Newspapers / The Clay County News … / Aug. 3, 1928, edition 1 / Page 5
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Dr. Long. out fishing with Alexander Pierce, a detective, telle of hie projected trip to Southley Downs. Pierce advisee him to Steep his eyes wide open while there. On the way in a traiii Dr. Long is attracted by a girl, who later faints. Dr. Long treats her, and looking into her bag. Is astounded to •find a loaded revolver. Dr. Long meets Ahmad Das, an Oriental, whs conducts him to Southley Downs,, ■where he meets Mr. Southley and his son Ernest Southley. Mr. Haywood and rls son Vilas, and then Josephine Southley, who Is the girl he had met on the train. "Josephine tells him the story of Southley • Downs and Its Ghost, which is not the ghost of a hu tnan being but a tiger. Dr. Long has a quarrel with Vilas Hay ward over Josephine, and finds that the Hay wards have a strange authority * , over the Southleys. He is ordered to leave Southley Downs. The rain prevents him leaving at i •once. Dr. Long and Ernest go out on the I road in the rain looking for the tracks of a | tiger that Ernest says are- there. They find the tracks. Later Ernest and ' Dr. Long see a prowling creature in the hall of Southley Downs. This frightens the elder Hayward, who also sees it. Ernest begins to.feel that Ahmed Das is perpetrat ing some' deviltry. The elder Hayward is later found dead, his neck broken as if by a giant’s Mow. The coroner and police arrive in order to Investigate. Because of the murder. Dr. Long must remain at Southley Downs. All the persons there are questioned by Inspector Freeman. | Dr. Long becomes Jealous of the love he believes to exist between Vilas Hayward and Josephine. During the course of investiga tions of the crime Dr. Long becomes suspi cious of a man named Robin. He determines to watch him. •Alexander Pierce and Inspector Freeman d’s^iH* tb° _cHme, Dr. Lo^g feels that his visit at Southley Downs is coming to an enu. and regrets leaving the habitht of the girl for whom he feels he has a hopeless love. Josephine Southley begins to show some warmth toward Dr. Long during the course of the investigations of the murder. In tre library Dr. Long meets Vilas Hayward. Both watch the Oriental. Ahmad Das, who is half-obscured in the dim light NOW GO ON WITH THE STORY— “I’ll tell you Ahmad,” he cried. “I’ll tell you all. I’m Strumburg, just as you said, and a fugitive from justice, too. And I haven’t anything against Southley. Even my father couldn’t have proved his claim in a test, and he’s dead. Let me go Ahmad! Don’t raise your talons against me.” • The wild flow of words died away, and for an instant the form in the shadow halted. Then it mov ed slowly forward again. “I<tell you I’ll go away, and never return again. We never had any. real proofs. Ahmad! Let me go!” And at that instant I felt Alexan der’s breath against my ear. “You heard, didn’t you, Long?” he whis pered. “Yes—” “Then the work’s done.” I felt the stir as his arm reached up to an electric switch on the vail He pressed it. Uiiknown to me, the wrecked lighting plant had been re paired. All the great chandeliers of the library flashed on at once. The first impression was blind ness. But as my eyes became ad justed to the sudden glare, I jcnew at least part of the truth at last. The form of the tiger had been most real and convincing at the edge of the dim an'd ineffective candlelight. But i,t was more terrible than the counterfeit giraffes that the cloiyns parade in a circus ring, when the glare from the chandeliers came down. Before us, stripped of all de lusion, Ahmad Das rested on his hands and feet on the floor. He held his body low, his legs almost straight, to give the effect of length. Over him, in a rather ingenious way was thrown a great, tawny tiger skin. The four legs were fastened with some simple device to his an kles "and wrists, and the great head, filled out with some light substance, rested on his. ■ I leaped and siezed Alexanders shoulders. • “Good Heavens!” I yelled in his ear. , < “That’s only part of it. That in sane hoax couldn’t have broken Hayward’s neck!” But Alexander wriggled out of my grasp. “Of course it didn’t break Hay ward’s , neck*” he said. “The real murderer of'Hayward slipped1 one over on us—improvised some busi ness that hasn’t written in the play. I’ve: got the rdd, murderpr of Hajr ward, dead, down in the boat” Alexander Pierce spent most of the rest of the evening answering questions. Tbire wdte more things to find out than ever I thought I could possibly learn. First he took us down to the boat beside the water, and lifted the tar paulin that covered the thing in the bottom. A dead animal lay there in—a creature large as the largest hound, y^How, with spots of black. It was a powerful animal, long clawed and white-fanged; and my breath stopped at the sight of it. “A tiger?” I demanded. “Tiger, nothing!” Alexander an swered. “You' ought to be enough of a naturalist to know that a tiger has stripes. This beast has spots. He weighs two hundred pounds, and a tiger twice as much. Besides, you don’t find tigers in Southern Flor ida. It’s plain to me, old Doc Long that you don’t know the history of Florida very well.” “Evidently I don’t. I don’t re member reading about such a crea ture as this”— ' “Please speak respectfully of him. I‘d have much preferred to have left him alive, but we’ll need him for proof of that wild story we have to tell the coroner’s jury tomorrow afternoon. If you remember, there was a time when Southern Florida was