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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 11, Issue 11 (February 1, 1937)

The Thirteenth Clue Or The Story Of The Signal Cabin Mystery

page 20

The Thirteenth Clue Or The Story Of The Signal Cabin Mystery

These incidents are complete in themselves, but the characters are all related.

Chapter VIII.

Gang all here?” asked Gillespie as he rapped on the table for attention with the legbone of a cannibal warrior from the Waikanae sand-dunes.

“All here,” said Teasewell, “but I don't like the sound of ‘gang.’ Talk polite like me. ‘Gang’ is Chicagoish. We are a committee of investigators endeavouring to get at the bottom of a blinking mystery, Heaven knows what, I don't. But ‘gang’—no!”

“All here but Lauder, poor fellow,” said Lloyd. “Alas, let his short and too-bacchanalian career be a lesson to all of us. That musical mug of his at our last séance—or was it a tankard—ah, how little did he dream when he introduced us to its mysteries that it would be the last swig he ever swug.”

“Not by a long chalk,” came a hearty voice from the quietly opened door. Lauder stood there in the life. “No, it's not my ghost. ‘Tis I, be not afraid.”

“But your sudden death!” gasped Teasewell. “And what the doctor said about decomposition and all that?”

“Only a rumour,” replied Lauder with a merry ringing laugh.

“Misguided medical practitioner made a bloomer, that was all. What he took for symptoms were simply some over-mature fragments of crayfish which I had inadvertently left in a pocket or two. Did'nt notice it myself, of course, being so Búlletinish, you know. I've been misreported. Death notice exaggerated. So we'll carry on, little ones.”

Fanning rose to a point of order. Could a member of the brotherhood, after being postmortemed and all, and a good deal deader than even a cray, be permitted to return as cool as a cucumber and take part in the business of the living? No, decidedly no! It wasn't done, that was all. It would establish a dangerous precedent. However could this young and—he ventured to say it in spite of all contradiction—prosperous nation forge ahead and all that if these dead-and-done-for jokers were allowed to butt in? It would clog the wheels of progress and clip its wings by drawing dead—or was it red?—herrings across the trail. I move “that Lauder be regarded as merely a Shade henceforth, a deeply regretted Shade.”

“Oh, all right, I'll be a Shade, anything for a quiet life,” said Lauder. “Last time I saw Fanning he was a policeman. Now, apparently, he has become a politician. Ah, me, he was a good policeman, but—no matter. But this is why I have come, I have a message.”

In sepulchral tones Gillespie said: “Shade, or Lauder himself, or whosoever you be, I charge you by the sacred bone I hold in my fist, and the ashes of our ancestors, give over your Message!”

“My Message,” returned Lauder, “is here.” He stepped two paces to the left. “Enter, oh Envoy of the Orient,” he said, “and announce your mission.”

In came a short, sturdy, brown man, dressed in a brown suit. He bowed to the company, advanced and bowed again. He might have been a Jap swordsman, he was so keen and muscular; he might again have been a Polynesian pearl-diver; or half-caste Indian from British Columbia.

The stranger spoke, after bowing again to Gillespie, who he perceived was the Most Noble Grand of the Lodgé.

“I have been charged by the Government, by a great Pacific Government that need not be named, with the task of assisting your honourable bliddy committee in the task of elucidating this most bliddy mystery. I am one Topside Criminal Investigator. I have seen life everywhere, I have helped quell bliddy crime in Yukon City. I have helped crowned heads in Europe lose their bliddy crowns. I have done some honourable bit of everything. I now reveal to you I am original bliddy Japanese House Boy. Ha, you start, honourable sirs! Yes, I am the he for which your Hon. Professor Shellback is on warpath with tomahawk, seeking to gag!”

Cries of “No, no! It cannot be!”

“Yes,” said the Envoy, “but let that pass. Now, to cut the matter short. I have a Clue already. I shall reveal it to you at midnight to-night on board our Harbour Board's inimitable dredge, page 21
“Enter, oh Envoy of the Orient,” he said.

“Enter, oh Envoy of the Orient,” he said.

the great dredge out yonder. I have reasons—but enough! Let us bliddy well away!”

Beckoning the members, fixing them with a mesmeric eye, the mysterious Messenger led the way out of the committee-room. They did not notice that six brown-suited brown gentlemen stepped quietly after them. At the wharf boat landing to which the stranger silently led them, a motor-launch was waiting.

