The Secret Search: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  Cautiously Bobby began to pick his way across that sad memento of the waste of war. Soon he was half-way to the rear of the sweet-shop. By looking over the back wall of the shop yard, he would be able, he hoped, to see if any signs of occupation were visible. ‘Reconnoitring’, the army would have called it. He became aware that behind him some one else was moving, stopping when he stopped, moving when he moved. With every sense alert, he resumed his way, still cautiously, still silently, telling himself he must be careful not to allow his unseen pursuer to draw too near. He had no desire to share the fate of the unlucky Sergeant James and to wake up in hospital, wondering how on earth he had got there. He reached the yard wall, and there stooped down so as to be hidden in the shadow the wall threw. He moved a little distance to one side. There he stayed, crouching in the shadow so that, unseen himself, he could distinguish even against that dark sky the silhouette of his follower.

  “Clumsy lad, whoever it is,” he told himself as the noise of a stumbling approach grew louder. “Sounds as if it might be Tiny,” he thought. “Big and clumsy,” and braced himself for a struggle with an opponent who might be clumsy, and too awkward to make full use of his muscles, but whose physical strength none the less was formidable, and who would certainly resist with desperation.

  Whoever it was, Tiny or another, had now reached the yard wall, and there stood for a moment or two, apparently puzzled to know what had become of Bobby—if, that is, he had recognized Bobby, and had not merely been following out of curiosity or else from some more dangerous motive. Now he hoisted himself to the top of the wall and balanced there, half over. Probably he thought Bobby might have climbed over into the yard behind, and was trying to see if he could make out any sign of him there. Bobby straightened up and began to move nearer. His movements were certainly not as clumsy or noisy as had been those made by his follower, but neither were they perfectly silent. Indeed, to move noiselessly on the rough and rubble-encumbered ground would have tried the skill even of the Red Indian of fiction or the well-trained commando of fact. He was heard, for the man balanced on the top of the wall looked round quickly, and dropped back on the ground to be instantly tackled, tripped, and laid flat on his back before he had any chance to know what was happening or to recover his balance. In tones of concentrated fury, Bobby said:

  “You again, Wyllie; still doing your level best to mess things up.”

  CHAPTER XXIV

  “ARE YOU ALL SQUIFFY?”

  IT WAS with almost equal temper that Ted retorted as Bobby, having relaxed his grip, he struggled to a sitting position:

  “Mess up? What are you doing for any one to mess up? Except grabbing me from behind when I wasn’t looking? Haven’t you anything better to do than dodge around after me?”

  Bobby glared. As it was too dark for a glare to be visible this had no noticeable effect. He gathered all the latent resources of his eloquence together in order to tell Ted exactly and precisely what he thought of him. Then, instead of letting loose the full torrent of his official wrath, he paused and said:

  “H-ussssh, husssh!”

  His quick ear had caught the sound of what he thought was the cautious opening of a door. He crouched down in the shadow of the yard wall. Ted, obeying a fierce and imperative gesture, did the same. Cautious footsteps on the other side of the wall became clearly audible. They came nearer, and fresh sounds indicated that some one had placed a packing-case or something of the sort in position, had climbed on it, and was peering over the wall into that bleak expanse of waste and rubble where a church had stood for many hundred years and now was there no longer. The shadow thrown by the yard wall hid the two crouching in its shelter. The patter of the rain, now much heavier, helped to cover any faint sounds they might have made. Apparently satisfied, whoever it was went back to the shop, and they heard the sound of a closing door.

  “Who was that?” Ted whispered.

  Bobby did not answer. He had drawn himself up to the top of the wall, and was peering over it in his turn. A faint illumination was visible where a light within the shop shone behind a closely drawn blind. Bobby lowered himself to the ground again. He said to Ted:

  “Hurry off. Find a call-box. Dial police and tell them I’m here and want help. Understand? I’m going to climb over and see if I can find out what’s going on.”

  “Cut along yourself if you want to,” Ted retorted, though in the same careful whisper. “I’m not leaving here till I know about Betty. It’s my job.”

