The Error of Her Ways

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20956, 8 November 1939, Page 12

The Error of Her Ways

Enthralling Serial Story

CHAPTER XLIX. Petroleum and a Key With this peroration Mrs Stutter withdrew, leaving the door, however, just sufficiently ajar to allow of a broom handle being slipped in to preclude bolting on the inside. But Sylvia took no action, offensive or defensive. She drank some tea, she even tried to eat; and when Mrs Stutter came to say that her room was ready she rose to follow without a murmur. For the poor girl was now trying to be reasonable—to follow the new line of duty: duty to her father, the only one now left her to love.

Psani slept that night at Ivy Cottage, where the terror-stricken maids received him with open arms—figuratively, 4 of course. He had been a great .favourite in the servants’ hall at Chart Court, having all the fire ot the sunny south tempered with a refinement which made his gallantry quite flattering. At nine the next morning he walked down the hill to the Red Lion. There he found Giuseppe with his umbrella and bundle awaiting him. The lad gave him a blank envelope. Psani turned it over, and, finding no mark upon it, crossed himself and thanked his especial saints for this token of their goodness to his beloved master. Giuseppe also crossed himself, and joined in the silent service of thanksgiving, showing his patron a new shilling which he had received from Mrs Harrowgate on top of the most wonderful breakfast, to account for his gratitude. “Good, piccino; you are on the road to greatness,” said Psani. “Now, you stand here, and when you see two policemen in disguise, fetch me.” Psani strolled into the yard and looked into the stables, where he fcund old Jimmy cleaning a horse.

“One, two, sree, four horses,” remarked Psani. “How you tell zis horse from zat, eh?” Here he had the old man on his favourite theme at once. Straightening himself up, and laying one hand on his bent back while he slowly rasped his chin with the currycomb, he took stock of Psani and replied:

“Well, that’s a good ’un! How do I tell this ’orse from that ’orse? Why, by his looks, same as what you’d tell me from the King of old England.” He then gave as an example the case of John Cox’s horse, from which Psani learnt that Cox was landlord of the Chequers Inn at Wickham, a village about two miles and a half distant, and that Mrs Iving’s son-in-law, who had hired the horse, was living at Wickmere Moat, a place about a mile and a half beyond Wickmere. Which was exactly what Psani wished to know.

“Of course,” piped the old man in conclusion, “I don’t mind telling you this here, because you’re a foreigner; but had you been a policeman you might have shut me up in a loose box yrith a wild ’orse and that ’orse wouldn’t have kicked it out of me. Because, you see, this here Cox has had his license marked already along of a job with some hop pickers, and I wouldn’t get him into trouble—not for worlds.”

Psani strolled next into the bar of the Red Lion where the landlord was brightening his glasses by breath Jng into them and polishing up with his handkerchief.

“What zis story I hear T>out tv.o my countrymen Italians coming nere in carriage and topping two hoars before ze murder, eh?” asked Psani, when he had called for a bottle of lemonade.

“They wasn’t no countrymen of yours, guv’nor,” replied the landlord; ‘•no more Italians than I am.” Then he trotted o\%r the ground again, giving such minute descriptions of his visitors that Psani had no longer any doubt that one was Malcom and the other, who “looked like a groom, and likewise talked as such, though treating the other more like a servant than a master,” was Stutter, possessed of the dominating power for which he had thirsted. When Giuseppe slipped into the bar with the whispered informatidn that the policemen were coming, Psani waited, knowing that the men would not overlook the inn in the course of their investigation. A more artless child than Giuseppe might have known the constables in spite of their “plain clothes”—both of the same height, keeping step, and marching with the slow swinging gait of the beat. In due course they came into the bar, as Psani had foreseen. “Just been having a look round the yard to see if there are any suspicious characters about,” said one. “What’ll you have, Figgs? Old Jimmy doesn’t know anything about this suspicious case, and I s’pose you don’t.” The landlord shook his head and kept his mouth shut, with the innkeeper’s instinctive dread of police complications. “Pint of mild and bitter for me,” said Figgs. “We’ve got a long job on—pint for me likewise, please. From information received there’s a lady can’t be found. So our first duty, Figgs will be to view the scene of the fatal occurrence and then go down Mill Lane to the Plough and Horses, and from there on to the Chequers at Wickmere; then round by the King’s Head to the Pig and Whistle at Chickford; and so by the Bird in Hand and the Cross Keys to the Black Boys at Seri, and we shall have done about all the likeliest places where this young woman can have concealed herself.” “I go wiz you,” said Psani. “’Gainst the reg’lations,” demurred Constable Figgs.

