CHAPTER XIV
NO FIREARMS CERTIFICATE
IT WAS only when they reached the spot where they had to wait for their ’bus back to Central, that Bobby broke the silence by saying abruptly:
“Well, Ford, what do you think of that young woman?”
“She’s a deep ’un,” Ford said with conviction. “Butter!” he said. “Where’s she get it from?”
“She may have learned her cooking in France,” Bobby suggested. “She could get it there, I suppose. So could the Banner Agency people. What I would like to know is what she’s after? Hugh Newton’s murderer or Kenneth Banner’s safety? Or something on her own, something quite different?”
“What about Jordan having left that suit-case of his with her?” Ford asked. “She’s a deep ’un,” he repeated.
“I shouldn’t say that exactly,” Bobby said, “it’s more being utterly ruthless in pursuing her aims, whatever they are. Not going to let anything turn her aside. Not once she’s got going. That sort of thing; and when a woman’s like that you might as well try to shift her as shift a stone wall—with anything less than high explosive. Looks as if we were at a dead end for the time.”
Their ’bus arrived then to bear them back to Central—three ’buses in fact, touching each other in accord with the convoy system, the first ’bus, of course, crammed to suffocation and the third empty.
For the next day or two indeed no progress was made, no new developments occurred. Bobby himself took little part in what little was done, he had plenty on his desk to keep him busy. Ford, however, kept hard at it, making wholly unsuccessful efforts to discover whether a suit-case had been left on deposit anywhere by anyone answering to the description of Jasper Jordan. Unobtrusive and equally unsuccessful efforts were made to trace the present whereabouts and past history of Mrs Abel-Adam. Discreet watch was kept on Jordan’s goings and comings, but of this he was so soon aware, and took such delight in leading his trailers on the most fantastic excursions, that it was soon called off.
“Jordan,” Bobby said over the ’phone to the D.D.I. (Divisional Detective Inspector, that is), “has a childish love of showing off. No need to encourage it, he’s conceited enough already. I should suggest letting up for the time. Just ask your men to keep their eyes open. Any more visits by Mr Pyne to Jordan I should like to hear about. I have it in mind to pay Pyne another call as soon as I can find time. That flat of his seems of interest to some people. Have you done anything about his application for a licence to possess a pistol?”
“Turned it down,” said the D.D.I. with decision. “Wouldn’t be safe. He would be shooting himself first thing we knew—or his wife perhaps.”
“Quite possible,” Bobby agreed, remembering a certain vagueness about the position of a safety catch.
With that he said good-bye and hung up, but soon was called to the ’phone again, this time to be put through to Seemouth.
“Thought you might like to know,” said Seemouth, “that Ossy Dow has left for London by the afternoon express. He’s been drinking rather freely at the ‘Blue Bear’ and talking in a wild sort of way. Rambling along and muttering to himself. One bit of gossip is that he has said once or twice that someone might hang soon, but it wouldn’t be him. It’s since your visit. Upset him quite a lot apparently.”
“Well, that’s all to the good,” Bobby answered. “Nothing like stirring things up. Thanks a lot for letting us know. I’ll have the train met and get a man to trail him. He’s a cunning bird though, and he’ll probably be good at covering up. I wonder if his remark about not being the one to hang comes from optimism or from fear. Too much to hope, I suppose, that he’s coming to see us. No such luck. Personally, I think he isn’t far from the top of the list in the Hugh Newton case.”
“I quite agree,” declared Seemouth. “We’ve always thought him a wrong ’un, though there’s never been anything much to lay hold of. Very often there isn’t with the worst of ’em.”
With which profound reflection Seemouth hung up, only to be on the line again within half an hour.
“Something else now,” Seemouth announced. “Can’t say we don’t give you all the news that is news, can you? There’s a ‘Closed Temporarily’ notice on the door of the Banner Agency office, and Miss Guire went off in a taxi to the Seemouth Aerodrome. She got a charter plane to take her to London. Looks as if she meant to trail Ossy and see what he’s up to. Is she in the running, too, do you think? Hope not. A fine girl,” and the anxiety in these last few words was quite plain.
