"CHRISTABEL"

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 June 1939, Page 12

"CHRISTABEL"

Published by Special Arrangement. Copyright.

By

PEARL BELLAIRS.

(Author of “Velvet and Steel,” “The Prisoner’s Sister," etc.)

CHAPTER 11. (Continued). There were two men aboard the pilot boat who didn’t look like the rest of the crew; two men in felt hats and city clothes, who held on carefully as the boat heaved and lurched alongside. Keith drew back from the rail where they were standing. His voice drew her attention. "I say, will you take this?” He handed her a thick, sealed envelope. ‘■lt’s too big to go in my pocket easily,” he explained. “What have you got in it?” “Oh, just some papers—instructions from the firm.” She closed it in her handbag. The two men from the pilot boat had come aboard, and they crossed the deck to go up to the Captain’s quarters. Glancing round Christabel met an inquisitive look from one of them. She and Keith leaned on the rail, the blue waves slapping her side. Christabel had no idea what was in Keith’s mind, though afterwards she guessed. It all happened very suddenly. The two men came down from the Captain’s quarters, the Captain with them. They came up to Christabel and Keith, and the tallest man, who had a square red face, said to Keith: “Are you Keith Milsom?” Christabel, in surprise, when Keith didn’t answer immediately, said innocently: “Yes!” . “Our name is Lorraine!" said Keith, hurriedly, correcting her. She stared at him. She thought he must be mad. And then she saw that he looked very queer. A smirk passed across the faces of the two men. “Let's see your passport,” said the taller one. Keith took it out. The two men looked at it together, closely, and the smaller one said: “This has been tampered with.” Th tall man nodded, taking a paper out of his coat pocket, and unfolding it carefully. “I’m Detective Inspector Kyle of Scotland Yard,” he said, and repeated monotonously: “I arrest you, Keith Milsom, and you, Mary Christabel Milsom, on the charge of conspiring with Thomas Craigie, alias George West, to defraud Henry Bayes Goring of Essex Court, Wimbledon, of the sum of one thousand pounds, by means of false representation.” He drew a breath, added a warning about anything they might say being used in evidence, and concluded: “You’d better get packed pp to come along ashore with us!” Christabel stared at Keith. He looked very white. “Say something!" she thought. "For Heaven's sake, say something!" He did manage to say: “There’s some mistake!”

“We’ll see,” said the big detective. “Better get packea up and come along,” the otner one told Christabel. They moved towards the companion ladder on to the main deck. Christabel breathed deeply, trying to strengthen herself, clear her head. She wanted to protest her innocence: “It’s impossible!” she was going t.c say. “I know nothing about this! It’s some awful mistake!" The words were on her lips— Suddenly there was a terrific noise, a reverberating bang, so loud that in itself it seemed to stun her. Keith, going down the ladder in front of her, pitched forward. He hit the rail of the ladder—smack!—crashed down on the deck below with a thud. Christabel screamed, nearly lost her balance on the ladder, and stood staring down. Keith lay on the deck, his face, turned to the sky. The detective following Christabel pushed past her and ran down the ladder. She cowered there, the ladder under her feet, the gulls wheeling and crying in the sky above . . . “Not real! This isn't real!”—the helpless cry seemed to ring in her head. But her body realised what her mind would not. Someone took her arm and drew her back off the ladder; she tried to stand, staggered, and went down into waves of numbness, silence, darkness . . “Is he dead?” asked the detective, who had laid her down on the deck, when the other officer came up again from below. “Dead," said Inspector Kyle laconically. He bent and picked up Christabel’s handbag: the first thing lie took from it was the envelope Keith had given to her. He tore it open, and took out a packet of bank notes. He flicked them over —French francs, Italian lire. Argentine dollars. And here's the swag!” he said. He looked at Christabel, lying halfconscious at his feet, and shook his head. CHAPTER HI. It was twilight when they left, the River Pla'te; Keith’s body was put board the pilot boat first, and then Christabel was helped down the spe-cially-lowered gangway. The boat leaped and plunged like a restive horse. They put Christabel in the one tiny cabin, and the two police officers sat with her, trying to screen the body which lay along one of the the lockers, covered with a blanket. She was stupified,. sick and dizzy still after her collapse. The trip to Dover seemed to take hours. They took Keith’s body ashore while she waited in the cabin; when she came off the boat in the windy darkness they were putting the body into a police ambulance. She saw the