  This time Bobby’s glare ought to have been visible even in that darkness. Unfortunately it didn’t seem to be. At any rate, Ted didn’t seem to notice anything. Bobby tried to speak, but words simply would not come, smothered as they were by deep emotion. He thought wildly of knocking Ted out with one on the point of the chin, delivered with all the force behind it of the overwhelming emotion he was feeling. But that would have been highly improper and unofficial, and, much more important, could not have been carried out, even successfully, without the risk of resultant sounds that would be sure to betray their presence. Then all the wild and whirling words with which his mind was full turned once again into a whispered ‘Husssh,’ as once again there became audible cautious sounds indicating a fresh careful opening of a door. A voice said:—

  “O.K. No one about. Not likely. Not when it’s raining like this.”

  “Got to make sure,” another voice said. “Always make sure.”

  The second voice had been a woman’s, and Bobby felt how Ted strained and quivered to the sound of it. Bobby whispered:

  “Did you recognize it?”

  “I couldn’t tell. It’s the rain,” Ted whispered back. “I couldn’t say.”

  There was again the sound of a door carefully closed, and again there was silence. Ted muttered:

  “It might be Betty. She may be there. I got hold of that man you saw at the teashop, and he promised to help. He told me to meet him here to-night, because if she came it would be along that street where I was waiting, and if I saw her, then I could speak to her. He never turned up, and I didn’t see her—only I saw that fellow who answered my advertisement I told you about, but he and another fellow with him only went into a café, so I came on here, where Hidd thought they might be bringing her.”

  “How much money have you been giving Ally?” Bobby asked crossly. “I suppose you haven’t enough sense to understand that if you offer money for information, you get it all right, only mostly made up for the occasion. What else did he tell you?”

  “He said Betty had probably been got at and taken off under pretence of seeing her uncle she’s been wanting to find for years. But now she may have got suspicious. It’s all mixed up with what happened to mother and at Seemouth. I’m going to make sure if Betty is there. God knows what’s happening.” With a sudden, unexpected spring he was on the top of the wall. He said: “It’s all right. I’ve got a gun. You go and fetch your chaps.”

  “A gun,” Bobby groaned. “It only needed that.”

  Ted, lowering himself into the shop yard, disappeared from sight. Furious, frustrated, unable to make effective protest of any sort or kind, since an attempt to do so would be almost certain to raise an alarm, Bobby followed. The yard was full of that sort of debris—old packing-cases, wrappings, empty canisters, and so on—naturally accumulating in the back yard of any shop. Against the wall dividing the yard from the one next to it on the left, stood a small shed. Again there came the sound of a door being carefully opened, and in the rain, now really heavy, a little group of men and women dashed from the back door of the shop across the yard into the shed, wherein they vanished in a hurried scramble. Why this rush to get out of the rain, and the fact that some of the group had umbrellas up, struck Bobby in memory as slightly comic, he did not know. Even murderers, planning fresh crime, may reasonably object to water trickling down their necks.

  At the moment, however, he had neither time nor inclination for such reflections. Seizing the opportunity offered by this skurry in the rain an
d the dark, he darted across into a space left between the back of the shed and the outer wall of the yard. Ted was almost as quick. Any sounds they made passed unnoticed, mingled as they were with others made by those who had so suddenly emerged from the shop. There was a small window at the rear of the shed, and by good fortune a pane had been broken. A rag, stuffed in to replace the missing glass, fitted only imperfectly, so that any light within the shed would be instantly visible and any talk audible at once and without effort. Against this so convenient spy-hole, Bobby stood. Ted pressed as close to him as he could get, and Bobby observed, entirely without sympathy, that a stream of water from a broken gutter was descending upon him. Not that it made much difference, for by now they were both wet through. Besides, Ted was plainly utterly oblivious to any such minor inconvenience.

  Inside the shed there was a certain confusion of movement and disconnected muttering as those within settled themselves into position, shook off rain from hair or clothing, put their wet umbrellas aside. A voice Bobby recognized for that of Tiny Garden asked:

  “What’s the sense bringing us out here?”

