So Many Doors Page 3

  Besides, there was the girl herself. Not very pleasant, if any thing did happen to her, to have to reflect that she might have been saved but for cautious official scruples. Playing safe for himself, Bobby knew, might well mean, would mean, leaving this unknown Isobel he had only seen once and hardly remembered, to run into dreadful danger. But then, again, that danger might well be entirely imaginary. Had Olive not been watching him he would, in his perplexity, probably have fallen back on that old trick of his of which she had tried to break him—that of rubbing the end of his nose so hard that she had professed alarm lest he should rub it all away, or at least flatten it for good. Instead he thrust his hands deep into his pockets, to keep them safe, and went across to the window.

  The flat was on the fifth floor, and from the window there was a wide and extensive view. He stared out moodily, watching the many twinkling London lights. On the distant horizon a silver rim appeared and grew, and under its quiet, shining radiance the twinkling London lights grew less brilliant. It was the full moon, and as it rose in all its loveliness Bobby made up his mind. For soon that increasing radiance would illumine the whole land, as it had done, he knew, that other night when a wife had met a sudden and dreadful death, and again as it had done when a girl had vanished for ever from all human ken.

  Not that he supposed for even a passing moment that even in a world so strange, so little understood, as this, either the moon or any other heavenly body could in itself affect human minds or wills. But he knew well—too well—the power of suggestion, and the compelling effect it can at times exercise on both mind and will.

  He turned and said:

  “I think I’ll go and prowl round Thameside Village for an hour or two.”

  Olive said nothing. She had been looking forward to a quiet evening with Bobby at home for once—not too common an occurrence for any wife with a husband in a Force in which at any moment the telephone may ring with urgent clamour.

  Bobby began to make his preparations in a slow, reluctant, worried manner. He had a strong impression that he was going to a great deal of unnecessary and thankless trouble. In fact, he felt he was being the complete busybody, meddling in things that did not in the least concern him. He went along a corridor and knocked at the door of the Barretts’ flat. Mrs Barrett appeared; for gone are those days when a knock at the door produced inevitably a correct and uniformed maid. Bobby asked if he might keep for the present the photograph Olive had just borrowed. He asked also if Mrs Barrett had ever seen Mr Mark Monk, and if so what impression he had made on her.

  Mrs Barrett hesitated and looked uncomfortable.

  “I’ve only seen him once,” she said. “At my sister’s. He’s—well, he’s rather plain himself, but he has a most fascinating voice. I can’t describe it: it’s almost like soft, far-away music.”

  Bobby nodded. The odd, almost hypnotic effect of Mr Matt Myers’s voice had been mentioned more than once during that murder trial of past years. He asked:

  “What sort of an impression would you say he made on people in general?”

  Mrs Barrett hesitated again, and then laughed uneasily.

  “I suppose most people were fascinated in a way, and yet in a way I think he made them rather afraid. I think it was rather like a rabbit must feel when it’s dropped into a boa-constrictor’s cage. Not every one, of course. My husband disliked him intensely on sight. He said he looked and talked like a crook. He called his voice soapy when I said how nice it was.” She hesitated again, and then went on: “One man who was there said something to him. I don’t know what, but it must have made Mr Monk very angry, because I saw him give the other man such a look—it made me feel all funny and creepy up and down my back. Afterwards, I didn’t think his voice so nice, after all. And there was the oddest sort of glassy look in his eyes sometimes. I can’t describe it exactly, and it wasn’t always there. It came and went. I remember thinking that if he was only talking to you, and you couldn’t see him, he could most likely make you do anything. But if you saw him looking like that, then you would be far too frightened to do it, or listen any longer. My husband said it was all nonsense; but, then, men always tell you that till,” said Mrs Barrett comfortably, “they find out different.”

  “Yes, I know,” said Bobby, and he remembered also that this strange ‘glassy’ look had been mentioned in the trial that had ended in a verdict of ‘Not guilty’.

