Therewith Eddy was returned to the cells, and the station sergeant, looking very puzzled, said:
“Is he really up against something, do you think, sir?”
“Oh, yes. He is a badly frightened boy,” Bobby answered. “I wish I knew what of. Perhaps he’ll talk after a time.” He picked up the piece of paper of which Eddy had denied all knowledge. “Got a canteen here, haven’t you?”
“A canteen?” repeated the sergeant, slightly bewildered.
“I want to do a bit of cooking,” Bobby explained gravely, and was conducted to the canteen.
There in the oven he carefully heated Eddy’s bit of paper. On it there presently appeared figures—27495. Bobby, both satisfied and puzzled, made a note of them, and then returned the paper to the station sergeant, telling him that he, too, had better make a note of the figures.
“But what do they mean?” the station sergeant asked. “Your guess is as good as mine,” Bobby answered, “but they probably mean something important, or why the invisible-ink business and why the safety-pin to make sure the paper wasn’t lost?”
“I don’t see what made you think of it,” the sergeant said; slightly annoyed that he hadn’t himself, but suspecting, in fact sure, that Bobby had been ‘tipped off’ somehow.
“Eddie lied about it,” Bobby explained. “I don’t know what we should do without liars,” he said thoughtfully. “When I showed him that bit of paper, he swore he had never seen it before. Something you had picked up here yourselves,” he said. “Well, if he was taking the trouble to tell lies about it, obviously it must have its importance. A message or note of some sort, probably. But it was apparently blank, nothing visible. So I tried it for invisible ink and those numbers showed up. Question is, what do they mean?”
The station sergeant said he thought it was a bit of a teaser. He also looked as if that fact rather pleased him. Mr Acting Deputy Commissioner, or whatever he was, Bobby Owen might be very clever, but what was the use of being clever if it didn’t take you any further? Give me, the station sergeant told himself, good solid routine, and none of your fancy tricks.
Bobby, if he had known these thoughts—he only guessed them—would have agreed that there was a lot to be said for such a point of view. He agreed also, and said so, that to get at the significance of those figures was going to take a lot of hard thinking. Then he asked to be informed if Eddy decided to make a statement, and drove to the ‘Action Stations’ club, where the resident superintendent—a Mr Fry—shook his head sadly when he heard that young Eddy Heron was in trouble again.
“A difficult boy,” he said. “That’s what his school report said—difficult.”
“Why not say ‘vicious’?” Bobby asked. “Call a kid difficult and he is rather pleased. He is just difficult—and different—and it’s your job to get over difficulties, not his. Tell him he is a vicious little rat and will come to a bad end if he doesn’t pull himself together, and anyhow he knows where he is.”
Mr Fry looked shocked, and said modern psychiatry—Bobby interrupted to make the large, unfounded, and somewhat presumptuous claim that he knew all about modern psychiatry, the whole bag of tricks of it, and could Mr Fry tell him anything about Mr Brown?
Mr Fry brightened up. Much more agreeable to talk about Mr Brown than about Eddy Heron, too ‘difficult’ to reflect much credit on the club. Mr Brown was, said Mr Fry, one of the nicest gentlemen he had ever met, and a great help in every way. Very popular with the boys. He had a way with him and he took them as they were. He never preached. Just accepted them as man to man. Unfortunately he was not so frequent a visitor as Mr Fry could have wished. A busy City man. He had not visited the club for several days, but no doubt would ‘breeze in’, as he liked to say, sometime before long. He was a most liberal contributor to the club funds. He was always specially interested in any ‘difficult’ boy—Mr Fry’s tone was slightly defiant as he stressed the word ‘difficult’. Mr Brown often made a point of visiting such boys in their homes so as to be able to form a better judgment, and once or twice had obtained jobs for them, in the country, away from their present associates. No, Mr Brown had never given either his private or business address. In fact, he had specially asked that no attempt should be made to get in touch with him in any way. It appeared, said Mr Fry, a trifle amused, that he was a bit ashamed of taking an interest in social work. He had always laughed at it as ‘pampering’ and ‘sentimentality’, and he did not want any of his hard-boiled City friends to know what he was doing. Not at any rate till he had results to show.
