The Dark House at Highgate

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10702, 24 August 1912, Page 2

The Dark House at Highgate

'CUP SERIAL.)

"The claim whs to have, been made as soon as Cluny had learned his part thoroughly, He had to make h:m-oli familiar with tho scones ef liis halfbrothcr's eariy life. Of course -Hi.'uington would liavo been a pensioner us soon as Okuiy was in possession of the Canvay estates. "Thai; was the .sum and substance of the imiinisbod letter," I said, "and, of course, you will understand that Mail line Olaude and her aHy,Do:-tor Riminytou, dared not start their scheme, which was to keep thein all in affluence, so lon'* as 1 had it in my power to explode such a bombshell as this confection. My death, to bo sure, would not have made their position safe; nothing but the destruction of the letter could have done that; kit it would have left them room for hope, whereas if 1 had been rescued from their grasp the whole plot must liavo fallen to pieces—a-, indeed, it bad done." How the letter had ir.-.-t. into the cabinet was a matter that was not cleared up until later. There was no great mystery about it. Cluny, though for obvious reason he was forbidden by his accomplices to make friends, had nicked up acquaintanceship with Mr Setswortli in a London Hot? I, and, being a young man of artistic tastes, was cordially invited by the old connoisseur to spend a few days with him in the country.

Ho accepted tl'.o invitation, and durliis visit lie seems suddenly to have realised the wickedness of the imposture to which he had consented to lend himself. The warning words of the preacher who had moved him <.,0 strongly came home to him. when lie. was away from the malign influences of his mother and of Ilimington, with such force that, in a fit of penitence. he sat down impulsively to write to the man whom he designed to make his father-confessor.

In the midst of his writing Mr Betsworth and some visitors heard approaching the room', in which he was husy, and he liurriedlly dropped the wet and unfiinislied letter into the open drawer of a collector's cabinet close to his hand, locked it up, and pocketed the key. A harried summons to return to London, and the loss of the key, prevented him from recovering the document; his fit of penitence passed, and lie made the existence of the letter known to Itimington some months [later, greatly to that schemer's pcrI tuhation.

We made a late sitting of it- that nicrht. talking mostly, as was natural, of poor Tony, who was unconscious oT his improved chances of an early restoration to liberty; for no/jury would conviet him—indeed, we thought the magistrates would scarcely commit hinv—now that it was known that ?.!> Betsworth's house had heeu burgled on the night of his death. .And then my plot had to lie propounded. "T want to interest you both." T ssßf to Anne and to Amir's mother, 'in Madame Claude's stepdaughter, who is now without a home. To he sure, she is well out of her stepmother's gloomy establishment, but her position is a sad and friendless one. She is very pretty, well educated, and the daughter of a gentleman.'' "Now, Tony will be return nig to us almost immediately, and Tony is voting and impressionable. If you could have her bore for a- time, it is not impossible that he might recover from a recent disappointment he has had. The omdest violet may attract when one has been rudely cured of a taste of the tawdry, over-blown blossoms of the hothouse; and she really is charming, and lias a little competence of her own." The slow-growing smile that first warmed my heart toward Anne irradiated the face of the gentlest and kindest of sistors.

"Oh, Peter, you shocking match-

maker," she said. "I thought it was only-married women who were allowed to arrange these affairs." "Then, dearest Anne, I will leave you to superintend, the matchmaking," I replied, "for I will see to it that yon are properly qualified for the part at the first possible moment." And as her -hand slid confidently into mine, T was, perhaps, not wholly wrong if I inferred that she was really interest in my little scheme.

CHAPTER XXYIT. CONCLUSION. Wo learned afterward that Madamo Claude was the orphan daughter of an improvident gentleman who had fallen when leading .his company up the heights of Alma. Thrown early upon her own resources, she had been employed in a flower shop in. Picesdilly when, at the age of twenty, *>he

BY DERWENT MIALL 2> thor of "Laav Rosalie's 1-t.L,'acy," "Bp.Harr.y's Warring," '"The Strange Onae -f Vincent Hume, 1 ' "in. the Web." Etc Etc.

• captured the errant fancy of Lard j Carway, who was, at that time, s j young man about town. | The girt was proud of ancient linen:'.' and her humble position irked 1;-" Tn Lord Carway's devotion she . thought she saw a passport to wildly groatnes.s; and. striving to hold j him, she. trusted him too far —c'.utchi ing too recklessly at a poor, gambling ; chance of w-innirig fortune, she paved , the way for disaster. There seems to have been ho doubt, j at any rate in her mind, that (V,rw, i y, i whom T have heard described as an I erratic, self-willed, but good-natured young man, honestly intended to marry her. But then something occurred —a flash of temper from her, perhaps, j or a too deft use of hor undisciplined tongue—at all events, my lord took fright, and was off and away to Canada on a snorting tour when a child av.is born. Then, as we have seen. Lord Carway married; and the unmarried mother, intent upon another bid for fortune, kept her child's existence a- secret. Later on. she seemed to have prospered; but her early defeat left her hitter, and led to a drying-up of the fount of human kindness; and in so far as she made a wrong choice at the outset, she may be a fit subject for pity. But that is net the question the justice of the heavy punishment that was meter out to her <ind to those who had ploted and planned with her in the dark house at Highgato. And when that has been said there is Httle that needs to be added to my story, throughout: a creature ofk twbygg (The End.' 1