“At Jimmy Joe’s café?” Bobby asked. “Did you go?”
“Yes. How did you know it was there?”
“What had he to say?” Bobby asked, not replying to the other’s question.
“Nothing much. It sounded more as if he were trying to find out what I knew. He wanted to know if I would give him her photograph.”
“Did you?”
“No. I didn’t trust him, somehow. I wasn’t sure what he wanted it for.”
“He wanted it so badly he broke into Mrs Wyllie’s to get it,” Bobby remarked. “It was about him I came to see you. With a message. You’ve been noticed talking to him. You’ve been seen at Jimmy Joe’s place. And I’ve been asked to give you a warning. It comes from a man who knows Tiny Garden. It is: ‘Blooming amateurs had best keep out of a job like this.’ It’s a warning I want you to take pretty seriously. Leave it to us. I don’t want to have the further job of finding out who it was cut your throat and dumped you in the Thames. Please believe me when I say that’s a possibility you must consider very seriously.”
Ted leaned back in his chair. He was smiling a little now. He looked much more normal. Imitating Bobby, he took out a cigarette and lighted it, and Bobby noticed with surprise that his previously shaking hands were now quite steady. Ted said:
“Will you take a return message? Tell them that throat-cutting is a game two can play at. If anything’s happened to Betty, I’ll take a hand myself, and that goes for every man-jack of them.”
“Don’t talk like a fool,” Bobby said, startled and angry, for there was that in Ted’s voice, now very quiet and low, that made him feel Ted meant it and would do it. “Do you want to get hanged yourself?”
“What should I care?” Ted asked.
CHAPTER XIX
“ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE”
BOBBY WENT away then, more worried and troubled even than he had been on arrival. To Olive that evening he said:
“Means I’ve not only to take care that Wyllie doesn’t get murdered himself, but also that he doesn’t murder any one else. I’ve told Sergeant James and young Ford to keep a sharp look-out and let me know at once if they see him anywhere in the Jimmy Joe café neighbourhood. I wish now I hadn’t mentioned Ally Hidd’s message.”
“Why?” Olive asked. “What’s that matter?”
“I don’t know, but Wyllie is nearly off his head, and you can’t tell what he may not be up to next. He looks it, too—off his head, I mean. James has noticed that. Only—”
“Only what?”
“Well,” Bobby answered, half apologetically, “it’s rather far-fetched, but all the same it’s got to be considered. James put it to me that the only man he has ever seen with that sort of wild, distraught look of Ted Wyllie’s, was a man who had murdered his sweetheart and was being driven slowly mad by the memory. So James is saying it may be like that this time, and he thinks possibly Mrs Wyllie more or less unconsciously suspects that that’s what’s happened, and that’s why she keeps thinking she sees or hears the dead girl. Her subconscious presenting her secret hidden fears to herself in visual form.”
“He’s been reading psycho-analysis books,” Olive commented.
“We all do,” Bobby answered. “There’s something in them if you observingly distil it forth. My own idea was that it might be some form of spontaneous thought-reading, like that broadcast, you remember, the other day. Quite outside police routine, though. Not the sort of thing you would ever dare put in an official report.”
“If it was thought-reading—and after that broadcast, you can believe anything,” Olive said musingly—“wouldn’t that mean that she is still alive?”
“I don’t know,” Bobby answered. “I don’t think it follows. If thought-reading is possible . . .”
He left the sentence unfinished, and they were both silent for a time. Olive looked at the clock and said it was bed-time. Then she said:
“If it’s Mr Wyllie, why should he be going to these places, trying to find out things when he knows all about it and they don’t? And why should that bother them so much that Ally Hidd thinks they may do something to him?”
“Well, anyhow,” Bobby pointed out, “there’s no doubt about the plot to get hold of the Smith money, and no doubt about there having been one murder already. If Wyllie starts hanging about and asking questions, it’s quite likely they may think he’s after the Smith money and had better be got rid of. But there’s always the hope that the real Betty Smith is still alive, being held as a kind of hostage to make sure that when the Smith money is secured, it’s shared out.”
