“Nothing like that at all,” Bobby reassured her.
“Oh, well, then,” she sighed, and gave the address, Low Beech Cottage, on the west border of the forest, towards its northern boundary, and so in the same district as The Manor even though three or four miles separated them with a projecting arm of the forest lying between.
Bobby expressed his gratitude to the hat shop divinity for the information and departed in spite of the fact that, her former indifference broken down, she now seemed condescendingly inclined to linger, even to chatter indeed. But he had grown preoccupied, for he was wondering whether this comparative proximity of Low Beech Cottage to The Manor had any significance, and he had been rendered a little uneasy, too, by the apparent revelation that Miss Farrar was pressed for money. He told himself gloomily that when you are pressed for money, most people would be inclined to say that a hundred pounds could be a great temptation.
All the more need then to discover the truth and so clear the innocent from suspicion. For that, after all, is as important a part of a detective’s work as is the bringing of the guilty to justice, and to save a good name often means as much as to save a life.
A little cheered by this reflection he went back to the garage where he kept the motor-cycle he had lately purchased – on the hire system – wondered where the next instalment was coming from, wondered whether he would get the petrol he was going to use successfully passed through expenses, and then mounted and rode out Epping way.
It was a pleasant ride once the more crowded streets were left behind. He had picked out his route on a map and near his destination he consulted a constable who had never heard of Low Beech Cottage but was able to indicate the probable direction. Riding on, Bobby found himself presently on a quiet path, running through the forest itself with the tall trees rising up on either hand. It was very still here and very quiet, a contrast indeed to those roaring spates of endless traffic through which his earlier course had lain. Here he rode alone and tranquillity was all about him. It was very dark, too, he had to turn on his headlight and proceed slowly on a route by no means in the best of repair.
Uncertain whether he had not somehow missed his way, he halted, and sat for a moment or two, aware now of the lovely silence that here lay like the peace of God upon the, great still forest.
He thought lazily how tranquil all the earth would seem if it were not for the presence of the quarrelsome and restless race of man. How all this surrounding peace, for instance, would be shattered the moment that he started his engine roaring and clamouring again, how, too, the fumes from his exhaust pipe would poison the sweet evening fragrance of the woodland air. He told himself it would be like an insult to the old forest gods – only that probably they had not yet recovered from the last bank holiday. He became aware that someone was watching him from the midst of a clump of young beeches near by.
In his present mood he would have been willing to believe this must be satyr or faun, but supposing that was hardly probable he switched off his light, said something aloud about having to ‘see about it’, alighted, fumbled for a moment or two with his satchel of tools, and then made a swift and sudden dash at the cluster of beeches.
“Right-ho, guv’nor, it’s only me,” said a familiar voice, and Bobby paused and gasped as he recognized Clarence.
“What in thunder are you up to now?” he demanded.
“Same as you,” answered Clarence, not without complacence, “keeping an eye on her.”
“On?”
“On her,” repeated Clarence, a trifle impatiently this time. “She’s here all right.”
“Where?” asked Bobby.
“Where she hangs out, over there,” Clarence explained, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. “Blooming lonely, ain’t it? and what’s that for? Not natural like, is it? Front gate down the road where it turns. You can get to the back this way.”
He led Bobby a few yards through the trees. They reached a footpath and following it for a short distance they came in sight of a small cottage that looked like an old building recently restored. By its side was a substantially built garage, evidently a modern addition.
“She got here half an hour ago,” Clarence explained. “But there was a bloke before that. Come along on a bike he did. I saw him coming so I laid low and watched. He nosed around a bit and tried the door and it wouldn’t open so he got in through one of the windows.”
“Was it open?”
“It was after he worked it a bit with a knife,” Clarence answered. “Pushed back the catch with it and got in. Clumsy bloke, but he done it in the end. And he hadn’t been in more than ten minutes when the lady come along in her car.”
“What happened?” Bobby asked uneasily.
“I heard her squeal once after she went indoors, same as ladies do when took unexpected, and then nothing more.”
“You’ve done nothing, heard nothing else?” Bobby asked.
“I was trying to think what I did ought for the best,” Clarence explained, frowning slightly at the memory of the mental effort he had been making, “me not knowing what it was all about, and then I heard your motor-bike. So I says to myself as very likely it’d be another of ’em, and I had better wait and see what’s next, me being mixed up in it all as much as seems healthy like and not knowing what mightn’t happen next. So when I sees it’s you,” added Clarence virtuously, “I says to myself, here’s a busy I’ll park along with – you being a gent, Mr. Owen, sir, and not like some as is always down on a bloke.”
“You’ll find me down on you all right if you try any monkey tricks,” Bobby warned him grimly. “Come along. We’ll see what’s happened.” He began to move towards the cottage, and Clarence followed. “You didn’t recognize him, the man you saw get here, I mean?”
“Bloke of the name of Yates,” answered Clarence. “One of ’em from Mr. Judson’s office, I’ve seen him there once or twice, it’s him as had it in for Mr. Macklin along of him getting the job what he thought did ought to have been his.”
