Mystery Villa (15 page)

‘Why not?' Bobby asked. ‘Has
Sunday Photos
nobbled him, too?'

‘No, he's keeping out of the way on his own, apparently. From what I can make out, Humphreys caught him at the till, and threatened him with the police, so he's taken care to be missing ever since. Funny thing is, the landlord says the rent was in arrears until recently, and then Humphreys cleared it off and paid two quarters in advance. What do you make of that?'

‘Sounds as if business had been picking up,' observed Bobby cautiously.

The newspaper man made sounds indicative of disgust at so prudent a response.

‘Not giving anything away, are you?' he commented. ‘The landlord says he's never known it happen before, but, naturally, he didn't object, or ask any questions. Can't you people find out what's become of the little blighter?'

‘I've been run off my legs the last few days,' Bobby responded. ‘I didn't even know Humphreys had cleared out. But I don't see what good he would be to you. We took a statement from him, you know, long ago. I don't think he had anything useful to say. He never seems even to have seen Miss Barton, and so long as he got his weekly order and his weekly pay he never gave her a thought – her order wasn't big enough to interest him much. Even if you found him, there's nothing you could get out of him.'

The
Daily Announcer
man looked at Bobby pityingly.

‘It's a poor journalist,' he said, ‘who can't make a thundering good story out of nothing, only, of course, you've got to have their signature to confirm, in case it's challenged. In fact,' he added reflectively, ‘I prefer it when they've nothing to say. You're less' – he paused, searching for a word – ‘less – trammelled,' he concluded triumphantly, having found one at last. ‘Less trammelled – that's what you are. And if one of those blighters from
Daily Intelligence
or
Sunday Photos
spot him first, they'll call it a scoop, and a nice telling off I shall get.'

Bobby had no consolation to offer, but he did think it worth while to go round to Humphreys' shop and make a few enquiries. He remembered the little man had talked of selling his business in order to buy another in Bournemouth; apparently he hadn't sold, but closed down, and had even paid two quarters' rent in advance. This last fact, when Bobby had confirmed it, seemed to him so unusual that he reported it to Mitchell.

‘I thought it might be worth following up, in case there's something in it,' he explained.

‘What?' asked Mitchell.

‘I don't know,' Bobby answered. ‘It's hardly probable, but there is just the chance that when Miss Barton left Tudor Lodge she went to Humphreys and asked him to help her find a fresh hiding-place. She had money, most likely, and would be able to offer him good pay – that is, assuming she hadn't already sold all her jewellery.'

‘It may be worth looking into,' agreed Mitchell. ‘Lord knows, there isn't much we've got we can follow up! How can you trace people when about the only description you have is that the girl was a pretty blonde with fair hair and blue eyes, all togged up in the latest style – and, thank heaven, England stands where it did so far as pretty girls go, and pretty girls still stand where they did so far as the latest thing in togs goes. Then about the one man all we know is that he wore plus-fours, and wasn't seen very clearly; and about the other that he was young and dark, and sported a pistol and a rather specially lurid tie.' Mitchell paused, and began again to drum upon the table, as was his habit when some new idea struck him. ‘Might be something in that,' he said musingly. ‘Not that a lurid taste in ties is much to trace a man by. But first, what about Humphreys? It's a bit odd he should have vanished, too, and odder still that he should have paid two quarters' rent in advance and yet closed down the business. How do you propose to start tracing him?'

‘Well, sir,' Bobby explained, ‘he talked rather a lot about Bournemouth, when we saw him – as if he meant to go there if he ever got money enough. He told us he had done well with garden-stuff, and had worked up the business a lot since he had gone in for that as a new line. He boasted in the same way to some of his neighbours as well.'

‘How do you mean, garden-stuff? Greengroceries?'

‘No, sir. Seeds, tools, artificial manures, garden lime, lawn sand, and so on. Doesn't sound a profitable line in Brush Hill, but he told everyone he had done very well with it.'

‘Well, we'll try Bournemouth,' Mitchell said. ‘It'll be easy enough to find if any new business has been opened, or any old one taken over, by a man named Humphreys, or answering his description. Draw up as complete a description as you can and let Ferris have it, and I'll tell him to carry on. May as well try other seaside places as well. Shouldn't be much difficulty in finding him. He can't have any reason for lying low, unless, of course, Miss Barton really ran for it because she thought her secret was known now the Saratoga trunk has been seen open. She was more or less in touch with Humphreys through her purchases, and she may have gone to him and given him money to help her to some fresh hiding-place. Perhaps that's how he got the money to pay rent in advance, and why he only put his shutters up – he means to come back and start again some day.'

