The Secret Search: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  While they had been talking, they had made their way back to the police station. There they parted, after Bobby had warned both Ford and the station sergeant to expect him back first thing in the morning—eight o’clock, most likely. “Which means,” he said mournfully, “what with all I’ll have to see about first, and one thing and another, that I shall have to get up at six at the latest. Who would want to be a policeman?”

  “I often wonder that myself,” said the station sergeant; and added, with a glance at Ford to let him understand that grumbling was a privilege reserved for seniors only: “Fine chance for young fellows, though. Very different from what it was in my young days.”

  Bobby nodded in grave agreement with this sentiment, that has indeed echoed down the ages ever since it was first enunciated—probably by Adam. He retired then to find his car and drive home.

  Duly and reluctantly he rose from his bed next morning at the requisite hour, so as to have time to do a little ‘phoning and to make sure nothing had come in by the first post requiring immediate attention. At Southam he arrived at the grim hour arranged. Constable Ford, in uniform, was waiting for him near Acres Lane. At Mr Smith’s residence they knocked, and there appeared Mrs Day. She was a small, active-looking, red-faced woman, with grey hair, and a rather flat face, in which a large, well-shaped nose stood out prominently between two small, bright grey eyes, and above a big mouth with thick lips. Behind these showed strong, irregular teeth, plainly still her own. She regarded the two men with a startled, even frightened air, as would perhaps most women on finding a policeman on their door-step at so comparatively early an hour.

  Bobby, at his most genial—and how hard it is to be genial when you are still half asleep and would like to be wholly so—explained that certain suspicious characters had been noticed in the vicinity and that Constable Ford had seen one in the garden of this house during the previous night.

  “About ten o’clock or a little later, wasn’t it, constable?” Bobby asked.

  “Yes, sir, just about the half-hour,” Ford agreed. “Ugly-looking customer, too. I didn’t like his looks at all.”

  Bobby was a little inclined to consider this was a somewhat unnecessary painting of the lily, so to say. He gave Ford a sideways look, but Ford had as innocent an air as Bobby himself might once, in his younger days, have assumed in similar circumstances. But he noticed also a sudden pallor on Mrs Day’s large, florid face and something like panic that seemed to show and flicker in those small grey eyes of hers. It was with some difficulty that she managed to gasp out:

  “What . . . what was he like?”

  “Well, ma’am—” Ford began, but here Bobby interposed:

  “Smallish man, walked like a cat,” he said. “Was that it?” And now it was plain that though she had not waited for Ford’s reply, only by a great effort did she control herself.

  “I . . . you had better see Mr Smith,” she stammered, and hurried away, walking as one who only with difficulty kept balance and control.

  “Put the wind up her all right, sir, that you have,” Ford commented. “Were you thinking of some one in particular?”

  “Cy King’s a smallish man, and he walks like a cat,” Bobby said. “Looks as if Mrs Day thought it might be him and knows enough of him not to like the idea. And where does that fit?”

  Ford, somewhat unnecessarily, said he didn’t know. They had been left standing on the doorstep, and there they had to wait some minutes before Mrs Day came back. And that she had been fortifying herself from the bottle of gin Bobby had seen on the kitchen table the previous night was fairly obvious. She said Mr Smith had not finished dressing, but would be down in a few minutes, and Bobby asked if they might have a look round outside to see, as he put it, if their nocturnal visitor had left any trace of himself or his doings? Mrs Day consented at once, and Bobby and Ford made an admiring tour of the garden. For the garden was one that was clearly kept with that kind of loving care and attention to which all created things, animate or inanimate, make their response.

  “If you ask me, sir,” observed Ford, more interested in allotments than in flower-gardens, “that Mrs Day was precious glad to get rid of us.”

  “I think so,” Bobby agreed. “She wanted time to pull herself together. Had a bad scare, either for herself or for Sunday, as they call him, if he is really her son. Goes to show Cy is trying to gate-crash on something good—only what? I don’t like the look of things at all.”

