Mystery Villa (13 page)

Mitchell turned a cold official eye upon the young man.

As for umbrellas,' he observed, ‘what makes you think Con Conway mightn't simply have left it at the Yard one day for you, with his compliments and thanks for the loan of it?'

‘Yes, sir. Did he do that, sir?' asked Bobby.

I only said “might”,' retorted Mitchell. He paused, and his cold official air gave place to one of slight embarrassment. He signalled to the driver to stop.

‘There s a tube station over there,' he remarked. ‘Ever hear of a place called Tooting? Improbable sort of name, but if you hop out here and take a tube or tram or a bus, according to taste, and if it's going the right way, you'll probably get there in time. If you do, you can ask the local men if anything's been seen of a chap answering Con Conway's description, possibly run in recently for obstructing the traffic by trying to sell bananas and apples from a barrow in the street – fast traffic for motorists being more important than cheap stuff for housewives or an honest living for a fellow like Con Conway.'

‘Yes, sir,' said Bobby, and hopped out accordingly.

The journey to the improbably named district known as Tooting duly accomplished, Bobby soon found, as indeed he had expected, that he had been put upon a hot scent, but, unfortunately, one that ended abruptly, as abruptly as when, in full cry, the hounds are checked when the cry goes up ‘Gone to earth' – though in this case an earth of which the locality was not known. For at the local police-station the Sergeant in charge knew all about Conway, except where he was now.

‘Pushed a barrow for one week-end,' he said. ‘I knew him again at once – I was at Cannon Row last time he was brought in. Of course I didn't let on. Next thing I heard was that he had sold barrow and fruit to another man for half its value – said he was fed up with the job and he was off to Manchester, where he knew of a £10,000 pearl necklace he could pick up for the trouble of climbing a gutter-pipe. So we told Manchester they had better keep their eyes skinned.'

‘You told Manchester to keep their eyes skinned?' repeated Bobby, slightly alarmed. ‘What happened?' he asked anxiously.

‘Oh, they just thanked us, and said they'd do their best, but they knew Manchester wasn't London, which, of course, it isn't, and never could be,' agreed the Sergeant. ‘And then there was something about a thanksgiving service I didn't quite follow, and so I told 'em to keep a special eye on any locality likely to be harbouring £10,000 pearl necklaces, and they said there weren't none their way, and hadn't been, not since cotton went bust. All Manchester pearl necklaces come from Woolworths nowadays, they say. But they thanked me, and wanted to know if I could go and help them, but of course I couldn't do that.'

‘No, you couldn't, could you?' agreed Bobby, offering a silent little thanksgiving service of his own that he wasn't likely to have anything to do with Manchester until this passing episode had been forgotten.

‘I told them to watch out for Butler, too,' continued the other. ‘You know Slimy Butler? Behind most of these jobs, and behind that last one Con Conway did – the one he was brought in for with the goods upon him and got ten years, and then that there blessed Court of Appeal let him off because at the trial the judge happened to allow one witness repeat a bit of hearsay or something of the sort. It cut no ice one way or the other, but the Appeal Court said it might have affected the jury, if they noticed it, which they probably didn't, and if they thought it important, which wasn't possible. Just hair-splitting, I call it. Us chaps sweat our livers out bringing in a notorious criminal like Con Conway, and then the ruddy lawyers turn him loose again just on a silly technical point like that.'

‘Too bad,' agreed Bobby absently, for he was thinking his hardest.

‘Heart-breaking, I call it,' said the Sergeant. ‘What I say is, when you get 'em, keep 'em. Makes the force a laughing-stock, if you ask me, and encourages men like Con Conway to think they can always get away with it.'

‘Something in that,' agreed Bobby. ‘I suppose these men selling stuff from barrows buy it at Covent Garden, do they?'

‘Cheap lots that have got left over,' the Sergeant said. ‘Sometimes they get stuff from a grower near London who's got more on hand than he can deal with comfortably. But generally it's Covent Garden.'

So Bobby thanked him and returned to headquarters, and afterwards went home and went to bed, though first, not without a heavy sigh, setting his alarm-clock for half-past three.