“Too soon by long odds to think of that,” Bobby said reassuringly. “Thanks again quite a lot for tipping us off so well. I’ll arrange to have her trailed—easier job most likely than the Ossy one. That is, if she is there to meet him and if he duly arrives. He may double on his trail, and she may not turn up at the station. But it does look very much as if something were brewing—I should say cooking, the way cookery is all over this business.”
“Miss Guire is a real dab at it, too,” the Seemouth man observed.
“Oh, Lord,” Bobby groaned. “Are you sure? I thought she was just ordinary.”
“Well,” came the response, “I was told she would take over the kitchen at her digs on a Sunday sometimes, and the oftener the better as far as her landlady was concerned. She seems to have told the neighbours Miss Guire could do it a treat, and any hotel would be glad of a chance to snap her up.”
Seemouth rang off then, and Bobby went back to his desk, thinking of all the things he would do to the next person who mentioned cooking to him. However, fortunately there was no reference to cooking in the reports that now began to come in. Imra had duly arrived by air, but had made no attempt to meet Ossy’s train. From the aerodrome she had gone direct to a large popular hotel and there booked a room for the night. She had a small suit-case with her which she had left at the hotel when emerging presently on what seemed to be an ordinary shopping expedition. Ossy, too, had gone straight to an hotel, in his case a smaller one near Waterloo station. He had not been seen to leave it, and so presumably was still there.
“Question is,” Bobby mused, “whether they will stay put, or whether they will slip off again on the quiet. Too little to go on to justify keeping a full-time watch. But I’ll see if Pyne has anything to tell us.”
Later on therefore Bobby knocked at the door of the Mayfair Crescent flat. It was opened cautiously by a lady Bobby took to be Mrs Pyne, and when he explained his identity and his errand he was ushered into the room he had seen before. Mr Pyne himself appeared at once.
“I have been seriously considering,” he explained in his slow, formal way after he had fulfilled the usual rites of hospitality—the offering of a chair and a cigarette, both accepted—“the advisability or otherwise of requesting an appointment. In my view, not hastily adopted, the refusal to issue to me a firearms certificate and the confiscation of my means of self-defence—namely, a Browning automatic pistol—is arbitrary and impermissible. Two reasons were advanced, namely: (a) Risk of accident. This is entirely hypothetical, and I do not accept its validity. (b) The protection given to me and to my family in the ordinary course of the work and duties of the Metropolitan Police. I pointed out, without, I trust, undue asperity, that this vaunted protection had lamentably failed to save me from the criminal assault of which I informed you recently. I protest strongly therefore against any such attempt to deprive me of the means to exercise my natural right to self-protection, means in my view, more especially essential to one who like myself has not been endowed with the physical advantages usually possessed by those engaged in burglary and other avocations of a similar nature.”
“Very cogently argued, if I may say so,” Bobby agreed. “But the plain fact is that the close season for burglars extends all the year round. I believe the law is that while you have the right, in fact, the duty, to arrest any burglar, you must have satisfactory proof that he is one. It could be argued that his presence in the house at night might have some other explanation. You ma
y use force only if he resists or flies. I imagine that resists would mean that he must be allowed to get his blow in first. After that, you may proceed to use force yourself—if still in a condition to do so.”
“And ‘flies’?” asked Mr Pyne thoughtfully. “What would you consider the full implication of ‘flies’ as here used?”
“That the burglar is entitled to a fair start,” Bobby answered at once. “You must be sure he is really running away and that he has heard your summons to stop. Then you may use force as before—if he resists. The rights of all citizens, even when burgling, must be respected. And if we in the police forget that, we get it in the neck.”
