"The Chains of Bondage."

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10084, 3 September 1910, Page 2

"The Chains of Bondage."

CHAPTER XXXVI. | TWO MEN AT THE DOOR. | If she only found John Trevena at home! It' was her last cJiancc! With feverish haste Judith hunted for Trevena's number in the directory bv the side of the telehpono, then'rang up the central exchange. furiously. , ... As she gave the number a terrible suspcnce consumed her. Would tins one man on whom her last hope hung be at home? It was not his voice that presently came to her over the wire. "Hello! Who are you?" It was Jim Ralston ,who happened to be working late, busy with his new duties, at Trevena's rooms that night. "I want Mr Trevena. Is he at home? My business is urgent." The woman at the telephone hardlv recognised her own voice. " She waited in suspence for the answer. If Trevena were out, nothing could save her. A rush of tremendous relief swept over her as she heard his voice answering her: "Hello. I'm Trevena! Who are , vou?" "I am Judith Fairfax!" she cried desperately. "Mr Trevena, you came to my help—you saved me the other night! To-night I find myself in a position no less terrible, and you are the one man in the world I can appeal to to help me again. I fiare . not ask Wilfred. Will you help me?" Judith's voice, full of uncontrollable agitation, startled Trevena _as her cry reached him over the wire. "What has happened? Where are you? How can I help you? Of course, I am at your service in anyway possible." The quick, decisive words seemed to bring comfort already to the ter-ror-stricken woman. Pbe had known her appeal to John Trevena would not be in vain.

She told him the address, indicated the precise position of the flat in the building. "For Heaven's sake think of some way of helping me!" she broke out desperately. "I am a prisoner in tkis flat with a dead man—a scoundrel who laid a trap for met He's lying dead here, and the key of the outer door is mising. I am a prisoner, and I dare not attract attention, or suspicion of the man's death must inevitably fall on me. Can you help me?" A startling message for a man to receive, Trevena 4 answered withoat a moment's hesitation!

"Keep up your courage. I'm coming without delay—l'm going to do my best! I'll give three low taps on the d©or, that you may ki»®w that it is I. Keep up your courage."

The intense relief the words brought to her! Then in the reaction after the long strain, the woman at the telephone fainted off in a dead swoon.

Juditk was still lying unconscious in the hall when the flap of the Utter slit in the door was gently rais ed, and John Trevona pr-eped through and' saw there the figure ci' the woman who had r.ot lit-ird Lis signal. Trevena's face was pal-?. Something terrible had happei-vl Siohiiid that locked door that dividri hiii' from a living woman and a dead man.

Murder! The agitated words on the telephone had hinted that murder had been done. Murder by whom? Trevena brushed the thought aside. All that he was there for was to help unreservedly this woman whom destiny Fate seemed to have so strangely intertwined with his—this woman dogged by persistent evil fortune.

Could he get her away without being seen ? He looked round hurriedly. The building seemed deserted. He took something from his pocket that he rapidly inserted in the lock.

Trevena was a man who could do anything and everything of a mechanical order, and the question of this locked door did not present any serious difficulty to him. He had not the dexterity of a professional burglar, perhaps, but in a very short time he had forced back the lock 1 with the skeleton key. The door was still latched, and his skeleton was unavailing for that—it was a Yale. Judith must open the door for him. She had already opened her eyes. She looken round in the first moment of waking consciousness in startled bewilderment; then she heard his voice speaking cautiously through the slit in the door, and the sound of the familiar tones brought hack with a rush all that had preceded her fainting fit. . "Come to the door," he was saying. Weak and trembling in every limb, Judith dragged herself across to the door. "I've got the lower lock unfastened ; you have only to pull back the latch now," he whispered. At last the door was opened. In the rush of almost hysterical emotion that swept over her Judith would have fallen, but that John Trevena caught the swaying woman i in his arms. I

"Control yourself! Not a cry—not a word!" he said authoritatively, afraid lest her relief might betray itself in some hysterical outburst. Quickly he shut the door. His eyes hacl caught sight of the dead man through the door of the sitting room. For a moment there was silence.

BY EMILY B. HETHERIIfGTON. Author of—" His College Chum," " Worthimrfcon'd Pledge," " A Jblej-entant Foe," „uj.

She could not trust herself to speak. She could have laughed and j sobbed hystericaly in the same breath. In her peril she had appealed, not to her lover, but to this man who had come hot-foot on the heels of her prayer, and had opened the way of escape to her. By what right had she dragged him into this tragic tangle of her danger that might well prove danger for him, too—this man who had already risked much for her sake ? Yet something told Judith Fairfax that lie had done it gladly—no less gladly than if he were her lover and not merely her friend. "Oh, how can I thank you," she said at last—"how can I ever thank you? I think I should have gone mad if I had not been able to summon you!" she cried wildly with a shudder. Then, as she saw his eyes return from' the figure on the floor, and rest inquiringly on her ! face, as though she read in his look a question and a fear, she broke out feverishly: "I didn't kill him—oh, you mustn't think I am guilty of that! I r.wear I am innocent of his death! But he deserved his fate, if ever any man did, after the infamous trap he laid for a defenceless woman, yet it was not I who killed him ! You believe me, don't you ?"

"Hush! You must not agitate yourself so!" he oried in a low, warning voice, to the woman whose slender, trembling form he was still supporting. "Control yourself, Miss Fairfax. W r e are not out of danger yet!" Excitedly, as if the telling of it were a relief to her overcharged feelings, she told him the story of those last moments of Herbert Wace's evil life.

1 "It sounds wild and increditable, I know, that the murderer, should have passed out of this flat like an intangible shadow, but what I've told you is the truth! Oh, I would have killed him with a dagger I had snatched up if, when he forced the door, he had refused to let me go! , I believe I would havekilled him in self-defence, and I should have been justified!" she cried, with her dark eyes gleaming with a passionate light. 1 * "But I had no revolver. Who could have fired it, or from where he could have fired it, is a mystery to me. The door was locked, and the flat was empty, except for myself and the dead man; only lam guiltless! I couldn't lie to you about it, after all you have done for me!" she wildly cried. "Hush!" he said again insistently. "You are only agitating yourself, Miss Fairfax; and now, if ever in your life, you have need of all yourself control! I don't accuse you —I believe you. But tl*ere is no time for words now, when every moment of delay increases the danger. Are you strong enough to make theventure out?"

But, in spite of his impatience to bo gone from this place of tragedy, Trevena realised that Judith was not sufficiently recovered to make the attempt yet. To faint on the stairs might mean the betrayal of everything. Leading her to a seat he poured out some brandy that he found in a decanter on the sideboard. "Drink this,' he said.

The spirit brought some of the colour back to her face, brought back some of her strength.

"Why did this man lay a trap for you," he asked. "Revenge! Not on me, but on Wilfred. He hated Wilfred. He was a scoundrel, a blackmailer, who Wilfred had once exposed," she told him. "Wace lured me here, and he meant Wilfred to find me here in nis rooms; he was going to telephone to Wilfred when he was shot." "But why did you come? Wasn't it imprudent?" "He forced me by a threat. He was blackmailing me " Judith checked herself suddenly on the brink of an admission. She must not let this man know what power Herbert Wace had held over her.

"You mean he had discovered you were Judith Hardress, and was using the knowledge as a means of blackmail?" Trevena asked, and she snatched, eagerly at the evasion offered.

CTo be Continued Daily.)