The Secret Search: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “I’m afraid you are growing cynical, Mr Wyllie,” Bobby said.

  “I’ve been through the war,” Wyllie answered simply. Then he said: “Do you really think there’s any reason for mother to worry about Betty?”

  “No reason at all,” Bobby told him quickly. “Please tell your mother so. Still, we don’t like it when a young lady comes to England on a visit and her friends she was going to stay with hear nothing of her.”

  “What you really mean,” Wyllie remarked in his most casual, indifferent tone, “is that there’s every reason to worry like hell, but I’m not to tell mother so.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t put it so strongly as that,” protested Bobby.

  “What can you do, anyway?” demanded Wyllie. “Betty will give me raw hell if it’s all right—you, too, if she thinks you’ve been meddling. She can—I’ve seen her go in off the deep end all right, when she found one of our chaps had been playing the fool with one of her girls.”

  “An unpleasant prospect,” Bobby agreed, shaking his head gravely. “Nothing we dislike more than being given raw hell by an attractive young lady. But an occupational risk. Do you know if Miss Smith had any intention of staying in London before going on to your mother at Bournemouth?”

  “Not that I know of. But that’s what we thought at first. I thought of asking a few of them. Only there are such a lot—hotels, I mean.”

  “There certainly are,” Bobby agreed. “Most of South Kensington is hotel and most of Bloomsbury is boarding-house. But that’s a job we can easily cover. Every constable will be asked to inquire at every hotel on his beat. We’ll ask at the hospitals, too. Luckily there aren’t so many of them. One good thing,” he added, with an air of relief, “if any young lady does turn up here to give us raw hell for not minding our own business, I can detail a sergeant to take it. What sergeants are for. I know. Not so long since I was one myself. Have you made sure Miss Smith did in fact arrive—by the ‘Queen of the Seas’, wasn’t it?”

  “Well, her name’s on the passenger list. I asked.”

  “Are you sure it was the same Miss Smith?”

  “I never thought of that,” Wyllie began, and paused. “I rang up and asked, and they said a Miss Elizabeth Smith was on the passenger list, so I took it that was all right.”

  “We always try to check everything,” Bobby explained. “If there are any developments, we shall probably check your identity and your record in the Air Force. Could you supply us with a photograph of Miss Smith and as full a description as possible?”

  “Yes, but look here,” Wyllie said doubtfully. “You know, I don’t feel comfortable about all this.”

  “Isn’t that precisely why you inserted your advertisement? Isn’t that why you are here?”

  “Oh, well, I suppose so . . . yes . . . only . . . you’ve never seen Betty in a paddy,” he added ingenuously. “I have.”

  “We’ll take full responsibility,” Bobby said, careful not to smile. “The fact is, Mr Wyllie, some things you have told me have made me uncomfortable, too—very uncomfortable. I can’t tell you the reason. I will just ask you to believe me. The only question now is whether we can have your full co-operation. Inquiry will be made. Your co-operation may make all the difference between whether that inquiry succeeds—or fails.”

  “Oh, all right, then,” Wyllie assented, but without enthusiasm. “I’ve got a snap.” He brightened up suddenly. “Mother’s got rather a good one, I believe. I’ll ask her for it.”

  “Ask her, too,” Bobby went on, again inwardly amused, again careful not to show it, at this innocent betrayal of the boy’s reluctance to part with his own snap of Betty Smith and of his relief at remembering that he could probably induce his mother to surrender hers; “ask her to give us as good a description of Miss Smith as she can. I mean the things a photo doesn’t show. Personal habits. Trifles. If she prefers coffee or tea in the afternoon, perhaps. Her style of dress, her colouring, any little trick or mannerism Mrs Wyllie can remember.”

  “Well,” Ted Wyllie answered, still very puzzled, “I do know she was rather gone on cooking. I’ve known her ask in a restaurant how they did something or another she thought good—it generally was good, too, believe me. She told mother she wanted to get out of being a typist and start up as a cooking instructor. That’s what got mother. She said it was so nice to find a modern girl really interested in cooking. Only how’s that going to help? What can it matter whether any one prefers coffee or tea?”

