Genre Mystery & Crime. Page - 15

He hit me and threw me into the wall. I'm sorry, Greg, I shouldn't be calling you, but--"

Greg heard a man shouting in the background, then a commotion. The phone went dead. He felt sick and helpless, like a kid who had just been spun on a merry-go-round at breakneck speed until he flew off. And the dizziness would not soon go away.

Greg wanted to call the police, but what would he tell them? And why did she call him instead of 911? He would call her back. No, he couldn't--he didn't have her number.

Then he felt something on his leg. The ice cream was melting beneath the chocolate shell, and it had collapsed under its own weight, and fallen onto the bed of napkins in his lap.

Still dazed, he sat for a full minute studying the ice cream as it dripped down the sides of the cone onto his hand and arm. Gradually the streams of white turned to pink, then to red-- running down Cynthia's face! A cold chill ripped through his body, and jolted him back to reality. He dropped the cone onto t

w seemed ridiculously dim by contrast with the tremendous blaze of the flash-power.... And then, as I stooped forward, staring and listening, there came the crashing thud of the door of the Grey Room. The sound seemed to fill the whole of the large corridor, and go echoing hollowly through the house. I tell you, I felt horrible--as if my bones were water. Simply beastly. Jove! how I did stare, and how I listened. And then it came again--thud, thud, thud, and then a silence that was almost worse than the noise of the door; for I kept fancying that some awful thing was stealing upon me along the corridor. And then, suddenly, my lamp was put out, and I could not see a yard before me. I realized all at once that I was doing a very silly thing, sitting there, and I jumped up. Even as I did so, I thought I heard a sound in the passage, and quite near me. I made one backward spring into my room, and slammed and locked the door. I sat on my bed, and stared at the door. I had my revolver in my hand;

as open at the top,and he had distinctly heard the jingling of a hansom bell.

He threw open the bottom sash and leaned out. A hansom cab was waiting atthe entrance to the flats. Wrayson glanced once more instinctivelytowards the clock. Who on earth of his neighbours could be keeping a cabwaiting outside at that hour in the morning? With the exception of Barnesand himself, they were most of them early people. Once more he looked outof the window. The cabman was leaning forward in his seat with his headresting upon his folded arms. He was either tired out or asleep. Theattitude of the horse was one of extreme and wearied dejection. Wraysonwas on the point of closing the window when he became aware for the firsttime that the cab had an occupant. He could see the figure of a manleaning back in one corner, he could even distinguish a white-gloved handresting upon the apron. The figure was not unlike the figure of Barnes,and Barnes, as he happened to remember, always wore white gloves in theevening

exactly as it stands, beginning at page three of theblood-soaked note-book:

"Nevertheless, when I dined at Rheims with Coselli and GustavRaymond I found that neither of them was aware of any particulardanger in the higher layers of the atmosphere. I did not actuallysay what was in my thoughts, but I got so near to it that if theyhad any corresponding idea they could not have failed to expressit. But then they are two empty, vainglorious fellows with nothought beyond seeing their silly names in the newspaper. It isinteresting to note that neither of them had ever been much beyondthe twenty-thousand-foot level. Of course, men have been higherthan this both in balloons and in the ascent of mountains. Itmust be well above that point that the aeroplane enters the dangerzone--always presuming that my premonitions are correct.

"Aeroplaning has been with us now for more than twenty years,and one might well ask: Why should this peril be only revealingitself in our day? The answer is obvious.

ient looked down with a rueful face at his own unconventional appearance.

"I'm sure it must look very bad, Mr. Holmes, and I am not aware that in my whole life such a thing has ever happened before. But will tell you the whole queer business, and when I have done so you will admit, I am sure, that there has been enough to excuse me."

But his narrative was nipped in the bud. There was a bustle outside, and Mrs. Hudson opened the door to usher in two robust and official-looking individuals, one of whom was well known to us as Inspector Gregson of Scotland Yard, an energetic, gallant, and, within his limitations, a capable officer. He shook hands with Holmes and introduced his comrade as Inspector Baynes, of the Surrey Constabulary.

"We are hunting together, Mr. Holmes, and our trail lay in this direction." He turned his bulldog eyes upon our visitor. "Are you Mr. John Scott Eccles, of Popham House, Lee?"