Bobby’s uneasiness increased. What was Yates doing here? Was it possible there could be any connection between Yates and Olive Farrar? He began to run. In the increasing darkness, as the night drew on, he blundered against the wire fence that bordered the cottage garden, put there to keep out the ubiquitous rabbit. Almost at the same moment there broke out from the cottage a sudden clamour, a sound of shouting, of conflict as of men fighting together, and a thin voice screaming shrilly.
Bobby half leapt, half scrambled over the wire fencing, lost his footing, fell headlong into a bed of lettuces all run to seed. He picked himself up. There rang out two or three pistol shots in close succession. At his utmost speed Bobby dashed towards the cottage, ran right into a rose bush, tore himself free with the blood trickling from a long scratch on his left cheek, and ran on, as once more, as the sounds from the cottage ceased, there prevailed the deep silence of the forest, indifferent and serene above all these noises that so soon passed and were gone.
Bobby was at the back door now. It was locked and though he flung his full weight against it, it resisted. He raced round to the front. All the windows were closed and curtained but here and there, where the curtains did not quite meet, rays of light reached out into the night. He rounded the corner of the cottage and as he did so he heard the front door bang and was just in time to see a figure fleeing down the garden path towards the shelter of the darkness beneath the forest trees.
Bobby shouted what he knew was a futile order to stop. The fugitive paid no attention, ran the faster. Bobby took a step or two in pursuit, but the other was running with a speed and lightness that told it would not be easy to over-take him.
Besides, there was in him a dreadful anxiety, a gnawing fear that gripped his heart with such terror as he had never known before, that dried his mouth till he knew what that old writer meant who spoke of the tongue that clove to the roof of the mouth.
“Follow him, a quid if you catch him,” Bobby gasped to Clarence and himself
dashed back to the cottage.
“O.K. guv.,” responded Clarence and made a great show of obeying.
But he had an innate dislike for pistols and though a quid was a quid, even more emphatically was a bullet a bullet. For a few minutes he pounded along, more or less at random, and then gave it up and turned back towards the cottage.
There Bobby was trying to get in. The door, provided with a spring lock, had fastened when the fugitive banged it behind him. Driven by the unexpressed fear that urged him on, Bobby leaped on the sill of the nearest window. A vigorous blow with his elbow shattered the glass. He put his hand through, undid the clasp, lifted the sash, tore aside the curtain, scrambled inside.
He was in a small hall. No sound came to tell anyone was aware of his entrance. There was a door opposite. He pushed it open. Within was a fair sized room, a ‘lounge’ is now the fashionable name. At one end was a deep recess with a small table, a dining recess a house agent would probably have called it. Between Bobby and this was a settee, and by the light of a lamp hanging from the ceiling Bobby saw a hand, a helpless hand reaching out from behind the settee as though vainly asking for help.
Bobby stepped forward. He saw plainly who it was lying there. With almost a sob of relief he said aloud:
“Thank God.”
From behind Clarence who had followed him – Clarence hated to lead but he was always ready to follow – said slowly:
“That’s Yates, that is. Who outed him?”
Bobby knelt down by the side of the prostrate man and saw to his relief that he was alive, probably not even very seriously injured. Apparently he had been knocked out by a heavy blow on the forehead. He did not appear to have been hit by any of the shots Bobby and Clarence had heard and a neat little hole in the ceiling suggested that one at least had been fired in the air, whether intentionally or not. Overturned furniture and a breakage or two suggested however that the struggle had been vigorous while it lasted.
“If she done it, and there weren’t no one else here,” observed Clarence with a touch of admiration in his voice, “she can hit same as she can run.”
“It was a man I saw,” Bobby said shortly.
“Ah, nowadays you can’t hardly tell one from which,” argued Clarence. “Trousers and short ’air and all,” he said and added severely: “I don’t ’old with it, spank ’em, I says. Did you see the bloke clear what was running, Mr. Owen?”
“Clear enough to be sure it was a man,” Bobby answered, though this was an exaggeration, for indeed he had had but the merest glimpse of that fleeing form before it merged into the dark night.
“Well, if it wasn’t her what runned, where is she?” Clarence asked.
It was a question Bobby had already asked himself, that already had brought back upon him that gripping, devastating fear he had known before. Leaving Yates lying, since it seemed he was in no immediate need, they began a brief search of the cottage. They soon assured themselves there was no one else there. Besides the lounge on the ground floor there was a small kitchen – or kitchenette to adopt house agent’s language – and a tiny entrance hall. Above was a landing, two fair sized bedrooms, and a bathroom. Heat, lighting and cooking, were all evidently done by oil. There was no attic, no place where anyone could be concealed. Bobby looked even in the cupboards and Clarence lowered himself ponderously on hands and knees to peer under the beds.
“She ain’t here and she was here,” he said with that direct simplicity which sometimes made his remarks memorable, “so it must have been her done a bunk, or who was it and where is she?”
“I tell you it was a man I saw,” Bobby retorted angrily. “Are you sure it was Miss Farrar you saw?”
“Got eyes, ain’t I?” asked Clarence in an injured tone. “It was ’er as squealed, too.”