  He walked over to a greenhouse at a little distance, and picked up a small screw-driver which had evidently been lying there all night. He brought it back and gravely tried it against slight marks on the back door.

  “Fits a treat, don’t it, sir?” Ford remarked.

  “Plainly the instrument used,” Bobby agreed. “Now there’s evidence to justify us in asking Mr Smith to allow us to keep a specially sharp look-out—and to justify us in asking a few questions, too.”

  CHAPTER IV

  “NUNKS, DARLING”

  THEY WENT back to the house. Mrs Day was not visible, but the front door was still open, and a voice from above, from the head of the stairs, asked them to wait in the room on the right. Mr Smith would be down in a few minutes. Bobby recognized the voice as that of the tall girl who, in the ‘Glorious’ cinema, had so solicitously warned Mr Smith against the risk of catching cold. A full, rich voice that with its odd, harsh undertones was not easily forgotten.

  The room, that in obedience to this directive from on high Bobby and Ford now entered, was large and well proportioned, with a pleasant view over the garden, but so crammed with all sorts and kinds of furniture that the first impression was one merely of confusion. Only slowly did the visitor begin to realize that almost every bit of furniture in the room was what is called a museum piece. But all huddled together in the most glorious muddle that can be imagined of style, period and wood. No pedantic respect here for old conventions about not mixing oak and walnut, mahogany and satinwood. The chairs and table in the centre were Sheraton, in satinwood, of his best early period, their pure, clean aristocracy of line a joy to look at. The centre of this table, though, was occupied by a heavy old knife-box in mahogany. Against one wall stood a fine Welsh dresser of grand, simple old lines, and next to it was a really superb Queen Anne walnut bureau. A lovely piece. Near the fireplace was an old Elizabethan chest, bearing the original owner’s arms and the date 1588, and on it was incongruously perched a jewel-cabinet by William Vile, a companion though smaller piece to that in the Rococo style made by him for a wedding present from George the Third to his bride. Then in the large bay window was a Buhl library table, dazzling in its magnificence of brass, ivory and tortoiseshell. But drawn up against it was a north-country ladder-back chair. An odd mixture, bringing together Yorkshire farmhouse and French chateau. On it, on this Buhl treasure of a table—for treasure it certainly was—stood a typewriter and a telephone, and an ancient beautifully carved Bible-box, now sadly reduced from its high estate to become a container for telephone directories.

  Ford remained standing by the door, both impressed and worried by surroundings he felt he would like to understand but did not. Bobby, picking his way carefully through the maze of ancient splendour, tried, and failed, to find in so strange a medley some clue to the character and disposition of its owner. Hard to reconcile the knowledge and taste and natural instinct for the beautiful in the particular, with the curious disregard of, or lack of feeling for, essential harmony in the general. How could, he wondered, any one eager to possess such lovely old things be yet capable of throwing them all together like this—of putting an old farmhouse ladder-back chair against a Buhl library table? He reflected sagely that there’s no accounting for the vagaries of human taste and character, even though environment, education, the accidents of life, can explain much.

  Bobby knew something about painting, an art which he practised occasionally when he had time, but very little about old furniture. No one, however, with any feeling for line and form could fail t
o be impressed by the walnut bureau or fail to recognize its beauty. He was touching it for the sheer pleasure of feeling that lovely wood when the door opened and there entered the little old man of the ‘Glorious’ cinema. He looked more fragile now than he had done when wrapped in his overcoat and muffler, and he peered up at Bobby from watery and ageing eyes that no longer saw clearly. Nor did he look in a very good humour. Bobby, indeed, was inclined to guess that good temper was not the old gentleman’s most marked characteristic and that his niece probably had her hands full in dealing with him. He was saying now in a thin, indignant voice:

  “What’s all this about? I don’t like all these police visits. I’ve never had anything to do with police. Always kept myself respectable, and now there always seems to be a policeman banging at the door. Very trying, very trying indeed.”

