Evening Star Newspaper, January 19, 1930, Page 85

THE 'SUNDAY "STAR, - WASHINGTON, D. C, JANUARY '19 1030.7 Sydney manager of the Bank Antarctica, who, when he heard the story long after, recalled a dismissed clerk called Cardigan, put two and two together and found that they made four. Cardigan had told her (because he loved her very much) about a scheme he had been keep- ing up his sleeve ever since he took to flying— & scheme that was to enrich him forever. “There's no real money in flying,” he had said. “But about this——. Just listen to me! I know where we can pick up jewels like peb- bles on the beach.” He and she were to lose themselves on the trip across—not to be heard of for a day or s0; to turn up at last, well and sound, with a story of a forced landing far at sea. And some day, months ahead, it would be found that Billy-all-alone was missing from his island. And if Messrs Cromwell & James, the famous jewelers and gem importers of Sydney, whose name had been on so many of old Benison's checks, thought to take alarm and make inquiry —why, it would be too late to find out any- thing. As much of this as suited his purpose Bert got out of the girl. She told him further that her name was Lily Delafield, and that she had been in trouble of various kinds. Bert drew his own conclusions. ‘While she lounged in a long chair, carnation cheeked, bright of eye, Bert Wills went over to the windows and looked down. There was not a sign of the pilot. Small wonder. A man with his neck broken would sink quickly. Somebody’s hand, soft as snow, fell on his shoulder. Somebody laughed behind him. She had a delectable laugh, this Lily Delafield. *“Looking at the bus, are you?” she said. ;:Vhat d’you think if you and I fily away with Tr? “Don’t think anything. I can't fly,” was Bert's not very encouraging answer. “I can,” said Lily amazingly. “I got my license last year. That's why he took me on the trip across, instead of any of the other girls that were crying their eyes out to go. Think I couldn’t hop across to New Zealand from here? Why, it’s more than half way, and the weather’s perfect, and the bus running like a watch.” Bert was discouragingly silent, She went on: “They don’t know him in New Zealand, and with his spare helmet on you'd pass for him anywhere. Why shouldn’t we go? We could tell them you flew the bus and just let me do the landing. You tell me where the jewels are, Il do everything else. And we'll go halves. I like you, now I look at you.” This was nothing new to Bert; women had always liked him. He was not in his thoughts unfaithful to Dorrie or to honesty. Nevertheless, he tem- porized. “You go and get some sleep,” he told her, somewhat roughly. “We'll talk more when you're rested.” Of course, he wouldn't do anything dishonest. But would it be dishonest, according to his own code? Whom would he be robbing? No one; if there'd been a family, a will—— LIKE a sudden stab came the thought of that long envelop with its seals. He had not thought of it till now. It looked like the kind of envelop that might hold a will. But the old man had had no family. It couldn’t be a will. Bert bit the side of his finger. This matter held special difficulty” for him-—difficulty which he was not inclined to confide to any one, least of all to Lily. He locked himself into his room before he opened the envelop. It contained a sheet of thin parchment covered all over with black characters. For a long time he studied it, hold- it to the light and going over and over every word. Then he drew a sigh. “Bad,” he said, folded up the parchment and put it away. The world had suddenly grown darker, problems more difficult. Lily Delafield was considerably more reflec- tive when he returned. She had smoothed and tidied herself, and was fully prepared to per- suade her companion to her way of thinking. She began, harmlessly enough, by asking ques- tions about Billy-all-alone and what had be- come of him. Bert's answer seemed to interest her immensely. She questioned him on the manner of Benison's end, the disposal of the body, the time that had elapsed between death and stowing away of the corpse. “You're all right,” she assured him. “They can’t do a thing to you. Way I take it, he died of a heart attack, unexpected, probably never knew he had it, and a P. M. would tell_that. ‘Tell the minute he died, and how long it was before you put him away. Circumstantial evi- dence all in your favor. You're lucky.” She seemed to take it for granted that he was going to need the help of circumstantial evidence, some time or other. That chilled him, and, almost more, the plain inference that she was familiar with trials for murder and their proceedings. Before sundown he had capitulated. Half unvwillingly, he got out the safe key