  “It all helps to build up the picture of the person we are looking for,” Bobby told him. “In this case we may possibly ask every restaurant and café in the country to let us know if one of their customers has been a young lady with a Canadian accent and who seemed interested in the dishes served.”

  “But, good lord!” protested Wyllie, “you can’t possibly . . . millions of ’em . . . take years.”

  “Organization,” Bobby explained. “That’s detective work—not, in cold, prosaic matter of fact, identifying footmarks in the snow or examining hairs under a microscope, and so obtaining the name and address of the murderer. A dull, routine, everyday job, in fact. But don’t tell any one. Why destroy glamour? And we do have our moments.” He paused, and his face grew lined and hard, for he was not sure but that one of those moments was close upon him. He went on: “Have you had many replies to your advertisement?”

  “Rather. Dozens. Circulars from private detectives. Most of them wanted payment in advance. I wasn’t falling for that. Besides, I didn’t feel like putting private detectives on Betty. Other chaps saying they thought they knew the young lady, and if I would send them their fare they would come and see me. Waste-paper-basket stuff, nearly all of it. Oh, and a few religious fanatics telling me to put my trust on High and would I come to their meeting next Sunday? One or two Spiritualists as well. Obvious fakes. One chap said he thought he could give me information if I would meet him.”

  “Did you?” Bobby asked.

  “Yes. I thought I might as well. The letter sounded a bit as if he really might have something to say and he didn’t want money in advance. It was one of those Lyons places. Tottenham Court Road.”

  “What was he like?”

  “Well, as a matter of fact,” Wyllie answered slowly, “he was a bit like you. Much the same size and make, only rather better-looking—sorry, I didn’t mean that quite. Only he really was the type girls fall for. He was wearing what I took to be an old school tie of some sort. I didn’t recognize it.”

  “Would you know it again?”

  “Oh, yes. And a serge suit like yours. I noticed it as soon as I came in.”

  “I’ll get you to do a bit of detective work,” Bobby said. “If you are willing, that is. Will you go to any rather smart men’s shop—Bond Street or Piccadilly—ask to look at a range of old school ties, and if you see the one this man was wearing, ask which it is. Buy anything you like—scarf, pair of gloves, shirt—to give you an opening. We’ll refund whatever it cost. I shall have to ask you to hand it over, though. They keep a pretty strict eye on expense sheets here, you know.”

  “I’m getting a close-up on police methods, aren’t I?” Wyllie grumbled. “I wish you would tell me . . . I never expected all this.” He hesitated. He said abruptly: “You’re giving me a scare.”

  “Purely precautionary,” Bobby told him. “Probably a lot of fuss about nothing. Work of supererogation. Most detective work is. So don’t worry, and don’t let Mrs Wyllie worry.”

  “Just you try and stop her when she’s that way,” her son retorted.

  “What did this man you met have to say?” Bobby asked next, showing no inclination to accept the task offered.

  “Oh, he asked a lot of footling questions—just like you. Sorry again. I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “Possibly both his questions and ours may be less footling than they seem,” Bobby answered, a little grimly, for he liked not at all this reminder of that companion of Cy King’s who, together with Cy, had visited the
house where resided the other and earlier Betty Smith.

  “I told him,” Wyllie went on, “I was willing to pay for any information likely to be useful, but not till I had tried it out, and till then it was no good wasting any more time talking. He looked a bit peeved. I gave him my name and address, and told him to ring me any time he had anything to say, and then I paid for my own bun and coffee and told the girl he could pay for his. He looked quite a lot more peeved then.”

  With that the interview ended, Bobby promising to let Wyllie know in due time of any results achieved—or not achieved. Nor had Wyllie long been gone before one of the C.I.D. men appeared.

  “It’s about the gentleman that’s just been in,” he explained. “I’ve been on duty keeping an eye on Jimmy Joe’s in Soho. You know the place, sir?”

  “What about it?” Bobby asked.

  “Gentleman that’s just gone out been there once or twice, seen in company with Tiny Garden.”

