Evening Star Newspaper, November 30, 1927, Page 45

k) THE FOUR STRAGGLERS By Frank L. Packard Author of “The Miracle Man" “Doors o1 the Night” “Jimmie Dale.” Ete. Copyright. Geo H. Doran Co. GAPT. FRANCIS NEWCOM in $he Great Snr.’.wlm btfi'& ’fi“:‘%‘dd but who is really Shadow figure of underworid. and in of Various”bis "steals that “Bave. et Landon o UL CREMARRE. noted Prench thiet. 2 ot OmrvnD 18 She TneRE "“.}f“,fi"‘*‘ o5, et who by efta ‘on his ow L) rflunn’ STRAGGLER. 0 e done some big “Vio hesre the b - that Newcombe was the one who had been on'the wrong scent—and that some one else had been the right one! His face was set In lines like chiseled marble now. Who was this “some one else’ ‘Was the question very hard to ai el ‘The fleld was very limited—significantly limited now! He He wasn't wrong, was he erou Shees PoLLY WicKES B . whom New combe has adopted and sent to America to & finishing school. with the idea of insur- g cial ‘I ntacts of the b before he o : lace on Mr. MARLIN utiful wand on of a big but weombe and Runnells He falls Star,) man who takes M o Florida on_his steam launch. ir love with Poliy (Continued from Yesterday Al ENT XX. w no sound from within. Softly he began to turn the door handle—the door would hardly be locked; that would be a mis) one a t lock one’s bedroom door when & zuest in a private house. 0: | Wis not locked. He had the door apart now. Again he listened. There Was still no sound from within. Was the man back yet, or not? The absence of any sound meant noth- ing. ve that Newcombe was prob- ably not in the sitting room of his ®uite—he might easily, however, be in either the bathroom or the bed- Toom beyond. Locke swung the door a little wider stepped through and closed it behind him. Again he his _revolver now out- fore him. The moon- ed across the floor. It dis- open door beyond. Still Locke moved forward. He could see into the bedroom now. The bed was not only empty but had not been slept in. He turned quickly and opened the bathroom door. The bath- Toom, too, was empty. Capt. Francis Newcombe had not, as vet returned. With a grim amile Locke thrust his revolver into his pocket. It was perhaps just as well—the time while he waited might possibly be used to very good ad- vantage! Capt. Francis Newcombe's bagzage was invitingly at one’s dis- posal—the Talofa, with its confined quarters, and where, on the little ves- ®el, it was always crowded, as it wvere, had offered no such oppor- tunit, Locke opened one of the bags. His amile now had changed to one of frony. Barring any other justifica- tion, turn about was no more than fair play, was it? He possessed a moral certainty, if he lacked the actual proof, that Capt. Francis New- combe had not_ hestitated to invade his, Locke's cabin on the liner ®o through his, Locke's, effects. He laughed a little now in low. grim mir He wondered which of the two, Newcombe or himself, would be the better. rewarded for his ef- fort There was little light, but Locke worked swiftly by tic sense of touch, with fingers that ignored the eneral eontents, and that sought exterously for hidden things. His fingers traverseq every inch of the fining of the bag. top, bottom and couldn’t be wrong! And there was always the torn sleeve! Locke's eyes fixed upon the two documents on the table again. Capt. Francis Newcomb No; it did not | make Newcombe any the less a guilty man because it was not he who bad worn the mask tonight. Newcombe stood out sharply defined against the light of evidence which, if only’eir- cumstantial, was strong_enough to damn the man a thousand times over for what he was. And here, adding to that evidence, was the proof that Polly’s ldentity had been, and was being, deliberately concealed from her. It opened a vista to uglier and still more evil things—things that only a soul dead to decency, black as the pit of hell, could have con- ceived and patiently put into execu- tion. A child—a guttersnipe, Polly bad called herself—rescued from naked poverty and the slums of Whitechapel by a man such as New- combe, whose only promptings were the promptings of a flend! Why? Was there room to question further why Capt. Francis Newcombe had years ago adopted such a ward: when now before one’s eyes those years were bearing their poison Polly’s introduction into this family here was even at this moment being traded upon to effect the theft of half a million dollar That was too obvious now to permit denial. Newcombe was making of a girl hizh-minded Med. a hideous cat's-paw. All that was clear enoug v should Poll: have been deprived of her rightful name, her claim to honest pareat- age? Was it to weld a stronger bond of gratitude—or make her the more helpless, and therefore the more de- pendent upon her guardian? Where were these parents? Dead or living? There was Mrs. Wickes — Mrs. Wickes, who had posed as the moth- er! Well, there were certain quar- s in London where those who straved outside the law could be made to talk. Mrs. Wickes should be able to furnish very interesting information, It was not far to White- chapel and London—by cable. His mind, his brain, worked on— but now suddenly in turmoil and misery despite all effort of his to hold himself in check. Polly! Polly Gray She loved this