DESIGN for BLACKMAIL

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20988, 15 December 1939, Page 10

DESIGN for BLACKMAIL

by J. L. MORRISSEY

CHAPTER Xlll—(Continued) “Too early to say yet,” he said sagely. “You know the way I work, sir. Everything sooner or "later fits in somewhere. I’m leaving this end of it for a while, to straighten up the matter of your niece, and who knows if at the Silver Dragon I may hit upon something a great deal bigger than a ‘blackmailing crooner.’ At any rate, I have what we seldom get in a case of this kind —I have the letters. Might I ask you to get them for me from your niece, sir? Usually folk who get into the clutches of these devils are too scared or too ashamed to come to us and the first we know of it is a note left by a suicide.” The colonel shuddered and clenched his hands. He was thinking of little Gerry driven ultimately to such a situation. “I’ll get you the letters, McKnight. old man, and good luck to you. I’ll give you a chit giving you carte blanche at the Yard and, while you’ve gone, I’ll keep an eye on Bates.” In the train going up to London, McKnight examined all the letters carefully, but they gave him no clue. They were all typewritten on cheap unidentifiable paper and each had been posted in a different district of London. Finally he replaced the bundle in his pocket and gave himself up to round-about thoughts on the complexities which he found confronting hi mat Deep Hollow. Taking a taxi, he drove to the i Yard and went immediately to his j room. Ringing the bell for his asj sistant, Allen, he greeted that worthy hurriedly and made some excuse for { returning so suddenly. • “I want the register of all the dance-clubs and restaurants in London,” he said briskly, and his assistant stared, but went at the double. I In five minutes, he returned with a | large ledger which he placed on the j desk before McKnight. | “Look up the Silver Dragon,” said I McKnight and Allen began to flip I the pages. Then he stopped and a j surprised lpok came into his face. I “The Silver Dragon, sir,” ne j blurted out. “Why, haven’t you I heard? It’s in this morning’s • paper ...” j “What about it?” interrupted | McKnight quickly. “Why, sir, just after midnight last night, the Silver Dragon caught fire and was burned to the ground.’

CHAPTER XIV No Secrets Gerry did not know which feeling was uppermost in her mind, relief or apprehension, when she came out of the library and ran upstairs to her room. Her secret was her own no longer. It was in the hands of the last people in the world to whom she would have surrendered it, had she not been forced into a corner. The police . . . ! Represented by this mysterious Mr McKnight, who seemed so friendly with her uncle and who seemed to have a power with him. Uncle Maurice certainly seemed to trust him implicitly, otherwise she knew he would not have been allowed to cross-examine her as he had been able to do. She wondered if she could trust him as her uncle did. Anyway, it was too late now. He knew everything—concealment was no longer any use and with this thought, the feeling of relief came uppermost within her. The torturing tension of the last week was at last ended. No more would she wake up in the morning fresh and cheerful, only to oe haunted anew with each dawn by the spectre of that horror. McKnight would no doubt examine the whoie case and she would know whether she was guilty or innocent, once and for all. No more suspense! No more fear! No more dread! In her room, she took out of the locked partition of her travellingcase, the thin bundle of letters and absently weighed them in her hand, her lips twisted by a little smile. These letters had marked a turning point in her life. Hateful as they had been, she had the good sense to realise, now that the suspense was at an end, that in their way they had influenced her life for good. She was now forced to realise that the life she had been leading ever since she came to England was the worst possible sort of life she could have led. She realised at last what a trial she must have been to her uncle and aunt and what a store of heart-ache she had been laying up for herself in the future. Well! She had had her fun and it had not been worth while. A kind Providence, in the guise of a loathsome blackmailer, had arrested her feet on the edge of the precipice. She gave a little laugh. Always she had had that characteristic of making a virtue of necessity and what she would have laughed at a month ago, she now accepted at its true value. A knock came on the door and at her invitation to enter, the door opened and Ewart stood framed in the opening. Coolly she tossed the bundle of letters on to the dressing-table and smiled a welcome to him. There was an exasperated frown on his face as he came in and s/ie could guess what he had been doing. “There’s something deuced funny about this whole affair, Gerry,” were his first words. “I’ve tackled Bates and he swears that chap McKnight included me in that summons to the library. When I told him that McKnight had expressly denied it, the fellow gave a sort of sneer and repeated that he was sure I was sent for as well. It looked to me as though he thought McKnight was a bit mad and that the best thing was to humour him.” “I think Bates must have been mistaken though,” answered Gerry. “You weren’t mentioned in the interview.” “What was it all about, by the way?” “Oh! Nothing . . . just a family affair, you know.” “A family affair! Is McKnight a member of the family then?” “No! Silly, but he’s uncle’s righthand man. He’s put him in charge of things down here now, you know.” “I’d gathered as much,” was Tony’s dry comment. “Not that he seems to have achieved very much up to now, if one can judge, other than to give everyone in the house the jitters. I just came upon one of the maids at a comer suddenly and she jumped as though I was a ghost. “But what have you been doing that he should want to see you? Been getting into any trouble, Gerry? Forgive me, perhaps I haven’t the right to ask . . . after all, I’ve only known you a few days, but . . . well, dash it all, I feel I’ve known you for years. All these weird things happening here seem to have drawn us together more than if things had been normal. I’m sorry I spoke.” “I really came up to see if you’d care for a game of tennis,” he went on quickly to cover the slight awkwardness that his words had caused. “They’re all having tea out there and I thought a few brisk sets might do us good. What do you say?” Her first impulse was to refuse, as she felt that she wanted to be alone to get things straightened out in her mind. Then she realised that she mi;st face it out; must join in the activities of the rest of the party, for after all, she had her part to play and if the person or persons who were behind the blackmailing of herself and the killing of Powell were at Deep Hollow, she could not hope to get any nearer to a solution, by sulking in her own room. “I’ll be delighted,” she said, smiling. “You go on down, while I change. I’ll be after you in ten minutes.” Tony had not seemed to notice the bundle of letters on her dressing-table, but when he had left the room, his unconscious observation of them came into his mind and with a start, he remembered the empty envelope he had picked lip outside the girl’s room, after that stormy interlude with Powell, which had probably been that unfortunate man’s last speech with his fellowhumans before death overtook him. For a moment, Tony turned back to Gerry’s room, trembling with excitement and a sudden fear, lhat the girl was in some trouble he was certain, but her manner, observed closely by him since their first meeting, had done more to baffle him I than to relieve him. For hers w T as a curiously poised temperament—he felt instinctively that she was capable of enduring the torments of the ( damned without flinching and there had been enough small indications, suddenly glimpsed, to show him that | some grey shadow was resting over ' her life. There was her connection with Powell . . . how the man had obtained admission to her room that night . . . the envelope . . . {the curious coincidence that it was past her window that the man’s body had been dropped ... by what, or by whom? The young man shivered . . . it seemed uncommonly as though Powell’s death had been a warning to Gerry. But that was so patently absurd. (To be continued)