Once again there had been an easy opportunity for him to shake off pursuit, had he so wished. But instead he must have actually reduced speed, and now he was looking back as if to be certain Bobby was still there. The moment he was sure of that, he increased speed again, and again was resumed this inconceivable pursuit, this wild and desperate hunt in which the quarry seemed to take every chance and run every risk—to avoid final escape.
They were beginning to leave the town behind. Occasionally they left built-up areas for a time. Not that that made much difference as they roared and rushed along. Bobby noticed that they were now not far from the neighbourhood of his new home, where Olive was so busy getting furniture in place and curtains hung. Not more than two or three miles away, Bobby thought, not more than two or three minutes in time at the speed at which they were travelling. It was open country here and the driving as tricky and dangerous as ever, for if there were few or no obstructions, there were sharp and narrow bends and blind corners where tall hedges, untrimmed all through the war years, made observation impossible.
Here Bobby began to gain. The cyclist was only a few yards ahead now. It looked as if these twists and turns were affecting him, forcing him to slow down. For almost the first time Bobby began to think there really was a chance of overtaking him—and how he would enjoy, Bobby told himself grimly, getting within arm’s length of this specialist in cheek and impudence who had led him such a dance. Straight ahead, in this lane as narrow as any they had traversed, a woman appeared, walking. She jumped into the hedge and stood there, screaming and half hidden by branches and foliage but making herself heard at least, even above or through the roar of the engines of car and cycle. A few yards further on, the lane, it was no more, turned at a sharp angle. Bobby swung his car round. Ahead was a long, straight stretch. It was empty. The cyclist and his machine seemed simply to have vanished.
CHAPTER VI
INEFFECTIVE SEARCH
It was only for the first moment that Bobby’s bewilderment lasted as his eyes wandered up and down that long and empty road. Then he saw that in the roadside ditch on his right hand, half hidden by a great bank of nettles, lay the motor cycle. Two or three yards further on from where it lay was a low stile, in part hidden by the overgrowth of the untrimmed hedge. Bobby jumped from his car and ran to it. On the other side was a smooth, well beaten path, leading down a fairly steep slope to a small wood or copse a few hundred yards distant. Beyond this and a little to one side, so as not to be entirely hidden by the trees, stood a church and other buildings. Bobby recognized them. They were the church and cottages and farms of Much Middles, the village of which his new home, Fern Cottage, formed a part. Then the chimneys he could see further on must be those of Middles, Mr. Fielding’s home, and nearer but hidden by the copse would be his own Fern Cottage and that other and smaller cottage where Miss Bellamy provided music and omelettes with equal skill, success, and éclat. And there would run the high road to and from London and the open country.
So all that wild chase and hot pursuit had brought Bobby back home, and there was the fugitive himself, now mounted on a pedal cycle and coasting easily down the slope of the hill. He turned as he drew near the copse. He saw Bobby at the stile, watching. He waved a gay farewell. Bobby waved back in acknowledgement of present defeat. He could almost hear the other’s smooth, complacent chuckle, see his triumphant grin. Oh, well, the best laugh is always the last, and so far, in Bobby’s conflicts with the underworld, the last laugh, and a grim laugh at that, had generally been Bobby’s.
No good, though, for a man on foot to attempt to pursue a man on a cycle, and already the fugitive had vanished within the wood. He would come out, Bobby calculated, in Steep Lane, not very far from Fern Cottage, or perhaps nearer to Miss Bellamy’s. As likely as not, so well organized did the whole thing seem, another car was waiting somewhere at hand, ready to pick him up. One of the conveniences modern progress offers to the criminal is easy and untraceable transport, since nothing is easier than to commandeer a car from some car park or another, make use of it, and then abandon it. If that was what had happened this time, the escaped cyclist would by now be comfortably driving back to town. Even if the police stopped him, he would have his stories and his papers all ready and convincing.
Bobby turned away. He remembered the woman screaming her terror in the hedge as he and the cyclist thundered by. He was not much surprised to find no trace of her. Probably an accomplice. He remembered how well she had been hidden in the hedge and he guessed that she had drawn closer twigs and leaves to form the effective screen that had hidden her features and lessened any chance of future recognition.
No doubt her job had been to provide a pedal cycle in readiness at a pre-arranged point where it could be used for escape along a path where no car could follow. Still more proof of the most careful, meticulous planning. Well, planning is the order of the day, and why shouldn’t rogues plan as carefully as any of the rest of us? Bobby hauled from the resting place in the nettles the motor cycle that was the one trophy left him. A hundred, a thousand to one, though, that that had been stolen, too. He pushed it in the back of his car.
For some time it had been raining though only now did he notice it. He supposed that on his way back to the Yard he had better go through Much Middles and inquire if any one in the village had noticed a waiting car. No one had. Nor, so far as he could learn, had any cyclist been seen, not even by the members of a road gang busy on repairs. Not of course that that proved much. He went into a telephone booth, rang up the county constabulary—the village was just outside the Metropolitan Police area and police have to be careful not to trespass on each other’s domains—and asked them to continue and complete inquiries about any motorist seen loitering, or any cyclist seen passing, in or near Much Middles village. Rather vague, he agreed in answer to the faintly amused, slightly troubled voice at the other end of the wire, but all police work meant not so much making bricks without straw as building houses without bricks or anything else.
