1939-10-06 — Page 16

THE CHINA MAIL, OCTOBER 6, 1939

CAT STORY

CROSSWORDS By Charles Douthwaite

"You remember the Highgate

08 a

house where you lived child?" the solicitor inquired when, in response to a letter as surprising as it was expected, Sylvia presented herself at the comfortably furnished office in Gray's Inn.

Did she not! That old-world house with the untidy studio where her charming but improvident father had lived until his death.、

"Could I ever forget it!" she said feelingly,

"And old Mr. Barker-Butt? And the hide-and-seek?" the lawyer questioned, and Sylvia nodded.

"Each time he came he brought a present-sweets, or a toy she said, "that he used to hide. If search- ed for a week, he'd not have told me where.'

The solicitor's quick glance at the red-haired, freckled-faced lad who was the third person

in the room, and his longer one at herself, was not without a certain sympathy.

"Mr. Barker-Butt died about a fortnight ago," he said quietly. "By the terms of his will there's a legacy to yourself of £250, free of duty. and a similar amount to his grand- nephew, Lawrence Head, here."

Sylvia's heart missed a beat. £250 -in real money! An antidote to the humiliating, self respect destroying, dread of unemployment.

ex-

"To help you," the lawyer plained, "If you find it necessary to give up your work to carry out the main provision,"

Engaged as she was in wholly un- congenial work

in a St.

Paul's Churchyard cloth warehouse, Sylvia did not hesitate.

"What are the

wishes I'm sup- posed to carry out?" she asked.

"Ever heard of Galloping Nick Heritage, the highwayman?" the solicitor inquired surprisingly, "Who died prematurely in 17337"

"Hanged, do you mean?" Sylvia exclaimed,

"Largely his own fault," the soli- citor said judicially. “He should have known better than to waylay Jacob Barker-Butt, the most feared man in Sussex. With half the county re- cruited to the hunt, Nick was run to earth within a week, and dragged to the Manor for examination."

"Third Degree stuff?" Sylvia sug- gested.

"If so, it didn't accomplish its ob- ject--which was to recover the family jewels the squire had been bringing from London," the solicitor said dryly. “And though Nick made a concession at last by promising to give a clue to the hiding-place before he was 'turned off,' he said nothing until actually the rope was about his neck. Then he laughed derisively, and shouted 'Barker-Butt'-just the name of the man he'd robbed-and not another word."

"Then what am I supposed to do?" Sylvía demanded.

"Help Head to find the treasure within thirty days, and you divide the proceeds between you," solicitor said promptly.

the

"I'd like to take you down in my two-seater," Head suggested, speak- ing for the first time, and it was during the drive she learnt that econornic necessity had forced Larry' to divide his talents between the production of book-jackets for the less reputable publishers and what he described as the contradiction in terms of commercial-art.

At the entrance of the half-tim- bered, wine-red Tudor manor, they were greeted by the housekeeper, a rawboned `kindly-eyed woman, who shepherded them into a trophy-and- weapon-hung hall.

at

"I'll take you to your room once," she said to Sylvia. "My nep- hew-Hector-will look after you," she added to Larry, indicating the long-nosed, ferrety-eyed man who had joined them from a door under the minstrels' gallery.

"Tell me," Sylvia said, as the house-keeper was on the point of Heaving the pleasantly old-fashioned bedroom, "is there any written re- Lord of Galloping Nick?"

Mrs. Worsnop looked at her for a moment before the reply came.

"Not unless it's in a letter my mas-

ter left for you two days before he died," she said at last.

Sylvia stared. Unless she was mis- taken, the woman' was afraid of something,

Going out of the room, the house- keeper returned with an envelope, that she handed to Sylvia without comment, who took it to the stron- ger light of the window.

A moment's examination, and she knew the reason for the house- keeper's discomfort. Brown eyes purposeful, Sylvia turned.

"Who steamed open this en- velope?" she demanded. Then, struck by a sudden thought, "Not your nep- hew, by any chance?"

