"3 STRANGE MEN"

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 October 1940, Page 10

"3 STRANGE MEN"

COPYRIGHT. PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT.

By

C. T. PODMORE.

(Author of “The Fault,” etc.

CHAPTER XIV. (Continued >.

He moved to the door of the next room. A locked door of any ordinary kind presented no difficulty to Mr Barling. This one was open in a few moments. What he had need of was a flash lamp, but he struck a match instead.

By the dim light he made out the figure of Sophie Cordery standing by the foot of a bed. Her hands were wide from her body, which was drawn up defensively; yet she swayed gently to and fro, as if she were but half awake.

“Don’t be alarmed,” he said quietly “How are you?”

“Who is it?” she whispered. ‘Headley Barling. Hush. Have you got your things all right?” “Yes, I —think so. I —” “Don’t bother now—come along. Very softly.”

Barling did not forget to lock the door behind her, before guiding her carefully down the stairs. There was some shuffling somewhere—it was about the front door steps. He turned for the door that led below, secured it behind him—he had certainly the gift of precaution—and descended with his charge to the basement. Through the grimy window he could see nothing against the area rails, but the shuffling still went on overhead; someone waited for the front door to be opened. A dull clamour elsewhere suggested an attempt of the occupants of the second floor to get free. This noise broke louder, and was followed by a running down the stairs. The front door crashed back, and feet returned rapidly upstairs. Barling, opening the door, went up the steps to the level of the pavement. There was a taxi by the kerbstone; of course, that was how Rumely had come here. This was probably the one used for the decoy, and the driver of it a cognisant person, no doubt. Mr Barling signalled to Sophie, who joined him. He helped her safely into the cab. But he had barely closed the door on her when a cry sounded from the open window above, and from the front door Rumely and the taxi-driver rushed out.

Mr Barling was a fast wdrker, and did not allow himself any undue excitement. If he must hit again, he would hit hard. He saw the driver go suddenly shy. But Rumely came on —leapt—and clung tenaciously from the step, reaching back toward Sophie as if to clutch her.

“It’s, my business,” he panted, “she shall not get away. She’s a listener. She .”

This would not do.Barling, one hand on the wheel, was dangerously cramped in his narrow space. His other hand shot out in sheer muscular desperation, and Rumely fell back to the pavement in the arms of the driver. But not a sound from Sophie, shrinking in her corner behind Barling. , The car, moving at first wildly, attracted the notice of persons in a wider street round the corner, who stood and watched it, and shouted angry warnings. Barling drove on. Outside a long row of shops in Commercial Road, he drew up, came round to the door behind, and opened it on Sophie’s vaguely wondering eyes. “We get out here.” he said. “Are you feeling better?”

“Yes. But I’m not home.” “Not yet. You have been drugged, you know. Let me help you.” “No. I’ll manage, I think.” “Come along, then.”

But when she joined him on the pavement he did help her, and he walked her past the garish windows of the shops until she began to look bewildered, and he smiled in her face. “That was not my taxi,” he said. “I am going to get another and send you home. There’s something you are supposed to have overheard, but you can tell Mr Parmitter about that. He, too, is looking for you. lam just the lucky one. You really must be more careful, Miss Cordery, about getting into adventures like this.” She breathed some words of thanks.

A little further on Mr Barling put up a hand to a passing taxi, and he accompanied her, almost in silence, as far as the City. “Don’t be too much afraid,” he reassured her at last. “If I thought that fellow meant all he said I’d kill him. Oh Mr Parmitter would, I’m sure.” As he stood and looked after the departing taxi, Mr Barling was fully aware that the episode should not have ended here. But he did not want to feel embarrassed by a too close familiarity on this ground of Sophie's rescue, and he did not seek to be' told anything of the private affair that lay behind it, more than George Parmitter had told him already about the stolen papers. CHAPTER XV. George Parmitter found himself bewildered by the interests that crowded on him. His impulses were many, and his hands fere full. There was Sophie, repentant now, and chary; and Barling —he could not get Barling’s audacious daring out of his mind; and the sinister menace of Rumely, who had acted like a madman. All that could be got from Sophie was reference to some bargain with a man called Markham, and that did not seem dangerous knowledge. Anyhow, Barling, the incomprehensible business man, playing his heroic role, had his eye on The Pilgrims Hotel, wanting nothing to George's mind, but cloak and sword, and a feather in his cap. Barling did indeed seem more than ever like a hint of Fate. And then the sad interlude at Streatham, where old Geoffrey Parmitter was laid to rest; and the dry legal interest of Torkney in the event, representing his firm, and intermittent inquiries by Hardy, who seemed to be everywhere at once, and whose curiosity, in unexpected ways, was apparently never to be sated —all

