waiting for the entrance of the man who had trapped her. In her passionate, desperate mqod she would have taften his life tlien if he had still refused to let her go; but thesight 'of ~ this riiysterious tragedy appalled lier. Was the murderer still hiding in the flat ?

"You must think—think what's to be done!" she whispered to herself again insistently. Once before she had found herself faced by a crisis such as this; it was almost difficult to disassociate the tragedy of Gilbert Hardress' fate and this man's death in her distraught mind. And now, as then, Judith Fairfax realised how fatally circumstances would knot the meshes of suspicion about her if she were found here with the dead man. There was almost a sense of unreality about the situation. Three minutes ago this man, who lay so still now, had - spoken gloatingly to her of the revenge he contemplated on the man he hated—the revenge that would strike through her. He had laid an infamous trap for her; had lured her to his flat, that he might summon her lover by telephone to come and find her there, unable to explain her presence. While Herbert Wace lived, his trap held her fast. Unless she plucked up resolution to act at once, the trap might hold her still—ruin her—after the callous scoundrel who had laid it was no longer able to enjoy his triumph. The thoughts swept through her mjnd like a tideway. (To ise Continued).