The Secret Search: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “Yes, sir,” said Bobby doubtfully.

  “Well, if people want to be murdered,” snapped the Commissioner—“well, there you are. You can’t protect people if they won’t co-operate.”

  “No, sir,” agreed Bobby, less doubtfully.

  “Chiefly applies to this Smith bloke,” the Commissioner went on. “Not to the missing girl you talk about. If she is missing. No reason why you shouldn’t look into that. Discreetly, of course.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Bobby.

  “You can’t help wondering,” said the Commissioner.

  “No, sir,” said Bobby.

  The Commissioner was studying the photograph from Bournemouth.

  “Pleasant-looking girl,” he said. “Sort of frank, jolly look about her. Got two daughters myself. Don’t let anything happen to the kid if you can help it.”

  “No, sir,” said Bobby stolidly, and wondered how he was to help it.

  “By the way,” the Commissioner added, “I rang up Southam about this plain-clothes-man story. They said none of their plain-clothes men had been near the place. Said they had done no more than instruct the man on the beat to keep a special eye on the house. Of course,” he added sorrowfully, “the most truthful blokes think it’s all right to pull wool over the boss’s eye—and, what’s more, they think he swallows it all. But Southam did seem to be in earnest this time.”

  “I can’t say I like this plain-clothes-man story,” Bobby said. “It’s just possible that what it means is that Cy King and his pals—or Tiny Garden and his pals—have been hanging about again.” He picked up Mr Smith’s letter and read it once more. “Probably that’s the explanation,” he repeated, “and I don’t like it.”

  “Nothing we can do,” said the Commissioner; and, in hushed and awe-stricken tones, went on: “There might be a Question in Parliament if we aren’t careful.”

  “We don’t want that,” agreed Bobby, himself shaken to the depths by this suggestion, which few indeed can hear unmoved.

  The Commissioner was still staring at the photograph, which to him also had now taken on an air as of one crying for help and crying without hope. Rather shyly, for he was always a little scared of his subordinates, most of whom had so much greater experience in criminal matters than he had himself, he said:

  “Do you think it possible this girl at Mr Smith’s is not only not his niece but that he knows she isn’t? Just calls her his niece to make it more respectable.”

  “It might be,” Bobby agreed. “It’s possible, certainly. One thing, I wouldn’t mind betting is that Miss Smith’s behind this letter. To my mind, there’s more than a touch of sly feminine spite about it. Old Mr Smith would have been less catty and more abusive.”

  The Commissioner said he was inclined to think so, too, and repeated that you couldn’t do much to protect or help people who wouldn’t co-operate.

  “If they want to be murdered, they’ve got to be murdered, I suppose,” he declared; and Bobby said he thought so, too, but he didn’t want it to happen, all the same.

  CHAPTER VIII

  “UNKNOWN DESTINATION”

  EARLY THE following week there arrived from Liverpool a report which in no way lessened the latent unease in Bobby’s mind, but yet did not seem to help in any way or to suggest any action that could usefully be taken.

  “Doesn’t make it any easier,” Bobby told himself, and then he picked up the ’phone and made an appointment with Ted Wyllie for that afternoon.

  Ted arrived punctually. He looked tired and worried, and he admitted, when Bobby said something to that effect, that he had been sleeping badly and having bad dreams, though what they were he could never remember.

  “Sort of being in a hole somewhere and not able to get out,” he said. “Never dreamt much in my life before. It’s not knowing, I suppose. You’ve no news, I take it, from what you said when you rang me?”

  “No, only an inconclusive report from Liverpool,” Bobby told him. “Doesn’t take us much farther forward.”

  “I don’t believe,” Ted said slowly and deliberately, almost as if he were reciting something he had learnt by heart but all the same was not quite sure of—“I don’t believe Betty would be here all this time—it’s three weeks now—without letting mother know. Not if she could help it. It’s not like her. A letter might go wrong, but there’s the ’phone. Mother’s got one. Betty often used it when she was there. Even if she had forgotten the number she could easily look it up. It’s second nature to Canadians. You said you had a report from Liverpool?”