  “Thank you,” Bobby said. “Positive identification? Yes, I’ll remember. It may be very important. Glad you spotted it. Good work.”

  CHAPTER VII

  “ME? O.K.”

  “IT’S AN extraordinarily difficult case,” Bobby remarked discontentedly to Olive that evening. “All sorts of hints and possibilities, and yet nothing you can be sure of. Just a mass of shifting sands of suspicion. There’s this Wyllie lad. Favourable impression made, as we say, but, then, it’s the job of a confidence man to make a favourable impression, and what was Wyllie doing at Jimmy Joe’s, also recently visited by Mr Smith’s housekeeper? It’s like trying to make a sketch of a landscape in a fog that keeps thickening and clearing. And always in the background Cy King and his pal he seems to want to get up as a kind of,” said Bobby indignantly, “imitation me. And of all the cheek—”

  He left the sentence unfinished, brooding in angry silence on what he felt was deliberate insolence and—much more important—contained hidden within it some sort of challenge, perhaps merely impudent, perhaps much more serious.

  For Bobby had no thought of under-valuing Cy, in whom he recognized an unusual combination of cunning and of reckless daring.

  “What about making inquiries in Canada?” Olive asked.

  “We could,” Bobby agreed. “We could ask for information about a Betty Smith who left Toronto some months ago to join an uncle in England. They would probably tell us that hunting for needles in haystacks was what they loved above all else, but they did prefer some sort of hint as to size and kind of needle required, there being many different needles or Betty Smiths in and around Toronto. I do suspect the Southam girl of being a fake, but she has been recognized and accepted by old Mr Smith, and he ought to know. Anyhow, if mischief is really intended we’ve given warning that we are there.”

  “What sort of mischief?” Olive asked.

  “Well, what?” Bobby asked, and Olive did not answer. Bobby went on: “If the girl is no more Mr Smith’s niece than I am, it’s quite plain the idea is to get hold of his money. That can only be done by inducing him to make a will in her favour. What would be his expectation of life once that was properly signed and witnessed?”

  But Olive shook her head.

  “I don’t believe that girl’s the murder kind,” she said slowly and thoughtfully. “More what you would call a good-time girl. Remember her mouth—soft and drooping, a sort of perpetual pout to it. There’s not a hard line in her face, and I thought she was trying her best to look after the old man, and rather enjoying doing it, too.”

  “Well, I don’t know,” Bobby said doubtfully. “You may be right, but it’s a big thing they’re on. That is, if I’m right. And Cy King dodging about in the background.”

  “Yes, yes,” Olive said, and looked less comfortable. “I wish you could get rid of him somehow.”

  “Then,” Bobby continued, “there’s this story about another Betty Smith her friends haven’t heard of since she landed. She comes from Canada, too, and she has an old uncle somewhere, she says, though apparently her old uncle is, or was, a bankrupt. But bankrupts sometimes made good and turn into rich men. Suppose it’s the same uncle, and the missing niece is the right niece? And suppose she’s being kept out of the way? And if it’s like that—well, it doesn’t look too good.”

  “But all that’s only guesswork,” Olive protested uneasily.

  “Oh, yes, nothing solid to go on. But you can’t forget all this about a girl who never turns up at the friends she was going to stay with. Precious little to go on there. No real proof she is missing in any police sense of the word.” He took a photograph from his pocket. He said: “Wyllie wired his mother to bring it up and leave it at the Yard. I got it just before I left.”

  He handed it to Olive. It showed a young woman in the uniform of a junior officer of the women’s branch of the Royal Air Force. Olive studied it long and carefully.

  “She looks a nice girl,” she pronounced finally. “Nice-looking, too, and if her colouring and complexion are all right, a little more than only nice-looking. I wonder if she knows how to dress. I do think uniforms are horrid for women, don’t you? You can’t tell, can you?”

  “Tell what?” Bobby asked.

  “Well, anything. I mean, the way a girl dresses shows . . .”

  “Does it?” said Bobby.

  “Well, of course,” said Olive. She studied the photograph again. “What did you say?” she asked.

  “Me? Nothing,” Bobby answered.