They were downstairs again. Clarence said:
“If it was a man as bunked, then ’im or this one –” he stirred the unconscious Yates with his foot, “must have gone and been and done something with ’er. Only what?”
“Oh, shut up,” almost shouted Bobby. “She must have gone again,” he said more quietly.
“Her car what she came in is there still,” Clarence said. I ran into it when I was after the bloke what runned, that’s why I didn’t cop him. If she’s gone, she’s left her car – and where is she? It’s dark and it’s late and them trees all round.”
Bobby made a great effort to collect his thoughts, to fight down the panic he felt besieging him. His great quality had always been the coolness of mind that never hitherto had deserted him, even in the most critical moments. But now he felt it going. He supposed it was nerves. For the first time in his life he began to under-stand what that word means, a word of which hitherto he had always been more than a little contemptuous. He must summon help, of course. He ought to have done that before. By this time the fugitive he had seen would be safely away. He would be blamed for that, he supposed. He was sure himself it was a man he had seen escaping, but would others believe that when he would have to admit under questioning that he had had but the merest glimpse, and that only in the obscurity of the night? Others, too, would be quick to remember, as he had already done, that Macklin also had been knocked out by a heavy blow on the head. On his confused and fearful thoughts, there broke the voice of Clarence.
“Here’s her hat and gloves and bag,” he said. “They was in the hall like, on the table.”
He was holding out a woman’s hat, gloves, handbag. Bobby looked at them gloomily.
“Shows she was ’ere,” said Clarence, “so where is she?” Bobby had already noticed the ’phone in one corner of the room. He went across to it and rang up Scotland Yard. Assured that assistance was on the way, he rang off and said to Clarence:
“We’ll have a look round outside.”
But the illusive Clarence had once more disappeared. He had no desire to be there when that help arrived Bobby had summoned, nor to undergo the questioning which would inevitably ensue. Bobby noticed, too, that the handbag, which had been closed before, was now open, and he was not greatly surprised when he looked inside to find in it no money, but only an empty purse.
“Our Clarence saw his chance,” Bobby said to himself, “no proof he pinched the money because he’ll swear it was done before by whoever knocked out Yates. I shall get it in the neck for having let him go, I suppose.”
But the thought of that was almost a relief compared with the deadly fear he was making so great an effort to control, that he knew well might master him at any moment, urge him to seek relief in some madness of folly or hysteria.
“I mustn’t lose my head,” he said and forced himself to stand perfectly still, not moving, hardly breathing, for a minute or two.
Then he went outside. It was quite dark now, the last trace of daylight long vanished. He called out once or twice but there was no answer. His voice died away and was lost in the great silence that seemed no more intense amidst the stars above than it was beneath the tall trees all around. He began to make a circuit of the house, every sense and nerve alert, for a fear was on him of what he might find lying out here in the darkness. He was able to make out the garage as a low black mass against the sky. He groped his way to it, stumbling once or twice over hidden obstacles till he found the concrete path that connected it with the house. The door was closed, locked he thought, when he tried it a voice from within called –
“You can go away. I’ve made up the door and you can’t get in.”
Bobby leaned against the garage wall, for the moment a little faint with the relief as there rolled away that cloud of fear within which he had walked for these long last minutes.
“Thank God,” he said aloud once more and still more fervently and then again: “Thank God.”
CHAPTER 16
COFFEE FOR TWO
Leaning there in the dark against the garage wall, Bobby strove hard to recover a self-possession disturbed and shaken in a way he had never known before. He found he was perspiring slightly, his hear
t beating more rapidly than usual. He had trained his naturally visual memory till he had an unusual power for recalling in every detail faces he had once seen, but that did not explain the intensity with which now he seemed to see Olive Farrar’s, yet not so much in detail, in passionless recountable detail, as in a kind of intensity of presence. Angrily he asked himself what was the matter, and then, because he did not wish to know, he knocked again at the garage door.
“Miss Farrar,” he called, “will you please open? There is no one here now but police and an unconscious man in the cottage. He has been hit on the head and stunned. I have sent for help from Headquarters. It will be here soon.”
There was no answer but Bobby felt Olive was listening. He knocked and called again.
“There is nothing to be afraid of. My name is Owen. You remember I called to see you at your shop the other day? I can push my card under the door if you like.”
He did so and then after another pause she called out to him that the door was locked on the outside so she could not open it. There was a spare key, though, and she told him where it was. He found it and opened the door wherefrom now she had removed the obstructions with which it had been barricaded. A hanging lamp lighted the interior and by its illumination they stood for a moment or two watching each other. Bobby said:
“They didn’t hurt you?”
She shook her head slightly, and with a faint surprise, for she had recognized an anxiety in his voice that she did not quite understand. He said:
“You are alone? There was no one with you?”
Again she shook her head, watching him curiously by the light of the lamp shining full on his face. She said:
“Your face is bleeding? You’re hurt?”
“It is nothing, only a scratch,” he answered.
They were silent again, looking at each other, and why they were silent and why they watched each other so, neither knew. Reminding himself that he was a sworn officer of police and that he had a duty to do, Bobby said abruptly: “What happened?”
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