  “Well, sir, I’m sorry if you’ve been annoyed,” Bobby said in his most dulcet tones, “but surely you would prefer policemen knocking at your door to burglars coming in by the window—without knocking.”

  “Nonsense, rubbish!” declared Mr Smith petulantly. “Why should burglars be coming here in particular? No diamond necklaces here, no fur coats, nothing of that sort. No money even, only a little loose change. I pay everything by cheque.”

  “A man was in your garden last night,” Bobby said. “The constable here saw him. There are marks on your back door made by a screw-driver. A screw-driver was lying near, and it fits the marks.”

  “Mischievous boys, most likely. Trouble enough with them,” Mr Smith retorted. “Don’t know what good police are if they can’t look after the young scoundrels. Can’t keep an apple on my trees, and all you say if I complain is that boys will be boys, but you’ll do your best. Bah, if that’s your best, I don’t think much of it, and so I told the other fellow who came here.”

  “You have had a previous police visit?” Bobby asked. “I didn’t know,” and that remark was perfectly true, for the visit referred to had not been from the police—far from it, indeed. “Did he give his name? Did he show his credentials?”

  “Called himself Owen—Bobby Owen, I think,” Mr Smith answered, ignoring the last part of the question. “I didn’t like him, I didn’t like the questions he asked. Nosing, snooping. Said he was one of the biggest men at Scotland Yard. Told me he would issue a warrant if I didn’t give him full information.”

  “If he talked such nonsense as that you might have guessed he was an impostor,” Bobby retorted. “Did you answer his questions? What information did you give him? It’s serious, perhaps very serious.”

  “I told him what I’ve told you—that there was nothing in the house to interest any burglar. If he was an impostor, how was I to know? How do I know you aren’t?”

  “Well, here are my credentials,” Bobby said, producing them. “Also I have a uniform man with me and you have a telephone, so you can ring up the police station and ask. Mr Smith, I must warn you very seriously that for some reason this house is being an object of great interest to an expert and daring gang of thieves. I don’t know why. There must be some reason. You say you can’t suggest one. But it must exist. Without your co-operation there’s very little we can do. Without full co-operation from the public no police force can do much. With it, we can probably assure your safety and that of your niece. Otherwise we are helpless.”

  “There’s nothing here to interest burglars,” Mr Smith persisted, though now plainly a little shaken, for Bobby had spoken gravely. “Nothing.”

  “There’s the furniture in this room,” Bobby pointed out. “Any one could see it was valuable.”

  “You’ve noticed that, have you?” the old man grumbled, as if half resentful at the discovery of his private treasure, half pleased that the worth of his possessions had been recognized. “I’ve had our parson in here, and he never said a word—might have been hire-purchase stuff, for all he knew. Insured for three thousand at present, item by item, and I’m having it re-valued soon. All right stuff, not a wrong item in the lot. I buy nothing till I’ve had it vetted by an expert.”

  “Very wise indeed,” agreed Bobby, thinking that probably the purchased articles represented the expert’s taste, and their arrangement in the room that of Mr Smith.

  He wondered a little what had induced this old retired business man to take an interest in collecting furniture, and, as if answering the unspoken query, Mr Smith went on:

  “Grandfather clock I had. Didn’t think much of it. Big thing, rather in the way, and took a deal of winding up. It belonged to my old grannie, and she had it from her grannie. Well, a fellow came along and offered me twenty shillings for it. I said two quid and it’s yours, never thinking he would pay up. But he did on the spot, and collected the clock same day. Next thing I knew there it was in a shop window, priced fifty guineas and marked sold. I wasn’t going to be had again, not if I knew it.”

