“MAN FROM THE AIRPORT”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 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 XV. Continued. No. They had just to stay here, and await development, it seemed. Paula shivered, warm and close though the weather was. The thought of sleeping, of being alone in this room till the silent place began to stir with a new day, filled her with horror. But already, she suddenly realised from sounds drifting in through the open windows, the place was stirring. Men’s voices clashed in some sort of argument below, with one high-pitched one shouting protests. Quickly, she moved to a window and looked down, stared, shrank back, turned to her brother.

“Surely they can’t have found it out already?” she said under her breath. “There’s a policeman with some people down below.” He crossed to her side, looking out. bending low to try and see more clearly.

‘You’re right. The police, and—if I’m not wrong—l believe that liule rat Tucker is with them. So he can

-m-dly have killed the German, or he wouldn’t be with the police ” “Oh, how can we tell?” Again Paula’s over-wrought nerves nearly brought a collapse. But she could see that her brother, if anything, was as bad as herself. He had never been remarkable for strength of character in crises. She knew the only way to calm him was to control herself.

“Whatever is happening down below,” she said, “I’m not stopping here any longer. We’ll go down, and see for ourselves what the trouble is.”

He argued, tried to detain her, but she gained her point. She walked down the stairs a little ahead of him, and they both found the entrance-hall fully lighted. Tucker was there, as Geoffrey had said. The one uniformed policeman seemed to have a guarding interest in him. But, what Paula had least expected and was startled to discover, was the presence of John Peters and his two friends. None of these people had heard or noticed the movement of Paula and her brother down the staircase. Their attention was too engrossed in what the solicitor’s clerk was jabbering, between questions from the policeman, and an occasional dry remark from John Peters or one of his friends. It was not until Paula herself spoke that they all swung round her way. “What is all the noise about?” she asked quite calmly. “My brother and I were just going to.bed, but the row below was too deafening for words. We came down to see what it meant.” “Sorry that you should have been disturbed,” John Peters answered for the rest. “But, the fact of the matter is that my two friends here and I have a particular interest in making sure that this person, whom I’m sure you know well enough, does not leave these premises. We found him doing his best to do so, and were obliged to give him in charge ” “I warn you again, constable, that there will be serious trouble over this,” piped frenziedly the clipped voice of the man, Tucker. “It’s wrongful arrest, and I say that-these people can prefer no charge against me which can be proved ’’ “That remains to be seen,” the officer intervened stolidly. ‘lf, as happens to be the case, these gentlemen are prepared to make a charge against you, it’s my duty to see you charged. I had been paying particular attention to you myself before they spoke to me.”

But for the sense of drama electric in the air, Paula would have regarded the stolidity of that constable as an immense joke. However, at this moment, fear gripped her, thinking always of what lay in that room upstairs —something about which it seemed clear these people were still entirely ignorant.

She gathered from what was said next that there being no police station nearer than one in a distant town, the idea was to telephone from here, and have a sergeant come over in a car. The uniformed constable, still jealously guarding the clerk, put a call through and arranged this on the telephone. It was not until then that Paula realised what the charge was to be.

“It’s in connection with that case of theft from a church, sir,” the officer’s voice boomed importantly. “Stealing a legal document —a marriage certificate.”

Someone from the other end spoke to the officer, while the solicitor’s clerk kept up a flow of high-pitched protests. But Paula was watching the grim, unemotional face of John Peters. He looked hard as nails, merciless, a thing of stone. In preferring this charge, of course, he was definitely bringing to an issue his right to the Accrington millions. Small hope she had of saving them now for her brother and herself. John Peters, it was clear, had no thought for her at all. He was marching for his rights, trampling everything and everyone underfoot, regardless of what ruin he left. And that was even more apparent in his next remark which he made after the constable had left the telephone, saying pompously. “The matter being one of importance, sir, the superintendent himself is coming over right away.” “Just as well,” John Peters said then. “The case is of importance, officer. As a matter of face. I have been in touch with the Yard over it today and this man would have been arrested tomorrow, anyhow. It's only happened earlier because we found him leaving.

And, by the way, he isn’t the only one concerned. The manager, or proprietor of this place, a man named Emil Luttner. is an accessory after the fact, anyhow. It might be as well to have him called.”

Paula held her breath. Out of the background there had meantime emerged that yawning waiter, the nightporter and two of the kitchen-staff. The policeman began interrogating them as to the whereabouts of the proprietor. The waiter horrified Paula by saying:

‘The last I saw of Mr Luttner he went to his rooms upstairs an hour or more ago. Miss Accrington and the young gent there was asking for him, wanting to see him important, and I said where they’d find him ” “As a matter of fact, that’s quite true,” Geoffrey hastened to intervene. “But my sister and I —thinking he’d probably retired to bed—decided that we’d see him in the morning, and we’ve been in my sister’s room since till we heard this disturbance down here.”