Mr Pyne put his finger-tips together and examined them carefully. Then he said:
“I consider myself a law-abiding citizen, as indeed my position at the Ministry of Priorities demands. But I consider myself also as fully justified in providing myself with such means of self-defence as I can secure. We are not yet a police state—a phrase so often used in protest against the enforcement of the most ordinary and necessary regulations. In fact, I don’t care a damn what the law says. I’m jolly well going to defend myself if I’m attacked,” and this outburst was accompanied with such a knowing nod of schoolboy self-satisfaction as could hardly have escaped anyone’s observation, and certainly did not escape Bobby’s. But all he said was:
“Well, of course, I fully agree there’s a lot to be said for that point of view. Only it’s not the official one. What I really called for was to ask if you had noticed any fresh signs of interest in your flat or anyone else showing a tendency to hang about here. We’ve been working on the Hugh Newton case, and though we’ve not made much progress we do seem to have caused some uneasiness in at least one quarter. We are still very much in the dark though with very little idea of what’s behind it all. You know Mr Jasper Jordan, I think?”
“I don’t exactly know him,” Mr Pyne answered, looking, however, rather startled by the sudden introduction of the name. “Why? What makes you think I do?”
“Well, it does seem as if in some way or another he may be involved. We don’t know. He calls himself the Enemy of Society, doesn’t he?”
“An attractive appellation,” Mr Pyne said. “It makes its appeal. One does occasionally become aware of a feeling that there is rather too much society lying around at present. A return possibly to more primitive conditions—one doesn’t know.”
“Short, nasty, and brutish,” Bobby quoted. “You called to see Mr Jordan one evening recently, didn’t you?”
“Indeed,” Mr Pyne said cautiously. “May I ask what gave you such an impression?”
“Oh, well,” Bobby explained, “we’ve been keeping an eye on Mr Jordan, rather to his amusement apparently, and you were seen paying him a visit. After your adventure with your burglars, all the police in the district know you by sight, and so your visit was noticed and it was mentioned.”
“I have met him,” Mr Pyne admitted then. “He called here after the incident to which you have just referred. Surely you don’t mean you think he may be the murderer?”
“No question of that at present,” Bobby answered, and added: “But it has crossed my mind while talking to you that Mr Jordan is very much the sort of person who might be asked to secure a pistol for a gentleman considering he has a right to have one and fully determined to—police regulations or not.”
“I have no comment to make,” Mr Pyne said after a long pause.
CHAPTER XV
ABOUT LIMPETS
THAT ENDED the interview, and Bobby then went on to West King Street to pay another visit there to Mr Jasper Jordan. It was growing late now, and dusk was falling, for Bobby, before this, had been home for that meal Olive was accustomed to designate as high tea, dinner, or supper, according to the hour at which Bobby arrived to partake of it and the time she had been allowed to give to its preparation.
As now he approached the basement occupied by Jasper, he saw coming up the area steps a young man. He seemed in haste and hurried away, not quite running but very near it, in the opposite direction from that in which Bobby was approaching. Bobby increased his own speed instinctively. He hardly knew why. The young man did the same. Probably he very well knew why. A cruising taxi came up, going the same way. The young man hailed it, jumped on before it had stopped. The taxi drove off. Bobby stood still and watched it go, wondering if he was letting his imagination run away with him, or whether there had been a deliberate and somewhat panicky attempt to avoid him.
“If it was like that, well, why?” Bobby asked himself, half-aloud. “On general principles? An old acquaintance, not anxious for us to meet again? Or—?” He paused to put down the exact time in the note-book he always carried. He said, still half-aloud: “Or does it mean Pyne rang up to give a warning? Coming along very nicely, our Pyne, for a staid, respectable, hidebound Civil Servant, well up in the carpet hierarchy. Repressed tendencies breaking loose? The strong wine of adventure going to his head? He’ll be burning his fingers pretty badly if it’s that, unless he looks out. He can’t surely have anything to do with limpets?”