“A fine character,” reported Mr Fry. “A heart of gold behind an outward cynicism. He told me frankly the first time I saw him that he was a materialist and an atheist. All I can say,” declared Mr Fry with emphasis, “is that I wish some of our church members were more like him, atheist though he may be and cynic though he may call himself.”
Bobby said ‘yes indeed’, and wondered very much whether this Mr Brown, the hard-boiled, cynical but nevertheless golden-hearted Mr Brown, as known to Mr Fry, could be identical with the ‘hot gospeller’ of Lady Geraldine’s acquaintance, and whether there could be any possible connection with the ‘spiv’ or ‘lay about’, the gangster hanger on, known as Joey Parsons. Bobby was more than ever aware of an impression that he was embarking on deep and strange waters.
Producing the photograph that had been taken of dead Joey Parsons, he asked Mr Fry if he recognized it. Mr Fry examined it with a good deal of hesitation. Not Mr Brown, he decided. Mr Brown was fuller in the face, and he had a small wart or something of the kind at the side of his nose. That did not appear in this photograph. Then Mr Brown wore spectacles—large, horn-rimmed glasses—and Mr Fry had noticed that if he took them off for a moment his eyes were very bright and quick. The eyes in the photograph were quite different—almost a dead look about them.
Bobby did not explain that they were in fact the eyes of a dead man. He thanked Mr Fry for giving him so much information, offered a contribution to the funds of the club, decided that he would only charge one half of it to his expenses account, asked to be rung up and informed if Mr Brown returned, and, as it was now late, went home for dinner.
CHAPTER XIII
THE KILBURN HOUSE
Bobby sat down to dinner that night in one of those moods which to-day it is fashionable to call ‘frustrated’.
“How are you to find out,” he asked crossly—or ‘frustratedly’—“what a number means when there’s no context or anything else to suggest any connection?”
Olive wasn’t listening. She said:
“That’s the week’s meat ration I got to-day. Will you have it all now, or shall we save some for to-morrow?”
“Let us eat to-day and be merry,” Bobby answered, “for to-morrow there may be fish.”
“Dreamer,” said Olive.
“Well, anyhow,” Bobby said, “to-day is here and now, and let to-morrow look after itself.”
So he spoke, but what he really meant in his carefree, masculine way was that not itself but the woman should look after it. However, on second thoughts he left enough on the dish for next day. Then, between two thoughtful mouthfuls, he continued:
“There must be some meaning in the figures; they must mean something Eddy knew he had to remember because it was important. Or he wouldn’t have lied about them. Only what? And if we did get the answer, would it come into the case?”
“Why should it?” Olive asked as, taking advantage of Bobby’s worried absorption in the puzzle, she slipped back half her helping of meat on to the dish again, so making sure of a more respectable allowance for the next day. “Could it be the key to a cypher?” she asked.
“Well, you know,” Bobby agreed, “that’s an idea—but I don’t think our criminals go in much for cyphers. Some of the spies who got rounded up during the war did, of course. But it’s pretty rare in crime, though you do come across it. Only if it is, what is the good of a key if you haven’t the cypher?”
“I don’t know,”
said Olive obligingly, as Bobby seemed to expect an answer.
“It might be the number of a safe in a deposit company’s vaults,” he went on. “Or almost anything. But I don’t know how we can find out. It is even possible Eddy doesn’t know himself. Given him to keep safely or to hand on to some one else. Or even for identification purposes. He shows it, and another fellow shows the same lot, and then they click. Those,” said Bobby, “are a few ideas for you to sort out.”
“For me?” asked Olive, surprised.
“For you,” said Bobby sternly. “What number could a little street rat like Eddy Heron want so much to remember he had to keep a note of it pinned in his pocket for safety? Any suggestions?”