monster—that she thought a man, and called her guard- jan. Not the love of a maid for lover: but with the love, the honor, the respect and gratitude that she d | would give a cherished father. The truth would break her heart. The love her friends had given her, turned to their own undoing! The shame would he torture: the self-degradation, the abasement that she would know would be beyond the bearing. Her faith would be a shattered thing. Locke's clenched hands lay out- spread across the table. He drew them suddenly together and dropped his head upon them. “And you love her,” he whispered sides. He disturbed mnothing. Presently he. laid the' bag aside, and started on another—and sudden- tv be nodded his head sharply in ®atisfaction. This one was what was generally known as a Gladstone bag. and under the lining at one side of Bis fingers felt what seemed like a folded ‘paper Ithlt moved under hl: 1 g A . ol M ‘some way = it=yes, Bere it was? er elever! And safe—unless one were for something of 11 e was a flap, or pocket, at e of the bag, the ordinary sort d_at the bottom of the fingers, working deftly, th the edzes of the lining, whi'e apparenily fastened together, were made, in reality, into a double fold—the lining Deing stiff enough. even when the edges were displaced, to fa!l hack of its ewn accord into place axain. He scparated the edges now, worked his fingers into the opening. and drew out an envelope. It had been torn open at one end, and there was a superscription. of some sort én it in faded writing which, in the semidarkness, he could not make ut. He stood up, and went quickly to the window to obtain the full bene- fit of the mwn)lflm He could just decipher the writing now: #Polly’$s papers which is God's truth, Mrs. Wickes X her mark.” For a moment he stood there mo- tlonless, but his eyes had lifted trom the envelope now and were fixed on the lawn below. The window here gave on the side of the lawn, with the trees at the rear of the house in view. A man had just stepped out from the shadow of the trees and was coming toward the house. ‘Locke stared, even the envelope in his hand temporarily forgotten, as & frown of perplexity that deepened into amazed chagrin gathered on his forehead. The figure quite recognizable, even minutely so. It was Capt. Francis Newcombe. It ac- eounted for the missing sockets on that French window perhaps—but the man_ was as perfectly and im- maculately dressed as he had been that night at dinner. There was no torn coat—or missing coat sleeve. The man he had fought with, the man in the mask, had not been Capt. ¥rancis Newcombe. . He laughed now—not pleasantly. He had obviously been waiting here for the wrong man. There was no need of waiting any longer—unless be desired to be caught himself! Q But was was it that was least, he would find that out! He thrust the envelope into his pocket, closed the bag and returned to his own room. He switched on the light, hurriedly took the envelope from his pocket again, and from it drew out two documents. He studied them while minute after minute passed, then dropping them on the fable before him, he stood with drawn face and clenehed fists, star- fng across the room. Polly's birth éertificate! The marriage certificate ot her parents! He saw again the agony in the d; the agony in the proclaimed a parentage out: Pale. And a great oath came now from Locke's white lips. He flung himself into a chair be- gide the table. He fought for cool, Gontained reasoning. ~These papers ~-Newcombe! Did it change any- place Newcombe in any bet- light, because it was some other n who had worn that mask to- pight? He shook his head in quick, thin; ter ma to himself. “Do you know what that is going to mean? You did not count on that, did you? Do you know where that will lead? Do you know the consequences?”’ He answered his own questions. “No,” he said numbly: “I don't know what it is going to mean.. [ know I love her” - Polly Wickes, from her -pillow,. stared Into the darkness. There bad been no thought of sleep: it did not seem as though there ever could be again. She had undressed and gone to bed—but she had done this me- chanically, because at night one went to bed, because she had always gone to bed. Not t6 sleep! : The tears blinding her eyes, she had groped her way up the stairs from the living room Wwhere she had left Howard Loeke, and somehow she had reached her room. That was hours and hours ago. Surely the daylight would come soon now; surely it would soon be morning. She wanted the daylight, she wanted the morning, use the darkness and the stiliness seemed to accent- uaté a terrible and merciless sense of isolation that had come so swiftly, so suddenly Into her life—to over- turn, to dominate, to stupefy, to cast contemptuously éside the dreams and thoughts and hopes of happiness and contentment. And yet, though she yearned for the morning, she even dreaded it more. How coul meet Howard Locke—at breakfast? She couldn’t. She wouldn't go down to_breakfast. The small hands came from under the coverings and clasped them- selves tightly about the aching head —and she turned and buried her face in the pillow. She might easily, very easily evade breakfast—and postpone the inevitable for a few minutes, even