“MAN FROM THE AIRPORT”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 January 1940, Page 10

“MAN FROM THE AIRPORT”

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT. COPYRIGHT.

By

LESLIE BERESFORD.

Author of “Mr Appleton Awakes,” “The Other Mr North,” etc,

CHAPTER XIV. Continued. “Too much to leave lying about this room, all night,’ she remarked, adding: ‘I hadn’t though of that. Perhaps, after all, it might be as well to see Emil right away now, and have the whole business settled ” “Just what I think Sis,” the other exclaimed on a note of intense relief, and urged: “You hand the money over to me, and -let me find him. Ten to one, I’ll get away with half this figure. He wouldn’t find it so easy treating with me as with you r ” “No, no,” she insisted. “Twenty thousand isn’t much to pay to make our money safe for us. I won’t have any arguing. And I’m going to see to this, it ”

“Exactly why 1 suggest you should keep out of it, Sis,” the other intervened. “If there ever was trouble, you wouldnt be dragged into it. You would have paid over the money, knowing the paper had been destroyed."

“Don’t be silly, Geoff!” Paula laughed. “It’s my money, drawn by me from the bank, that’s paying the price. That would come out. It’s you who needn't get involved. Geoff. I don't want you dragged into it. You’ve had a rough enough time already. It’s really for you that I'm doing this thing. If you hadn’t turned up, I don’t thing I’d have come to terms with Emil. I’d sooner have let that Peters person make this claim, and win it if he could. But. as things, are- ” ■She turned towards the door, the notes in her hand, and he followed her, rejecting her suggestion that he should wait till she came back. “We’re in this together, Sis,” he insisted.

Downstairs, at that moment, nobody was about. The chattering Mayfairers had left in their cars. Paula made straight for Emil’s private office, but found this to be empty and unlit. A yawning waiter, suddenly appearing from round a corner, told her that the German had gone upstairs to his room half-an-hour since.

Paula turned back to the staircase, with her brother by her side. The main hall was lit only by one electric bulb, and the foot of the stairs was in darkness, though the glimmer of a light on the first floor could be seen up the shaft of the lift, which was not working. > Out of the darkness at the foot of the stairs, rather startling Paula, a figure emerged in great haste, a haste indeed which had something furtive about it. That did not surprise Paula, anyhow, when she realised who it was Tucker, whose manner was always furtive and sly. He seemed, in fact, more surprised to see them, if not even a little alarmed. In his white, twisted face, his beady eyes were glaring suspiciously, and his thin lips were moving, as if he talked to himself soundlessly. He was about to brush past when Paula stopped him.

“Have you seen anything of Mr Luttner?” she inquired coldly. “Mr Luttner? Why should I have been seeing him?” the other exclaimed in his clipped voice. “I haven’t seen him for certainly a couple of hours. He told me that you hadn’t yet been able to get that cash ” “As a matter of fact, I did get it —” Paula was saying, when the other almost jumped at her in amazement:

“You say you did get it?” he stared, and his eyes opened wider still as they saw the wad of banknotes in her fingers.

“I’m wanting to settle with him now,” she said. “A waiter said he was upstairs in his rooms. Hadn’t you better came with us. as you’re in this blackmailing business too?” “No. That's all right',” the other said in hurried undertones. “You settle with Luttner. I—l have to go—to leave at once on an urgent matter—” With that, in amazing haste, he slipped away into the shadowed background of the hall, vanishing almost noiselessly out of sight. “Why, what’s the matter with him?” Geoffrey asked in puzzled tones. ‘Acted as if he’d been robbing the safe, or something like that. In too much of a hurry to handle his share of those notes, too. Queer.” “I think, from the little I’ve seen of him, that’s just his way. A nasty, creepy-crawly piece of work, Geoff," Paula laughed, a little uneasily all the same.

“Come on up," she added, beginning to mount the stairs. “Emil Luttner’s just about as poisonous, anyhow, so the sooner we put paid to his account, the better I'll be pleased.” A few minutes later, at the door of the German’s suite of rooms, she knocked. There came no answer, so she knocked again, and then—as she often had done in the days of their friendlier relationships—she tried the door handle. She pushed the door inwards. to find the lights on, but no sight or sign of the German. She was about to move further into the room, when Geoffrey laid detaining fingers on her arm. “Wait a minute,” he said on a sudden note of alarm. “I've an impression that something’s wrong here. Looks to me as if someone's been playing a smash-and-grab act of sorts here. Better let me investigate. ” He advanced only a few paces, when he stopped dead. Paula saw that his face had gone white, and his eyes expressed a sudden growing horror. She realised that he was staring down at something hidden from her sight by an immense settee.

terrible’s happened. That German, Luttner . . .” CHAPTER XV. It was futile to be squeamish. Weakness was not one of Paula’s faults, anyhow. She moved quickly to Geoffrey’s side. It was no pleasant sight. The German had quite obviously been attacked from behind. His skull had been battered by violent blows from something heavy. Paula realised what the heavy object had been. It lay on the parquet floor not far from the spread-eagled body. A heavy bronze statuette of Aphrodite which usually stood on a small occasional table by the right arm of the settee.