At that strange, unearthly hour the alarm-clock duly sounded, but probably would have failed to waken Bobby had he not taken the precaution to place the clock on top of an overturned tin bath. Thus it did awake him, though not till it had awakened first everyone else in the house, so that it was in an atmosphere charged with malediction and hate that Bobby threw a blanket over clock and bath, and dressed and let himself out into the street at that sad hour which combines all the drawbacks and disadvantages of both day and night into one enormous yawn.

However, when he arrived at Covent Garden it was to find everyone there brisk and lively, and apparently quite unaware of the unsuitability of the hour. Bobby could only suppose, rather crossly, that custom had hardened them to it, as use is said to harden eels to skinning.

He had provided himself with a photograph of Con Conway, and patient and persistent enquiry, diversified by many hairbreadth escapes from charging trucks and backing lorries seeking whom they might annihilate, discovered, at last, a porter who first plainly recognised the photograph, and then firmly denied that he had done so.

‘Police, ain't you?' he asked, with an appraising glance at Bobby's stalwart, upright form. ‘No, I don't know him; take my dying oath I never saw him. What's he done?'

‘Nothing,' answered Bobby promptly. ‘We only want to find him because he can give us some information we are quite willing to pay him well for. It'll mean a pound note, most likely, for him, if you can help us find him.'

The porter admitted, though with some distrust, that that did make a difference. Finally, after a little more persuasion, he agreed he recognised the photograph as that of a man who had been to the market once or twice recently. The porter had noticed him because, though a new-comer, he seemed to have an eye for a bargain, and had made one or two good purchases. For instance, the porter remembered having helped him with a load of Australian apples he had bought cheap as they were on the point of going bad.

‘There was too many for one load,' the porter explained, ‘so he stored about half or more, and then when he came back he got rid of the lot – gave 'em away, so to speak. I asked him what he was doing that for, and he said the competition was too strong down Tooting way, and he was going to try his luck in Glasgow – competition too strong in Tooting, and so he's going to try his luck among them Scotties – ha, ha, ha,' laughed the porter.

‘Ha, ha, ha,' laughed Bobby, and thanked the porter, and offered him a shilling, which was refused, for the good man was even yet not quite easy in his mind, and wouldn't risk accepting what might turn out to be blood money earned by betraying some poor devil to the authorities.

But a cigarette and a drink he had less objection to, and then, his debt discharged, Bobby returned to Scotland Yard to ask permission to take the next train to Glasgow.

This was granted, though not by Mitchell, who was not expected on duty that day till afternoon, and, on his way to Euston, Bobby reflected that he would give quite a lot to know where Con Conway had got the money from to pay for his Covent Garden transactions and his Glasgow fare.

‘I may have a nasty suspicious mind,' Bobby admitted, reflectively, ‘but, all the same, I shouldn't wonder...' and then left the sentence unfinished, even to himself.

The sky was a cloudless blue, the sun shining brightly, when Bobby reached Glasgow. The sky was still a cloudless blue, the sun still shining brightly, when Bobby, his enquiries completed, took the train back to London. These facts, being taken directly from Bobby's own diary, in which they are carefully recorded, are beyond doubt or denial.

On his return Bobby was informed that the Superintendent was expecting him, and so proceeded at once to Mitchell's room with the pleasant knowledge that he had a success to report and even something more as well.

‘You found Conway, then, I understand?' Mitchell greeted him. ‘What on earth is he doing in Glasgow?'

‘Well, sir, it's happened this way,' Bobby explained. ‘I got track of him all right in Tooting. It seems, sir, from what I can make out, he had managed to touch some kind, soft-hearted gentleman for a' – Bobby just managed to smother a laugh – ‘for a tenner, sir; no less. Must have been a very kind, very soft-hearted gentleman,' said Bobby, quite failing now to conceal an enormous grin.

‘Never mind that,' said Mitchell testily. ‘Get on with your story.'

‘Yes sir,' said Bobby. ‘Only a tenner – to Con Conway! I ask you – Yes, sir, as I was saying,' he went on hurriedly, when Mitchell made an impatient gesture to indicate he was not in the least interested in ‘tenners', or in soft-hearted gentlemen, either, ‘Con used it to get a start selling fruit from a barrow.'

