Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 64, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 March 1916 — The THOUSANDTH WOMAN [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The THOUSANDTH WOMAN

by ERNEST W. HORNUNG

Author of WAMATEUR CRACKSMAN. PAFFLES Etc ILLUSTRATIONS hy O. IRWLN MYERS'

CHAPTER Xll—Continued. —ll— accepted his fate with a ready resignation, little short of alacrity. There was a gleam in hia somber eyes and his blue chin came up with a jerk. “That's talking!" said he. “Now will you promise me never to marry Cazalet T’ "Mr. Toye!” "That's talking, too. and I guess I mean it to be. It’s not all dog-in-the-manger, either. I want that promise a lot more than I want the other. You needn’t marry me. Miss Blanche, but you mustn’t marry Cazalet” Blanche was blazing. “But this is simply outrageous — “I claim there’s an outrageous cause for it Are you prepared to swear what I ask, and trust me as I’ll trust you, or am I to tell you the whole thing right now?’’ "You won’t force me to listen to another word from you, if you’re a gentleman, Mr. Toye!” “It’s not what I am that counts. Swear that to me, and 1 "! swear, on my side, that I won’t give him away to you or anyone else. But it must be the most solemn contract man and woman ever made.” The silver teapot arrived at this Juncture, and not Inopportunely. She had to give him his tea, with her young maid's help, and to play a tiny part In which he supported her really beautifully. She had time to think, almost coolly; and one thought brought * thrill. If it was a question of her marrying or not marrying Walter Cazalet, then he must be free, and only the doer of some dreadful deed! "What has he done?” she begged, with a pathetic abandonment of her previous attitude, the moment they were by themselves. "Must I tell you?” His reluctance rang genuine. "I insist upon It!" she flashed again. “Well, it’s a long story.” "Never mind. I can listen." "You know, I had to go back to Italy—* “Had your "Well, I did go." He had slurred the first statement; this one was characteristically deliberate. “I did go, and before I went I asked Cazalet for an introduction to some friends of his down in Rome.” . "I didn’t know he had any," said Blanche. “Why, he doesn’t have any,” said Toye, “but he claimed to have some. He left the Kaiser Fritz the other day at Naples. I guess he told you?” “No, I understod he came round to Southampton. Surely you shared a cabin?” “Only from Genoa; that’s where I took the steamer and Cazalet regained hes." • . • . “Welir "He claimed to have spent the interval mostly with friends at Rome. Those friends don’t exist. Miss Blanche," said-Toye. “Is that any business of mine?” she asked him squarely. .. “Why, yes, I’m afraid It’s going to be. That is, unless you’ll still trust me —’’ -

“Go on, please.” "Why, he never stayed at Rome at all, nor yet In Italy any longer than it takes to come through on the traija. Your attention for one moment!” He took out a neat pocketbook. Blanche had opened her Ups, but she did not interrupt; she just grasped the arms of her chair, as though about to bear physical pain. “The Kaiser Frits" — Toye was speaking from his book—"got to Naples late Monday afternoon, September eighth. Seems she was overdue, and I was mad about it, and never got away again till the —” “Do tell me about Walter Cazalet!” cried Blanche. It was like small talk from a dentist at the last moment. ■ **l want you to understand about the steamer first," said Toye. “She waited Monday night in the Bay of Naples, only sailed Tuesday morning, only reached Genoa Wednesday morning, and lay there all of forty-eight hours, as these German boats do, anyhow. That brings us to Friday morning before the Kaiser Frits gets quit of Italy, doesn’t it?” “Yes —I suppose so —do tell me about Walter!" “Why, I first heard of him at Genoa, where they figured I should have a stateroom all to myself, as the other gentleman had been left behind at Naples. I never saw him till he scrambled aboard again Friday. about the fifty-ninth minute of the eleventh hoar.* 7 "At Genoa?" "And you pretend to know where he’d been!" ...... .._~ "I guess I do know*—and Toye "Cazalet stepped on the train that left Naplee six-fifty Monday evening, and off the one timed to reach Charing Cross three-twenty-five Wednesday." “The day of the m—" I never called it by the hardest name, myself; but it was seventhirty Wednesday evening that Henry Craven got his death-blow somehow. iWeIL Writer Cazalet left Charing

Cross again by the nine o’clock that night, and was back aboard the Kaiser Fritz on Friday morning—full of his friends in Rome who didn’t exist!” The note-book was put away with every symptom of relief. “I suppose you can prove what you say?” said Blanche in a voice as dull as her unseeing eyes. ’“I have men to swear to him —tick-et-collectors, conductors, waiters on the restaurant-car —all up and down the line. I went over the same ground on the same trains, so that was simple. I can also produce the barber who claims to have taken off his beard in Paris, where he put in hours Thursday morning.” Blanche looked up suddenly, not at Toye, but past him toward an overladen side-table against the wall. It was there that Cazalet’s photograph had stood among many, others; until this morning she had never missed it, for she seemed hardly to have been in her room all the week; but she had been wondering who had removed it, whether Cazalet himself (who had spoken of doing so, she now knew why), or Martha (whom she would not question about it) in a fit of ungovernable disapproval. And now there was the photograph back in its place, leather frame and all! “I know what you did,” said Blanche. ’You took that photograph with you—the one on that table —and had him identified by it!” i “It was the night I came down to bid you good-by," he confessed, "and didn’t have time to wait I didn’t come down for the photo. I never thought of it till I saw it there. I came down to kind of warn you, Miss Blanche!”

