1938-12-02 — Page 11

THE CHINA MAIL FRIDAY SUPPLEMENT, DECEMBER 2, 1088

BEYOND THE

THE RANGES

(Continued from Page 1) two years and spent that five thousand in the far flung places of the world seeking adventure and not finding it, gave up. He was hunting for the impossible. Adventure, romance were dead. their glamour had vanished from the world.

Disillusioned he caught a boat, any boat, back to London. The first that came handy landed him at the most humdrum of all land- falls; the London Docks,

Thanks to the tide his ship did not tie up until after two a.m. a hopeless hour to land in that most disillusioning of districts. Yet he refused to stay on board until a more taxi-likely hour. He was so thoroughly disgruntled with the whole business of adventure that he wanted to break at once even this shipboard connection with it, though it meant walking all the way to his house.

suburban boarding

He left the docks in those still, lifeless hours, and, being a Lon- doner, that is a man totally ignor · ant of the geography of his own city, it was only a matter of min- utes before he was completely lost in the maze of the neighbour- ing streets.

It was while trying to find a way through a wilderness of alleys that he got entangled in "a small crowd of foreigners. They moved across his path just as he emerged from a particularly

noisome passage into a street al- most as dark. They were going to the right and instinctively he turned with them, walking some twenty yards before he real- ised he was in the centre of the crowd.

There were some twelve of these people. They were all stocky, foreign looking men, save one, who was a girl. They walked with a curious silence not merely as to conversation, but as to feet. They were for instance, in three groups, two men walking well ahead like scouts, then the main group with the girl, then three men acting as rear guard a little way behind.

Harbord found he had tacked himself on to the main, middle group, though nobody seemed to bother. He had joined it at a turn in the road and perhaps the men thought he had come up from the rearguard, while the rear- guard had not noticed that the main body had been increased by: one. Anyhow, the crowd went ahead as though Harbord was one- of themselves, and meaning to turn west at the next road,' he did not bother for a few minutes.

It was during those few min- utes that he noticed the girl.','

She was a prisoner. The mon“ beside her held her arms, and in no gentlemanly manner. It was a brutal jerk one gave to her as she stumbled "that actually drew Harbord's attention to her pre- dicament.

At first he could only see that she was a girl of middle height, young and with a very good figure that stylish clothes, too stylish, for her companions, showed to ad- vantage. Then he saw that her clothes were, dusty and torn, as though she had been through a struggle. Then her head turned under one of the rare street lamps, and he saw her face.

It was beautful. It was foreign, but it had that dark, burning loveliness he had always dreamed Into the woman of his adventures. The s were dark, but full of fire and mystery and allure.

r :-,

They were frightened' now. That quick glance round had been ·

a desperate search for help. Frightened, yet indomitable for though she plainly saw nothing to give her hope, her face merely seemed to tighten up and she made no outcry. That was just how the superb heroines of Har- bord's dreams always acted.

It was not only her glance that told him she needed help. There was blood on her forehead; while her hat and her hair were awry. These things, the way the men held her, the brief, fierce struggle she attempted as they plunged through an arched gate way towards some deep dark building, proclaimed that she knew she was in danger from pitiless enemies.

Her enemies, the men holding her, left no doubts about it either. They closed about her, gripping her in a way that made her moan. Still she struggled. Then, as the gate shut behind them, one of the men whipped out a big knife and held it to the girl's throat.

He said a few words to her. in a language Harbord could not un- derstand, warning her, for just as Harbord was about to launch himself to her rescue, the 'girl's struggles stopped. Her lovely head went up proudly, they all went in.

They went down steps into.....a room lit by a single high power but dirty electric bulb. It seemed to be the cellar of a disused ware-

house. A few rather grimy pack- ing cases, bales and such like A litter were · scattèred about. couple of the packing cases had been placed together to form a sort of table under the electric light. A big, fat, bearded man with repulsively small eyes and mouth, and several lowering men who had been warned by the ad- vanced guard, were taking their seats at this extempore table.