But Bournemouth was drawn blank. So were all the other towns, at the seaside and elsewhere, where enquiries were made. Nowhere did it seem that any new business had been opened by anyone answering the description of Humphreys, and once again the investigation was at a complete standstill. The newspapers began to lose interest, discovering new amazing sensations to proclaim in their headlines, and Bobby, going home after another long and tiring and utterly futile day, found himself staring into a hosier's window, attracted, in spite of himself, by a remarkable collection of ties of patterns so strange, of colours so startling, of designs so staggering, that the general impression was that of one of Euclid's propositions, gone insane through studying Einstein, crossed by a neo-post-impressionist turned Bolshevist.

But then, with a certain relief, Bobby understood that it was merely a collection of ‘old boy' ties he was looking at, and he remembered vaguely that Mitchell had once said something about a ‘specially lurid tie' there might be ‘something in'. He had not seemed to follow up the remark, but now from that almost incredible tumult in the shop-window Bobby's eye gradually selected a pattern of green and yellow bars spotted with blue and red. As though drawn by the awful fascination of the thing, Bobby entered the shop and enquired about the particular brainstorm that had attracted his attention.

‘St Polycarp's, sir,' the assistant told him, not without pride. ‘Supposed by school tradition to represent what St Polycarp said during his martyrdom on the grid-iron – not the orthodox story, I'm told, but much cherished by the school.'

‘I don't think I know it,' Bobby said. ‘Where does it hang out?'

‘In the Bicester country, sir,' the assistant explained. ‘One of the smaller schools, but very well thought of, and very ancient – founded by Edward the Confessor for the sons of destitute lepers, but limited by later statute to two hundred pupils. Always a waiting list, because only boys of the very best and wealthiest families are admitted, and besides, owing to the rich endowment, very low fees as well.'

‘Interesting,' said Bobby. ‘I'll take that one, please.'

‘Yes, sir,' said the assistant hesitatingly. ‘Very chaste line of ties here, sir, only half the price.'

‘But I want that one,' said Bobby.

‘Yes, sir; just so, sir,' said the assistant. ‘Beautiful thing here, sir – in purple and gold, very restrained and gentlemanly, only three and nine.'

‘But–' said Bobby.

‘Yes, sir; exactly, sir,' said the assistant. ‘The secretary of Old Polycarpians is very particular, sir, in asking us not to sell to any but Old Boys. Now here, sir, is a very tender, chaste design–'

But Bobby stretched out a long arm, captured the atrocity they were talking about, dropped the three halfcrowns it was valued at on the counter, and walked out, and the assistant turned despairingly to a colleague.

‘Can you beat it?' he demanded. ‘Doesn't even know where St Polycarp's is, and then buys their tie to swank around in – well, I ask you. No wonder,' said the assistant, shaking his head moodily, ‘there's all this Communism and Socialism about. What we want is the Blackshirts – they'd soon put a stop to that sort of thing.' He fingered, lovingly and softly, another Polycarpian tie. ‘Swell,' he murmured. ‘Might borrow it for to-night, now I'm taking Gladys Amelia to the new Mae West picture.'

The registrar of St Polycarp's, that ancient and honourable foundation, was a major and a reverend, as was only suitable, for St Polycarp's bestowed upon Army and upon Church an almost equal approval – and that is saying something, for there was not much except St Polycarp's that St Polycarp's really approved. He was also an Honourable, which was almost equally suitable, since the House of Lords was the one institution to which St Polycarp's paid real deference. When Bobby appeared he was on the point of setting out for a round of golf – St Polycarp's concentrated on golf, considering football slightly vulgar, cricket a trifle colonial, and tennis a bit international, and considering itself called upon, in these slack days, to set its face steadily against the vulgar, the colonial, and the international.