  “I expect it’s what you think, too,” Mrs Barrett said abruptly. “Just an old woman’s chatter. But I can’t help feeling so very uneasy about dear little Isobel.”

  “Not the least reason to suppose anything’s happened to her,” Bobby declared cheerfully. “Nothing much to be done, anyhow. It’s not a police matter. All I can do is to make a few discreet inquiries. If we do happen to get to know where the young lady is, we can tell her parents. Sometimes young ladies who run away from home get disillusioned very quickly. I may take it, may I, that her parents would be willing to have her back home?”

  “Oh, yes, yes,” Mrs Barrett exclaimed fervently. “It’s all they’re living for. She is such a dear child. She could come here, for that matter, if she feels nervous about going straight home. She came to me when she ran away from school and was afraid to face her father.”

  “Why was that?” Bobby asked, with his insatiable curiosity for every detail throwing any light on the character or personality of those with whom his duty brought him in contact. “Wasn’t she happy there?”

  “I never knew exactly,” Mrs Barrett told him. “Something to do with one of the mistresses. What school-girls call a ‘crush’. I think Isobel got the idea that the mistress was laughing at her behind her back. There was a terrible scene, and Isobel ran away.”

  “Did she go back?”

  “Oh, no. She didn’t want to, and the school didn’t either. They had been really frightened, apparently. Isobel is very emotional, poor child, though she always seems so quiet.”

  “Quiet people sometimes are,” Bobby remarked. “Emotional, I mean. Quiet because they feel so strongly they feel they mustn’t let themselves go.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Mrs Barrett, but doubtfully, for to her this was a new idea, and she wasn’t much inclined to accept it.

  Bobby took his leave then. He got his car from the near-by garage where he kept it and drove to Thameside Village, now a little less fashionable but a good deal more populous than in former days. Along the bank of the river stood a number of large houses with gardens leading down to the water. Some were now hotels or boarding-houses or were occupied by societies of one sort or another or as business offices. One or two were still in private hands. Others were unoccupied, waiting the inevitable day of doom when they would be converted into uncomfortable, inconvenient, and extremely expensive flats.

  Bobby went first to the Thameside Village police station. Without explaining exactly his reasons, he showed the photograph of the one-time Matt Myers. He hoped it might be recognized as that of a Thameside resident. But the station sergeant shook his head. No one he had ever seen. If Mr Owen cared to leave the photograph with him, though, he would show it his men, and perhaps one of them might recognize it. He made much the same suggestion about Miss Bella Brown when Bobby mentioned her name. He had never heard of her, but some of the men might know something. The local knowledge of the men on the beat was extensive. They kept their eyes and ears open. Bobby said the local knowledge of the ordinary uniform man was the foundation stone of all sound police work. The station sergeant purred a little, and suggested that the staff of the local paper, ‘The Thameside Awakener’, might know her. The office would be closed now, but he could ring up the editor at his private address, if Mr Owen wished.

  Bobby said that was a splendid idea. Unfortunately, the editor’s reply was to the effect that he knew nothing of any Miss Bella Brown. Some people called themselves journalists on the strength of having once had a letter published in a national newspaper. But he would ask at the office next morning. Some of the staff might know her. So the station sergeant thanked him and hung up, and Bobby thanked the station sergeant for the trouble he had taken and prepared to go. Then he asked casually if anything was being done about the suspected gambling going on locally.

  “Wasn’t there a raid being planned?” he asked.

  “Been put off,” the station sergeant explained. “There’s some information just come in that makes Mr Ferris”—this was the name of the D.D.I. (the Divisional Detective Inspector)—“think there’s more to it than gambling: that the gambling is only a sort of cover, and that the place is also a depot for getting rid of stolen goods. There was a whacking big haul of cigarettes last week, you remember, sir, and one of our contacts has tipped us off that the whole lot is being brought here one night. Nice night for it, too—almost like day, with this moon. We’ve got a man on the look-out.”