“A pity to disturb the gentleman’s dreams,” John Peters interposed drily. “But, I suggest he should be asked to come down at once, constable. It might be as well if you and I get the waiter to show us his room. Your, presence may have a persuasive effect. We should also be sure that possibly becoming alarmed, he does not escape us by back-door methods. I happen to know that he purposed leaving by air for Germany in the morning. It is indeed in my mind that he may already have flitted. It’s certainly strange that the disturbance which brought Miss Accrington down, hasn’t awakened him.”

Paula had the greatest difficulty in preventing herself from crying out that Emil Luttner would never waken again on this earth. She controlled herself, sinking into a chair, while the policeman arranged with O’Corrigan and De Brissac to watch Tucker during his absence upstairs, and then — with John Peters—was taken up in the lift by the night-porter. As the lift shot upwards, Paula’s eyes watched the grim face of John Peters disappear from sight. She wondered what he would think when he came into that room upstairs, if he would believe it was anything to do with her brother and her. For John Peters, she realised, knew quite well why Geoffrey and she were here. He knew so mucn. He even knew, it seemed, that Emil Luttner had been intending to fly to Germany tomorrow with his ill-gotten gains. How came John Peters to know that, for the German would scarcely have advertised the fact? The more Paula though about John Peters, the more subtly dominating a figure he became, the more terrifying, the more hateful. She did not, of course, know that, out in Newfoundland, he had refused to have anything to do with the Accrington .money. Nor did she know that a chance meeting with Mr Wallingford on the liner bringing them both to England, with a subsequent introduction to Sir Oscar Baring, had led him to Beaconsfield and her.

She could only suppose that deliberate purpose on his part had brought that about. She was even inclined to believe that the fierce verbal warfare between them both on the Beaconsfield aerodrome had been deliberately begun by him in order to create an acquaintance, as the result of which he could the more conveniently and completely trap her. If he had only, from the very beginning, told her the truth about himself, how very differently events might have moved. If —on that one occasion when he had visited “Sunnyside”—he had been honest with her, explained why he really was there, she might—she would —have seen him now in a far better light. But now—well, he was upstairs with the policeman, discovering that thing upon the floor behind the settee. And, down here. Tucker still yammered his fierce threats against arrest. He was, indeed appealing to her. “You’ll bear me out, Miss Accrington, I’m sure,” he was saying. “You’re the person most concerned, anyhow, You’ve never seen any stolen mar-riage-entry in my possession, have you?” She knew what was at the back of his mind. He was hinting to her that she would be wise, for her own sake, not to admit the truth. He supposed that she would be willing to shield him with blunt frankness, because now she knew that nothing could any longer be hidden. “You know,’as well as I do, that you did steal that marriage entry. You know, too. that Emil Luttner held it. Hadn't we better wail till he comes down? I’ve been dealing with him — not you." “Sure, lady, and thals the way lo talk to the little sneak," chuckled O’Corrigan. suddenly grasping the solicitor's clerk by the back of his collar and thrusting him down into a chair. “Sit ye (here," he said, "and keep your tongue still. Let me be telling ye that—as the policeman put it—the more your tongue wags, the more evidence there’ll be against you. Let me be telling you this too. You’d have been wiser to have taken the tip from John Peters, when you came to Newfoundland, and he told you that he wanted nothing to do with the cursed money.” That last sentence, as if somehow she saw it printed in startling italics., amazed and stupified Paula. The solicitor’s clerk, the stolen marriage entry, the money itself, all seemed to have no meaning or matter. Just- the fact, that John Peters, out in Newfoundland had refused to have anything to do with, the last ... [ Paula turned to the Irishman, mean-

ing to ask him if that were true. But. at this moment, the lighted lift shot downwards, and the gilded gate clattered open. John Peters stepped out. with the waiter at his heels. The waiter, his face livid and his eyes bulging, raced to a telephone. Peters came towards the others, and especially towards Paula, to whom he spoke. “A pretty fine outfit this is," he said to her. “And a good job for you that you and your brother didn’t look in on that German in his rooms tonight. You’d have had a nasty shock. Or, perhaps, you're incapable of shock. You came devilish near murdering me only a few weeks ago on the Beaconsfield aerodrome, and never turned a hair.” i

(To be Continued.)