“MAN FROM THE AIRPORT”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 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.

CHARTEP XVI. Continuec.

“Don’t apologise, Superintendent. I’d only just came in from attending a birth, when your call came through. I might just as well investigate the death. Where’s the body ?”

They were taken up in the lift. Paula, who feh as if she was suffocating, went out on to the terrace, where the empty car stood, it engine stilled. Very still too was the morning. Crystal clear, and cool. The sweet fragrance of flowers came to her. It was as if heaven had suddenly paid a surprise call on hell.

She discovered presenty that Geoffrey had joined her. He was obviously worried.

“I don’t like the way that superintendent's handling this business.” he remarked. Looks to me. as if he suspects you and me.” “Let him,” Paula replied, without interest.

“What—in blazes—do you mean? We don’t want io find ourselves arrested on a charge of attempted murder?” “Would it matter if we were?” She turned suddenly on him, in a wave of reawakened fury.

“Has it dawned on you yet, Geoffrey, that you and I—from this very minute —can look on ourselves as penniless outcasts, worth nothing at all? You perhaps didn’t see that copy of a marriage certificate in Peter’s hand. I did. We haven’t a leg to stand on. Geof, you can take it from me.” “Good lord ” He stared at her, and then suddenly laid a hand on her arm.

“Listen,” he said. ‘That may be for the best, after all. You’ve been a good sport. The old fatted calf, for the prodigal, may be out of date. But you did your best to kill it for me, and I’m grateful. I’m a poor.fish. I know, but —I’m making good from now on —” "Silly boy!” she laughed suddenly, and kissed him, then became serious.

“After all,” she said, “we may both find ourselves in prison before many days are over. Even if that superintendent upstairs doesn’t accuse us of attempted murder, we’re’ both of us quite definitely liable to be charged with getting busy over that stolen marriage certificate- —” “Not you, Paula,” the other interrupted her.' “I’ll see to that. If it does come to a court-case, I’ll swear blind I was the only person who discussed the thing with that beastly German fellow ”

He, in turn, was interrupted. John Peters had joined them on the terrace.

“You’re both wanted upstairs,” he said.

Paula moved straightway indoors. She passed through the entrance-hall, which was deserted, and climbed the stairs. Half-way up she looked back at her brother.

“What’s that old saying about Mohammed going to the mountain, if the mountain didn’t go to Mohammed?” she asked, with an inconsequent laugh. “They didn't know the value of electricity, those days—” "The lift was available for you, Miss Accrington, if you’d said the word,” interposed Peters.

“Really?” She looked back and down at him on the staircase. "I didn’t think of that. Why should I? I don’t suppose that Anne Boleyn or Lady Jane Gray, or any of those oldtime people, were particularly anxious to mount the scaffold.” No comment was made on that. Paula found herself eventually at the open door of Emil Luttner’s rooms. She passed in. The superintendent bulked before her, but she could see through an open door into the back room that the doctor was bending over a bed.

"I though you might like to know, Miss Accrington,” the superintendent addressed her, “that Mr Luttner has meantime made a very brief StatementSufficient to establish definitely the identity of the person who attempted to murder him.”

“Meaning that my brother and I are no longer suspect?” Paula asked in a weary drawl.

“If you care to put it that way, Miss Accrington. Although, personally, I did not regard it as at all likely that you knew any more about it than you said.” “Ought I to be grateful for that kind remark?” Paula murmured with faint sarcasm. “I’m afraid I don't feel that way. Having no guilty conscience, you see. I’m not really interested ” “Not even in this, Miss Accrington?” Paula, challenged by the superintendent’s sharp change of tone, did suddenly become interested. For he was holding out. for her inspection, a strip of paper, of parchment texture and yellowish with age. She had at last glimpsed it in the hand of Emil Luttner. She glanced inquiringly at the superintendent. “I would be interested to know where this was found,” she said. “Clutched tightly in one of the injured man's hands," came the reply. “Apparently, from what we have gathered so far, he had this piece of paper, with a considerable sum of money and other papers, in that recess you can see there in the wall, a secret hiding-place. It seems that the man. Tucker, had discovered this, was in fact, at the recess when the injured man entered. There followed a violent struggle, with the results of which you are aware. The man, Tucker, frightened, tried to make a bolt for it. but was fortunately prevented by Mr Peters here, and his friends.”

