They had no difficulty in finding Yabsley’s shop in Acre Lane, for the front of it was decorated with showcases containing an assortment of portraits and groups. The Counsellor, after a cursory inspection of them, guessed that Mr. Yabsley did not cater for the neighbouring county families.
“What’s Early Closing Day in this town?” he asked the inspector. “Thursday, is it? Yes? Ah, that accounts for it. Evidently Mr. Yabsley had to shut his shop here that afternoon and decided to make a little on the side by taking his grinding-machine to the Fair. Zeal! Let me do the talking, please.”
A little bell clanged as they opened the shop door, and they found themselves amid a further array of camera products. In a few seconds, a little man with tinted glasses on his nose entered by another door.
“What can I do for you?” he asked politely in a high treble voice which seemed likely to rise to a squeak at times.
“I want to buy a dozen copies of one of your photographs,” The Counsellor explained.
“Number, please?” inquired the photographer. “I mean the number of the photograph in my series,” he added, fearing that The Counsellor might misunderstand him. “With a large output like mine”—he almost visibly swelled with pride—“a System is essential. Every negative is numbered and stored in proper sequence. I can put my hand on any required picture at a moment’s notice. Efficiency, the keynote of a business like this.”
The Counsellor valiantly repressed a smile. He hardly knew whether to take this as bluff or as conceit.
“Trouble is, you see,” he explained, “I don’t know the number. I lost your card with the number on it. It was given to me by a friend,” he added. “It’s not my own photograph I want.”
This evidently reassured Yabsley. He had been examining The Counsellor’s tweeds with increasing doubt. No one, having photographed material of that character, could have forgotten the wearer for some weeks at least. And, naturally, he had not been able to recall taking any such photograph.
“I see,” he admitted, dubiously, as he realised that in this particular case his beloved System was of no assistance. “Then. . . .”
“I can tell you something to put you on the track, though,” The Counsellor interrupted. “This photo was taken at the Little Salten Fair on the 8th, round about three o’clock.”
The inspector’s face showed that he had only a faint glimmering of The Counsellor’s purpose. Yabsley, on the other hand, beamed with pleasure, as he found that his System could meet even this emergency.
“I think we can do something with that information,” he volunteered, “I think we can . . .”
“The quickest way would be to let me see the negatives,” suggested The Counsellor. “I’ll know the thing when I see it.”
“That we can do, that we can do,” declared Yabsley. “Let me see . . . September 8th, about 3 p.m. Just a moment, please.”
He opened a drawer and pulled out a fat loose-leaf pocket-book.
“September . . . 8th. Here we are,” he exclaimed, opening the book and glancing over the pages. “A great thing, a System. Invaluable. I note down time and place opposite each number, you see? So there can be no mistake, of course. Unnecessary trouble, some of my colleagues tell me. What do you want that for, they say, when you’ve got the number of the film? System, I say, System. What’s worth doing, is worth doing well. And here comes your order to prove it. Let me see . . . 2.45 p.m. I took No. 6423 then. Would you care to start at 2.45 p.m.? Or earlier, if necessary. No trouble, I assure you. Only too glad to be of service. . . . A dozen copies, you said? I’ll just make a note of that. One moment. . . .”
He made a jotting and then turned to a row of film albums on a shelf.
“No. 6423 . . .” he ran his finger along the backs and pulled down the album he required. “Here it is . . . and,” he flicked over the leaves, “here is what we want. One would be lost without a System in this business.”
He withdrew the film and fished for a moment in another drawer.
“A piece of opal glass,” he explained. “If you lay the film on it and hold it up to the window, you’ll be able to make out the picture, I think. That is, if you are accustomed to negatives.”
“I am,” The Counsellor assured him, picking up the film and glancing at it. “No, I’m afraid this isn’t it. Sorry to give you trouble.”
One by one, Yabsley handed out his negatives for inspection, but at each of them The Counsellor shook his head. At last, one fell under his scrutiny which extracted from him an ejaculation of satisfaction.
“This is the goods,” he said, turning it up to the light so that Pagnell could examine it in his turn.