"I am."

"We have been following you about all the morning."

"You t

the consumption of himself and his friends.

No. Philip Hornby had some strong motive in paying a heavy bribe to avoid the visit of the dogana. If he really had paid, he must have paid very heavily; of that I was convinced.

Was it possible that some mystery was hidden on board that splendidly appointed craft?

Presently the gong sounded, and we went below into the elegantly fitted saloon, where was spread a table that sparkled with cut glass and shone with silver. Around the center fresh flowers had been trailed by some artistic hand, while on the buffet at the end the necks of wine bottles peered out from the ice pails. Both carpet and upholstery were in pale blue, while everywhere it was apparent that none but an extremely wealthy man could afford such a magnificent craft.

Hornby took the head of the table, and we sat on either side of him, chatting merrily while we ate one of the choicest and best cooked dinners it has ever been my lot to taste. Chater and I drank wine o

Bruce read:

"I opened your message. Alice not here. I have not seen her for over a week. What do you mean by wire? Am coming to town at once.--EDITH."

The baronet's pale face and strained voice betrayed the significance of the thought underlying the simple question.

"What do you make of it, Claude?"

Bruce, too, was very grave. "The thing looks queer," he said; "though the explanation may be trifling. Come, I will help you. Let us reach your house. It is the natural centre for inquiries."

They hailed a hansom and whirled off to Portman Square. They did not say much. Each man felt that the affair might not end so happily and satisfactorily as he hoped.

CHAPTER II

INSPECTOR WHITE

Lady Dyke had disappeared.

Whether dead or alive, and if alive, whether detained by force or absent of her own unfettered volition, this handsome and well-known leader of Society had vanished utterly from the moment when Cl

to tell him you're an American citizen. 'It's British law and order over here,' says he. By the way, mister, talking of Jack James, it seems to me you don't do much to cover your men."

"What do you mean?" Von Bork asked sharply.

"Well, you are their employer, ain't you? It's up to you to see that they don't fall down. But they do fall down, and when did you ever pick them up? There's James--"

"It was James's own fault. You know that yourself. He was too self-willed for the job."

"James was a bonehead--I give you that. Then there was Hollis."

"The man was mad."

"Well, he went a bit woozy towards the end. It's enough to make a man bug-house when he has to play a part from morning to night with a hundred guys all ready to set the coppers wise to him. But now there is Steiner--"

Von Bork started violently, and his ruddy face turned a shade paler.

"What about Steiner?"

"Well, they've got him, that's all. They raided his store last night, and he and his

er who had thus adorned his habitation--a law-writer perhaps or an author, or perchance even a poet--when I perceived the number that I was seeking inscribed on a shabby door in a high wall. There was no bell or knocker, so, lifting the latch, I pushed the door open and entered.

But if the court itself had been a surprise, this was a positive wonder, a dream. Here, within earshot of the rumble of Fleet Street, I was in an old-fashioned garden enclosed by high walls and, now that the gate was shut, cut off from all sight and knowledge of the urban world that seethed without. I stood and gazed in delighted astonishment. Sun-gilded trees and flower beds gay with blossom; lupins, snapdragons, nasturtiums, spiry foxgloves, and mighty hollyhocks formed the foreground; over which a pair of sulphur-tinted butterflies flitted, unmindful of a buxom and miraculously clean white cat which pursued them, dancing across the borders and clapping her snowy paws fruitlessly in mid-air. And the background was no less won

and wife, I should think," he said thoughtfully, "yet one never can tell!"

Involuntarily they all three glanced towards the man. He was well preserved and his little imperial and short grey moustache were trimmed with military precision, yet his hair was almost white, and his age could scarcely be less than sixty. In his way he was quite as interesting as the girl. His eyes, underneath his thick brows, were dark and clear, and his features were strong and delicately shaped. His hands were white and very shapely, the fingers were rather long, and he wore two singularly handsome rings, both set with strange stones. By the side of the table rested the stick upon which he had been leaning during his passage through the room. It was of smooth, dark wood polished like a malacca cane, and set at the top with a curious, green, opalescent stone, as large as a sparrow's egg. The eyes of the three men had each in turn been arrested by it. In the electric light which fell softly upon the upper part of it, the sto