  “Yes. It confirms that Miss Betty Smith landed from the ‘Queen of the Seas’ on the date you gave us. We had the photograph we got from you reproduced, and it was identified by two or three of the staff. She is remembered by them as a very pleasant, friendly girl, full of fun. And it seems that none of the travellers’ cheques issued to her in Canada have been cashed. They come to a substantial amount—about a hundred pounds.”

  “Well, what’s she doing for money?” Ted said. He went on: “Mother’s been wanting me to come to see you. She says—”

  “Yes,” Bobby prompted.

  “I expect you’ll laugh.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, it sounds so cracked. I told mother you would only think me a fool. She started to cry.” With that he started to wriggle on his chair. His face was more than red—crimson. “When a chap’s mother starts crying . . .”

  “Yes, of course,” said Bobby.

  “I had to promise. What she says is she’s twice heard a voice when there was no one there. Well, you can’t, can you? I mean to say, hear what isn’t there to hear? But she sticks to it.”

  “What does Mrs Wyllie think the voice said you think she didn’t hear?” Bobby asked.

  This way of putting it seemed to puzzle Ted, who remained silent, regarding Bobby with a very worried air. It was some moments before he spoke. Bobby waited patiently. Then Ted said:

  “She sticks to it the first time was in the middle of the night, when she was lying awake worrying about Betty and what could have happened, and she heard quite clearly, and it was Betty’s voice, she says, and it said: ‘Me, O.K.’ Mother says she went to sleep then. Then two days later she heard it again when she wasn’t doing anything in particular, but it was quite loud and clear, and it said the same thing: ‘Me, O.K.’”

  “‘Me, O.K.’” Bobby repeated; and this time, being better prepared, he showed no sign of surprise or special interest. “You are sure those were the exact words? And Mrs Wyllie is sure she heard them?”

  “Swears to it,” Ted answered, a little relieved that Bobby had neither burst into loud guffaws nor given the quiet cynical, politely superior smile Ted had unconsciously dreaded still more. But, then, Bobby had not felt in the least like either the loud guffaw or the superior, cynical smile. Ted went on: “What do you make of it?”

  “Nothing,” Bobby answered promptly. “Not enough to go on. Quite likely it’s only that Mrs Wyllie is badly worried and so she’s imagining things. May be some sort of telepathy or thought-reading or something like that, I suppose. Even if it is, it doesn’t take us much further forward. All the same, if Mrs Wyllie hears, or thinks she hears, anything more, let me know at once. ‘Me, O.K.,’” he repeated. “Seems more reassuring than anything else.”

  “Yes, that’s what I thought at first,” Ted agreed. “Only I don’t now, and you don’t either, do you?”

  Bobby was a trifle taken back by this remark, and by the suggestion thus conveyed once again of the unexpected and shrewd insight Ted seemed able to display at times. Bobby knew that in his heart he believed this message—if message it were—to be profoundly ominous, and yet he could not have told why. No sensible officer of police could allow himself to be affected in any way by the workings of the imagination of an elderly woman. Yet Olive also had heard or thought she heard. He knew that henceforth he was going to give to this problem a concentration of attention he had not till now felt able to afford. Answering Ted’s remar
k, he said:

  “Anyhow, it says ‘O.K.’”

  “That’s what I told mother,” Ted answered. “She wasn’t having any,” and the plain implication in his voice was that he wasn’t either. “Look. Betty’s got to be found.”

  “You may depend upon it that no effort will be spared,” Bobby said, becoming as coldly official as he only did when he was deeply moved and didn’t want any one to know. “At present it is not easy to say what the next step should be. Publicity might be dangerous, and publicity is often our greatest help in such cases.”

  “Why should it be dangerous?” Ted asked, but it was evident he neither expected nor wished for a reply, since also he already knew what it would be.

  “Our Liverpool report,” Bobby went on, “states that no trace of Miss Smith has been found further than that she took a taxi to Lime Street. Presumably she caught the London train. Fortunately at Euston a porter has been found who thinks he remembers her arrival. But he’s not sure of the date. However, he was able to pick out her photograph from several we showed him. He remembers her because she seemed rather surprised at being met, and even a little doubtful about it.”