They formed a sort of tribunal. They were, in fact, trying the girl. She was forced forward to face the fat man, while the crowd gathered in a half moon about her. The fat man flung words at the girl, again in a language Har bord could neither understand nor place, though, from the look of the men they were of a semi- asiatic, or East European coun- try: The girl after one short sen- tence-obviously contemptuous in the same tongue remained proudly silent. With her slim body and her pale head held erect she suggested a still flame of

scorn.

Her fat judge seemed to expect this, his face grew evil and menacing. He carried on the trial in spite of her silence. Man after man, witnesses against the girl undoubtedly, stepped for- ward and spoke. Harbord could not understand a single word of what was spoken, but the mere sight of them put him entirely on the side of the girl,

If even there was a first-class museum collection of ugly, cut- throat criminals, the fat judge.. and his

8 crew were it. The girl standing among them had the beauty of decency, honesty and wholesomeness amid a mob of de- generate gangsters.-'And the brutes seemed to hate her for it.

With a kind of appalling sud- denness the trial came to an end and the fat man gave a verdict.

What that verdict was Harbord could not, of course, know, but there were brutish cries of ap- proval, and the men's eyes had a wolfish gleam as they turned on the girl. Also a squat and repel- lent man, with the broadest shoulders and the longest arms Harbord had ever seen, advanced

.

upon her, his eyes gloating, his great hands out and clutching.

'What he meant to do—strangle her, frighten her or merely seize her for some reason-Harbord could not say. All he saw was that the girl was horribly afraid. Even her gallant pride could not re-. press a cry of fear. She shrank. away from the advancing man; even her hands went to her long white throat as though she .al- ready felt those terrible hands gripping it.

As she backed away, flung the glance of a trapped animal round the room, her eyes found Har bord's,

Harbord, having come in with her party of captors, had been ignored. Some of these men must have been strangers to the others, whatever the bond that bound them, and he was taken for one of them. Also, once the trial had be-. gun they had all become so ab-. sorbed that there was no atten- tion to spare for him.

For the same reason, though some of the rearguard had, at first, stayed with Harbord near the door, he had kept close to it because he realised the danger of the situation and the need of a quick escape:

When the girl's eyes, met his that instinct of escape seemed to flash between them. She knew at once that Harbord was not one of her enemies but.a friend, and he, in turn, knew she would trust him in her desperation. The moment to aid her had come...

He acted instinctively but

swiftly. As she shrank sideways from the squat man, two others moved to hold her. At the same moment Harbord's hand reached downward, hooked up a lidless,' empty box and swept it into the faces of these men.

It struck them squarely, taking them so completely by surprise that they were driven in a huddle onto the squat man. There was at once confusion and shouting, but the girl kept her head. She darted straight by Harbord and out of the door.

One man, near enough, leapt to: cut her off. Harbord's fist caught him under the ear and dropped

· him: Then Harbord jumped for the door. His left hand found the switch and clicked the single light off his right grabbed a very big, empty packing case at the same time, so that as pitch blackness engulfed the place, he dragged it after him, blocking the exit.

As he went through, slamming the door after him, he heard the outcry of men falling over the packing case. That delay was all to the good. He scurried to the gate where the girl was waiting and, swinging that closed, they both took to their heels down the empty street.“

He found himself running and dodging round corners hand in hand with her. Her hand was small, strong, warm. It seemed to carry a glow right up his arm into his heart, Every now and then, at turnings when they had to. de- cide which was the best road, they looked at each other, and smiled in a comradely way. The beauty of her smile was heady.

Harbord ran on exhilarated,

(Continued on Page 8)

"Perhaps I'm hard to please.

When I was younger

I didn't much.care what I ate or drank or

smoked. But nowadays I-take my pleas- ures, not sadly but seriously. I suppose you would call me faddy. I hate to be put off with second- best, no matter what it is. I won't eat a peach unless it is English. If I order caviare it must be Beluga.

You see what I mean about whisky. While I can obtain a whisky as soft and smooth as a fine liqueur, why on earth should I be put off with anything less than White Horse PI admit that perhaps I am hard

but take

it from

it pays.

WHITE HORSE

WHISKY

You can tell it blindfold!

Agents for South China-