(By FRANK BARRETT)

“I stand ze drinks!” After that there could be no reasonable objection to his company. Psani made himself so agreeable and carried out his contract in such generous spirit that when on leaving the Chequers at Wickmere he expressed a desire to see the moated house they had been talking about with Cox, they went out of their planned route to show him the place. “Not a soul comes down here in the winter,” said Figgs. “You can see that by the snow. “It’s, as you may say, dead and buried.” Dead, indeed, the squat quadrangular building looked with its shuttered windows, snow-covered roof and lichen-coated walls. Psani was vastly interested in it, having never seen, in all his travels, anything like this moated house. His obliging companions allowed him to look all round it while they rested on the parapet of the bridge and smoked an invigorating pipe. He noted that the wide moat was encompassed by a wall that rose four feet clear from the water without step or break; that there was no means of crossing the water save by the bridge in front; that there was no sign of life anywhere—either in the building or the surrounding ground. Not a smell, even, of smoke: unbroken snow everywhere. He came back to his friends on the bridge discouraged. “Rummy old door, ain’t it? Looks as if it hadn’t been opened for cent’ries.”

The constable rose and gave the door a push that might have opened a lattice window, but could make no possible impression on such a weighty mass of timber and iron, work, he expanded his nostrils and drew a deep breath. “We forgot the ‘Duck and Dog,’ Figgs,” said the constable on the bridge. “So we did. Now there’s a likely place for you, and not more than a mile or so out of our way!” They trooped off to the likely place in question. But, leaving the Dog and Duck, Psani pleaded that his little boy was fatigued, and on this excuse left the “plain-closers” and with Giuseppe retraced his steps to the moated heuse. There, crossing the bridge, he applied his hooky nose to the hinges of the great door and then to the lock with a dawning smile of satisfaction. “Petrolio!” he murmured to himself. Then, taking out his pocket-knife, he inserted a blade very carefully into the keyhole of the lock. “Key inside! Holy Joseph!” he exclaimed, mentally. “Who could be so stupid as to leave the key there but my friend Bob Stutter.” CHAPTER L. The Siege. Standing with his back to the door as he shut his penknife and returned it to his pocket, Psani cast a rapid yet comprehensive glance about him. Not far from the bridge and on the opposite side of the road was a dilapidated cartshed without a door. He went over and looked inside. It was empty, save for some bundles of bracken stacked at the further end. The thatch seemed sound; the littered floor beyond the entrance, where the snow had drifted in, looked dry. Psani nodded approval, then, regarding the moated house opposite, he drew his finger and thumb down his long nose again and again, with one eye closed, in silent cogitation for a couple of minutes. His calculations made, Psani, with quick transition, proceeded to action. “Piccino, I am going to leave you for some time —one hour, perhaps two. You will stop here till I come back. While I am away you will do your best to make this little house habitable, for maybe we shall have to live in it some time. Show me what you can do, my little friend, and think of Victor Emmanuel.” He now strolled carelessly with his hands in his pockets and whistling along the road until the house was no longer in sight, and then stretched out nimbly towards Whitham. Again he was warmly welcomed at Ivy Cottage. “Have you had your dinner, Mr Psani?” anxiously inquired the cook. “I have eaten nozing since my happy breakfast wiz you, dear madame.” “And it’s nearly three. Lor’ you must be famished. Will you come into the larder and see what you fancy?” In the larder Psani raised his hands rapturously and asked if he could borrow a basket. “A basket. Now what sort of basket might you want, Mr Psani?” asked the cook, attempting to conceal a perplexity which might amount to ill-manners. “Zat one will do,” answered Psani, pitching upon a capacious basket with a handle. “Now if you be so good as let me put zis leg of mutton in it, and zese two loaves, and zat ham, and zis cheese, and zose liddle tarts, if you can spare zem, and zome boddles beer, and knife and fork, and two plates. I sink zat about do viz perhaps about handful of tea and sugar and a cup, eh?” “Lor’, Mr Psani! excuse my laughing—but surely you’re having one of your jokes.” “Oh, no. Only I go to have little pig-nig.” “A picnic this weather. Oh, go on, Mr Psani, and snow on the ground!” “Yes, vezy cold; so I ask you to give me two, sree big blanket, and six seven candle, eh?” “Oh, Mr Psani, you’ll be the death o’ me, you will,” the buxom cook doubled up with laughter at the thought of it. “Madame,” said Psani, with impressive gravity, “it is to give life to a lady, not deace, zat I do zis sing. One day you know all. Now—let zis be great secret between you and me. It is for our dear master I ask zis.” “Lord, sir, I didn’t know you were serious,” said the good woman, in a tone of awe. “But since I see you are, I’ll do as you bid me, and ask no questions. Is there anything else you want?” "I go round stable find coachman.” “He's out there, Mr Psani. I’ll get these articles packed by the time you come back.” Psani found Bendall, made his requirements known, and returned to the house, whence he carried his provisions to the station cart, in which the cob was already har(To be Continued)

Pedestrians who are familiar with motor operation stand a better chance of keeping out of traffic trouble than those who lack this advantage. This definite conclusion is drawn from evidence that of most of the pedestrians who are killed in traffic accidents yearly, the majority do not know how to drive a motorvehicle.