  “Who was it met her?” Ted asked quickly. “I don’t see how any one could. No one knew she was coming except us. We didn’t till we got her cable.”

  “You can’t be sure about that, can you?” Bobby said. “She was met by a young man described by the porter as tall, as wearing a raincoat, as having his hat pulled down over his face, so that the porter didn’t see him very clearly. But, then, he didn’t take much notice. There was a car waiting. They drove off together in it. The porter didn’t notice either the number of the car or the make. You couldn’t expect him to.”

  “I don’t see who it could have been—or why,” Ted muttered. “It all sounds screwy . . . screwy,” he repeated, but clearly that was not the word that was in his mind. “I don’t understand it,” he said, very loudly, almost defiantly.

  “You didn’t think of meeting her yourself?” Bobby asked.

  “I should have if I had known in time,” Ted answered, and he showed no sign of seeing that this question might have underlying implications. “I was in Ireland, trying to fix up an order for a big supply of Irish soldiers, all in correct Eire uniform, and after that I did a run round to our agents and customers. Mother wired me as soon as she got the cable saying Betty had sailed, but it followed me all round the place, from one hotel to another, till in the end it was sent back to our London office. If it had reached me in time I could have met her all right, but it didn’t.”

  “That seems, then, as far as we can trace her,” Bobby said. “She is met by an unknown young man for some unknown reason, since apparently no one but you knew she was coming, and together she and this unknown young man drive off together to an unknown destination.”

  “It doesn’t sound too good,” Ted muttered, “We’ve got to do something.”

  “Not much to go on,” Bobby said. “I suppose the young lady wasn’t a vegetarian?”

  “Why, no. What’s that got to do with it?”

  “Well, presumably, if she wasn’t vegetarian, some butcher somewhere will have a new customer. Grocers, too. A slender line, but it might work,” and the thought in his mind, though he did not give it words, was that perhaps this young girl had now no further need of such things as meat and groceries.

  “I don’t know what to think,” Ted said in the same low, muttering voice, and he had become so pale that clearly this time he understood better what was in Bobby’s mind.

  “You can’t suggest,” Bobby went on, “any other friend or acquaintance of hers she might have gone to or who might know something about her?”

  “Not that I can think of,” Ted answered. “There may be, of course. Look. It’s all pretty upsetting. Only why? I mean—well, if something’s happened—well, why should it?”

  “The first thing is to find her,” Bobby said, avoiding a direct answer, for at present he did not wish to mention Southam or that other Betty Smith, who also had left Canada to find or join an uncle. In her case, though, a rich uncle, not one to be described as an undischarged bankrupt. “We’ll do everything we can. We may be able to dig up something to help. It won’t be for want of trying if we fail. I don’t like any more than you do this story of her being met by and driving off with some young man or another. But there’s always the possibility of that post-card arriving some morning or a ’phone call to clear it all up. Let us know at once if anything out of the ordinary turns up, no matter what it is. By the way, did you do what I asked about identifying the tie you mentioned?”

  “Oh yes. I bought a shirt. I’ll keep it; it’ll come in all right. They showed me some old school ties. It was a St. Dominic’s the chap was wearing.”

  “An old school-fellow of mine, then,” Bobby observed. “I wear it sometimes. Inspires confidence in those who know, and those who don’t only think what rotten bad taste I have to wear such a sort of fiery cross, all the colours swearing at each other.”

  With that the interview ended, and Bobby sat for long in thought. He had asked the young man to call very largely because he wanted to form a fresh judgment of him. In that he had not had much success. Ted Wyllie gave the impression of being simple and straightforward, and yet at times he showed an unexpected subtlety of insight. There might well be in him depths he had not yet allowed to appear. As a business man he appeared energetic and successful, for even in what is called a ‘sellers’ market’, it is not too easy to build up a new and prosperous business.