‘Well, I suppose that's what it was meant for,' grunted Mitchell. ‘I suppose he didn't say who he got the money from, did he?'

‘No, sir. I asked him, but he said he had taken his dying oath not to tell.'

‘Oh, well,' observed Mitchell indifferently, ‘if he had promised, of course he couldn't. You didn't press him?'

‘Oh, no, sir,' answered Bobby. ‘Though, if only I knew who it was, I should like to warn him to watch out when a man like Con Conway tries to touch him. No good being soft with his sort, that's a mug's game.'

‘So it is,' agreed Mitchell, with emphasis.

‘I should like to see one of Con's sort getting a tenner out of me,' declared Bobby, with a grim smile. ‘If that softhearted gentleman knew a bit more, he would know the Con Conways let you down nine times out of ten, and it's best to keep your pockets closed against them.'

‘Suppose,' observed Mitchell coldly, ‘you tell me what you did in Glasgow, if you've quite finished your general observations.'

‘Yes, sir,' said Bobby. ‘Sorry, sir, only it did seem funny to think of anyone trusting Con just because he pitched a yarn about wanting a chance to run straight.' Bobby gave a superior smile, and Mitchell began to put some papers away in the wrong drawer, and then took them out again. ‘So when he got his tenner out of the soft-headed – that is, soft-hearted, gentleman, but it's much the same, whose name he wouldn't tell, he bought a barrow and some apples or something, and started peddling in Tooting. Then Slimy Butler turned up.'

‘Slimy Butler?' repeated Mitchell, sitting upright, and speaking in a very dismayed voice, for Slimy Butler was only too well known as an organiser of big thefts and burglaries, helping in carrying them out and in disposing of the booty, but himself remaining so carefully in the background that never yet had it been possible to bring any offence home to him. Worse still, by far, he was known, more than once, by half tempting, half bullying them back into their criminal ways, to have frustrated attempts to help released convicts who had seemed likely to make an effort to run straight for the future. ‘If Slimy Butler got to know about Con, and got after him, it's not much wonder if he's gone wrong again,' Mitchell admitted gloomily.

‘No, sir,' agreed Bobby. ‘Especially as it seems Slimy Butler knew about some job Con had had a hand in some years back, and was threatening to give information, if he “went back on his pals”, as Slimy chose to call it.'

‘Some day, perhaps,' observed Mitchell, ‘I'll get hold of Slimy. I only hope I never get a chance to push him under a motor-bus. I might be tempted to do it.'

‘So then,' Bobby explained, ‘poor little Con – he hadn't much chance against that big bullying brute of a Slimy Butler – sold his barrow and load to another man for half value, and vanished from Tooting, though not before he told a man he was having a drink with he was fed up barrow-pushing, and knew where he could pick up a £10,000 necklace for the trouble of swarming up a gutter-pipe. I wonder,' said Bobby, with the most superior smile that even Oxford at its most superior could produce, ‘what the soft-hearted gentleman of the tenner would think if he heard that.'

‘Probably think his head was a deal softer,' growled Mitchell. ‘Anyhow, if a job's done Manchester way, we shall know who to look for, and that'll mean another ten-year stretch for Conway, a big success for the Yard – and a big failure too. Only what's he doing in Glasgow, if the job's in Manchester?'

‘Well, it's like this,' Bobby explained. ‘You see, it seems the soft-hearted gentleman knew Con had been let off by the Court of Appeal because it was felt that just possibly he hadn't had a perfectly fair trial, even though there was no doubt about his guilt. So the soft-hearted gentleman put it to Conway – as he had had a square deal himself, oughtn't he to try to give a square deal back, and didn't he owe it to the judges, who had let him off so as to be quite fair, to play up? Apparently Con admitted he felt a little like that, and he said, as between gentlemen, he wanted to show the three old geezers in wigs that he appreciated it. Only, he had to live, and after two nights on the Embankment, and two days without anything to eat to speak of, you don't care much what you do. But then the tenner came along, and Con was getting a fair start with his barrow when Slimy Butler turned up, and Con said he felt that put the lid on Tooting for him. So he told a whacking lie about Manchester and a pearl necklace to put Slimy off and cleared out for Glasgow.'