Bobby made up his mind very firmly that he couldn’t believe that, and then decided, equally firmly, that in the world of to-day you can believe anything except the probable. Rather pleased with this reflection, which he considered was worthy of Oscar Wilde, he descended the area steps and knocked. Jordan made a prompt appearance. Bobby noticed that he did not seem unduly surprised. He said:
“Making this your home from home, aren’t you?”
“One would think you weren’t glad to see me,” Bobby protested in the most pained tone he could manage to produce. “I just thought I would like a bit of a chat, that’s all.”
“Bit of a chat indeed,” Jasper growled. “I know your bits of chat. Come in if you want to. Nothing to hide.”
He led the way back into the room that seemed to serve him both as living-room and work-room. It looked, Bobby thought, much tidier than when he had seen it before, as if someone had been busy with broom and duster. Indeed, a hand-brush and a dust-pan, well filled, in a corner suggested that this operation had been recently interrupted before completion, and he wondered who had been carrying it out. Not Jasper, he was fairly sure, and a little late for the charwoman he had never heard that Jasper in fact employed. Jasper was now pushing forward a chair with a general air of regretting the necessity. He took up his own favourite position with his back to the mantelpiece and said:
“Well, what is it now?”
“Chiefly,” Bobby answered, “about that pistol you got for Mr Pyne he asked you for when he was refused a firearms certificate.”
“Has the little rat been squealing?” Jasper demanded angrily.
“Now, now,” Bobby said, “you mustn’t call a highly respectable Civil Servant a little rat. Most improper. And he hasn’t been squealing. It’s just that I’ve been, what some people would call, guessing. What I prefer to call intelligent deduction from observed facts. Putting two and two together and deducing—or guessing—that they may make four.”
“What do you mean? Trying to be funny clever, aren’t you?”
“Rather a good expression,” Bobby applauded. “Funny clever! I must remember it. Admirable. Funny clever! The world’s ideal at the moment.” He paused, saw that Jasper, so baited, was on the point of losing entirely his self-control, decided that that was not at all desirable, decided that Jasper’s self-conceit and belief in his own superiority had now been sufficiently shaken to make him at least a little more amenable to questioning, and went on: “You see when one of the two twos to be put together in case they do make four is (a) a gentleman fully resolved to get hold of a pistol unreasonably denied him by mere red tape, a thing he hates and resents, and the second of the two is (b) a gentleman who ranks himself as an enemy of society; and when (a) is seen visiting (b) and when in addition (a) smirks—a fair word, I think—in a most marked manner, with a sort of sugary self-satisfaction when the subject of pistols comes up—t
hen guessing is not the word. Definitely not. A gift if you ask me.”
“Bluff and balderdash,” Jordan grunted, trying to keep his end up. “I suppose you think that’s all very smart?”
“Well, I rather hoped you would,” Bobby answered wistfully. “The worst of explanations. Explain, and people think nothing of it. Obvious. Wrap it in mystery, and they think you’re a wizard.”
“Well, what do you think you are going to do about it?” demanded Jasper.
“Nothing at all,” Bobby told him. “I can’t prove in court all the things I know. Too easy if I could. Pyne may very likely shoot himself. Or even somebody else. I hope it won’t be me. He has a way with safety catches I don’t find at all attractive. By the way, there was a young man leaving here just as I arrived. I thought he seemed in a hurry. Anyhow, when I rather hurried to catch up he didn’t seem to want to wait.”
“Why should he? What did you want to ‘catch up’ for? Can’t you leave anyone alone?”
“Not,” Bobby answered, and now his voice had again that hard, grim note in it that sometimes it could assume, even without conscious intention on his part, “not if there seems even the smallest possibility that something may be known about—murder. Anyhow, this young man jumped on a passing taxi that came up just then, and was off and away in minutes.” Bobby had reverted now to the light, bantering tone he had been using at first and that he felt baffled and bewildered Jasper. “Off and away,” he repeated, “and nothing left for me to do but whistle: ‘Will ye no’ come back again?’ Was his name Kenneth Banner?”
Strange Ending: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 11