Paula, unthinkingly, picked up the statuette, the base of which was stained with blood. She was startled out of her dazed thoughts by the sound of her brother's voice in a frantic whisper: ,

“Drop that thing, you little fool! Do you want the police to trace your finger prints? Drop it, I say.” The thing fell from her limp fingers with a heavy thud. Much heavier than that, she told herself, the base of it had hammered at Emil Luttner’s skull. She could not be in the very least sorry for him. He deserved an end like that, remembering the kind of man he was. But she was chilled with horror.

She saw vaguely that Geoffrey had been kneeling by the inanimate shape. He stood upright now, gesturing impotently. “I think he’s quite dead,” she heard him saying. “The thing is—Sis —what are we to do about it?”

‘Call the police,” she answered simply in a dull voice, and then knew it might not be quite so simple as that. “If we do,” her brother reminded her, “they’ll have to be told why we were here, all about that stolen marhow we were going to buy it. No. We’ve got to try and avoid that, Paula. We must get out of this, quick as we can, never let on that we knew what has happened when it’s discovered tomorrow ” “Tomorrow? It’s tomorrow now!” she laughed in a cracked, half-hysteri-cal way, and pointed to a time-piece which showed three o’clock, all but a few seconds. Her roving eyes, their gaze passing round the room, studied the writing-table. Above this, a startling thing showed. Some of the pannelling in the wall was open, a gap showing. “Look, Geof . . .” She pointed this out to her brother. “Some sort of secret hiding place. I’ve been in this room many times, but I’ve never seen that. I knew Emil had some hidden spot. He often said so. I think he keeps people's letters and things there, people he —was blackmailing. Likely enough he was keeping that stolen paper in that place ” “Never mind that,” her brother snapped impatiently, dragging her by an arm away from the settee and the lifeless, battered thing it hid. “We must be slick,” he went on, having reached the door which was ajar a little, and holding her back warningly while he widened the opening and peered out. She saw relief come into his eyes, and he beckoned her whispering:

“Quick!” It seemed ages to Paula before she was back again in the room she had only so recently left, and the door was shut. Geoffrey was moving to and fro nervously, though she had flung herself down apathetically in a deep chair. She was wondering if they were doing right, to pretend blindness over what had happened, if they would not be wiser now to give the alarm, her first intention.

Geoffrey, however, was already arguing against this course, without, her saying a word.

"No, Sis,” he was saying. “We must quite definitely know nothing at all about what's happened to that German. We must keep right out of it, I insist.” “But Geoff, there are one or two things we must remember,” she ar--gued, mostly to see what would be his arguments against them. “First of all. it will be known that we were looking for Emil. That waiter will remember that we asked where he was ” “Well, when we found he was in his room we just changed our minds and went to bed." “Then there was that little horror, Tucker,” Paula went on. “He’ll be able to say he saw us at the foot of the stairs, and we were going right up to see Emil.”

“But —will he say it?” Geoffrey stopped in his stride, staring down at her with the air of a man who feels he has made a discovery. “Supposing it was that same solicitor's clerk who killed the German?" he suggested, startling Paula, but not convincing her. "And—why. Geoff? The two were friends. They were partners in that marriage-entry business ” “Friends!” the other, shrugged. “If you knew as much about crooks as I do you’d be wise to the fact that friendship between crooks lasts only so long as they’re within sight of each other. And that solicitor’s clerk, slithering away like a streak of greased lightning, saying he was off on urgent business at three o'clock in the morning. Why, Paula? He murdered the German, I tell you. There couldn’t be anybody else here, don’t you see?” There could indeed be nobody else, unless it had been a visitor, or one of the staff, with a grievance against Luttner. And it must have happened within the last half-hour or so, had no doubt been happening while they were last in this room. Knowing the German as she did, Paula could well be-

“Keep back!' he urged sharply under his breath, as she made a slight forward movement towards him. “You don’t want to loo): at this. Something lieve that, in some way, he might have

been trying to double-cross the other, and had been found out.

All that, however, was conjecture. It was more important to think of their own position here, even though they pretended not to have been near that room of death. Paula pointed this out to her brother.

"I'm afraid we can’t keep out of this business altogether. Geoff." she said. "1 mean. Peters is bound to tell the police about the stolen marriage-entry, so we'll be dragged in, that way. anyhow. It’s a pity we're here. They'll guess at once that we came here about that document. They may even suspect that one of us did that killing ” “Suspicion's no good—they have to prove it before they start hanging anyon e ”

“Don’t. Geoff!" Paula’s jangled nerves were at breaking-point now. She had the greatest difficulty in controlling herself to prevent herself from giving way to hysterical panic. One moment she was for urging that they should slip down to the car-park, and set out right away for “Sunnyside." Then, in a flash, she realised that to do so meant almost a confession of guilt, would set the police on their tracks right away. (To be Continued.)