# mo-

The woman remained for ment staring unhappily to her front. Then, slowly, she nodded.

"I found him busy with a kettle,” she explained miserably. "I-I was so ashamed, I got some paste and re- fooled it hoping you wouldn't no- ticem so sorry,"

vivia, was sprry, too-for Mrs. Worsnop.

"Incidentally," she asked, "do you suppose he's read it?"

Looking rather relieved, the wo- man shook her head.

"He was just drawing it out of the envelope," 'she 'said quickly. He's he's a dear boy, really, and- I've no child of my own."

So that was the way of it, just an- other instance of starved maternal instinct turning to an unworthy ob- ject for outlet.

"That's all right, Mrs. Worsnop." Sylvia said reassuringly. Then dis- concertly a thought came. "Tell me, does your nephew know anything of the lost treasure?"

Her face troubled, the housekeeper - made no attempt to shirk the issue.

"I'm afraid so," she said quietly, and as Sylvia did not reply, handed over a bunch of keys. "You'll need these for your search.".

eyes were

Alone again, Sylvia's misty as she opened the envelope. A cynical and disillusioned old gentle- man, the writer, but a loyal friend to her father, and an indulgent, under- standing one to herself,

My dear Cynthia, (she read). . By this you will have been in- formed of my posthumous gesture to remind you of those jolly, character- building games at Highgate. And it has occurred to me that as you may consider the existence of the jewels to be so uncertain, and the area of search so wide, as to render the game impossible, this is to tell you that I, personally, discovered the clue to their hiding place here in this house, and so that the search should be worthy of our old association, al- lowed them to remain untouched.

Yours affectionately,

Jacob Barker-Butt. Sylvia hurried downstairs to show the letter to Larry..

"It begins to look as if actually there is something in it," he admit- ted. "And if that letter isn't so much hooey, I may be able to fulfil one, at least, of my two ambitions."

This appearing to have more be- hind it than was on the surface: · "And they are?" Sylviä asked. "To scrap all pot-boiling stuff, and go right ahead with my painting," he said promptly.

There was a pause.

"And the second?" she demanded, wishing she could control her pulse as well as her voice.

'He looked at her, flushed, and looked away.

"I'm hoping you may be more prepared to listen to that a little later," he said in a voice she had not heard from him before.

"I'm glad Hector isn't the only one interested in what we're here for, anyway," she said hurriedly, and went on to report her discovery, and Mrs. Worsnop's admission concern- ing it. Only to break off as, looking more hang-dog than ever, Hector came in with the tea-tray,"

Over the meal they arranged the search systematically; beginning at the cellar-because it was there Nick had been detained-they would work upward to the attics.

They found that the cellars form- ed the foundations of the house, and

in the next three days they search- ed with such minuteness that by the time it was over they had come, as Larry claimed, to know every spider by its middle name. And when all the accumulated junk had been re- placed, and with nothing resembling a clue discovered, physically dis- hevelled, but mentally unruffled, they were better friends than ever. On the fourth and fifth day they "did" the drawing-room, only, as they expected, to draw blank; on the sixth, the dining-room, where, again, they went unrewarded.

"The big trouble, of course," Larry said as they passed into the hall, "is that we're not the vaguest idea of what we're looking for."

"A piece of paper or parchment, probably," said Sylvia.

"A chart, perhaps, with a cross to mark the body," said Larry satiri- cally. "I wonder where Nick was put through his Third Degree, any- way?"

"Either in the study or the hall, I should imagine," Sylvia. suggested. "But he'd be watched too closely to be able to hide anything. Besides,,

it was there where he promised to give them the clue."

Larry sniffed.

"And all he did was to yell out the name of the man responsible for putting the rope round his neck," he reminded her.

Sylvia thought for a moment.

"Your room hasn't been disturbed, by any chance?" she asked quietly at last, and Larry looked up alertly.

"Not that I know of," he said. "Anyone been poking about yours?"

She nodded.