still the home of the jauguars —the greatest of American felines.” I remembered that I had heard something about it. Most of them were exterminated a good many years ago. You can still find ’em in a few remote re gions in Southern Texas. I sup posed myself that they were all gone here—even in such a wild part of the1' State as this. Long, you see here what is probably the last of the Florida jauguars—a creature as heavy as a leopard, and one of the strongest jawed and shouldered fe lines in the world. “And since you won’t rest till I tell you the rest of it, I might as well say that this big cat was the base on which Ahmad and Southley worked out their plot. They, knew about this jauguar. “When Hayward and his son bore down upon them here—after tracing them all the way from England— Southley and Ahmad saw a chance to take advantage of this big, tawny creature in the swamp. I suppose you know by now what the Hay wards were.” “Blackmailers, of course,” I an swered. Alexander gritted his teeth. “You’ve taken plenty long to guess it, but you’re right at last. “Their real name is Strumburg. They are crooks themselves. The elder Strumburg was a confederate in crime in Southley’s own youth. I use the word guardedly, Long, and I think it is true. I haven’t any doubt but that Southley’s early life wouldn’t bear investigation. But that dosen’t matter now: It’s a jo/ my boy, to come to the aid of one who has come to his own aid. Southley rose above that other life. 1 think that he escaped alter a particularly reckless Crime. It wasn’t a crime that benefitted him financially, he says; but yet the hue and cry that was raised scared him from his criminal ways. A man was shot, and though there were extenu ating circumstances, he certainjy would have gone to prison for twen ty years at least, according to the way men were sentenced in those days. First he Went to India and Africa, and made his fortune. ' Then he came to America, as Andrew Las son. And all the 'time he lived in deadly fear that the long arm of the British law would reach out for him. “Then the elder Strumburg found him put He adopted the name of Roderick, .and sent out inquiries for this Andrew Lasson. He offered a huge reward to be paid a jear after we found Him, and of course Las son—or Southley as we call ' him now—was to pay the reward. He came here at last with his vicious son, and the work of blackmail be gan. They told, old - Southley—in the gray twilight of his days—what :o expect in case he didn t come* hrough with their demands. “They said they had proofs that' ,vould put him back in prison. The error of his long years came back is never before, and he didn’t have he strength and judgment to fight it any longer. Old age was upon lim. He gave way again and again. And even today he wouldn’t be free if it hadn’t been for the real hero jf Southley Downs—his servant Ahmad Das. “Ahmad Das is a mystic. Long you’re a doctor, and you don’t be lieve in parental influence. You say it’s all bunk. Yet it is true that Ah mad Das’s mother was attacked by a tiger, that the creature died when Ahmad Das was born—and it is true that Ahmad has the most remark able, natural, catlike grace of any man I ever saw. Of course he just pretended the rest—his propensities toward creeping around on his hands and knees. It all lent toward the effect. He’s a mystic, I tell you— perhaps a believer in the theory of reincarnation of souls; and that dark, oriental mind of his conceived an idea that I don’t think most An glo-Saxons would have ever thought of. “He knew he couldn’t kill the Haywards. That was murder, and would defeat their own ends in that it might draw attention to the past life of Southley. He knew that Southley coudn’t satiate their rapa cious appetites. They would cling and suck till the last cent was gone. Southley bought those clothes—paid for their cars. Other things were planned for this winter. So Ahmad Das conceived bf‘ the desperate scheme of scaring the Strumburgs— or the Haywards as they called themselves—from the estate by means of the tiger legend. “Ahmad Das had all the material in the world to work with. He knew it when he thought out the plan. This jauguar-i—a tawny streak in the jungle, and leaving its tracks in the mud—was of course his greatest card. His own natural feline grace and Hayward’s naturally superstiti tious nature were cards, too. Wicked men usually are superstitious. Of course Ahmad couldn’t get the ja gaur into the house; but it was a simple matter to rig up that tiger skin. Every day he put a piece of meat out on a certain flat rock on the hillside. It wasn’t human blood and flesh you saw there. It was good red beef; and Ahmad Das got blood stains on his shirt carrying it down there. And it wasn’t any time at all until they got that big cat so that he stayed around the jungle at the base of the hill. The inside work couldn’t be done in the bright light, so it was necessary to pretend that the lighting plant was broken. The faint light of candles gave just the proper atmosphere. “I’m crazy about the whole scheme, Long. It worked out to perfection except for one thing. No body had counted on the jaguar kil ling Hayward.” What were you doing with that shirt—and the heef blood?” “Simply making the necessary tests—so to prove my story to the jury tomorrow. If I hadn’t Free man would have had poor Ahmad— the most faithful soul in the world —convicted and hung for murder by now—mentally, at least.” “And, lastly, how did you come to be involved in this affair at all? Did you dome just because I