and opened the safe. She followed him, watching every step of the proceedings with greedy keenness. When the gems were out of their cases, tum- bled forth on the bed where Billy-all-alone had been wont to sleep, she let out a shriek of amazement. “Oh, gosh! Oh, gee! Oh—there's a hundred thousand pounds of them—maybe more!” She was hardly affected at all by the beauty of the wonderful things. She hovered over them, claws outspread, like a bright parrakeet suddeniy turned vulture. “That's an awful lot of money,” objected Bert. “Are you sure?” He was almost fright- ened by the magnitude of the prize—if it was a prize. “Sure? D'you think I've never had jewels and that I've never hocked them? Sure? Rather. Didn’t he leave any list or anything? How can one know they're all there?” - She had seen the parchment in its envelop. She pounced on it suddenly. “Look-a-here,” said Bert warningly. “You be careful of that; it's something valuable.” She did not seem to hear him; she had sud- denly become very quiet. Over at the window, with the parchment held up to the full light of late afternoon sun, she studied its contents for at least five minutes. Bert was growing impatient, when A shout from the woman: “You've killed him!” she came {0 an end, replaced the document in its envelop, and said coolly: “Have you read this?” “I hadn’t time to go all through it,” he answered. She was watching him, now, like a cat watching a mouse. ; “I'll keep it for the present,” she said, with her eyes on his. “I'll go over it some time or other.” She put it, crumpled up, into her pocket. “I want it,” he told her, touched by some vague suspicion. “You'll have it.” She was smiling deliciously. “But let’s have dinner first. You go and sit in your chair, like a man should sit,” she told him, “and Il go to the kitchen and make dinner for us both. I'm so hungry I could eat my boots.” ¥y “I'll come along and help you.” “You won't.”” She seemed curiously deter- mined about this. “I want to make a real good dinner. If you and I are going to start off with the bus for New Zealand at sunup, we'll need something inside of us. I get that hungry, flying.” Bert, wondering a little why she should think it necessary to make all these explanations about a very simple thing, went off to the gallery. He amused himself for a while, hang- ing out of the windows and looking down at the plane. It was in a secure place, well anchored; and the weather, as Lily had said, was perfect. \ WAB he going with her? Would they two, at sunup, rise from the water and head away for New Zealand, Luala a blue speck on the ocean far below them, poverty, anxiety left far behind? Would a day come when he could send for Dorrie to join him, in America or elsewhere, with a fortune in his hand to offer her? The parchment stood In the way—the will. Benison, in dying, had tried to form the word with his last breath—had barely failed to do so. That will left the stuff to somebody. If one went away with Lily Delafield and the jewels, one wouldn't be merely depriving the govern- ment of something it oughtn't to have; one would be robbing quite concrete people, widows and orphans, maybe. That was more than Bert Wills, mason, here- tofore- honest man, was prepared to do. He was beginning to feel hungry, and power- ful smells of something cooking in the kitchen added to the feeling. Lily was frying onions; one couldn’t mistake that powerful reek. But she was not the cook she claimed to be, or Bert was seriously mistaken. For there was another smell, half-masked by the onion, yet un- mistakable—a smell of animal matter burning. Shoeless, Bert Wills crept into the kitchen— and stood still. Lily had filled a pan with grease and onions, and set it on one burner of the oil stove. Over the other she was holding something that caught fire, smoldered, stank, and refused to make a satisfactory blaze. What was she try- ing to do? Was she—by heaven, she was! Bert, though a powerful man and a quick one, was almost too late. Lily Delafield heard him come up behind her, and frantically stuffed the burning parchment down the chimney of the oil cooker, risking explosion. He caught her hand, and thrust his own into the blazing chimney. The parchment eame up, torn, scorched and blackened, but practically whole. “What did you do that for?” he said, breath- ing hard. They stared at each other antago- nistically. “Find out!” she cried, and bolted from the room. Outside the doorway she turned round, put her head back into the kitchen, and spat a curious epithet at him. It was “Dunce!” Bert, very philosophically, returned the parchment to his pocket, and busied himself cooking dinner. It was dark before he had done, and more than once or twice he found occasion to and look out of the windows, even