Mystery of Mr. Jessop (30 page)

He retired accordingly within the building, and Mr. Higson turned to Bobby.

“Wants me to identify a suspect?” he asked. “I don't mind telling you now there was one customer Saturday night I noticed particular. Very likely I should have let you know before only for being” – Mr. Higson hesitated a moment –”temporarily indisposed.”

“Just the sort of bad luck that often throws an investigation all out of gear,” commented Bobby.

“I never saw the paper on Sunday,” Mr. Higson continued, “never even heard there had been a murder in Brush Hill till last night when I saw it in the evening paper. I said at once: ‘That's him,' and so, when I heard of you asking about it, I got the
corpus delecti
.” He paused to watch the effect of this, and Bobby was quick to look properly impressed. “I've brought it along with me,” he concluded.

“Smart of you,” said Bobby admiringly, for he knew well how far a little harmless flattery goes. “
Corpus
in the brown paper parcel you have there? Good. I'll take charge of it, shall I? But we won't open it now. Important in these cases to preserve a perfectly open mind. Many a good case ruined because defending counsel has been able to suggest preconceived prejudice. So I won't even ask you what's in it, though I can guess all right. What we want you to do is to point out anyone you think you've seen before. If it's the man we expect, then we shall know we're on the right track. If it isn't, the whole blessed case will have to start again.”

Mr. Higson nodded with grave approval, realising how important his testimony was going to be.

“My memory for faces is excellent,” he announced. “A sort of gift it is with me,” he explained modestly.

“Will it be all right with Mr. Weaver?” Bobby asked. “Or would you like to ring him up and explain?”

Mr. Higson looked at Bobby in a manner by the side of which an iceberg would have seemed a furnace.

“Him and me have parted,” he said. “I couldn't reconcile it with my principles to go on working for a man who is Against the People.”

“Is Mr. Weaver?” asked Bobby, faintly surprised.

“Weaver,” declared Mr. Higson, “is almost a – Fascist.”

“But I thought,” said Bobby, more puzzled still, “that you were a bit that way yourself?”

Mr. Higson's voice was slow and solemn as he answered gravely:

“I am No. 4 in a Communist cell.”

“Dear me,” said Bobby. “Now in our cells we give them much higher numbers.”

“Communist cells,” explained Mr. Higson, entirely unaware that this had been intended for a joke, “are limited to five members. Our slogan,” he continued, “is ‘C.S.C.S.”

“Oh,” said Bobby, puzzled. “Something about a co-op?” he hazarded.

Mr. Higson surveyed Bobby with amused contempt.

“It means,” he said, “Comrade Stalin Comes Soon.”

“Jolly good,” approved Bobby.

“I invented it myself,” explained Mr. Higson, thawing visibly in the sunshine of this appreciation. “I dare say soon it'll be on the lips of every Comrade. And then,” said Mr. Higson, growing grim all at once, “we'll give those Fascists what for.”

“Changed your opinions a bit, haven't you?” asked Bobby.

“My eyes have been opened,” replied Mr. Higson, though this was only true metaphorically, since in cold fact they had been closed, both of them, for some time.

“Sudden conversion, eh?” said Bobby.

“All true conversions are sudden,” announced Mr. Higson. “You've heard of St. Paul?”

Bobby admitted the fact.

“It's why,” explained Mr. Higson, “I'm glad of the chance of seeing something of your methods. I consider it an opportunity to study police organisation at close quarters. In the Communistic State, the police force has a most important role to play.”

“Bump 'em off good and plenty,” suggested Bobby.

Further conversation was interrupted by the return of Ulyett, still morose. He instructed Bobby, who was at the wheel, to drive first to the Bloomsbury Hotel, where they were lucky enough to find Mr. Carton. He appeared very promptly in answer to the message sent in.