“The only numbers I ever want to remember and can’t,” observed Olive, “are telephone numbers.”
Bobby looked at her, rose from his seat, picked her up bodily, kissed her as she waved an ineffectual knife and fork in the air, put her down again, remarked that it was obvious and why the mischief hadn’t she thought of it before, and went to the ’phone.
“Your dinner’s going cold and you’ve messed my hair most awfully,” said Olive.
Bobby came back to resume his meal he was no longer interested in—or at least not so much.
“I told them,” he said, “to get the names of every subscriber in the country using that number, and to get ’em quick. But don’t you go giving yourself airs, my girl. You may be all wet.”
“What a horrid expression!” said Olive disgustedly.
“Nothing to show the exchange,” Bobby remarked, “but Eddy might think he could remember that.”
“I always can,” observed Olive with a touch of complacence. “It’s only numbers are such a bore.”
Presently the ’phone rang. Bobby took pencil and pad and went to answer it. He came back with a short list of names and addresses.
“First lot,” he explained. “More to follow. One’s a legation—no good. Another is ‘Hats and Gowns, Ltd., Bond St.’ No good either. Joseph Porter, Kilburn. Um-um. Joseph Porter—Joey Parsons. Same initials. Coincidence. I think I had better slip along at once and look up Mr Porter. It’s a chance.”
“Oh, must you to-night?” Olive protested. “I thought we might go and see that new picture—’As Little Children’. Mrs Mills says it’s lovely—every one cried and cried the whole time.”
“Sounds jolly,” agreed Bobby, “and I suppose we could take an umbrella.” He hesitated. The picture was one the critics had all spoken of in terms usually reserved exclusively for those produced in France. He said: “Sorry, old girl. But there is just a chance this may be it, and there’s more going on in the back-ground of all this business than I like—or understand. It’s not far, and I may be back in time. Anyhow, the thing’s pretty sure to run a bit.”
“You aren’t going alone, are you?” Olive asked, a little anxiously.
Bobby said he thought on the whole he had better go by himself. The kind of preliminary chat he had in view always went better when it was kept as informal as possible. Two visitors appearing together gave a much more official air to an inquiry, and was apt at times to make people uneasy. So then they became hesitant and reserved, just when you wanted them to chat as freely as possible.
He departed then, reluctantly enough, for he had no more taste than any one else for turning out again in the evening. But there was an uneasy tagging in his mind, reminding him that he had arrived at Lady Geraldine’s flat only just in time—better indeed had he been earlier. Twenty minutes drive brought him to the address given. It was a small house in a quiet Kilburn street where it seemed always Sunday afternoon—quiet, respectable, inhibited and dull. Small as were the houses, a diversity of curtains upstairs and down suggested that many of them, in the present shortage of accommodation, were occupied by two families. Almost all were badly in need of paint and general repair, as indeed are nine out of ten of the houses in this country. No. 17, the number before which Bobby drew up, had been freshly painted, however, and therefore stood out conspicuously in the generally drab extent of the street.
“Touch of black market, most likely,” Bobby told himself as he alighted.
He locked the car and turned towards the house. Some one was looking at him through the front-room window. A small, white, malignant face it was; and so swiftly withdrawn Bobby had but a glimpse of it and yet was sure he recognized Cy King.
But Cy King’s habitat was in the East End docks area, and from it he seldom emerged save when engaged on some criminal enterprise or another. What errand was he on, then, in this quiet, sober street where he was little likely to find either plunder or congenial companions? Bobby banged on the knocker. There was no reply. He had not much expected one. It was a terrace house with no back door or any way round to the rear. He banged on the knocker again and pressed the bell-push. He heard it ringing. Without waiting for an answer, he tried the window of the front sitting-room, the one from which he thought he had seen Cy King look out at him. It was not fastened, and he pushed it open. A maze of lace curtains and a barrage of aspidistras had to be negotiated and then he was inside, wondering a little what would happen if some indignant householder appeared, demanding explanation.