On Bobby's explaining his errand, the registrar showed himself a good deal worried. For him the world consisted of two great divisions – the recognisable, who were Old Boys, and the unrecognisable, or, in Indian parlance, the untouchable, who were not. Bobby he did not quite know how to place, for Bobby was undeniably an Old Boy, though only of the minor, on the fringe, variety, but still within the pale, while yet, as a sergeant of police, he could scarcely be so considered. A confusing world, it has become, sighed the registrar, and, indeed, values are no longer as once they were – simple and clear cut and plain for plain and simple and clear-cut minds.

The registrar therefore offered Bobby a cigarette as an Old Boy, as a police-sergeant omitted to shake hands with him, and continued to show much hesitation over Bobby's request to be informed of the names and addresses of those boys who had left the school in recent years.

The head master had to be consulted, a phone message put through to the noble lord who was chairman of the governing board, and nearly half a day wasted before at last the information Bobby required was put at his disposal.

Fortunately St Polycarp's was a school as small as it was exclusive. Only about forty boys departed every year. Therefore, if Mrs Rice's estimate of the age of the young man she had seen could be trusted – and Bobby had much faith in Mrs Rice's powers of observation, trained as they were by long hours at her window, keeping an eye on her neighbours' comings and goings – then, during the ten years that covered the probable date of his leaving the school, there were, roughly speaking, about four hundred names to be considered. But a good many of these could be eliminated at once. One or two had died, some were known to be abroad, or it was remembered that the description of tall, dark and good-looking could not possibly apply to them – ‘Tubby Brown', ‘Carrots Smith', and ‘Cross-eyed Jones' were, so to speak, automatically disqualified.

In the end Bobby was left with a list of about a hundred names and addresses to work on, of which he was able to tick off about twenty as clearly coming within the tall, dark, good-looking ambit, and, not dissatisfied with his day's work, Bobby took his leave, though not till the registrar had warned him to remember that, unhappily, not all who wore the old school tie did so of natural right.

‘There are painful cases,' the registrar admitted. ‘I myself have seen, serving in a grocer's shop...' He paused and shuddered slightly, but went on bravely enough. ‘I spoke about it... a regrettable insolence was shown... even Old Boys themselves... One informed me recently, appearing to consider it humorous, that his jobbing gardener always wore an Old Polycarpian tie, as coming from the neighbourhood... He refused to take action in the matter, on the ground that Old Boys were a jolly sight easier to find than working gardeners who knew their job... Subversive ideas are so widely spread to-day, one fears the wearing of a tie is no longer conclusive proof...'

‘That's the snag,' admitted Bobby gloomily. ‘But our job is mostly all snag. We just go on bumping our heads against stone walls in the hope that one day we shall find a soft spot. In the wall, I mean, of course,' he added hurriedly.

All this had taken so much time that it was past midnight before Bobby got home. In the morning he presented himself and his list to Mitchell, and, being told to carry on, proceeded to go systematically through his score of possibles. One he found had been in gaol that day, and another getting married. A third was playing cricket for his county, and a fourth occupied attending an inquest on an old woman who, while trying to cross the road, had got in front of his new hundred-mile-an-hour sports car (fortunately the coroner and the jury had been very nice about it, and had tendered him their deepest sympathy), and for various other reasons quite half of the rest of the list could be disregarded.

Five or six of the others had addresses in or near London, and Bobby put Mrs Rice – rescued from the clutches of
Daily Intelligence
, but promise made that no other paper should be allowed to know about her – in a car, and took her round to visit them all in succession.

One was demonstrating golf clubs in a big London stores. ‘No,' said Mrs Rice decidedly. ‘His nose is a snub.' One was in a lawyer's office in New Square. ‘I said goodlooking,' Mrs Rice pointed out, with some severity. ‘What that young man has is more a calamity than a face.' Another was run to earth in a Chelsea studio. ‘No,' said Mrs Rice, still more decidedly. ‘There wasn't any of that wild look in the eyes about the one I saw.' Yet another was an officer in the guards. ‘No,' said Mrs Rice. ‘But I'm glad to have seen him,' she added simply. The last held some position in a wireless factory but could not be seen, as he had left early in order to test at home details of a new invention of his own he was endeavouring to persuade his employers to take up. They got his address, however, and found it to be beyond Purley, involving rather a long ride. However, Mrs Rice had no objection; it was not every day that she was treated to long motor-drives, and when they reached their destination the first thing they saw was a tall, dark, good-looking young man strolling from an outbuilding at a little distance up to the house.