Triple Quest: A Bobby Owen Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  “He can tell the tale, can’t he?” Groan remarked, as Sir Walter paused. “You did ought to have seen him licking his chops over ’em. Well, we all have our little weaknesses as who knows better than investigators, like me and Mr. Owen here, not forgetting the sergeant,” this last with an amiable smile towards Ford who scowled ferociously in return.

  “I think, Mr. Groan,” Bobby said now, “that you had better hold your tongue. I may have a few things to say to you later on.”

  All the same he was not much more inclined to accept at face value Sir Walter’s glib explanation than was the openly incredulous Groan. Probably, however, Sir Walter had begun to fear that the welter of rumours of which the S.B.G. had recently become the centre and the subject, coupled with the known fact that some of the S.B.G. cellars had remained unopened for so many years, might lead to a search being suggested. An uneasy conscience had then told him that to remove these doubtful productions secretly, under cover of darkness, would be a prudent precaution. As it happened this had merely led to their discovery.

  “Help, that’s all I want to do,” Groan was saying now. “And what I do say is, Monkey and his pals not being here, where are they? Eh, tell me that?” Bobby made no reply but looked thoughtful, as if an answer was in his mind and was troubling him. Groan continued: “The bloke who tipped me off was dead sure they knew about the picture and were all dead set to get hold of it to-night—and what I say is, where the picture is, there’s him as did in Atts and young Jasmine, too.” He pointed an accusing finger at Sir Walter. “If you ask me,” he said, “it’s him. Opportunity, motive and all. Who else? What I’ve always thought, whether the stiffs are here or parked somewhere else. Lots of places like the Lower Flats where Hyams was and seen no more, and what about him having helped, and so had to be got out of the way? I ask you. Plain as a pennorth of peanuts.”

  “This is utterly incredible,” said Sir Walter, who had listened to all this in a kind of hypnotic daze. “Unbelievable. It’s really suggested I’m a murderer? Three times. In my own South Bank Gallery? My own Gallery. The fellow must be mad. Mad. Or I am.” Suddenly he in his turn threw out an accusing finger at Groan and cried: “It must be him himself, he’s trying to get me suspected instead.”

  Instantly Groan was on his feet, his former air of careless confidence quite gone, a little pale, trembling with indignation—or was it fear?

  “Don’t you go for to say things like that about me,” he shouted. “Me that’s been a trusted reputed investigator—”

  “That’s enough,” interrupted Bobby, who had been silent, half listening, half lost in his own thoughts. “Tell me, was it you or some of your friends I saw on bicycles as if they had been following me?”

  “How should I know?” Groan asked sulkily. “I haven’t been on any bicycle at all or following you either.”

  “Must have been someone else,” Bobby said. “Now you be off.” He pointed to the door. Groan hesitated. Ford made up his mind for him by taking him by the arm and gently but firmly impelling him in the desired direction. Groan safely in the passage, Ford closed the door on him and turned back. Bobby said to him: “You stay here for the present. I’m going to arrange for a complete search of every inch of the basement. The Director should accompany it. As he wishes.”

  He glanced at Sir Walter as he spoke. That dazed, bewildered, still very subdued gentleman nodded acquiescence. Bobby hurried away. He called in the police surrounding the building, gave the officer in charge his orders, sent a message to Ford to join him, and very soon Bobby and Ford, with a uniform man to drive the car and a plain-clothes man in attendance, were speeding eastward through the night as fast as permitted the darkness and the swirling, eddying mist rising from the river whose course they were following.

  Nor had they gone any great distance when the plain-clothes man turned in his seat to say to Bobby:

  “There’s a car behind, sir. Looks as if it was following us.”

  “Keep an eye on it,” Bobby said. “Ten to one it’s the Press. They may have got to know something’s been happening at the S.B.G. Nothing we can do about it if it is.”