still, closely-wrapped form which had been her husband for three years slide on its stretcher into place on the shelf of the lighted van. Night closed in on it as they shut the doors. The ambulance drove quickly away. "Where are they taking him?" She was hardly aware of having spoken aloud until the detective in charge of her replied: "To the mortuary, ma’am.” They began to walk to the police station. The steady ground underfoot and the fresh air helped to clear- her head. "I don't understand,” she said. "Does Mr coring say that I got all this money from him?” “Mr Goring is the party who's laying the information,” said Inspector Kyle. Even in that extremity her dread of being a nuisance to her mother asserted itself; and it was only with a great effort that she forced herself to ask them to put through a trunk call to Mrs Haye for her. They sat down on a chair in the police station. While Inspector Kyle was away telephoning the other detective seemed anxious to reassure her. “I know something of this case, and from what I can see of it, you’ll have a pretty good chance of getting off light. They’ll assume the coercion of your husband, Mrs Milsom; that’s what they usually do.” At the mention of Keith the storm of her pent up emotions burst in her; she broke down completely. After she had recovered enough they walked her off to the railway station, and 20 minutes later she was sitting with them in a railway carriage on the way to London. She began to think clearly again, though under a heavy cloud of despair and depression. Evidently there had been something wrong about the house Keith had been selling to Henry. She could not understanding how Henry could believe that she had had anything to do with it. . . It was all so awful that the utter humiliation of being met by her stepfather at Bow Street could not touch her. Mr Haye, furious at the disgrace to himself and his wife, treated Christabel with a kind of incredulity as though he could not believe that such a step-daughter existed.

“So Keith—Keith has ?” “Yes, Haysie.” Mr Haye couldn’t think of anything to say about that. “Did.you know what he had been up to?” “No, I didn’t, I ” “You must have! They tell me you and he sold a house to that friend of yours, Goring. It! was supposed to belong to a man called West, but he’d merely got hold of the keys from a house agent; his name is Craigie, the police know all about him, and he's a very crooked customer. Goring paid over a cheque for a thousand pounds to your husband, as Craigie’s agent; and the next thing is that you and your husband are on the way to South America with six hundred of it; and the real owners of the house are telling Goring that they've’ never heard of him!” "But, Haysie. I knew nothing about it! I thought the house belonged to Mr West!” “Yes, but what about this running away—this running off ’ to South America?” “Keith told me he had a job there!” Her step-father wanted to believe her, if only for the sake of his own self-respect. But it was difficult. He bit his lip and his face twitched. “You had the Goring money on you when you were arrested.” “I hadn’t.” “They say you had. The police aren’t likely to lie.” “But I can’t have! I know I only had a ten-shilling note and some silver!” She was white and trembling with desperation. They abandoned that point. “Craigie was arrested with four hundred on him. That's how they found out the whole business, because Craigie was under suspicion, and the police had their eye on him. They called on Goring this morning to make inquiries ” Mr Haye broke off, and added, with an effort at kindliness: “Well, we’ll do what we can for you, Christabel, your mother and I. But it’s a bad business, very bad indeed! Ruinous, I’m afraid, the scandal!” Mr Haye went away. It was only later that night, in the Bow Street cells, that Christabel remembered the envelope Keith had given her on the ship—it must have been that which they had found on her. with Henry's money in it. Early next morning she was formally charged with Thomas Craigie. alias George West. That picture of aged respectability had a grotesque unreality about him in the light of further knowledge. His ribald eye and the smell of spirits which always went with him now seemed to predominate over the mild impression created by his neat umbrella and his reverential white whiskers. Both of them, pleaded not guilty, and the case was transferred to the Central Criminal Court. Bail was refused to Craigie, but Christabel was released on her stepfather’s surety. Mr Haye took her back to the shocked silence of his home in St John’s Wood, and she stayed there until her case came up for trial. She was spared the discomfort of being with the rest of the family; her meals were taken to her room for her. Her mother gave her novels she could not read, sewing she felt too nervous to do. She was taken to see the family solicitor in King’s Bench Walk. She fancied that the solicitor believed in her innocence, but it wasn’t a matter which seemed of much importance to him. He was hopeful, but when he heard about the letter she had sent to Henry Goring asking him for the loan of twenty-one pounds for the dressmaker he looked grave and shook his head. “That was your one mistake. Mrs Milsom!” (To be Continued.)