  Olive looked up with a slightly startled air.

  “I thought I heard you say: ‘Me. O.K.’”

  “You’re dreaming, my girl,” Bobby told her. “Time you were in bed.” He took the photograph, and in his turn studied it long and thoughtfully. He found himself wondering if this pleasant-looking young girl were indeed in danger of her life, or whether there was a perfectly good, simple reason for her failure to get in touch with her friends. Not, he thought, as far as one can judge from a photograph, the sort of girl who would unnecessarily cause worry and inconvenience to other people. It was pure fancy, of course, that made the photograph seem to take on an air of appeal, as of one crying desperately for help, from out of the uttermost depths. Too late, perhaps. Who could tell? He put it down impatiently, angry with the sick fancies that seemed invading his mind. “Time we were in bed,” he declared again, and added in accents of profound gloom: “I don’t suppose I shall sleep a wink all night worrying about what it all means and—and—”

  He left the sentence unfinished, but Olive knew well that what was in his mind was the gnawing, dreadful doubt whether two lives were not in imminent danger, if indeed, for that matter, it was not already too late to take effective measures to help and to protect.

  Not that Olive was unduly worried by the prospect of Bobby’s possible sleepless night. She had heard that forecast made before, but had never known it fulfilled. For indeed he possessed that almost priceless gift of being able to put out of his conscious mind for the time all doubts and difficulties till the hour came to give them fresh attention.

  Next morning—after, by the way, nearly eight hours’ dreamless slumber—there was brought to Bobby, busy in his room at the Yard, a letter addressed to the Commissioner and endorsed in that gentleman’s familiar and crabbed handwriting:

  “What’s all this about?”

  What it was about was Mr Smith’s violent indignation at the annoyance he was suffering at the hands of the Southam police, apparently instigated thereto by an individual calling himself Bobby Owen, representing himself, most likely untruthfully, as employed at Scotland Yard, and not fit to be employed anywhere. After this genial introduction, the letter went on to say that Mr Smith did not wish it to be thought by his neighbours that he was under the supervision of the police. He considered it damaging to his character and reputation to have plain-clothes police any one could tell at a glance were police—if only, said the letter spitefully, by the size of their boots—always hanging about his house or banging at his door. Unless he received
an immediate apology and a promise that the annoyance would cease immediately he would be forced to instruct his lawyer to commence proceedings with a view to obtaining an injunction and damages. There was also a specially vicious suggestion that certain marks on the back door of ‘The Haven’ had been made deliberately by the police themselves in order to give them an excuse to come snooping.

  “Be sure your breach of regulations will find you out,” murmured Bobby sadly, and went off to see the Commissioner, to whom he told the whole story.

  “You’ll have to drop it,” decreed that dignitary. “We can’t afford to have proceedings like that started against us, farcical, of course, and dismissed on sight, I hope. I don’t know, though. You can’t trust lawyers. They might dig up some old witchcraft act or another, just for the fun of the thing, and try to make it apply. Anyhow, think how the papers would revel in it. The headlines, the screams of ‘Gestapo in London.’ Won’t do, Owen won’t do at all. The ancient Egyptians didn’t know their luck.”

  “Ancient Egyptians, sir?” asked Bobby, puzzled by this somewhat abrupt change of subject.

  “Ancient Egyptians,” repeated the Commissioner firmly. “They only had ten plagues. Trifles—locusts and that sort of thing.” The Commissioner, his memory failing him, did not attempt to go into further details. He went on: “The whole bunch of them a flea-bite compared with the eleventh they never knew—the Press,” he concluded dramatically.

  “Well, sir—yes, of course,” agreed Bobby and added, for he knew the ‘Daily Announcer’ was the Commissioner’s favourite paper, read every day from first page to last: “We might rather miss the ‘Daily Announcer’, though.”

  “Oh, well, the ‘Daily Announcer’” grumbled the Commissioner, and left it at that. “We’ll have to apologize,” he went on—“talk about perhaps too great zeal shown in this case, but there were very real grounds for uneasiness, but now the matter may be considered closed.”