  They drove on accordingly, the car behind sometimes dropping out of sight, then catching up again. The first stop they made was at the police station Bobby had visited before. There the Inspector in charge, warned by phone, was expecting them but had no news, other than that one of the local C.I.D. men, Hall by name, told off to watch the old house at the end of Bungalow Row, had, as instructed, rung up to say that all was quiet.

  “He ought to have reported again by now,” the Inspector added, a little uneasily. “More than ten minutes ago.”

  “May have spotted something and been following it up,” Bobby suggested. “We’ll go along and see. Hall, did you say?” and added, for he liked to think he knew every C.I.D. man, and sometimes succeeded in persuading himself and others that this innocent delusion was a fact: “Fair hair, fair complexion, bit of a snub nose, bit of a north-country accent—is that the man?”

  “Well, no, sir,” the Inspector answered. “He’s rather dark, says his mother was Italian, Roman nose anyhow. Born in Whitechapel and regular Cockney to hear him talk.”

  “Oh, must have been thinking of someone else,” said Bobby, slightly deflated. “Well, we’ll try to find him. Better come, too, hadn’t you? There’s someone to take over?”

  The Inspector said there was and joined them in the car. The driver nodded to another, halted at a little distance.

  “That’s the one that’s been following us,” he said. “Waiting till we start again. Doesn’t care if we know.”

  “Looks like the Press,” Bobby said. “Might as well try to keep wasps out of the jam pot as keep them out. Whatever you do, don’t give them any information. The Lord only knows what they would make of it. Civil but silent, that’s the idea when the Press boys are around.”

  They started and their attendant car started too, making now hardly any pretence that it was not following them.

  “Pests,” said the Inspector. “That’s what they are.” He added with some bitterness, for only recently, in another case, he, an Inspector of seven years’ standing, had been described in a national newspaper as a sergeant: “And always get everything all wrong.”

  The distance was not great and soon Bobby began to recognize land marks he had memorized. He told the driver to stop when they were still a short way away from the Bungalow Row turning, since he did not wish to give warning of their approach. The car behind stopped, too, but in the darkness they could not see if anyone alighted.

  “Infernal cheek,” muttered the Inspector. “Obstructing us in the performance of our duty. That’s what I call it.”

  It was an unusually dark night, the sky covered with a thick layer of cloud through which neither moon nor stars could send even the faintest ray. Once or twice Bobby signalled to his companions to stop so that they could listen and look for any sign that their coming had been noticed. But all was dark and silent, in this most silent, darkest hour of the twenty-four. Nor, when they glanced back, did they ever catch sight of any moving form or shadow to show they were still being followed, or hear behind them any sound of a pursuing footstep. Alone they seemed awake and active in a slumbering world.

  They came to the Bungalow Row turning and there found parked at the corner a big Tiger car, one of the fastest, most highly powered, most expensive of British cars. And still no sign of Hall.

  “What’s that car doing here?” the Inspector muttered.

  “Before and behind,” Bobby said. “I don’t like it. Followed and forestalled. What’s become of Hall?”

  “He ought to be here,” the Inspector muttered uncomfortably. “I told them as soon as his report came through to warn him to be on the look out for us.”

  “Perhaps it never has come through,” Bobby said, and he, too, was growing uneasy. “Push on. Remember, not a sound.”

  In the silence of this still night, however, that was an injunction more easil
y given than obeyed. An occasional stumble on this unmade road, a muffled exclamation, the sound of their heavy footsteps, a stone accidentally kicked away, once a sneeze that rang out like some kind of minor explosion, nearly producing from Bobby another kind of explosion, all were inevitable.

  So they progressed in single file till they reached the tumble-down gate that led into the garden of the old house and nothing so far had suggested that either in the bungalows ranged on each side of the road or in the old house itself had any as yet been roused by their coming. Nor was there any sign of Detective Constable Hall who should have been on the alert, waiting, watchful and attentive, for their arrival.