“On board, gentlemen,” he said.

“What the blinky hell does this mean?” asked Gillespie. But the stranger quelled him with a glance of his glittering eyes. “Wait!” he said, “it will be the surprise of your lives, and everything depends on it. It is a matter of life or death.”

No more was said until the dredge was reached. As it was Sunday evening all the crew were ashore at Church. The six mysterious brown figures who had formed the committee's rearguard had quietly boarded the launch too. They leaped aboard the dredge. Some of them sped about their business in the darkness, the others remained behind our friends.

“Down below,” said the stranger. He led the way into the expensively furnished saloon, which was panelled with pearlshell. “Sit down,” he said. “Now I shall reveal the secret to you.” He produced from one pocket a revolver, from another an automatic pistol, and levelled them at the members of the Society.

“Bliddy disguise now thrown off, gentlemen!” he said, in tones that froze every soul with horror. “This is honourable bliddy fact of case. My Government has followed proceedings of your Society with bated breath and great disgust. It has come to conclusion that whole honourable boiling of you are Potential Bliddy Menace to peace of the Pacific, for which our more honourable Government is striving tooth and nail, hook and crook. We consider you have not bliddy feather to fly with. Therefore I have been deputed to carry out certain decision which will totally eliminate potential peril of Pacific and restore status quo in criminal world. So—“ and the terrible stranger drew a silver whistle from his left-hand trousers pocket. He blew a shrill pipe and in rushed the mysterious brown men. They spoke not a word, but they carried eloquent tomahawks.

They threw themselves on Gillespie and his comrades, who were in turns hot with indignation, and frozen with horror, and petrified with amazement.

The stranger threw aside a curtain. His gang, or whatever they were, dragged forth mysterious heavy blocks of a dirty white hue. They quickly tied these to the prisoners.

The stranger grinned fiendishly as he watched this operation. “Blocks of salt,” he explained. “I derived that bliddy clever idea from dear old Edgar Wallace. You remember it? Salt remains solid block long enough to carry you through bottom of dredge to bottom of sea, then melts and not a trace is left to show how deed was done. Oh, very clever! I wonder where Edgar got it? Anyhow, down you go—down, down, and Potential Menace is gone bung, what!”

Gillespie, recognising the inevitable, sang in solemn accents: “Down went McGinty to the bottom of the sea,

Dressed in his best suit of clothes.”

“Oh, don't, don't” moaned Lloyd. “In a few moments we will be no more!”

“Too bliddy well, you will!” said the stranger, fiendishly as before. “You see that lever there.” He touched a machine in the side of the dredge. “At my touch you will be precipitated through the bottom of the dredge. It will open to dump you like a load of mud—see! Now, there's no time to lose. Down, and out goes the Menace Gang!”

“They used to say in England once upon a time, that the seductive cigarette would sooner or later supplant the pipe altogether, but “the trade,” in the Old Land, says that pipe smoking there was never more popular than at the present time. Parsons, lawyers, doctors, politicians are all patrons of the pipe and Mr. Baldwin's Cherrywood has become world-famous. New Zealanders smoke millions of cigarettes every year, but the pipe still holds pride of place with smokers innumerable in Maoriland. As for tobacco, tastes proverbially differ, but it's no less true that “toasted” is first favourite with smoker throughout the length and breadth of the Dominion. The five genuine toasted brands, Cut Plug No. 10 (Bullshead), Cavendish, Navy Cut No. 3 (Bulldog), Riverhead Gold and Desert Gold are in incessant demand, for it's now generally recognised that while they give the most enjoyable smoke it's possible to get, they are (thanks to toasting) the purest and least harmful of any tobaccos manufactured. And you never tire of them! Once you take to toasted you'll never want to change.*

“The stranger quelled him with a glance of his glittering eyes.”

“The stranger quelled him with a glance of his glittering eyes.”

Hark! What is that row on deck? A shot, a whistle, shouts—hearty British shouts!

“Ha! Saved, saved!” gasped Teasewell. “Saved at the very last tick!” He fainted.

(To be Continued.)

page 22 page 23
The locomotive hauling the train illustrated above was specially built for the Adelaide Centennial Exhibition and embodies the latest improvements for service on the Trans-Australian Railway.

The locomotive hauling the train illustrated above was specially built for the Adelaide Centennial Exhibition and embodies the latest improvements for service on the Trans-Australian Railway.