The Secret Search: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 8

  Bobby picked up the house-’phone and asked if Sergeant James was in the building. Fortunately he was. From him, who had the reputation of knowing more about the night clubs, and, in general, the haunts of Soho than any one else in the force, Bobby had already received valuable information. Now he soon appeared in Bobby’s room. Then, the sergeant comfortably seated and provided with the inevitable cigarette, Bobby explained what he wanted.

  “Your considered opinion,” he said. “Is it possible that Tiny Garden and his pals can be working in on some long-term job with Cy King and his pals?”

  “Work together?” repeated the sergeant. “Them? Like hell they would. I mean that. Like hell, I mean. Cutting each other’s throats they would be before a week was past. Even if they tried, meaning it, they couldn’t. Dead sure they would be all the time that each of ’em was selling the other out. The whole lot of ’em will most likely be doing themselves in some day because of not able to trust their own selves any longer.”

  “That was rather my own idea,” Bobby remarked. “But Cy King has been to the Jimmy Joe café, hasn’t he?”

  “And got away alive,” admitted the sergeant in a faintly surprised tone. “Most likely because he came unexpected, kept out of that upstairs room, and there hadn’t been time to arrange for getting rid of the body. Tiny always swears he’ll do Cy in some day, and Cy says the same, but means it more. I’m all for letting them carry on according. Wouldn’t be proper official, though.”

  “Being proper official is a big handicap,” Bobby agreed, “but we have to put up with it. There’s some idea that Cy may be gate-crashing on one of Tiny’s biggest jobs.”

  “Lummy,” said the sergeant simply.

  “That,” said Bobby approvingly, “is exactly what I thought.”

  “Wild cats won’t be in it,” Sergeant James declared with almost equal approval. “Can’t we let it rip?”

  “Unfortunately, no,” Bobby said. “There’s a girl’s life may come into it—or her death.”

  “That’s bad,” said the sergeant, looking grave. “You don’t mean Gladys?” he asked, almost hopefully. Bobby shook his head. The sergeant said: “May be that’s why Cy has closed down his sweet-shop and cleared out.”

  “To an unknown destination?” Bobby asked.

  “That’s right,” agreed the sergeant, slightly surprised. “Him and that Gladys girl of his, and the old woman he had in to look after the business while Gladys was away—and said to be Gladys’s mother, which is as may be. And a hanger-on of his from the East End somewhere—Bill Bright. I don’t know anything about him. But all four of ’em piled into a taxi and went off together just like that. Shut the shop with a notice on the door—‘Closed temporarily’.”

  “There’s a Mr Smith,” Bobby said. “He and a niece of his have gone off on a holiday, they said, and without saying where. It’s possible Cy and his friends have gone after them. Cy may have kept a closer watch in Southam than we could do, and he may know.”

  “What’s the idea?” James asked, as Bobby paused, lost in uncomfortable thought.

  “Mr Smith is a retired business man, very well off,” Bobby explained. “Cy may have plans for getting hold of his money, and possibly Tiny Garden is on the same track.”

  “Lummy,” said James.

  “You said that before,” Bobby pointed out. “Cy’s going off may be a help. We can’t very well circulate descriptions of a perfectly respectable, law-abiding citizen and his niece on holiday, but we can of Cy King. Luckily he has a record. We can put a full description in the ‘Gazette’ and ask for a look-out for him to be kept, especially in watering-places, spas and seaside towns—holiday resorts generally. If we do hear of him, that’s where Smith and his niece will be.”

  “Is the niece the girl you said might be in danger?”

  “No,” Bobby said. He opened a drawer of his desk and took out a copy of the photograph supplied by Mrs Wyllie. “That’s the one I’m worried about,” he said. “Landed a little while ago from Canada, was going to stay with friends, and hasn’t been heard of since she was seen to leave Euston with an unidentified young man who met her there.”

  James had been studying the photograph carefully. He laid it down on the desk and then picked it up again.

  “Nice-looking kid,” he said. “Sort of jolly look about her, as if she enjoyed life. Is it her? She may be in their way?”