after t sun was quite down and the sea had turned from indigo to soot. What Re saw seemed to interest him a good deal. He ate by and by, and, when he had fin- ished, put food on a tray and took it to the door of the bedroom. “You'd better stop performing,” he said equably, “and have a bite to eat.” There was no answer, except hysterical and, he thought, exaggerated sobbing. He waited for a minute and tried again: : "Besides, I've something very important to tell you.” ‘The door opened, and Lily, red eyed but quite self-possessed, stood in the light of the lamps. “You're a liar,” she said, “but let’s hear your lie.” “If you'll look out of any of them windows of yours,” declared Bert, "youll see the lights of a steamer coming in.” She set down the tray and flew across her room. “So it is,” she breathed. “What do you—is it——" Mist. By Elizabeth D. Hart. What lovely thing is lovelier than wmist? Chill, salt-drenched mist that springs in a white cloud From dark and stormy seas; Pale plumes of mist, curling across the trees At dawn; mist swirling on a vagrant breeze Like tattered fragments of chiffon; the proud High-hanging wmist of purple twilight—these And mist of Autumn—Dblue veils over flame; Spring mist with all the sweetness of a name Once loved and half-forgotten; mist that dies On the moon’s gleaming breast in little sighs; The wmist of tears that stands in happy eyes. What lovely thing is lovelicr than mist? “I reckon it’d be the gunboat Dandelion eut on survey. She wasn't expected just abeout here, but I lay she seen the plane come down this afternoon, and thought she’d better make inquiries and pick up corpses, if any.” “What do you mean to say to them?” She was very watchful now, very much mis« tress of herself. Bert, in a flash of intuition, knew that she had before now faced representatives of law with no clean conscience—had learned to steel herself. “And she no more than a kid,” he thought pitifully. “I'm going to hand them over the jewels and this,” he said, tapping his pocket. “Yes?” She did not move. Her eyes were very blue in the lamplight. “And I'm going to tell them how the old boy *winked out, and you and the other chap come down in the plane, and how .he broke his neck. Pilots do break their necks some- times, makin’ what they call forced landings, THE commander of the Dandelion shut up the last leather case, snapping its elastics neatly home. “A magnificent collection,” he said. “Curious that old Billy-all-alone should have turned out to be a miser. Misers are out of fashion, rather, one thought. What's the paper you say he left? What's in it?” Silently Bert handed over the scarred, black- ened, but perfectly legible parchment. “Some one tried to destroy this?” snapped the officer. “I dono,” answered Bert woodenly. “Well, whoever it might have been, it couldn'§ have been you,” remarked the commander, “since it makes you—if the story you told me turns out to be correct—it makes you legatee.” Bert Wills was silent for about three seconds, Then he said: “Would you mind just reading it over again? I want to hear how it sounds read aloud.” The commander slowly and carefully read Michael Benison’s holograph will. Benison had been a solicitor’s clerk in his youth, and the document was sound. It left the jewels to whoever should attend him in his last illness—a final gesture of scorn from a man who despised humanity, ya@ one that seemed to suggest, strangely enough, some faint aspiration after pity. “I shall die alone,” it whispered, between the lines. “I know that. But I want you al§ to see what would have been the lot of asxg creature, no matter who, that gave me help and kindness at the last. . ..” In the event of his dying without witnesses (the will concluded) his possessions were to go to the crown. How much the shrewd naval man knew, how much he guessed, of the various happenings on Luala, was not, at that moment, told. He took charge of the jewels, in the name of the crown; offered Bert and the girl passage te® Sydney; and, as they were going down the long rock stairs for the last time, remarked to the former: “I should get something done, if I were you, as soon as you land.” “I know,” said Bert. “Get me hair cut.” “No. Get some one, quietly, to teach you to read.” (Copyright, 1930.) Smoking Fireplaces SIMPLE remedy has been found for the smoking fireplace. A piece of plate glass about four inches wide attached td the face of Jthe fireplace at the top of the opening will provide a barrier past which the smoke can not pass. Changing the air currents, which are baffled in their attempt to reach the room, sends all the smoke up the chimney, where it belongs. The glass, being transparent, is not s0 much in evidence as a metal bafle or hood and dovs not disfigure the fireplace.