"Yes. I know because I arranged my things in such a way that I could tell if they'd been touched... They have carefully-but unmistakably." "The estimable Hector, of course,' Larry said, frowning, and Sylvia nodded again.

"It's the Snooper, all right, and quite frankly I don't like it," she said purposefully.

"Neither do I, and so he's going to find out before he's through," Larry' assured her grimly, and after dinner disappeared until about a quarter of an hour before her usual bed-time.

"You

were right about the Snooper," he said without prelimin- ary. "He's been running the rule over my room-to-night. After that letter, probably to see if it'll give him a lead."

Sylvia got to her feet, but he laid a detaining hand on her arm.

"If you're thinking of complaining to Mrs. Worsnop," he said - "hold your horses."

"Why?" she asked indignantly. "Because I've an idea the Snooper may know something, and I don't want to cramp his style," Larry ex- plained.

a

Thereafter, while one made. search of the upstairs rooms, the other kept a close but unobtrusive eye on the Snooper, so that it was noon of the twenty-ninth day before the search was complete-and with no clue discovered.

After lunch, as they smoked their cigarettes by the old carp pond a hundred yards from the house:

"I shall be sorry to leave → all this," Sylvia said, contrasting the vista of lake and parkland with a very secondhand-furnished bed-sit- ting room in Balham, and with the realisation that her former loneli- ∙ness was as nothing to what she would have to face now.

"I shall be sorry than

to leave more this," Larry responded, his eyes very directly on herself.

: If she felt herself flushing in tune to the racing of her pulse, she con- trived to shrug her shoulders.

"Well, that's how it goes," she said. “All we can do is take our beating like little. gentlemen, and just forget the treasure ever existed." "Supposing we'd found it-what?" Larry said.

"In that case," she returned, her voice not as steady us her eyes, "maybe we'd have lived happy ever after."

He took an eager step forward, and she a reluctant one backward;;

“You mean that you care?" he

said.

She gave a gesture that indicated the futility of discussing the obvious. With £250 at his back, he still would be able to give some part of his time to the work that mattered. Saddled with a wife, if would be pot-boilers to the end of the chap- ter.

"I wish I didn't," she said

- and stopped: "No I don't. It isn't any good, of course, but it happens to be all that matters.

But he needed her so badly, and pleaded so hard for her to change her mind that, unable to trust her- self, she turned back to the house, passed slowly through the french windows, and into the hall.

came

It was as her foot was on the first tread of the stairs that the sound from the study-a metallic tinkle that reminded her that she had left her keys on the dressing- table.

Soundlessly she turned into the" passage to the study. The door open by a couple of inches, she could see the Snooper trying the lock of a drawer in the old writing-table- into where, for safe custody, slie had put the letter.

As quietly as she had come, she went back; saw that Larry was star- ing motionlessly into the pond.

"The Snooper," she whispered as he jointed her. "Burgling the study desk!"

Fire in his eye, Larry turned, lift- ed from the wall the pistol that Gal- loping Dick had left behind when he' was taken to Lewes.

"This'llarn him," he whispered, tip-toed down the

passage and crashed open the study door,

Jerking to the upright, the Snoop er's never especially attractive face whitened. He made an attempt to speak, but succeeded only in gulplrig.

Switching his grip to the barrel of his weapon; Larry weighed it trucu- lently in his hand... DENTA

"If you don't want the butt of this dropped on your head, you'll explain what you're doing at that desk," he said, sternly, and stared in astonish-.. ment as, her eyes shining with ex- citement, Sylvia laid an urgent hand on his arm.

"Send him away!” she said tensely. After all, as there was nothing he could do, probably this was the best way out. Measuring that shrinking workshy with his eyes, Larry jerked his head in the direction of the door. "Beat it!" he said shortly, and, registering relief, the Snooper shot through into the passage,

"And now what?” Larry demand- ed, turning.

"What

was the

highwaymen's slang name for their pistols?" Sylvia asked in a strained voice.

Larry thought for a moment. "Their 'barkers,' wasn't it?" he said at last.

Controlling a rising tide of excite-

(Continued on Page 17)

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