  CHAPTER XXXIX

  GIFT OF A JEMMY

  AT THIS GARDEN gate Bobby stood for a moment or two, considering how to deploy his men and with always in his mind that big Tiger car in which it would be so easy for anyone reaching it to depart at speed. Easy, too, if, as he had come to believe, the ‘Girl Peeling Apples’ was hidden here, for any occupant of the house to destroy it so utterly that no trace of it would remain, not even enough to prove that it had ever been there. And that was a contingency Bobby was more than anxious to avoid, altogether apart from his firm conviction that to discover who had obtained possession of it, and why, was an essential step towards solving the fate of the two men who had been so closely linked with it, and, like it, had so strangely vanished. Now to the uniformed man who had been acting as their chauffeur, Bobby said:

  “You had better stay here. Don’t let anyone pass if you can help it. If there is any rumpus, the people from these bungalows will all be turning out to see what’s on. If anyone tries to get away from the house, blow your whistle. This is really the back, and on the right is the back door. The rest of us will go round to the front. Understand?”

  The uniform man said he did and as he spoke a light showed in the window of the nearest bungalow on their right. Bobby viewed it with discontent. He remembered noticing the garden of this particular bungalow as rather specially well tended and well laid out and he remembered the name painted on the gate: ‘Mon Repos’. Now the bungalow door opened and a woman stood there, clearly outlined against the lighted background. She was wearing a vivid, orange-coloured dressing-gown. She called out:

  “Who is there? Is anything the matter?”

  “It’s all right, madam,” Bobby said.

  “My husband’s away,” she said. “I’m all alone to-night.”

  “It’s all right,” Bobby repeated. “Please don’t worry.”

  Apparently reassured, the woman went back into the bungalow. They heard her shut the door and then the light went out. Bobby, Ford, the local Inspector, the plain-clothes man in close attendance, began to make their way round to the front of the house. Slowly they went and cautiously, careful to make as little noise as possible. Once or twice Bobby switched on his torch to make sure there was no obstacle in the way and that they had not strayed from the path. The second time he did this, he said in a whisper as he switched off his torch,

  “You others go on. I think we are being followed. I’ll wait and see who it is.”

  The other three moved on accordingly. Bobby waited. He felt, rather than heard or saw, the approach of someone moving as a shadow among shadows. He flashed his torch and said:

  “Oh, it’s you again, Groan, is it? What are you up to now?”

  “Only wanting to help, Mr. Owen, same as ever,” answered the unabashed ‘private investigator’. “On my way home from the South Bank Gallery—lummy, didn’t we catch the old boy a treat?”

  “Never mind that,” Bobby said sharply. “I want to know what you are doing here? You are sailing a bit near the wind, aren’t you?”

  “Now, Mr. Owen, sir, you’re not being fair, contrary to reputation. Got word, going home, from one of my staff waiting for me as he had been tipped off Monkey Baron and a pal had pinched a big car. Meant they were on the move and I knew it was Greenwich way they were interested in. So when I saw a big car in a hurry heading for Greenwich I thought it was them and I tailed them cautious like, not wanting to call you blokes till I was sure. No good worrying you with false alarms.”

  Plausible as ever, Bobby thought, and if he didn’t believe a word of Groan’s story, there was nothing much to be done about it. Most likely Groan had been waiting outside the S.B.G. for Bobby’s departure and then had followed in the hope of being able to get some profit for himself—or even secure grounds for putting forward a claim to the offered reward if the lost picture were recovered. Bobby told him to keep out of the way, reminded him once more that if he wasn’t careful he would presently be appearing before a magistrate, knew perfectly well this warning was useless, since no one knew better than Groan just how far it was safe to go, told him again, more sharply still, to keep out of the way, and then hurried on to catch up with his companions. Nor was he unaware that Groan was still following, still watching, still hoping that somehow or another he might yet snatch some gain for himself from any of the events he foresaw were likely this night.

  Round the corner, where the path turned to lead to the old front door, all three of Bobby’s companions were waiting for him.