“All this, Miss Accrington,” the su-i pcrintendent went on. “is by way of' explanation. As you must realise however, this document may become a

<To be Continued.)

matter for investigation in the immediate future. The man, Tucker, has made statements involving you—" "Oh, I don't deny anything!” Paula interrupted on a note of weary desperation. ‘I am what I suppose you would call an accessory after the fact. I’m quite ready to face the consequences. Only—if you don’t mind, I'm terribly tired. I propose to go to bed, if you have no objection. After a good sleep, I’ll be ready to answer any questions you wish to put to me. CHAPTER XVII. So that was the end. Paula, wanting badly to sleep and yet unable to do so, beyond a fitful, dream-shattered slumber, from which she kept wakening at intervals, sprang from her bed to find that it was afternoon. Geoffrey stood in the room by her bedside. The noise of his entry must have startled her. “What's the matter, Geof” she asked. He laughed. “The matter? You must have taken a sleeping-draught, Sis, I should say. Do you know it’s three o’clock in the afternoon, and no end has been happening here?” "Why, what’s been happening?” she asked. “All sorts. For one thing, Luttner’s been taken to hospital, and it looks as if he’s going to get better all right. For another, that man Tucker has gone to gaol, till his trial comes on. And most important of all —you and I aren't going to be mixed up with the case.” “What do you mean, Geof, that we’re not being mixed up in the case?” Paula demanded. "We simply can’t help it. You heard what the superintendent said last night ” “ or early this morning ” the other interrupted' her, laughing, then was serious? “Tell you the truth, I don’t know exactly what’s been happening. I got that from the superintendent himself only a few minutes ago. He’d been having a long chinwag with Peters. By the way—l’ve been having a chat with him, and I don’t think he’s half a bad merchant. Matter of fact, he’s rather astounding. Do you know, Sis, that he has absolultely refused to fake our money from us?”

‘What?” Paula, pyjama-clad, flung from her bed, crossed to a mirror and began hurriedly to tidy her disordered curls. “Peters took me on one side and told me—yes, I know you’ll think I'm pulling your leg, Paula, but it’s true—that he didn’t want our money, never had wanted it, and—well, he thought the filthy lucre —those were his very words —was best left with you, because he felt you were the sort of woman who ought to be given enough of it to enable you to make yourself thoroughly silly.” “He said that about me, Geof? He actually said that?” Paula seized her brother by one arm, so that he was forced to face her. “He really said that about me?” she insisted. “And, for two pins, I’d have socked him one,” replied the other, and gestured. “Then I thought—what was the good of having no end of a row? He might have changed his mind, you know, and decided to keep the Accrington money—claim it, I mean.” “Geoffrey . . Paula studied her brother from lash-shuttered eyes, and her voice—when eventually she spoke —was tensely serious. “Don't you imagine for a moment that you and I are going to keep that Accrington money,” she said slowly. “I’m accepting no charity from Mr John Peters, or whatever he calls himself. You and I are going right now back to ‘Sunnyside,’ and Mr Wallingford’s going to have this matter thrashed out in the courts. If this John Peters is entitled to our money—well, he gets it, and we—well, we walk out. Geof.” “Right. I’m with you over that. We’ll find some way of carrying on —" “We must, Geof . . .” She kissed him,, cleared him out of the room while she bathed and dressed. Half-an-hour later, she appeared downstairs, smart and radiant, just as if she hadn’t a single care in the world. The superintendent of police met her in the entrance-hall. “Leaving here, Miss Accrington?” he asked, the fact being more or less obvious because her brother was, at the moment, starting up the car outside. . “I'm not under arrest, am I?” Paula retorted, and the other laughed. “Oh, no. Miss Accrington. Matter of fact, Mr Peters is most anxious that you should not in any way be upset “Really? Well, perhaps you’d be so good as to tell Mr Peters for me that I’m terribly obliged. Tell him also—will you. please?—that I’m going to ‘Sunnyside’ and—well, he’ll hear from me through Mr Wallingford.” And so, driving even more desperately than usual, she came to "Sunnyside." where she felt terribly like crying her eyes out, only that she was too sensible. That was as much as John Peters thought of her? The sort of woman who should be given enough rope to hang herself. For a week, everything seemed to stand still, so far as she was concerned. At "Sunnyside,” her Aunt Louie was her only company, apart from Geoffrey. And curiously her aunt Louie—who had been told exactly what had happened at “The One-Eyed Moon," and knew now the whole story about the stolen marriage entry and the claim of John Peters on the Accrington millions—regarded the situation as quite good.