  “It’s a possibility,” Bobby said. “Nothing known for certain yet. There’s an old man, too. His life will be just as precious to him, and our duty to him is just the same. Only when it’s a girl . . .”

  “Yes, sir,” said the sergeant soberly. “Some of us are fathers. Looks about the age of my Jenny. It’ll be the old man’s money they’re after?”

  “Looks like it,” Bobby said. “Too many Smiths, too much money, too much Canada, too much unknown destination. A bad set-up, and yet too little to be sure of or to act on. It’s always like that. The gang has the initiative, and until something breaks, nothing we can do. And then it’s too late.” He picked up the photograph still lying where James had laid it down. He said: “It may be too late for her, for all we know.”

  “Canada, sir?” asked James. “That’s where Cy’s girl friend Gladys has been. Visiting friends, she said. More like trying to get rid of loot if you ask me. She’s been back two or three weeks. Came on the ‘Queen of the Seas’.”

  Bobby asked the date. The sergeant gave it. Bobby said:

  “The same boat and the same date as the girl whose friends have never heard of her since she landed.”

  “Lummy,” said the sergeant for the third time, but in a different tone. “If you ask me . . .”

  But Bobby did not ask him, nor did the sergeant show any desire that he should do so. Instead he listened carefully while Bobby gave him a brief account of recent happenings.

  “It’s a bad set-up,” he agreed when Bobby had finished. He picked up once again the photograph Bobby had shown him and laid it down once more. “Poor kid!” he said softly. “Bad luck,” he said, and then he went away, promising to do his best to pick up any piece of information he could about either Cy King or Tiny Garden or any of their associates.

  Indeed, it was hardly more than an hour before James was ringing up to confirm that Tiny Garden and his associates had, like Cy King and his friends, vanished from their usual haunts. In their case, too, no one seemed to have any idea where they had gone and why.

  “If you authorize it, sir,” added Sergeant James, “I’ll promise five or ten bob to any of our contacts who can tell us.”

  Bobby said he thought it would be money well spent, and the sergeant said he would ring up the moment he got results—if any. He wasn’t very hopeful, though. Both Cy King and Tiny Garden were gentlemen of reputation, and no one was very anxious to interfere with any plans of theirs. More especially, and emphatically, not with Cy King’s. To do so was apt to be a short road to the river.

  This talk had, as it happened, interrupted Bobby as he was in the act of putting through a call to Southam. Now he did so, asking for Constable Ford, whose transfer to the C.I.D. had not yet been completed. Ford was at the moment out on his beat, his tour of duty this week being from two to ten in the evening. Bobby asked that Ford should be told to ring him up as soon as possible. It was not much more than half an hour before Ford was on the line.

  “I’ve a little job for you,” Bobby told him. “Confidential. Off the record. Of course we would never dare open a letter—worse than high treason. Couldn’t do that even to save the country from immediate ruin. But I think we might risk looking at a post-mark.”

  “Looking at a post-mark, sir? Yes, sir,” said Ford, very much puzzled.

  “I want to know where our Mr Smith has gone for his holiday,” Bobby continued. “Both Tiny Garden and Cy King have vanished in the last few days, and I don’t like it. May mean things are coming to a head, and if it’s that way, Mr Smith may be in real danger. He’s an obstinate old ass, but we’ve got t
o do our best for him, not to mention that we’ve plenty to see to without having to set to work to chase any more murderers.”

  “Do you think it’s as bad as that?” Ford asked.

  “I do indeed,” Bobby answered. “I may be all wrong, of course. What I want you to do is to see if you can get the postman delivering Mr Smith’s letters to notice post-marks. If Mrs Day gets one from any holiday resort, that’s most likely where Mr Smith has gone for what he calls peace and quiet. If he isn’t careful, it’s a peace and quiet he may find in his grave before long. Do you think you could manage that for me?”

  “Oh, yes, sir, I think so,” Ford answered confidently.