“But could any one be kept shut up like that nowadays?” Olive asked. “Is it possible?”
“Anything is possible to-day,” Bobby told her. “We don’t live in a nice, safe, comfy Victorian world. Our world is all violent melodrama, with bits of dead bodies dropped out of aeroplanes and other bodies destroyed in quiet suburban cellars in sulphuric acid. And communists dreaming of seizing the government of the country by force, and quite capable of having a try some day—with tommy-guns, and not votes, to decide. Not that I mean any one could be kept shut up for very long. If we had time we would go over the country with a small tooth-comb. But for a few weeks all you want is a good lock on an attic or a cellar and take care never to leave your prisoner alone for long. Or you could use drugs, or put your prisoner’s legs in plaster-of-paris and explain they had been broken in an accident. Something of that sort. Ted Wyllie couldn’t do it, not by himself. No one could. But Cy King has two women to help, and that makes all the difference.”
“But surely no woman would—not when it’s a girl.”
“That wouldn’t bother our Gladys one little bit,” Bobby retorted. “Especially not, when it is a girl. She’ll hate her all the more for reminding her of what she herself was once. If she has anything to do with it, all the less hope.”
Olive lapsed into a distressed silence, and no more was said that night. Next morning Bobby was at the Yard a good deal earlier than usual, and found waiting for him a report from Sergeant James. It was to the effect that Cy King was back at his sweet-shop, though this had not been reopened for trade. There was still a notice in the window ‘Reopening shortly under New Management.’ It did not seem that the two women—Gladys and the older woman who called herself Mrs Elizabeth Smith—were with him, and no one seemed to know anything about them. But, then, no one in the underworld was very anxious to supply information about any of Cy King’s doings. Not very safe. A disturbing item in the report was that Ally Hidd had been seen the previous night talking to Ted Wyllie and had then failed to meet Fred Ford, as had been arranged. Of the other suspects—Tiny Garden and his associates—the only thing noted about them was that they were to be found back in their usual haunts, but appeared to be drinking even more freely than usual.
Bobby’s first job was to supervise and, in one or two details, to tighten up the arrangements for picking up every crumb of relevant information. Seemouth had been able to secure evidence that two men answering the description of Tiny Garden and Sunday had been seen in the Castle Beach district. But that was hardly matter for an arrest, and Bobby felt that the simplicity and ease with which the crime had been committed were going to make proof of guilt extremely difficult to secure. Then he drove to Southam in the hope of seeing the sham Betty. He thought it possible that if she were in a state of real distress or fear as a result of finding herself concerned in a brutal murder she had never contemplated, she might be willing to talk. The one weak point, he thought, in Tiny Garden’s plans. It was a hope soon dispelled. Mrs Day, watchful, suspicious and resolute, told him that by doctor’s orders Miss Smith was not to be in any way disturbed or worried. He had forbidden her to attend the inquest, and indeed the police had agreed that her presence was not necessary—at any rate, not yet. Evidence of identification was satisfactory, and there was ample further evidence that Mr Smith had been in good health and spirits when she left Seemouth.
So Bobby had to be content w
ith leaving a message that if she needed help in any way he was always and entirely at her service. As was the whole of the police force of the country, since their purpose and duty was not only to bring the guilty to justice, but also, and even more, to protect the innocent, including of course the not wholly innocent who had somehow got themselves more deeply involved than they had ever expected or intended.
Not that Bobby thought this hint was very likely to be taken up. Of that, Mrs Day’s stony features and stubborn eyes gave little hope. Perhaps she knew her son—if Sunday were her son—had gone too far for there to be any hope of mercy for him.
Bobby went away then. Once more he warned the Southam police to be on the watch for any developments. Then he returned to town, feeling rather helpless. It seemed a dead end had been reached, and that there was little more to be done till the organization he had set on foot secured definite information on which action could be taken.
Back in his office, he turned to other matters, till presently James appeared with little to report but much to say on the difficulty of keeping watch on suspects who knew very well they were being followed.