The inspector was not an amateur photographer, so that negatives were unfamiliar to him; but he recognised some object in the background of the picture which bore a pattern of black-and-white vertical stripes. Evidently this was what The Counsellor had hunted for.
“As a test of your System,” The Counsellor said with a smile, turning to Yabsley, “could you tell me at what time you actually took this particular snap?”
Yabsley took back the negative, read off the number on it, consulted his loose-leaf book, and then—
“I took that at 2.53 p.m.” he announced with a note of triumph.
“Quite sure? You’d swear to it?” asked The Counsellor in a tone between jest and earnest.
“I’d swear to it any day,” said the photographer emphatically. “And what’s more, my notes would prove it to anyone. System, that’s the real secret. Do a thing well, and you don’t need to worry about it afterwards.”
“I wish I had a well-ordered mind,” said The Counsellor. “Now, let’s see, here’s my card,”—he produced one with his private address on it—“and you might send me half a dozen copies as soon as it’s convenient. How much will that be, including postage?. . . Ah, thanks. I’d better pay now, since you don’t know me.”
He paid over the sum demanded and then, with a few more words in compliment to the System, he left the shop, followed by Pagnell.
“Well, sir,” the inspector pointed out as they walked up the lane together, “I get a glimmering of what you’re after. But you promised to put your cards on the table with me, you remember. I’d like to know just exactly how you look at it.”
“That’s only honest,” admitted The Counsellor. “I’ll tell you just what I think about it.”
When he had finished, Pagnell shook his head dubiously.
“It would take a professional dipper to manage that trick,” he objected. “It’d be beyond an amateur.”
“Think so?” asked The Counsellor with a grin. “Well, there’s nothing like evidence. I do a bit of parlour-magic myself, sometimes. Here’s your fountain-pen, Inspector. Likewise your notebook. Can you tell me how I got them?”
Pagnell laughed at the hit and then turned on his companion with mock ferocity.
“I could charge you with larceny, for that.”
“Don’t try your bluffing with me,” retorted The Counsellor, with a twinkling eye. “The essence of larceny is intent to deprive the owner permanently of his goods. You’ve got them back, haven’t you? And I gave them to you freely, didn’t I? Then it’s not larceny. See?”
“You know a bit too much, sir, one way and another,” the inspector declared, as though rather vexed at the failure of his joke. “But as to this notion of yours, I’d like to have a think before I’d care to take steps in the matter. It’s clever; it’s ingenious, I’ll admit. But still. . . .”
“Think it over,” advised The Counsellor.
A thought seemed to strike him and he continued in a slightly different tone.
“By the way, Inspector, was old Treverton a member of the A.A.? Had he a badge on his car, do you remember?”
Pagnell shook his head decidedly.
“No, he hadn’t. He never spent a penny that he could avoid, and he wasn’t much of a motorist. Miss Treverton, she had the badge. And Whitgift had one on his car, I remember. But not Treverton, I�
�m dead sure of that.”
Chapter Seventeen
The Adventures of a Bus
WHEN he summoned Sandra Rainham and Standish to consultation on the following morning, they gathered at once from his manner that The Counsellor was in good spirits. He pushed his box of cigarettes forward as they came in.
“Sit down, my dear Watsons. Take a cigarette, do. They’re the sort I keep for visitors, you know. And now, with your kind attention, I’ll clear up this business—or part of it, at any rate,” he added cautiously.
“Seems very pleased with himself,” Standish commented as he reached over and took a cigarette.
“You’ve found the girl?” exclaimed Sandra, impulsively. “Oh! Good! I’m so glad!”
“Am I telling this story, or are you?” demanded The Counsellor, testily. “Let me do things decently and in proper order, will you? All you need say is: ‘Wonderful!’ and ‘Amazing!’ and so on, at proper intervals. I’ll do the rest without assistance.”
“Wonderful!” said Standish, obligingly.
The Counsellor ignored this.