sent for you?” “I’m a private detective, Long,” was his quiet answer. “I don’t work for the State, although the.State em ploys me sometimes. Southley him* self wrote for me to come—to help him out- I told him I couldn’t at first—^hat was some weeks ago— but* I knew a young man that would be the greatest assistance to him in the hour of need. That youn|g man had been in two or three bad messes before—the affair at Wildmarsh, and the story of the cobra curse, and the Mole. Southley had met the young man in a visit in Tampa, and he liked him. So the next day this young chappie—and what a bone head he has been got a letter from Southley asking him down for a week’s shooting, fishing, and rest. He was a doctor, and his name was Long.” Vilas left on the night train. He packed his bag in silence, and was rowed over to the railroad track whence he could go to the station. When midnight hung still and mysterious over the water world, Josephine and I found ourselves alone on the great veranda. “Let’s walk down to the water’s edge,’ she suggested. “It’s drying lip so quickly. It will be gone in a few days more.” “And I will be gone, too,” I told her. She walked in front of me, down the narrow path. And I was strug gling for words that wouldn’t come. “Did you know, Miss Southley, that Alexander Pierce was responsi ble for my invitation here?” I asked her at last. She did not even turn her head. “I found it out tonight.” “Do you see what that means? That I was sent here to serve. And all I did was make mistakes. “They started on the day we met —when I let you go without provid ing means of ever seeing you again,” I went on. “Fate protected me then. I wonder if I can ask it to protect me now—after all the other mis takes I’ve made. And the worst of them all—the ones that hurt most— are the things that I said and thought of you.” Her voice was scarcely more than a whisper when she answered me. “They hurt me, too.” ‘They showed me up as the poor er clay,” I told her sadly. “They exposed me—a doubting and suspi cious man, and a blind man, too. One who is unable to believe in his finer instincts. Of course, I see now why you brought the pistol in your vanity bag. Tell me, Josephine! It was for no other reason than to pro tect yourself from Vilas Hayward, if worse came to worst?” “I don’t believe you are done doubting yet, or you wouldn’t ask,” she said. “That was just part of the reason, Dr. Long. The other was that I was so' afraid—so afraid, all the time.” “You were with Vilas always as part of the blackmail plot your fath er paid. You were part of the price of silence, and you submitted be cause )'ou realized something of' the power that the Haywards held over your father. What your father told the detective—was from compulsion, not from choice.” She nodded. “And for the same reason you couldn’t come to my defense that night in the den—when I struck Vi las. And the reason that you told the detective of my quarrel with Hayward that day as I was leaving was not that you were afraid Vilas would be implicated, but why was it, Josephine?” “I don’t think you should ask me that. You’ve thought ill of me—so many times. The reason was—” “Yes.” “That I wanted you to stav, Dr. Long!” We were silent a long time. And all the while I W’as searching about in a mind suddenly gone empty for the words I wanted to say. They simply wouldn’t come. And then I became aware of some thing rapturous past w'ords to tell. Something was stealing along my arm, so light that I could hardly feel it through my coat sleeve, and finally it nestled at the hollow' of mv elbowr. And then I found myself | whirling, and speaking breathless words. “You’ll forgive me, Josephine— all those things I said—and did?” I pleaded. “Oh, sweetheart—” And no mortal eyes could believe the change in her that came when I spoke these words. It was one of the miracles of these latter days. At first she simply waited—as if for me to continue. And then, after a while, she made me an answer. Part of it was just words. Part was the look that the moonlight showed on her face. But what was by a thou sand times the biggest part, the part no human being could have been hopeful enough to believe, was a thing that her arms did. And then— What happened then is a secret between us. and the marshes; and the marshes are famous for not tell ing their secrets. One of their se crets is a ring that Vilas had given Josephine; and it lies in the mud of their bottom today. After a while a great owl hooted and called from the island, hoping to repeat his tri umph of a few nights before. But Josephine turned her face just enough to laugh at him. THE END SUMMER VACATION EXCURSION TO WASHINGTON, D. C. AUGUST 8TH, 1928 The Southern Railway will operate excursion to Washington on above date on the following schedule: LEAVE ASHEVILLE 2:30 P. M. AUGUST 8TH ARRIVE WASHINGTON 8:10 A. M. AUGUST 9TH FOUR FULL DAYS IN WASHINGTON Tickets good on all trains returning (except Crescent Limited) to reach original starting point before Midnight August 13th. Through sleeping cars and coaches. Tickets good in sleepers upon payment of regular fare. FARE FROM MURPHY, BRYSON, ANDREWS, SYLVA, $15.00 BASEBALL: Philadelphia Athletics vs. Washington Senators August 12th. Fine opportunity to visit points of interest in and around . Washington. For further information call on local agent or write to the undersigned. \
The Clay County News (Hayesville, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
Aug. 3, 1928, edition 1
5
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