  “Have to be careful, you know,” Bobby warned him. “If it got out we should probably be told that even the Gestapo at its worst would never have done a thing like that. Looking at post-marks! So mind your step.”

  “It’ll be all right, sir,” Ford assured him. “I know the chap on that round—Andy Stokes. He is opening batsman for Southam first eleven. Very steady bat. You can always trust him.”

  “Good,” said Bobby, as he hung up, reflecting that cricket was a great game and only in the Empire did they know how to play it.

  He wondered if Ford also was a good steady bat. The C.I.D. first eleven badly needed a man to go in first.

  CHAPTER X

  “IS IT A MR SMITH?”

  NEARLY A week passed before Bobby heard anything more. As completely as the second Betty Smith from Canada had vanished after her arrival in England, so now it seemed had vanished also not only old Mr Smith and Betty Smith I., but also both Cy King and Tiny Garden as well as their companions. Not a situation Bobby liked to contemplate; and yet, with so little that was definite to go on, and with hardly any one but himself convinced of the desperate need for speed in action, there was very, very little he could do.

  Then, one morning as he was busy in his room, word was brought to him that Constable Ford, on transfer from Southam (O Division) to the C.I.D., was asking for permission to see Commander Owen. Bobby sent for him at once, and there appeared a somewhat apologetic Ford—in plain clothes, as his posting had not yet come through. For his desire to make a personal report he excused himself on the ground that he thought Bobby might wish to give him fresh instructions. So Bobby said that was all right and to get on with it, and Ford explained that the trustworthy Stokes had told him that by the last post on the previous afternoon he had delivered at ‘The Haven’ a post-card he would certainly in any case have noticed, since it had on it no writing whatever, other than the address. Nor had there been any need to notice the post-mark, since the photograph on the reverse side was of Seemouth Castle, the ancient fortress dominating the little seaside town of Seemouth. It had been built according to the records by Simon de Montford to stop penetration by French invaders up the See, in those days a river navigable for twenty or thirty miles inland, though now sadly shrunken.

  “Looks as if a blank post-card had some sort of pre-arranged meaning,” Bobby remarked. “Anyhow, that’s probably where they are. Seemouth is about half-way between Bournemouth and Weymouth, isn’t it? Play a lot of golf there.”

  “Yes, sir, so I believe,” Ford answered with the properly tolerant contempt of a pucka cricketer for that alien intruder from the north, “and not a decent cricket-pitch in the whole place,” he added, this time with less tolerance and more severity.

  “Tut, tut,” said Bobby. “Bad that. I had better ring them up and ask them to keep their eyes open. Not very much we can do though except wait and watch while Cy and Tiny get their plans nice and ready. Our best hope is that they’ll soon start double-crossing each other.”

  He spoke with some despondency, for he was, he felt, in a singularly helpless position, obliged to stand idly watching the approach of a catastrophe he could do little or nothing to avert. He tried to cheer himself by the reflection that quite possibly his fears were groundless and that everything that had happened bore some perfectly simple, perfectly harmless explanation. None the less, there still haunted him, coming between him and his work, that photograph lying in a drawer of his desk—the photograph of a gay and eager, happy seeming young girl, who was one felt welcoming with open arms the full life she saw stretching before her.

  He did his best to put that troubling image out of his thoughts and to get on with his work. Then again, late that night, after Bobby had returned home, and indeed as he was beginning to think of bed, Ford was on the ’phone.

  “I hope you don’t mind me ringing up so late, sir,” he said, “but Andy Stokes has just been round, and I thought you might like to know. He says when he was making his last delivery he saw Miss Smith coming back home, and he says she looked something terrible. I couldn’t get out of him exactly what he meant. He says he saw her first almost running up the road, and she looked like death, he says. She didn’t notice him, but he had a circular to deliver, so he followed her to the front door, and when Mrs Day opened it, Miss Smith sort of tumbled into her arms and then had hysterics, right there on the floor of the hall, kicking and laughing and screaming. Stokes says he stood there staring till Mrs Day banged the door right in his face. I thought perhaps I had better let you know, sir.”