  “Well, I don’t see how that can have anything to do with what I’ve been asking,” Bobby remarked. “Who is it you’ve got on watch? It may be a big thing if you can bring it off.”

  “Sergeant Long,” answered the other. “Tommy Long—got his stripes only the other day.”

  “Oh, yes, I know,” Bobby agreed. “Good man. Had a commendation or two, I believe. I’ll go round and have a word with him, shall I? Tell him to keep up the good work.”

  The station sergeant looked pleased, and said young fellows appreciated it when they got a word or two of encouragement from their seniors. The personal touch went a long way.

  So Bobby, having received directions, went off to find Bexley House, the name of the house Sergeant Long was watching. As the station sergeant had remarked, it was almost as clear as day, with the full moon riding majestically in the heavens above. But to Bobby to-night this pale moonlight had a slightly sinister effect.
He did not know why. It made him think of a lovely woman offering a poisoned cup to her lover, or of her who brought forth butter in a lordly dish. He found himself murmuring a line he had once heard or read somewhere—Shakespeare, probably. ‘The pale-faced moon looks bloody on the earth.’ Stupid! Why on earth should this lovely night remind him of those only half-acknowledged fears he had been doing his best to forget?

  Anyhow, no reason to suppose there could be any connecting thread between this story of a suspected private gambling saloon that might also be a depot for storing stolen goods before distribution, and the tale of the girl who had run away in the company of a man who once had stood his trial for murder?

  CHAPTER III

  “NOT ALIVE, THAT IS”

  Bexley House, the scene of so many suspected activities, was only some three or four hundred yards from the police station. Thither Bobby now made his way through that contrasted pattern of deep shadow and thin, pale pools of light which marks the night when the full moon shines from a cloudless sky.

  As he walked on, following the directions given him by the station sergeant, he noticed on hoardings some bills advertising a dramatic performance given at Bexley House by a local amateur company in aid of some charity or another. Another bill advertised a political meeting. So some innocent activities at least were carried on there. But, then, innocent activities can at times provide a very useful cover for activities very far from innocent.

  By this time Bobby was nearing his destination, and he began to keep a sharp look-out for Sergeant Tommy Long, whose presence he supposed, however, would not be unduly obvious. Presently he came to Bexley House itself, a huge, square old building of the days when domestic help was cheap and plentiful and no one dreamed that it would one day be very much the reverse. It stood back from the road in a large garden that at the rear reached down to the river’s bank. Here in former days there had been a small private landing-stage, now much decayed. In front it was approached by a wide, circular drive, overgrown by weeds and grass, and here again was repeated that alternate pattern of shadow and light, for the drive was bathed in the clear moonlight, and on each side the shadows lay dark and impenetrable under tall trees and thick, close-growing bushes.

  No sign anywhere, that Bobby could see, of Sergeant Long. Not, of course, Sergeant Long’s business to advertise his presence. Natural, though, when Bobby had walked a few yards past the open iron gates at the entrance to the drive and saw a darker shadow apparently trying to make itself inconspicuous against a tree on the other side of the road, that he should assume it was probably the sergeant. But when he crossed towards it he saw that it was a smaller, slighter man, and saw, too, that this stranger was trying to tie a handkerchief round his right hand, which was apparently bleeding rather freely. A trifling incident, but just a little unusual to find a man trying to tie up a wounded hand late in the evening in a deserted suburban street. More especially outside a house under police observation. And anything unusual always interested Bobby, lest it should be a sign or a suggestion of something more unusual still.

  “Hurt yourself?” Bobby asked amiably. “Can I help?”

  There was a distinct pause before the other replied, and Bobby was aware of an impression that his offer had not been welcome, and that a first and strong impulse had been to reject it with vigour. But apparently second thoughts had been different, for the reply, when it came, was friendly enough.

  “Oh, thanks: it’s nothing much,” the stranger said. “I’ve managed to give myself a nasty cut, that’s all. On a razorblade in my pocket. Silly trick. It must have worked loose. If you could just fasten my handkerchief for me. It’s bleeding a bit.”

