Page:Weird Tales Volume 24 Issue 4 (1934-10).djvu/71

Rh voice had been heard, and, after some persuasion, induced the highly amused Ronnie to do the same. With Inspector Renshaw representing the absent girl, Hugh made a very creditable reconstruction of the scene. At the conclusion the detective made a few brief entries in his note-book.

"Thank you, gentlemen, I'm much obliged for the trouble you have taken to put me wise." He snapped the clip on his note-book and thrust it into his pocket with an air at once elated and surprized. "That's the first real clue I've had handed me since I took up the case."

He spoke with such assurance that Hugh Trenchard was conscious of a sudden feeling of apprehension. "Do you imagine that Miss Endean is involved in this matter?" he demanded sharply.

A grim smile twisted the detective's features.

"Very much involved, I'm afraid," he answered, shooting a quick glance at the tense, drawn face of his questioner. "If I might be permitted to offer you a little friendly advice. Doctor Trenchard, I would warn you to keep as far away from that young lady as possible during the next few weeks."

Hugh took a quick pace forward and gripped him by the arm.

"What!—you know her?" he gasped in a voice that betrayed the pent-up emotion he was endeavoring to repress.

At the question there came a flicker of amusement in Renshaw's keen eyes. The expression was but fleeting, and was gone in an instant; but it had not passed unnoticed either by Hugh or Ronnie.

"Know her?" the detective repeated, and there was an unmistakable innuendo in his tone. "I should say we do! The girl who calls herself Miss Joan Endean has been known to the police for years!"

are moments in a man's life when his normal consciousness is overwhelmed and submerged beneath the surge of emotion brought about by a sudden and unexpected shock. Such a moment came to Hugh Trenchard when the detective's revelation regarding Joan Endean shattered the idol which he had enshrined within his heart. He sat listening with unheeding ears while Inspector Renshaw outlined his plan for the capture of the Terror of the Moor. To his surprize, he even found himself occasionally contributing to the discussion of ways and means; but for all the impression which subsequently remained on his clouded and preoccupied mind, the conversation might have been conducted in a language quite unknown to him.

The thought that the beautiful girl, whose eyes had looked so frankly and so fearlessly into his own, was a clever crook—'known to the police'—was like acid dropped into an open wound. In spite of his first suspicions caused by her conflicting stories when she had arrived at Moor Lodge on that night of storm and rain, in spite of the ingenious manner in which she had made him the decoy with a packet of blank papers, in spite, too, of the clever masquerade by which she had lured him to the empty house opposite Ronnie's surgery—in spite of all, he had believed and trusted her. Nay, more—he had loved this mystery girl who had come so strangely into his life. He knew it now—now that the blunt, matter-of-fact words of the police inspector had shown that his idol was not even composed of good honest clay. Masquerading under a false name, feigning to be engaged in a mission which must remain an inviolable secret, throwing dust in his eyes and making him the innocent accomplice in her schemes—she had fooled