“In and out of tubes and lifts at the last moment,” James complained. “Up one escalator and down the other, and grin at you as you pass each other. Stores with half a dozen doors, in at one, out the other.”
“Got to go on trying,” Bobby told him. “Till we know different. We must work on the idea that the real Betty is being held somewhere. If it’s like that, our best hope is that some of these people may give us a lead. Or there may be a general blow-up.”
“Well, if they start doing each other in, that’ll be different,” James remarked, but not very hopefully. “Only, if there are corpses, corpses can’t tell, and those that aren’t corpsed will talk less than ever. Suppose I put it about there’s money waiting for any information about a girl believed to be held somewhere?”
But Bobby shook his head.
“Too dangerous,” he said. “Remember we’ve got to find her before Tiny Garden does—and he’s probably working as hard as we are. I don’t want Cy to know we’re on the same track. One reason why I’m worried about young Wyllie. So far as I can see, Cy knows nothing about him. He may now. And he may begin to feel it’s too dangerous to keep her alive and much too dangerous to let her go.”
“Hands tied all along the line,” James grumbled.
“The girl’s safety has to be put before everything,” Bobby repeated once more. “If it’s not too late already. Has Ally Hidd turned up yet?”
“Not a sign.”
“I’ve rung up Mr Wyllie’s office,” Bobby said. “They’ve had a ’phone call to say he won’t be there for a day or two. That’s all they know, and they seem a bit peeved about it. Anyhow, the ’phone call shows he’s quite safe up to the present.”
“Serve him right if he wasn’t,” grumbled James, with all a professional’s contempt for amateur interference. “Got enough on our hands without him.”
“About Cy’s sweet-shop?” Bobby asked. “What’s the layout? Back way in?”
“Not regular, no back door,” James explained. “It’s one of a block of shops in a turning out of Main Street. They all have backyards, and the walls between aren’t too high. Easy to climb both ways, and from Main Street only three back yards to cross. More the other way. At the rear there used to be a church. Badly blitzed. Dead easy to slip across the blitzed area—it’s been cleared, but that’s about all—make sure no one’s followed you and then skip over the back wall into Cy’s yard. No trouble at all. Overhead premises let off in flats. All respectable people, as far as known. Cy’s premises are the shop, a sort of back parlour, and a big storeroom. There’s cellars, good size.”
“Cellars?” Bobby repeated. “We’ve got to get a look at them.”
“I was thinking that,” James said. “Warn Cy, though.”
“Work it through the Gas Board,” Bobby told him. “I’ll get their co-operation. They’ll have to say a leak’s been reported. They can start at the Main Street end and go through the motions till they get to Cy’s. Then they must examine every inch of the floor. Under a microscope. Two of our best men must go with them, got up as Gas Board workers. Every inch of the floor,” Bobby repeated. “And have a close watch kept, just in case there’s any attempt to smuggle the girl away if she’s alive and that’s where they’ve had her. But I don’t expect that.”
“No, sir,” agreed James. “We’ll take care of the cellar floor all right,” he added grimly.
CHAPTER XX
“RING ME WHEN HE’S GONE”
THE NEXT day this operation was carried out. Without result. Bobby was hardly disappointed. He had not expected more. It wasn’t going to be as simple as all that. Whether Cy’s suspicions had been aroused it was impossible to say. He had not seemed much interested in the proceedings, and though, to add a touch of verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing performance, a gas-cylinder had been cautiously opened so that escaping gas could be smelt above, he had made no comment.
So once again it seemed a dead end had been reached. Cy King on the one hand, Tiny Garden on the other, appeared to be behaving in their normal manner. Ally Hidd was still missing from his usual haunts, and Ted Wyllie had still not returned to business. But he was being ‘tailed’ by a plain-clothes man, and since he was unaware of the fact, and in any case would have had no experience in how to throw off those following him, the task was not difficult. He had been indoors all morning. About two in the afternoon of this day he came out and took a ’bus to Baker Street. His ‘tail’ travelled on the same ’bus, and followed him to a tea-shop. There he provided himself with a cup of coffee and a bun, and as he seemed settled for a time, the plain-clothes man risked leaving him long enough to ring up the Yard and ask that Bobby should be informed.