  “Let me look,” Bobby said. A deep cut, evidently, and bleeding a good deal more than a bit. Bobby produced the first-aid pack he always carried with him. He soon had the wound bandaged. “That’ll be all right,” he said when he had finished. “At least, it will be till you get home. Live near?”

  The other did not answer this inquiry, but he thanked Bobby for his help. He had a deep, distinctive voice, harsh and penetrating. He remarked that Bobby seemed well prepared for emergencies, and asked if he were a doctor. Bobby laughed and said no, but he had passed his first-aid examinations and always carried a first-aid pack ready for accidents. The stranger thanked him again, and they said good night. Bobby walked on; but presently glanced back. In the moonlight he saw the stranger cross the road and stand for a moment, looking through the open iron gates of the Bexley House drive. Bobby thought at first he was going to enter, but, after two or three minutes of apparent hesitation, the stranger walked briskly away.

  A little curious, the whole incident. And was it, Bobby asked himself, only the influence of the pale and ghostly moonlight that filled his mind with such vague but troubling fears? Was this blood that he had seen upon the right hand of a wandering stranger a kind of warning or suggestion of ill things to come? His mind went back to those other nights of the full moon when the then Matt Myers’s wife had met a strange, a violent, a still unavenged death; and when another woman had stepped from the warm safety of her home and family into the moonlight of just such another night and been heard of no more.

  He had still seen nothing of Sergeant Long, and he wondered if the sergeant had taken up his post within the Bexley House garden itself. Not permissible, of course, since the police do not trespass on private property without clear and sufficient reason; but, then, the impermissible does sometimes occur. Bobby told himself that perhaps he had better go home. Indeed, he was not very clear what he was doing here. Moonshine in his mind, perhaps, he thought, as well as on the earth. He turned back; and now when he came to the Bexley House gates he heard a murmur of voices, carrying far in the calm of that quiet evening. He walked up the drive. He had decided suddenly that he would knock and ask if Miss Isobel Winlock were there, and, if so, could he see her, as he had a message for her from her aunt, Mrs Barrett. She might be more willing to listen if he said he came from her aunt rather than from her parents.

  Besides, he was curious to know who was talking at this late hour in the shadows by the side of the moonlit drive. Possibly Sergeant Long might be one of the invisible speakers. The voices ceased as he drew near, and from the shelter of one of the trees a man stepped out. In a surprised tone, he said:

  “Oh, it’s Mr Owen.”

  “Evening, sergeant,” Bobby said, in his turn recognizing Long.

  Another man came lumbering out of the shadows where he and Sergeant Long had been talking. He was a short, heavily built, fat man, with a large, flat, white face and short arms and legs, hopelessly out of proportion with his big and heavy body. His voice was high and squeaky, again out of harmony with his massive torso, and his eyes were pale and small and hidden. He said resentfully:

  “Mr Owen now? Commander Owen, isn’t it? There you are,” he complained. “All Scotland Yard nosing round, and all for nothing.”

  “You know me, then?” Bobby remarked. “Have we met? I don’t think I remember you, do I?”

  “It’s Mr Jerry George,” Sergeant Long said. “A very enterprising gentleman.”

  “Oh, yes,” Bobby said. “I remember the name. Not a case I had anything to do with. Something about a whisky deal, wasn’t it?”

  “How was I to know there was anything wrong?” Mr Jerry George demanded. “All I did was put up the money. Discharged I was, without a stain on my character.”

  “That wasn’t quite what the judge said,” Long remarked.

  “Prejudiced old blighter,” commented Jerry. “All very well for him sitting up there in his wig, telling other people off, and him just like the rest of us, most likely.”

  “Didn’t one of the documents you produced turn out to be a forgery?” Bobby asked.

  “That was Mark,” Jerry said, and now his shrill, thin voice took on a whining note. “Mark,” he repeated. “It’s him as put you on to this, isn’t it? A pack of lies. Spite. That’s all it is. Spite and malice.”