“I was coming round to see you,” he said, before either of them had a chance to speak. “Irene says she told you I had shown her a pistol I have, a small automatic, and I remembered you were asking me about it and I told you I hadn't one. Well, that's right, but I meant over here. The one I showed her is the one belonging to the management – it was when she came to Nice for her holiday a year ago. I thought I had better explain.”

Ulyett asked a few questions, agreed it was a misunderstanding that had needed clearing up, and, after a few more remarks, Carton retired again within the hotel and they drove away. Ulyett said:

“Think he was telling the truth?”

“I thought it sounded all right,” Bobby answered. Higson, who had heard all this somewhat imperfectly, said:

“That one of the crooks you want me to identify? I've seen him before, all right; could swear to him any time. But I can't quite remember. Something about a pistol? Did he pledge? Did he buy?”

“Perhaps it'll come to you in time,” suggested Bobby; and was ordered to drive on to Mayfair Square, where, however, the commissionaire, in answer to their inquiries, informed them that both Mr. Jacks and Mr. Wright were out. In answer to further inquiries as to when they were likely to be back, the commissionaire said that Mr. Wright had gone out early after being rung up on the 'phone, had come back in a great hurry, had been closeted with Mr. Jacks for a time, and then both men – “looking upset like,” said the commissionaire – had departed in Mr. Wright's car. In the commissionaire's opinion something was up – definitely.

“Didn't say where they were going, I suppose?” Bobby asked.

“They were looking at the map,” the commissionaire answered, “and I heard Mr. Wright say something about finding the quickest route to Cheltenham.”

“Cheltenham – good God!” exclaimed Ulyett, startled out of his self-possession, and the commissionaire looked quite offended.

“Cheltenham's a very fine town,” he asserted. “I was born there myself.”

“A haunt of the bourgeoisie,” muttered Mr. Higson truculently from behind.

They drove away, and Ulyett told Bobby to make for the garage Denis Chenery owned. But when they got there they found that Denis also had departed for the day.

“Said he wouldn't be back till to-morrow,” explained the foreman in charge. “Young lady came for him – excited like she seemed. Miss May her name is; she's been here before; boss sweet on her, if you ask me. They took a Bayard Twenty we've got on sale.”

“Didn't say where they were going, did they?” Bobby asked carelessly.

“No, only the boss told me to find him a map of the Cotswold country,” answered the foreman, and Ulyett and Bobby looked at each other with a kind of wild surmise.

They drove away, taking the route for Cheltenham and making the best speed permitted by other traffic and a modified respect for the law. Once, on a clear, straight stretch of road, Bobby got up to eighty; but Ulyett remarked that he wished to reach Cheltenham quick but not dead, and Mr. Higson threw out a tentative suggestion about completing the journey by rail.

So Bobby overcame the temptation the next straight bit of road presented; and was not sorry when Ulyett remarked that they might stop for a few minutes at the next decent-looking pub they came to, so as to get a bite of something to eat.

“A quarter of an hour won't make any difference,” he declared, and when they had finished their meal, and were standing in the doorway of the inn ready to leave, there went by at a high rate of speed a car of which, through trees that sheltered them from the road, they had a passing glimpse.

“See that? See who that was?” Ulyett asked, so far forgetting his dignity of superintendent as to seize Bobby excitedly by the arm.

Bobby, too, was staring after the vanished car a cloud of dust had so soon hidden from view. He did not answer immediately, for he almost thought there must be some mistake. But Mr. Higson spoke up:

“I know him – not the driver, but the gentleman sitting behind. It was Mr. Mullins. He's not a customer of ours, but he's well known in Brush Hill. Lives at a big house in Chesters Street – The Towers, I think it's called.”

Ulyett was wiping his forehead, on which beads of perspiration were standing out.

“This,” he said solemnly, “this is just sheer, unadulterated nightmare.”

“Yes, sir,” said Bobby, in full agreement, as usual.