“I shall now explain Helen Treverton’s disappearance,” he said with dignity. “But perhaps, Wolf, you’ve taken my advice about thumpin’ and thumpin’ at the thinkin’, and have got a solution yourself? No? Somehow, I thought not. Well, this is how it is. As I told you before, Miss Treverton had an invitation to go to a tennis party at Dr. Trulock’s on the afternoon of her disappearance. She got out her car after luncheon, put her attaché case on the seat beside her, and went off. I know the exact time she left, because it was just after a bus passed the lodge gate, going towards Grendon St. Giles—two miles away. That bus was on time. It’s due at Grendon St. Giles at 3.05 p.m. Therefore it passed the lodge just about 3 p.m.”
“How do you know that?” asked Sandra. “About the bus, I mean.”
“Whitgift saw it pass when he was talking to the girl on the avenue,” explained The Counsellor. “I proceed. Four miles up the road, Miss Treverton’s car stopped. She got out of it and opened the bonnet.”
“Second sight, you’ve got?” interjected Standish. “Amazing!”
“Brains,” retorted The Counsellor. “When you want to know a thing the best method is to ask. Brains come in when you pick out the right person to ask. I picked out the right person. He’s called The Great Foscari.”
“Nobody would trust a man with a name like that,” objected Standish. “Nobody with brains, that is.”
“Call him Nat Rabbit, then, if you find it more convincing,” said The Counsellor agreeably. “He owns a debilitated plane, I may say; and if you like to risk your neck at five bob a shot, he’ll accommodate you. He was accommodating the more temerarious of the autochtones—good word, that!—at a Fair which was held at Little Salten on that afternoon and on succeeding days. During one of his aerial gambados, he made the observations I’m summarising; but he didn’t see the end of the story, unfortunately.”
The Counsellor picked out a cigarette and lit it deliberately before proceeding.
“The next thing that happened was the arrival of a bus, coming from the Grendon St. Giles direction. Seeing the car in distress, the bus-driver kindly stopped to give assistance. . . .”
“Did he?” interjected Standish sceptically. “Oh, well, you said the Treverton girl was pretty. Perhaps even bus-drivers have feelings. Still, seeing they’re usually running to a time-schedule. . . .”
“I am telling you what happened, Wolf. No doubt you have your own reasons for knowing it didn’t happen. But there it is. That bus did stop. It’s a conspicuous kind of bus, painted wasp-pattern in black and yellow. No one could mistake it. Now the curious thing is that no such bus should have been on that particular stretch of road at that particular time. I checked that. As I told you, a homeward-bound bus of that fleet passed the Longstoke House lodge gates at 3 p.m.; and an outward bound bus had left Grendon St. Giles at 2.50 p.m. on the way to Little Salten, so it was ahead of Miss Treverton’s car. As it’s a forty-five minute service, no bus of that fleet should have been there at all. I interviewed the proprietor of The Royal Defiance Express Service which runs these wasp-patterned juggernauts. Also various drivers in his employ. So that’s that.”
“‘Curiouser and curiouser’,” said Sandra impatiently, as The Counsellor made a pause for effect. “Get on with the story, Mark.”
“Hold on a moment,” interrupted Standish, as The Counsellor was about to speak. “How did. . . .?”
“Let me do things decently and in proper order,” repeated The Counsellor. “I’m telling a plain tale just now. Questions afterwards. Now we take up a fresh thread. It seems that somebody—Dr. Trulock, as a matter of fact—very decently offered the children in some orphanage at Stoke Alderbrook a treat. He hired a bus from The Royal Defiance Express Service to take these kids to the Fair, and he stood them seats at the circus as well.”
“Oh, so it was that bus that stopped, was it?” asked Sandra. “It would be apart from the regular service, of course.”
“That bus reached the Fair ground at 2.26 p.m. in time for the kiddies to go into the circus at the 2.45 p.m. performance,” said The Counsellor, mildly. “So it passed over that stretch of road ahead of the 2.50 bus from Grendon St. Giles, which in turn was ahead of Miss Treverton’s car.”
“Oh!”
“I proceed. The driver of that bus had, by permission, brought his wife and—I gather—a selection of his family with him. They accompanied the orphans to the circus performance, after parking the bus in a corner of the Fair ground. The driver—a perfectly reliable man, according to his employer—took away the ignition key with him. Like to make any remarks, Wolf?”