“Looks like he was expecting some one,” the message said, and as Bobby thought that sounded likely enough he got a police car to take him to the indicated spot.
“He’s still there,” the plain-clothes man told him on his arrival. “Just been joined by a party answering the description given of Ally Hidd.”
Bobby nodded, and went into the tea-shop. The two of them, Ted and Ally, were too deep in conversation to notice him. He provided himself at the ‘self-help’ counter with a cup of coffee and crossed to their table.
“Mind if I join you?” he asked amiably as he seated himself.
Ally half rose from his chair as if minded to make a bolt for it, but sat down again abruptly when Bobby looked at him.
“I ain’t doing nothing about nothing,” he muttered.
“Aren’t you?” Bobby said, and turned to Ted. “And you?” he asked.
“Do you expect me to sit still while you mess about and get nowhere?” Ted retorted, with dark anger in his eyes, hot and inflamed and bloodshot.
“Are you getting anywhere?” Bobby asked.
“At any rate I’m not sitting on my behind, doing nothing,” Ted answered in the same angry tones, and Bobby smiled wryly as he thought of all that hidden, intense activity, that secret search, of which it was so important no sign should be shown. Ted saw that smile and misinterpreted it, and said with even greater anger: “Nothing to grin about.” Then he asked: “How did you know I was here?”
“Oh, we have our methods,” Bobby retorted. “I am afraid you do not feel much inclined to trust us, Mr Wyllie.”
“It’s not that,” Ted replied, though somewhat grudgingly. He was staring hard at Bobby. He seemed to hesitate. “Where are your results?” he demanded. “If my salesmen don’t show results, I want to know why. I’m having a try myself. Where’s Betty?”
“You should learn to swim before you dive into deep waters,” Bobby told him, and then turned sharply on Ally. “Well,” he said, and managed to make that simple word sound like a warning and a threat.
“S’elp me,” Ally protested, “that’s what I been saying. Wasn’t it me said to tell him to keep out? How was I to know he w
ould come right straight to Jimmy Joe and hand him a one spot to put him on me? Which Jimmy Joe didn’t ought to do, not to a pal, and never would, only for seeing Mr Wyllie wasn’t a busy, and thinking to do me a good turn.”
“I suppose you mean Mr Wyllie promised to pay you well?” Bobby suggested.
“I told him I might wring his neck for him if he didn’t mind,” Ted interposed.
“There you are,” complained Ally. “What did I tell you? That’s him all over. So what was I to do when he comes along?”
“Your methods, Mr Wyllie are just a trifle crude,” Bobby said. “I think you had better be careful—very careful.” Ted’s scowl indicated that he had no intention of being anything of the sort. “I had occasion,” Bobby went on, “to say much the same to Mr Smith. He wouldn’t listen. Now he’s dead.”
“What was I to do?” Ally repeated plaintively. “I ain’t so keen on getting across these blokes what’s working it. I don’t want to be mixed up in nothing. All for a quiet life, I am, and here’s this gent, talking violent like, only offering good money, and I don’t hold with murder, or young ladies what nobody knows what’s become of them, especially when she’s sort of smiling and nice like, as if it was all a bit of fun, and Mr Wyllie don’t take no notice when he’s told to keep out, but back again, asking his damfool questions same as before, so as every one knows and Tiny Garden and all—well, what was I to do, only try to keep him out of trouble?”
“I promised to pay his passage to New York and give him something over to start with when he got there,” Ted said.
“They wouldn’t let him in, not with his record,” Bobby said.
“Now, guv’nor, you know better’n that,” Ally protested. “You know same as me there’s places where they’ll give you an A.1 passport all complete, everything O.K.—very reasonable, too, mostly.”
Ted had seemed to lose interest in what the other two had been saying. He spoke now, his tone and manner suddenly changed:
The Secret Search: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 14