a few hours. Why did_she grasp at pitiful subterfuges such as that? She was nameless. That phrase had come hours ago. It had scorched itself upon her brain—as a branding iron at white heat sears its imprifit upon quiver- ing flesh, never to be effaced, always to endure. She was nameless. It wasn't that she had not always known it—she always had. But it meant now what it had never meant before, Until now it had been some- thing that. since it must be borne, she had striven to bear with what courage was hers, and, denying its right to embitter life, had sought to imprison it in the dim recesses of her mind, but.now in an instant it had broken its bonds to stand forth exposed in all its ugliness: no longer captive, but a vengeful captor. claimii its miserable right from Et;w on to control and dominate Rer e. She had thought of love—it would have been unnatural if she had not. But she had never loved, and there- fore she had thought of it only in an abstract way. Dream love—fan- But she loved now—she loved this man who had so suddenly come into her lite—she loved Howard Locke. And happiness, greater than she had realized happiness could ever be, had unfolded itself to her gaze, and love had become a vibrant, personal thing, so wonderful, so ten- der and so glad a thing, that be. side it all the world was little and insignificant and empt; but even as the glory of it and the joy of it had burst upon her, she had been obliged to turn away from it—not very bravely, for the tears had scalded her as she had run from the living room—because there was no other thing to do, because it was something that was not hers to ha She could never be the wife of a hatic dissent. It did not! He s sure, certain of that. The trail too far back. was too well de- ned, too conclusive. And even to- ‘What was Newcombe doing morning? ;xh‘hc old maniac's word came back ‘with sudden and sure significance: *Digging—digging—aigging * * * The #ut in the woods at the rear of the B eie gnawed savagely at his lip: mhat was where Newcombe had com grom—the woods at the rear of the Newcombe was e one W :‘l‘d madman’s cunning, which could mever have happened if Newcombe not been stealthily trying to find hidden money; it simply meant man. She was nameless. Why had she ever found it out? It might so easily have been th: she would have never known. Ti She was sure that even b did not know, She smothered her face deeper in the pillow as she cried out in anguish. She could have had happiness then— and—and it would have been honor- le for her to have taken it, wouldn't he glad for his sake that s the truth, glad now of the day when she had found it out. She remem- bered that day. It sesmed to live more vividly before her now th: ever had before. Mrs. Wickes—her mother—had—had been drinking. The words had been a slip of the tongue, a slip that her mother, owing to her condition at the time, had not even been consclous of. Mfs. Wickes had been garrulously recounting some sordid crime that had remained famous even among its many fel- lows in Whitechapel, and, in plac- ing the date. had stated it was two years after Mr. Wickes had died. Later on, in the same garrulous ac- count, she had again referred to the date, but had placed it this time by saying that she, Polly, was a baby not more than & month old when it had happened. And on that day when she had lis- Lucky 'D. T, WEDNESDAY. still been could not but she was very old for 12, ums of London had seen tio And so, the next day, when her mother had been more herself. she had asked Mrs. Wickes, more out of a precocious curiosity perhaps than anything else, for an explana- tion. Mrs. Wickes had flown into sy turious rage. “Mind yer own business!” Mrs., Wickes had screamed at her. “Thes likes of you a-slingin’ mud at yerd mother Wot you got to complain: of? Aln't I takin' care of you? I ever you says another word I'll breal yer back!"™ In une sense she had not been dit- ent from any other child of 12 then, and it had not naturally caused any change in her feelings toward her mother; nor in the after years, with their fuller light of understand ing, had It ever changed or abated her love for the mother with whom she had shared hardship and distress and want. - She thanked God for that now. Her mother might have been one to inspire little love anad little of respect in others; but to her, Polly. when she had parted from her mother to come here to America, she had parted from the only human being in all the world she had showed af- Cection for her. She had never ceased to love her mother; instead, she had , NOVEMBER 380, 1927.' stand. and even lo add umnmivl to love and know-a great pity, where bitterness and resentment and unfor- giveness might otherwise have been, because she, tdo, had Hved in those drab places where the urge of self- preservation alone was the standard that measured ethics, where one fought and snatched at anything. no matter from where or by what means it came, that kept soul and body to- gether—because she could look out on that life, ot as one apart, but with the eyes of one who once had been a —a guttersnipe. And now? Now that this crisis in her life had come—what now? She did not know. 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