“Against him?” she said, as if there was only one man left in the world. “Yes —I guess I’d already warned Cazalet thatlwai starting on his tracks.” - And then Blanche just said, “Poor — old—Sweep!" as one talking to herself. And Toye seized upon the words as she had seized on nothing from him. “Have you only pity for the fellow?” he cried; for she was gazing at the bearded photograph without revulsion. “Of course,” she answered, hardly attending. "Even though he killed this maneven though he came across Europe to kill him?" “You don’t think it was deliberate yourself, even if he did do it.” “But can you doubt that he did?" cried Toye, quick to ignore the point

she had made, yet none the less sincerely convinced upon the other. “I guess you wouldn’t if you'd beard some of the things he said to me on and he’s made good on every syllable since he landed. Why, It explains-every single thing he’s done and left undone. He’ll strain every nerve to have Scruton ably defended, btft he won’t see the man he’s defending; says himself that he can’t face him! ” 3 “Yes. He said so to me,” said Blanche, nodding in confirmation. "To you?" "I didn’t understand him.” if “But you’ve been seeing him all this while?" "Every day,” said Blanche, her soft eyes filling suddenly. “We’ve had — we’ve had the time of out lives!" ' “My God!” said Toye. “The time of your life with a man who’s got another man’s blood on his hands—and that TnßjkWzno difference to you! The tTmeofyour lifto with the man who knew where to lay hands qn the weapon he’d done it with, who went as far as that to save the innocent, but no farther!’’ "He would; he will still, if it’s still necessary. You don’t know him, Mr. Toye; you “haven’t known him all your life.” “And all this makes no difference to a good and gentle woman—one of the gentlest and the best God ever made?" "If you mean me, I won’t go as far

as that," said Blanche. “I must we him first" "See Cazalet?" Toye had come to his feet, not simply In the horror and indignation which had gradually taken possession of him, but under the stress of some new and sudden resolve. “Of course," said Blanche; “of course I must see him as soon as possible.” “You Bhatt never speak to that managain, as long as ever you live,” said Toye, with the utmost emphasis and deliberation. “Who’s going to prevent me?” “I am, by laying an information against him this minute, unless you promise never to see or to apeak to Cazalet again." Blanche felt cold and sick, but the bit of downright bullying did her good. “I didn’t .know you were a blackmailer, Mr. Toyei” “You know I'm not; but I mean to save you from Cazalet, blackmail or white." “To save me from a mere old friend nothing more nothing all our lives!”' “I believe that,” he said, searching her with his smoldering eyes. “You couldn’t tell a He, I guess, not if you tried! But you would do something; it’s just a man being next door to hell that would bring a God’s angel —” His voice shook. She was as quick to soften on her side. “Don’t talk nonsense, please,” she begged, forcing a smile through her distress. “Will you promise to do nothing if—if I promise?" “Not to go near*him?" “No." “Nor to see him here?" “No.” “Nor anywhere else?” “No. I give you my word." “If you break it, I break mine that minute? Is it a deal that way?" “Yes! Yes! I promise!" ‘Then so do I, by God!” said Hilton Toye.

Faith Unfaithful. “It’s all perfectly true," said Cazalet calmly. “Those were my movements while I was off the ship, except for the five hours and a bit that 1 was away from Charing Cross. I can’t dispute a detail of all the rest But they’ll have to fill in those five hours unless they want another case to collapse like the one against Scruton!” 1 Old Savage had wriggled like a venerable worm, in the experienced talons of the Bobby’s Bugbear; but then Mr. Drink water and his discoveries bad come still worse out of a hotter encounter with the truculent attorney; and Cazalet had described the whole thing as only he could describe a given episode, down to the ultimate dismissal of the charge against Scruton, with a gusto the more cynical for the deliberately low pitch of his voice. It was In the little lodging-house sitting room at Nell Gwynne’s Cottages; he stood with his.back to the crackling fire that he had just Ughted himself, as it were, already at bay; for the folding doors werl in front of his nose, and his eyes roved Incessantly from the landing door on one side to the curtained casement on the other. Yet sometimes he paused to gaze at the friend who had come to warn him of his danger; and there was nothing cynical or grim about him then. Blanche had broken her word for perhaps the first time in her life; but it had never before been extorted from her by duress, and it would be affectation to credit her with much compunction on the point. Her one great qualm lay in the possibility of Toye’s turning up at any moment; but this she had obviated to some extent by coming straight to the cottages when he left her —presumably to look for Cazalet in London, since she had been careful not to mention his change of address. Cazalet, to her relief, but also a little to her hurt, she had found at his lodgings in the neighborhood, full of the news he had not managed to communicate to her. But it was no time for taking anything but his peril to heart. And that they had been discussing, almost as man to man. If rather as innocent man to innocent man; for even now, or perhaps now in his presence least of all, Blanche could not bring herself to believe her old friend guilty of a violent crime, however unpremeditated, for which another had been allowed to suffer, for however short a time. (TO BE CONTINUED.)

“I Know What You Did,” Said Blanche. "You Took That Photograph With You.”