  Could it possibly, Bobby asked himself, have been Ted himself who had met the lost girl? A bit of a dark horse, Mr Ted Wyllie, and not so simple as he seemed. It had sounded from the porter’s account that the young man was a stranger to her, since she had shown surprise and some reluctance to accompany him. But the porter’s account had been naturally somewhat vague; the surprise might simply have been surprise at seeing Ted, the reluctance to accompany him due to the abrupt change of plan, since presumably she had been intending to go on to Bournemouth. Ted had admitted he could have met her if he had received his mother’s wire in time. Well, had he?

  Not difficult to imagine a motive. Miss Betty Smith might have come not merely or chiefly to find an old and apparently bankrupt uncle, but for some other reason inconvenient to Mr Ted Wyllie. There had been, according to him, some sort of a suggestion of a marriage between them. Suppose there had been more than talk—promises, for instance. Or even a marriage that had been kept secret? And did she now wish it acknowledged, and would that be inconvenient to Wyllie?

  No use, Bobby told himself, pursuing these vague speculations, but they would have to be kept in mind. By his own evidence Ted and his mother were the only people in England who could have known of the girl’s arrival by that ship on that voyage, and the description the porter had given answered well enough to Ted, who also was young and tall. But, then, so were several hundred thousand others in the country.

  The ’phone rang. Bobby picked it up. It was Constable Ford of Southam, whose application for a transfer to the C.I.D. Bobby only that morning had endorsed with a strong recommendation.

  “I hope you don’t mind, sir,” Ford was saying. “I asked to be put through direct to you. Said it was urgent.”

  “That’s all right,” Bobby answered. “What is it?”

  “Mr Smith and the young lady have gone off for a holiday, Mrs. Day says, and she says they haven’t told her where, because they don’t know yet, and they don’t want any one else to know, because Mr Smith needs a complete rest. They’ll let her know when they’re settled, but she’s not to tell.”

  “Thank you,” Bobby said. “I rather wonder what that means. Let me know if there’s any further development,” and to himself as he hung up, he murmured: “Altogether too much unknown destination about all this for my liking.”

  CHAPTER IX

  “IT’S A BAD SET-UP”

  ON BOBBY’S desk lay plenty of work, awaiting attention
. But very little of it got done that afternoon, as Bobby sat and mused on what he had just heard.

  So much to fear, two lives that might well lie in the balance, so little on which firm action could be taken.

  On the face of it, only an old man who had gone away for a quiet holiday and asked no more than to be left in peace and quiet; only a young woman who had preferred during a visit to England not to stay with former friends, having perhaps found others.

  Yet that ignored so much. It ignored the sinister, fleeting appearances in Southam of Cy King and his satellite made up for some reason to resemble Bobby himself. What legitimate cause could there be for that or for the call on old Mr Smith? It ignored the recent visit to Canada made by Gladys, Cy’s feminine companion of the moment; it ignored the arrival of the old fat woman, Mrs Lizzie Smith, to take charge of Cy King’s sweet-shop; and is not Lizzie, like Betty, short for Elizabeth?

  Had all that no significance? Bobby asked himself, brooding uneasily in his room and letting lie unheeded on his desk the papers and the letters and the reports with which it was strewn.

  Altogether too high a proportion of Smiths, he decided, and was it decently probable that two Betty Smiths from Canada should arrive in England within six months of each other, each in search of an uncle, even though one uncle was certainly rich and the other reputed to be poor? But, then, the first Betty Smith had been accepted as genuine by an uncle, and presumably an uncle does not need to be really very wise in order to know his own niece.

  Nor did Bobby feel very happy about Ted Wyllie, who, by his own showing, had alone, with his mother, known the time of the second Betty Smith’s arrival, and who therefore, again by his own account, was the only person in a position to meet her. Had he done so? And was it with him she had gone away and not been heard of since? For Bobby knew how often an uneasy and a questioning conscience, driven by the urge to know what was happening, what was being said and done and thought and planned, had brought to the police, on one pretext or another, those of whose activities nothing would otherwise have been heard.