  “Because,” said another voice, lower, thinner, with a kind of hidden snarl in it, rather as if an angry cat had been given human speech, a voice Bobby recognized, too, this time for that of Cy King: “because there’s a flat overhead and a bogey comes sometimes. He’s the woman’s brother, I think. He’s a flatfoot, not a busy, but you can’t trust him for that. Snoopers, the whole blasted lot. Likely as not they know about me being here, and suppose they’ve took up a floorboard and put in a dictaphone or something? I tell you straight, I’ll take no risk of any one listening in to us to-night, not on your life, I don’t.”

  “O.K.,” Tiny answered. “I don’t want any listening, any more than you, see? What about a light?”

  “And having some one looking out of a window seeing lights in a place supposed to be empty? As likely as not ringing 999 because of thinking it might be burglars.”

  This suggestion seemed to amuse them all, and there was a sort of general chuckle. Tiny said again:

  “O.K. Have it the way you want. All I wanted was to be sure who’s here. You wouldn’t ever think of planting a pal or two just to be handy like, would you?”

  “Don’t be a fool,” Cy snarled. “We’re got to fix things honest and friendly, haven’t we? We know you’ve got the money, and you know we can do you down any time we want. Only we shan’t if you act on the square. Do a straight deal with the money when you get it, fair shares, same as said, and everything’s O.K. and every one satisfied, and us with our share we’ve a right to, no more likely to double-cross than you. Can’t afford it, either of us, once the deal is through.”

  “That’s O.K., that’s all right,” Tiny agreed in his heavy, rumbling tones. “Only you being same as you are, you’ll do the dirty if not watched, and I’m taking no chances. Who is the other skirt, and what’s she come along for?”

  “What other skirt?” Cy demanded. “There’s only Ma Day and her kid and Gladys.” Some one sneezed at this point, and Cy said. “That’s her. Shut it, Gladys, you and your snivelling.”

  “Can’t help it if I’ve got a cold, can I?” Gladys retorted. “Dragging me out in the rain and all,” and she sneezed again.

  “‘There was four,” Tiny insisted. “Coming across the yard, I saw there was four. I reckon you had her hid out there in the yard, waiting, and she come in with us to get out of the rain.”

  “You didn’t, it’s a lie, you didn’t, you couldn’t!” Gladys screamed, loud and shrill, “There’s only us three, so how could there be another? It’s a lie, it’s a lie, it’s a lie! Isn’t it, Tiny? Tell us it’s a lie, Tiny.”

  Gladys’s voice, hysterical at first, sank into a kind of frightened whimper. There was a sudden silence, as if the rest of those present were too surprised, too bewildered, by this outbreak, for which there seemed so little reason, to know what to say. Then Cy shouted angrily:

  “Shut it, Glad! What’s biting you? Shut it, unless you want a swipe across the face. Tiny’s fooling. What’s the big idea, Tiny? How could you see four skirts when there’s only three—and one of them in slacks.” He chuckled at this, as if he thought he had said something funny, and went on: “Pals aren’t we? If we don’t work the job together we’ll neither of us get a thing. If we do, it’s O.K., and enough for us all, and live respectable long as we want. Don’t want to fool a chance like that away, do we? What more do you want—everything being fixed up so we’ve got it the way we all want, safe as houses?”

  “I want to know who it was came in out of the rain along with the other women?” Tiny insisted sullenly, “and don’t try to fool me, because I’m not standing for any tricks.”

  “There wasn’t any one,” Cy repeated, and added a string of oaths for confirmation. “Better stand up, all of you. Line up against the wall. I’ll strike a match, and Tiny can count for himself.”

  There was a general sound of people scrambling to their feet, taking up their position as directed. Cy struck a match. It threw a faint, uncertain momentary light. It went out. Tiny said hesitatingly.

  “I saw someone else. I thought I did. Four coming sudden like out of the rain. O.K. There’s only the three of ’em. Must have been the mix-up in the rain. O.K.,” he said again, but his voice was still troubled and doubtful.

  “There’s only us,” Gladys said. “Me and Ma Day and her kid. How could any one see four when there’s only three? Stands to reason. It’s the rain.”