these things figured in George’s mind. He knew that Hardy, trying to find that “slant” on the Parmitter case in the office of Reed, Price and Torkney, had found the lawyers distinctly reticent. George had been reticent, too. But George had at least suggested Jowle as a possible informant. And of course Jowle might tell about that caller, whoever he was, who a year ago had brought a message of remembrance from an old shipmate named Kitson, then living somewhere about Gravesend; whereas George, concealing a possible line between Kitson and his. father’s treasure, could say nothing at present. Either- way, a year was a long gap of inaction between that and this. And Hardy had by no means forgotten Jowle as a possible witness to something; his interest in some corners of Tooting was very much alive.

And above all, at this juncture, George must make a move. Two points he considered were these:

The more he studied the chart he had bought from Boxwith, the more plainly he saw the futility, of road maps. This road-map business was simply a delay for Diggs and Rumely; they would realise it soon. Also, his mind was furtively dwelling on a chance that something had happened already at the cottage to make the whole search a farce . . .

Jowle alone could say whether this was so. but Jowle was still to be found. And yet George could not believe that the search was meant to end at that very spot. No —he felt sure his father had been too cute for such a childish idea. These were the considerations he looked back upon, when at last he had made his move and stood on the road to Blean, surveying the ancient city of Canterbury through a wayside border of old pines. Thus crowded, too, were to be the memories of his quest. At Herne Hill, where his route was further decided from a wooden seating that encircled a big tree by the’ foliaged church, he made a journey through orchard byways in a north-westerly direction, helped by a welcome lift in a farmer’s gig. Then, at Faversham, where a bridge over the creek gave him pause, and the Town Hall brought some perplexity, he was assailed by fear that he had been forced to a detour which was to strike, after all, the main London-Dover road.

These details were but a symptom of what lay before him. How he got through became a blur and a confusion in his mind; miles upon miles of cherry orchards were spun like a veil across his eyes: and it vzas early evening before he was able to step forth from the old Bull Hotel, at Chatham, with a feeling of convalesence; and even then urge of speed remained. For here he had to verify some local indications of his next move, prior to taking a course to a further point north-west. He had no intention of resting. He sought his clues vaguely, putting them aside vaguely, as one little thing after another did not seem to fit in. But ne came upon one at last; it was a church, ingeniously suggested by a cross, compass’d within four walls. George looked long at it, until he observed leaning against a corner of the churchyard wall, some thirty yards away, a man who seemed to.have observed his study of the sign. The man suddenly turned his head away and moved off. George, hurrying after him round the corner, caught a glimpse, of his face as he glanced back. He stood still, momentarily astounded. The man began to hurry. George followed again; but when he reached the next corner the man had disappeared.

“That was Boxwith!” he muttered. “Now what does this mean?”

George's mind began to crumble. Surmise opened up such intricate speculation that he actually paused breathless in the street.

Then an overwhelming impulse sent him into a post office, to write out a wire to Brixton. “The cottage!” he was thinking. “Who knows, after all?” He took to the road again. For three watchful miles he saw nothing more of the clerk from Manchester. Then a narrow lane on his right brought him, after ten minutes’ tramp through twilight, to a timbered wayside inn at the corner of a cross road. The sign of The Six Bells agreed with a drawing of his chart at this point, so he knew he was still right.

Here he arranged to stay the night, In a compartment of the old-fashioned “Snug,” he was able to study the possibilities of divining a simpler reading of his chart; but the effort failed. Its tendency seemed to be, now, northeastward instead of towards London. And rain was threatening, too. Glancing through the window, he saw a half familiar figure slowly emerging from the recesses of what had been the old coaching yard. The figure paused under the inn sign, and scanned it idly before passing within. George went to the bar, and touched him on the shoulder. The man's face showed that he was startled.

“Why,” he said, turning sharply, “you’ve got a touch like a p'liceman.” “Come into the snug and sit down. Boxwith,” George said, and led the way. When they were settled, the clerk very obediently, he added. “Didn't I see you in Chatham an hour or two ago?”

"You did Mr Parmitter." “What made you run away?" “Why ” Boxwith hesitated and looked aside —“It’s like this, you see. I told you I was going home, didn't I? Well, I didn't go; and, considering the wife and kids are sitting up for me. and all that, I felt a bit ashamed to meet you. See what I mean? I oughter gone home —I reelly oughter. I’m inclined that way now. I can't hardly sit still for wanting to go home.” “Walking it?” said George. (To be Continued).