The voice promised to do its best. Bobby got into his car again and drove slowly up Steep Lane, past Miss Bellamy’s cottage, and Fern Cottage as far as Middles and a little further. He found he had been right in estimating that the path the cyclist had followed did in fact, after leaving the copse, join Steep Lane near the Bellamy cottage. A man was working in the field the path crossed. Bobby asked him if he had seen anything of a cyclist. He had but at a distance only. He had observed him with disfavour, for the path was supposed to be for pedestrians only, and he had noticed that when the cyclist crossed into the road he had turned, not towards the main road to the right but to the left, towards Fern Cottage and Middles. He had also noticed that after that the cyclist had not been again visible. This had not impressed itself upon him in any way, though now he did remember thinking it was odd. But the cyclist might easily have stopped to rest and smoke a cigarette by the wayside or indeed for any other of fifty different reasons. Consulting a map perhaps. Still it was a fact that after the Bellamy cottage had hidden him from sight he had not emerged into visibility again. For all Bobby’s informant could say, though, he might, after resting for a few minutes, have either turned back unnoticed to the main road or gone on, equally unnoticed, towards Fern Cottage and Middles.
That was all Bobby could learn. Both uneasy and puzzled he drove on. At Miss Bellamy’s cottage, he alighted and knocked. There was no answer. Everything seemed locked up, secure. He tried the front door. Securely fastened, and he noticed there was a new Yale lock. All the same, having some knowledge of country ways, he made sure there was no key hidden under a convenient mat or hanging on some supposedly inconspicuous nail close by. Not that he thought Miss Bellamy was likely to be so trusting, but country ways are apt to be infectious. His search was unavailing. He knocked again and still got no answer. Back door and windows were fastened, the cycle shed securely padlocked. The one or two other sheds were empty and undisturbed. The gravelled paths, splashed with the falling rain, showed no
sign of recent footsteps. So far as he could see there was no possibility that the fugitive could be hiding here.
He went back to his car and drove to Middles. No one was at the house, except a young girl from the village, a kind of temporary housemaid. The cook-housekeeper was out on some household errand. Mr. Fielding was in town and wouldn’t be back till evening probably. Biggs, the chauffeur, had driven him in and would wait to drive him back. Mr. Fielding often made use of the car in the city, during his visits on business. Convenient to have a car at hand, he used to say, in days when taxis were as rare as snowballs in summer.
Bobby, still unenlightened, went off to his new home where he found Olive, Miss Bellamy herself, and Miss Rhoda Rogers, whom he met for the first time, all very busy together. He explained that he had been following a suspicious character who had last been seen in the vicinity of Miss Bellamy’s cottage. The three ladies all seemed slightly alarmed and Miss Bellamy wondered if she had better make sure he wasn’t hiding in any of her outbuildings or even inside her home. Bobby offered to accompany her. He could run her there in his car in a minute or two and bring her back as quickly. Miss Bellamy said it was very kind of him and she would feel safer if he were with her. The other two approved. Miss Bellamy got in the car and Bobby drove her to her cottage. They both alighted and went to the door. Miss Bellamy produced her key from a purse in her bag, but not till after a brief search, and opened the door. She went in first,
her wet and muddy shoes leaving traces on the boarded floor, for she had accidentally stepped in a puddle as she alighted from the car, and Bobby could not be sure, even though such had been his first impression, that till she reached it, trod on it, obliterated it, there had been a faint imprint of a wet and muddy foot near the door. But certainly no trace now of any intruder’s presence and the back door bolted on the inside, so no one could have slipped out there. Miss Bellamy led the way upstairs and he followed. There were two bedrooms; or rather there had been two, for the rear and smaller room was now only used for lumber. In it quite evidently no one could be hiding. The front room was Miss Bellamy’s bedroom—a small, austere room offering no possible means of concealment. Even the small low iron bedstead had no valance to hide anyone lurking beneath and the wardrobe door was open.
To Bobby’s secret amusement and surprise, Miss Bellamy displayed a somewhat outmoded Victorian modesty when showing him this room. She stood on the threshold, holding the door half open so as to let him see within but not allowing him to enter. He even had the impression that she was trying to blush, as if she thought that was expected of a maiden lady allowing a strange man to peep into her bedroom, but that she did not quite know how to manage it.
“There’s no one,” she said with her new faintly embarrassed, old-maidish air that was so little consonant with Bobby’s first conception of her character and personality, though of course, as he told himself, we all have these unexpected quirks and turns in our dispositions.
Bobby agreed with her and they went downstairs again. He offered to drive her back to Fern Cottage, but she explained that now she was back again, there were a few household matters she thought she would like to attend to. In any case it was only a few minutes to Fern Cottage, and it wasn’t worth troubling Mr. Owen again. So Bobby said how kind it was of her and of Miss Rogers to help them in getting settled, and how much both he and his wife appreciated it, and she said how good it was of him to come with her to investigate and how terribly nervous she would have been had she had to come alone.