  “Ain’t we had enough of this?” another voice demanded, that of a man. “Can’t we get on and get things fixed up reasonable like, all being pals?”

  “That’s right,” Cy said, but now it was his voice that was changed and shaken and hesitant as he said: “God’s truth, I counted four—Glad and Ma and her kid, and then I thought there was another with ’em; only then she wasn’t.”

  “It’s Cy seeing things now,” Tiny said with a loud but not too confident-sounding voice. “Light another match.”

  “It was the last I had,” Cy said. “See. I’ll call your names one by one, and you answer, each of you, and then come across and stand behind me. And Tiny, you stand at the door to make sure no one slips out. Glad?”

  “O.K. Me,” came a shaken, quavering reply, and sounds that showed she was obeying the order to move to where Cy stood.

  “Ma Day?” Cy said, and again there came the answer, “O.K. Me,” and again the sound of some one shifting position.

  The same challenge and response; this time from a younger woman’s voice, presumably ‘Ma Day’s kid’; and next from a man addressed as ‘Sunday’; and finally from a ‘Bill’ whom Bobby, listening intently to all this, took to be the ‘Bill Bright’, heard of last as Cy’s companion at Seemouth.

  “O.K.,” Cy said once more. “There’s five spoke up to their names, and Tiny’s at the door, and me and him make up seven, and seven we are, and no more, nor room for any, as all can see. Not so much as where a mouse could hide,” he said, and suddenly: “What’s that? Who said that?”

  A confused clamour broke out. Some were saying they had heard, breathed softly through the air, in a voice they did not recognize, coming they did not know from where, the same words they had all used in turn, ‘Me, O.K.’; and some were protesting angrily that they had heard nothing because there had been nothing to hear, and some one else was shouting:

  “What the hell! Are you all squiffy?”

  “Being funny, some one,” Cy snarled in a furious undertone. “Just let me spot which, and I’ll cut his inside out and fry it for the cat’s supper.”

  “There isn’t no one being funny,” Gladys cried very loudly. “It’s her, and she’s here somehow. She always is. She knows. She was there when Tiny did the job with the old man at Seemouth, and told us all about it, me and Auntie, lying on the bed and saying what she saw.”

  CHAPTER XXV

  “SHE’S BEEN TOLD”

  IT WAS Tiny Garden who first broke the s
udden silence that ensued upon this outbreak, of which, Bobby guessed, none of the others could at first make head or tail. Someone had struck another match. Now it flickered out and left the interior of the shed as dark as before—darker far than without. But Bobby could distinguish a bulky shadow moving heavily forward, and then he heard Tiny’s hoarse, threatening voice:

  “You go on talking like that, and I’ll knock your block off. See?”

  “All right, all right,” Gladys screamed “Go on, do it! Knock my block off and she’ll know, she’ll see; she’ll tell it all. Go on, you great beast! Why don’t you?”

  “Shut it, Tiny!” Cy said. “What are you getting at, Glad? What’s the good of talking like that, playing the fool?”

  “I’m not,” Gladys told him. “It’s gospel truth, what I said. Ask Auntie. She heard same as me. I tell you straight. Lying there she was, and saying what she saw and all—Tiny and Sunday and the old man and what they did, like it was television. I bought a book.”

  “Bought a—what?” asked some one, evidently finding this announcement as bewildering and even incredible as anything previously said. “What for? What book?”

  “What are you getting at?” Cy demanded, he, too, taken utterly aback by so unprecedented a statement. “A—book?”

  “It says all about it,” Gladys explained. She had quietened down, and was speaking in a more ordinary tone. “I mean to say, all about knowing things when you aren’t there to see them. It was on the wireless. There was a woman in an aeroplane somewhere, flying miles up, and she could tell about things in a room in a house. This book’s all about it.”

  “That was only a dodge,” Tiny said. “They worked it somehow. A code or something. Sort of conjuring trick. Any one but a dope could tell that.”

  “Who worked it when she knew about Seemouth same time it was going on?” Gladys asked.