Standish shook his head.
“Now all that’s fair, square and above board,” The Counsellor pointed out. “The first bit of funny business was when the driver went back to his car and found the ignition key in its place instead of in his pocket.”
“But how did it get there?” demanded Sandra.
“Just what my friend Inspector Pagnell asked,” said The Counsellor. “But I convinced him easily.”
“How?”
“By picking his pocket as an illustration,” explained The Counsellor. “Obviously someone did the same for the bus-driver, and so got hold of his ignition key. After that, of course, there was a bit of a risky passage in driving the bus away from the Fair ground. But all the uniform these chaps wear is a common brand of cap; and as the Royal Defiance fleet is a pretty big one, an unknown driver wouldn’t attract attention particularly. And I take it that they had a faked conductor as well, with cash-bag complete. Anyhow, they got the bus away safely enough.”
“Is this guess-work?” asked Standish. “It sounds a bit like it.”
“No, I can prove that bit,” retorted The Counsellor with a twinkle of satisfaction in his eye. “Not to keep you in the fidgets any longer, I’ll tell you how I did that. I learned that, that afternoon, a photographer fellow had planted himself at the gate of the grounds and was doing a bit of trade with a turn-the-handle camera, recording the dials of any burgesses who seemed likely to part with a tanner. I interviewed him and made an excuse to see all the negatives he took from a quarter to three onwards. The citizenry’s physogs didn’t interest me; but I hoped that perhaps the handle had been turning when that bus went out of the Fair ground. It was a long shot, but it came off. In a photograph taken at 2.53 p.m., the waspy bus appeared in the background, driving off. Unfortunately the photo did not show either the driver or the conductor, so I can’t identify them. But there’s no doubt that bus left the Fair ground at 2.53, when it ought to have been in the park.”
“Hold on a jiff,” interrupted Standish. “When was the bus leaving Grendon St. Giles at 2.50 p.m. likely to reach Little Salten?”
“It’s timed for 3.10 at Little Salten,” explained The Counsellor. “Your point is that the bus from the Fair ground, leaving at 2.53, would meet the regular bus somewhere on the road between Grendon St. Giles and Litt
le Salten?”
“Exactly,” agreed Standish, “and the driver of the regular bus would notice it, seeing that it was one of his own fleet and had no business to be there just then.”
“Well, he didn’t notice it,” The Counsellor pointed out. “So that means it wasn’t there to meet him. There’s a road from the Fair ground which leads straight to the Little Salten cross roads; but there’s also another one which strikes the Grendon St. Giles—Little Salten road about a quarter of a mile nearer Grendon St. Giles than the cross roads. The bus from the Fair ground could take that road and wait in it until the regular bus passed along. Then it could nip out and go all out for Grendon St. Giles with no chance of meeting anything. See?”
“But in any case it would meet Miss Treverton’s car coming up to Little Salten,” objected Standish. “Buses don’t usually take a run down a road for a bit and then turn back. And by your tale, this bus came up behind her before it stopped.”
“There are such things as side roads,” The Counsellor pointed out. “I’m merely guessing here; but obviously you can hide a bus in a side road, wait till a car passes on the main road, and then come out and follow the car back along the main road. There’s a road that goes off to Witton Underhill which would serve; but if they couldn’t get that length in the time, there are other lanes leading off to farms by the wayside which would fill the bill well enough.”
“That’s assuming that the fellows on the bus knew that her car would break down on that stretch of road. And what’s more, they must have had a rough idea of just whereabouts it was likely to stop.”
“Just so,” The Counsellor agreed. “They knew her car was going to run out of petrol just there or thereabouts.”
“Guessing again?” asked Standish, caustically.
“No, facts in support,” retorted The Counsellor, placidly. “But we come to them later. I proceed. As I told you, my friend The Great Foscari saw the next scene: where the bus came up and stopped beside Miss Treverton’s car. Now, Sandra, I put it to you. Suppose you have an engagement at your friend’s house up the road. Your car sticks for want of petrol. A bus comes up in the nick of time, going your way. What would you do?”
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