  Before Bobby could make any comment on this melancholy tale, the door opened and there appeared the tall girl Bobby had seen at the ‘Glorious’ cinema. Now a closer view confirmed his first impression of her as a buxom, Junoesque young woman, fair-haired, her chief claim to attractiveness lying in her youth and fine physique, and more especially in her voice—a soft, caressing voice. A coaxing sort of voice, indeed, though, too, with a rather curiously harsh undertone that might, one felt, become at times more marked. Her complexion was bad, her nose large, prominent and well shaped, her mouth soft, full, red-lipped, drooping at the corners with a hint of a tendency to pout at small provocation. A kissable mouth it might have been called. It seemed generally to be slightly open, and then it showed two rows of large, strong, slightly protuberant teeth, white and even. Of these she seemed inclined to be a little proud, for she clearly liked to display them by switching on a smile at extremely frequent intervals. At the moment this smile was in full working order, and her small grey eyes were intent on Bobby, as if on the watch for any observable reaction.

  “Oh, nunks, darling,” she was saying in that full, yet soft, caressing voice of hers—“oh, nunks, have they come bothering you again? I do call it a shame.”

  She pronounced ‘shame’ as if it rhymed with ‘slime,’ and indeed at times, but not very often, she slipped into that old cockney trick of giving the ‘a’ vowel an accent of the long ‘i’. It is a trick of dialect that, like others of the kind, is vanishing under the steady flow, day in, day out, of ‘B.B.C.’ English. But though she uttered this protest against what she called a ‘shime’ with every appearance of fervour, the more or less dazzling smile she was bestowing on Bobby remained unchanged.

  “They seem to have the idea,” Mr Smith began; and then was interrupted by a fit of coughing that sent Miss Smith rushing away to fetch what she called ‘your medicine, nunks, darling, you mustn’t forget what the doctor said.’

  ‘Nunks, darling’ took the proffered glass, grumbled at her for ‘fussing’, and drank off the contents, which in fact did seem to relieve his cough.

  “Elizabeth,” he grumbled to Bobby, “seems to think I’m still a child—in my second childhood, I suppose.”

  “Well, nunks, if you are,” Miss Smith protested, “I only wish I had half your second-childhood brains—and don’t be an old cross-patch. You’ve just simply got to be looked after. I’m not going to have you ill while I’m in this house. Even though you are wonderful for your age and likely to live to be a hundred, the doctor says, and then I shall be so old you’ll have to start taking care of me.”

  Mr Smith chuckled at this as at an old and much-appreciated joke.

  “If we’ve not both been murdered in our beds first,” he remarked, still chuckling. “They’ve just been telling me that some day we shall come downstairs, probably with our throats cut, and find there’s been a burglar here and he’s walked off with my Buhl table under one arm and my Queen Anne bureau under the other.”

  “Those two great things,” Miss Smith exclaimed. “Oh, how silly!”

  “Have you ever heard,” Bobby asked, “of daylight r
aids by organized gangs of very unpleasant people? We really don’t want to find you and Miss Smith tied up in the coal cellar while a motor-van stolen from some big West-End firm is being used to cart off all this furniture of yours. There’ve been one or two very nasty affairs like that. I expect you do sometimes have vans here delivering your purchases or to take away anything you want to get rid of to make room for something better. I doubt if your neighbours would even consider giving an alarm or thinking it in any way suspicious.”

  “Oh, how awful!” cried Miss Smith, and she turned to Mr Smith as if appealing for protection. “Oh, Uncle John, you wouldn’t let them, would you?”

  “Certainly not. Lot of rubbish, nonsense, perfect nonsense,” declared Mr. Smith, thus appealed to. “Certainly not, my dear—nothing to be afraid of.”

  “Oh, I’m so glad,” said Miss Smith, with a long sigh of relief.

  “I’ve tried to warn you, as was my duty,” Bobby said. “There is nothing more that can be done at present—certainly not without your full and willing co-operation. As far as our very limited man power allows, we shall continue to be on the look-out. Also I would like to advise you to install a burglar alarm—one operated from your bedroom, so that the moment you hear any suspicious sound you can give an alarm. Our men will be on the spot as quickly as possible, and they won’t grumble even if it’s only been the cat knocking off the dust-bin lid.”

  “Oh, nunks, do!” Miss Smith cried. “In my room, too. I shall feel ever so much safer. I haven’t your iron nerves, you know, nunks.”