Bobby was not much inclined to believe this. He did not think Miss Bellamy was at all the nervous type. His own impression of her was that she lived in a world apart, a world of deep and hidden emotion where ‘nerves’ played the smallest of parts.
CHAPTER VII
COSTUME JEWELLERY
Bobby went back to Fern Cottage in a thoughtful and a troubled mood. Odd, he told himself, that that wild chase and fierce and hot pursuit should have ended so near the new home he had secured through such odd good luck. Odd that the fugitive cyclist should have reminded him, though certainly in a somewhat vague and undefined way, of Biggs, Mr. Fielding’s chauffeur, and still more odd that both cyclist and chauffeur should seem to have an odd, unconscious trick of tilting the head to one side at moments of tension or expectation. Even more odd that the fugitive should have seemed at first so oddly willing to draw attention to himself and later so indifferent to possible chances of escape. Finally, most odd that in the end he should have vanished so completely in the vicinity of Miss Bellamy’s cottage. To what reality then, Bobby asked himself, were all these separate oddities related? Nor to that question could he even begin to imagine any reasonable answer. But he made up his mind to have a chat with Mr. Fielding about Biggs as soon as might be possible, and then he wondered if that would be altogether wise.
At Fern Cottage he found Olive saying good-bye to Miss Rhoda Rogers, who was on the point of returning home to look after her brother. He would, she explained, probably now be clamouring for his lunch. Rhoda was tall and fair haired, with a thin body and a thin, eager, attractive face, though hardly one that could be called pretty, for the features were large, too large for the small, peaked face, and of no classic regularity. Her eyes, though, were striking and unusual, very large and of a bright clear blue. In them seemed concentrated a queer energy of attention on each passing incident, however trivial, as it came to her notice. As Miss Bellamy, an older woman, appeared to live her own remote, interior life, so Rhoda Rogers seemed to live intensely in each separate moment as it came and went. An odd contrast, Bobby thought, and was annoyed to find once more that word ‘odd’ coming into his mind.
Bobby joined his thanks to those Olive was expressing for the help given to that process known as ‘settling down’, and Rhoda said how glad she was to have new neighbours.
“The vicar’s a widower,” she remarked, “and Mr. Fielding’s a bachelor, and Miss Bellamy’s a musician, and George, that’s my brother, spends all his time swotting at his books, and it will be nice to have someone to speak to sometimes. I’ll try not to be a bore,” she added laughing.
Olive, of course, made polite protests that Rhoda could never bore. Rhoda departed, and Bobby and Olive returned indoors where Olive wanted at once to set Bobby to work. Bobby, however, explained, trying to sound disappointed, that he must return to the Yard to report on his adventure and supervise the routine steps that would now have to be set in motion. Not of course, he admitted, that there would really be very much for him to do. It was all so well prepared, kept in such readiness for instant action, that everything possible had certainly been seen to already. But reports would soon be coming in and they would require attention.
He returned from the Yard fairly early however. Nothing of interest had come in, though the Yard seemed fairly confident of being able to find out soon whether one of the three gangs known to be engaged in smash-and-grab activities was responsible for this one or whether it was a fresh lot. Bobby himself did not think that likely. The whole affair seemed to him to have been organized with a skill and care that suggested considerable experience. The gang known as the Burden Gang, from its leader’s name, was the one he himself suspected. Olive listened to his story, looked uneasy at his somewhat sketchy account of his chase of the motor cyclist, supposed gloomily that he wouldn’t be satisfied till he had broken his neck and what was the good of being a deputy assistant acting whatever he was in the Yard hierarchy, if he had to do things like that? Why couldn’t he leave them to young constables and sergeants, who, no doubt, enjoyed that sort of thing, as, personally, she had no doubt Bobby did, too?
From this aspersion Bobby defended himself hotly; and Olive said he might talk as much as he liked but she knew better; and then went on to explain what she had been doing, and did Bobby approve of her arrangements—which of course he did—and to tell how grateful she was to Miss Bellamy and Miss Rogers for their help.
“Miss Rogers is awfully nice,” Olive said. “She li
ves with her brother in the bungalow we noticed near the church. Bobby, do you know what I think? I believe her brother—his name’s George—is in love with Miss Bellamy and that’s why Miss Rogers struck me as rather making up to Miss Bellamy. Because really I don’t think she likes her awfully. I don’t know about Miss Bellamy because you can’t. I mean, you can’t tell much about her, can you?”
“Cook and musician,” Bobby suggested. “Alpha plus at both.”
“That’s not her,” Olive said. “That’s only how she tells you what she is but you’ve got to find out for yourself what the ‘what’ is. I think Rhoda is rather frightened of her.”
“Don’t wonder,” Bobby remarked. “Anyone would be.”
“Mr. Fielding’s in love with her, too,” Olive said. “Perhaps it’s George Rogers who is pushing them apart all the time they’re being drawn to each other. But I don’t think it’s that, it’s more than just that,” she added, half to herself.
Music Tells All: A Bobby Owen Mystery Page 5