  “Quite right,” Bobby said. “Disturbing. Something happened at Seemouth to upset the young woman. Too late to do anything to-night, when we don’t know their address at Seemouth, or, for that matter, if it really is Seemouth she’s come from. I’ll get on to them in the morning.”

  He hung up then. Too late for action that night, he told himself again. Too late also, he feared, it might well prove to be for old Mr Smith. Was it too late also for the unknown girl of whom nothing had been heard for so long?

  In the morning, as soon as he got to his office, the first thing he did was to put through a call to Seemouth, and ask if anything had been seen of the suspicious characters for whom it had been asked that a look-out should be kept.

  The Seemouth station sergeant who took his call replied that no report of that kind had been received. He added with a touch of complacency that they kept a sharp look-out for such. Seemouth visitors were high class and often possessed valuable jewellery. So a close watch was kept for hotel thieves, and all hotels were reminded each season to report at once anything doubtful or suspicious.

  “Which they never do,” the station sergeant said, “being so afraid of giving offence. Besides which there’s the bungalows on Under Castle Shore. Not so classy there by a long way, and we’ve had a case of a woman in an hotel making the plans and a bloke from the bungalows carrying ’em out. But we watch ’em close. There’s a spot of trouble there this morning though. Old gentleman found dead in his bath. It’s making us busy. Have to be an inquest.”

  “Is it a Mr Smith—Mr John Smith? From Southam?” Bobby asked, but he knew already what the reply would be.

  “That’s right,” the sergeant said, and his voice sounded very surprised as he wondered whether Scotland Yard knew something, or whether it was just a lucky guess. “Not one of the suspicious characters you were asking about, was he?”

  “No,” Bobby answered heavily, “thank you. Good-bye”; and then he hung up, aware now that it was in fact too late to save the obstinate old man who had refused to take any notice of the warnings given him.

  He went then to see his closest associate in the hierarchy of Scotland Yard.

  “It looks to me like murder, almost certainly murder,” he told his colleague. “The girl was probably sent back to Southam to get her out of the way, but she guessed what was going to happen. That’ll account for her hysterics the postman told Ford about. She may not have bargained for murder. It’ll pass for a natural death unless we do something.”

  “What do you think of doing?” the other asked.

  “There’s the second girl, too,” Bobby went on, unheeding this question. “Betty Smith II. What’s become of her?”

  “If you’re right,” his colleague answered, and now his voice, too, had grown heavy and sombre—�
��If you are—too late for her as well?”

  “It may be,” Bobby agreed. “But possibly not too late to see her murderers don’t go unpunished—or Mr Smith’s either. And, after all, there is a chance she may still be alive. It may be she is being kept as a kind of hostage to make sure Mr Smith’s money, if they do get hold of it, is divided equally. And of course there is always the possibility that she is keeping out of the way for her own private reasons.”

  But neither of the two men believed this for one moment.

  “You mean locked up in an attic somewhere?” the colleague asked doubtfully. “Is that possible nowadays? What about neighbours? What about food, with rationing and all the rest of it?”

  “I think it would be possible, especially in London or one of the big towns, where neighbours don’t take much interest in each other,” Bobby answered. “Or even in the country, where anything any one noticed would simply be put down to the odd ways of visitors from a town. And there’s plenty of food off the ration you can get now.”

  “I take it it’s Mr Smith’s money they mean to try to get hold of?” the other man asked.

  “Most likely they’ve got the old man to make a will in the girl’s favour,” Bobby said. “They are playing for big stakes. I don’t know how much Mr Smith will have left, but he seemed to be very well off.”

  “Well, what’s to be done now?” was the next question, after a long and troubled pause while the two men contemplated grimly the task that lay before them.

  “Eh? What? Do now?” Bobby asked, roused abruptly from his thoughts. “Oh, I thought I would ring up Seemouth and ask them if they would mind if I ran down to make sure their Mr Smith is the same Mr Smith we’ve been worried about. I’ll tell them there’s a background to the case I think they ought to know about.”