But a first glance showed him there was little likelihood of that. The room was in utter disorder. Originally it had been such a one as could be matched, almost item for item, in many thousands of houses throughout the land. The same plush suite of two fat armchairs and a settee, the spindly china cabinet, the enlarged photographs and Landseer engravings on the walls, the brass fender and fire-irons. But now the spindly china cabinet and its contents had been overturned. One of the plush armchairs was on its side. Even the enlarged photographs and the Landseer engravings either hung askew or had been thrown down, as though some one had looked behind them. The carpet was all rucked up, as if the floor beneath had been lined. Plain enough that a hasty and fairly complete search had been carried out here.
For what purpose? Bobby’s mind leaped back to that other room where he had found Mona Leigh only just in time to save her from further injury. There, too, just such a search as this had taken place, and what strange link of fact or doubt was there between the very modernistic and expensive flat occupied by Lady Geraldine and this small working-class house in a Kilburn side street?
A sense of urgency sent him hurrying into the entrance passage. He noticed a ’phone, but did not stop to use it. The house was very still—still with the strong silence of the house where no living creature stirs. He hurried down the short passage into the kitchen. That, too, bore all the signs of having endured a rapid, eager search, a search indifferent to concealment or to damage done. Yet it could still be seen that this had been the general living-room, and that it had been a pleasant, friendly room where family life had flowed in contented peace. A door banged. It was the back door, leading to the small garden behind the house from the rear kitchen or scullery, where cooking and other household tasks were carried out.
Bobby ran through it into the garden. There was no exit; but the garden walls were low and the houses beyond were larger and semi-detached, with passages round them leading to the street. Perfectly easy to clamber over the garden wall into the next garden, from it reach that street, and by now be walking quietly away, even if no car had been in waiting. Pursuit would probably be quite useless, and Bobby felt his first care must be to find out what actually had happened. There might be those here in just such desperate need of help as had been Monica Leigh.
He ran back into the house and upstairs. There were three bedrooms, all originally clean, tidy, well kept, and all now in extreme confusion and disarray. In the front room was a double bed, pyjamas and night-dress neatly laid out in their cases on a rather gaudy satin bed-cover. The middle room held two small cots, and there was a toy cupboard, the contents of which had been flung on the floor in the course of the same rough and hurried search that had been carried out upstairs as thoroughly as in the ground-floor rooms. The third room, at the back
, evidently intended for visitors, was in the same condition.
There was something oddly sinister in this disturbing contrast between the so evident signs of what had been the prim orderliness of a well-conducted, self-respecting household, and these plain signs of a desperate and anxious search. What cause could there be for the irruption into the placid stream of such a calm, quiet existence of this angry violence?
And where were they who have lived here? The man might still be at work; but the mother, the children? What had become of the woman of whose daily toil and loving care every room showed proof? Where were the children whose toys Bobby had noticed thrown on the floor in a pathetic heap?
No hint, save only Bobby’s memory of the pale and evil face he had seen staring at him from the downstairs window and that other memory of how he had found Mona Leigh in Lady Geraldine’s flat.
CHAPTER XIV
UNAVAILING SEARCH
Bobby hurried downstairs again, meaning to summon help before doing anything more. He rang up the nearest police station, and had just received their promise to send assistance immediately when there came a loud knocking at the front door. Bobby went to answer it. On the doorstep was a policeman in uniform. Bobby said cheerfully:
“Well, that’s what I call service.”
“Eh?” said the policeman suspiciously. “You live here?”
“No,” answered Bobby. “Something very wrong, though. I’ve just rung up to say so, and some of our people should be here almost any minute. You don’t know me, do you?”
He gave his name and status, and the constable looked very impressed but still a little suspicious.
“A lady told me she had seen a man climbing in at the front window,” he explained.
“Me,” said Bobby. “There’s no one here, but take a look inside the front room, and you’ll see what I mean. Is that the lady who spoke to you?” he asked, indicating a woman hovering excitedly in the distance.
The House of Godwinsson: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 9