  “It was Groan,” Bobby said. “Trying to find out what’s going on.”

  But now from the darkness around came a hoarse voice, saying in tones of disgusted resignation and surprise:

  “If it ain’t Mr. Owen—always there, ain’t he?—especial when not wanted.”

  “Monkey Baron,” exclaimed Ford, in almost ludicrously similar tones of disgust and resignation.

  “Might be a public meeting,” Bobby said sourly. “I suppose it was you I saw cycling off when I was here before?”

  “I don’t know about that, guv,” Monkey answered cautiously. “From information received”—perhaps unconsciously he was imitating a policeman giving evidence—“we got the idea that the picture some bloke lifted from that place on the South Bank might be here. So me and Irish Joe came along just to ask, civil like, meaning no harm, if the facts was so, and if it was, there being a little matter of three grand mentioned, how about letting us have it and no questions asked, but the three grand split up friendly like, all O.K., and above board, Mr. Owen, us having no idea you was on as well. But might have guessed it,” he added, resignation creeping back into his voice.

  Bobby hesitated. He would have liked to arrest the two of them, Monkey Baron and Irish Joe, on a charge of being on private premises for a presumed unlawful purpose—and he had no doubt that if he did so they would be found to have in their possession housebreaking tools of one sort or another. Enough at least to provide sufficient evidence to substantiate such a charge. But he also felt that no such arrest could be effected without giving the alarm he was so anxious to avoid.

  “Who is with you?” he asked.

  “Only Irish Joe,” Monkey repeated. “Just out of hospital, been beaten up so cruel his own mother didn’t know him, and said as it couldn’t be no child of hers. Hey, Joe, where are you? Don’t be shy. Show up that mug of yours as is now almost human like, as was more like a mashed potato than human face.”

  “Mashed turnip is the correct expression,” Bobby corrected mechanically.

  As he spoke a strong ray from the hitherto hidden moon penetrated through a rift in the clouds. For a moment, no more, it illumined the house with a strange, weird light, lending to it somehow more than a touch of that air of evil waiting as for unmentionable deeds that Jasmine had managed to convey so well in that sketch of his. Just as Bobby saw it now, so he must have seen it, too, either in fact or by insight, foreboding insight, so it may be Monkey Baron saw it also in that one moment, for he uttered a startled exclamation and an appeal to his Maker that for once did not sound like blasphemy.

  The moment, the impression, passed. Bobby said:

  “Now clear out, the two of you. I don’t want to bother with you at the moment but I shall if you try to hang around.”

  “Oh, all right, guv, if you take it that way,” Monke
y answered, and was beginning to move off when suddenly a window opened on the attic floor, a light showed, an empty beer bottle came flying through the air and broke in bits at Bobby’s feet. A shrill voice screamed:

  “Go away, go away. I told you. There’s no one here but me,” and by way of emphasis, another beer bottle followed, though one less well aimed.

  “Madam—” Bobby began, remembering the old woman he had seen before, but got no further, for this time it was a milk bottle that he only managed to dodge by a quick and lively skip aside.

  “Old girl up there was doing that at me and Joe,” Monkey remarked. “Sort of artillery barrage. Must have heard us talking now and started her off again. Once it was a lighted lamp she chucked, and she scored a direct hit on Joe with a whacking big electric torch that wouldn’t work. Joe yelled he would do her in for that so she tried again with a lump of old iron.”

  “I’ve got a gun,” screamed the old voice from above. “Off you go. I know how to use it. I’ll teach you, trying to get in.” And they could see, thrust out from that upper window, what looked uncomfortably like the barrel of a gun. “Five minutes and if you’re still there, I’ll fire. Pack of cowards, think you can do what you like with an old lone woman all by herself. Be off. Five minutes.”

  “Madam,” began Bobby, and again got no further for down came that upstairs window with a crash.

  “Well,” said the Inspector, “I never—” and then he lapsed into silence.

  “What do we do now?” asked Ford, somewhat helplessly.