“Well, we had better push along after them,” Ulyett said, rousing himself from his bewildered and uneasy abstraction. “Don't like it, Owen,” he said to Bobby, who didn't like it either. “Don't half like it.” He called to one of the inn staff standing near. “Main road to Cheltenham, isn't it?” he asked. “Go anywhere else?”

“Branches about a mile on,” the man answered; “the right goes direct to Cheltenham, left takes you to the Cotswold country.”

“They may be either place by now at the pace they were going – mile a minute or thereabouts,” grumbled Ulyett. “Looks like trouble ahead to me.”

They got into their car and started, and Higson said to Bobby:

“Was that him you wanted me to identify? Most respected gentleman; everyone in Brush Hill knows him.”

“No, he was a bit unexpected,” Bobby answered. “Not that he really should have been a surprise, but he was one all right.”

“Was it him who was driving you meant, then?” Higson asked. “I didn't see him plain. Not a chance to recognise him.”

“I knew him,” said Bobby grimly. “Name of Wynne – Percy Augustus Wynne; and, if you don't like them, you can have others, as the political candidate said of his opinions. No, he was unexpected, too.”

Ulyett had been plunged in deep and troubled thought. They had arrived now at the spot where the road branched, and he told Bobby to go on straight to Cheltenham.

“They may have information for us there,” he said. “They'll have been rung up from our people by now and told to expect us. Six – that makes it we are six,” he said, sternly regarding Bobby as though it were entirely his fault. “Poem, ‘We are Six,' isn't there?”

“I think it's ‘Seven, in all, she said,' you mean, isn't it, sir?” Bobby suggested cautiously.

“Well, you ought to know; Oxford and all,” grunted Ulyett. “There's us, Denis Chenery and his girl, the duke on his own or not, the jeweller johnnies, and T.T. and his pal we've just seen; that's five, and the van makes six – six little nigger-boys – and soon there'll be less.”

“Yes, sir,” agreed Bobby.

“And what's going to happen,” added Ulyett, “only the good Lord knows – if it isn't too much for him, too,” added Ulyett, with a resigned sigh, evidently inclined to suppose that what baffled the Yard was likely to baffle Omniscience as well.

He sank again into his mood of uneasy abstraction, and Bobby drove on at a slower speed now that they were within a built-up area and there was more traffic about. Higson said plaintively in Bobby's ear:

“Couldn't you tell me what it's all about?”

Bobby reflected that he only wished he was in a position to do so. Aloud he said:

“Oh, the whole thing will be plain enough when you understand.”

Mr. Higson was plainly as deeply impressed by this as most people are by a platitude loudly announced. After a pause to think it over and allow it to sink deeper and deeper into his mind, he remarked suddenly:

“That Mr. Carton at the Bloomsbury Hotel.”

Bobby looked round with some apprehension.

“Yes? What about him? Why?” he asked, wondering if Carton was to be the next to make an appearance in this kind of universal hunt, possibly on a motor-cycle with Miss Irene sitting behind.

Nothing would, in fact, in his present state of mind have surprised him less, but Higson went on slowly:

“I've been thinking, and I've got it pretty clear now. He was in about three weeks ago about an automatic pistol we had in the window: licensed we are – I mean Mr. Weaver is – for the sale of firearms,” he added.

“Did he buy the pistol?” Bobby asked, interested.

“No, only asked, and inquired about regulations,” Higson answered. “What makes me remember him is along of him talking about France, and what a lot less red tape there is there – seemed to know a lot about France. But,” added Higson with a modest pride, “I didn't let him go without making a sale. Nice little brooch he took.”

“Oh, yes,” said Bobby. “Three straight horizontal gold bars, crossed by a spray in emeralds and small diamonds; cost seven guineas.”

Higson fairly jumped.

“How did you know?” he gasped.

Bobby only smiled – rather a good smile, he thought to himself, so full did he feel it had been of mystery and knowledge. “Was you watching?” Higson asked, awestruck.

“I mustn't explain our methods,” said Bobby gravely, ‘but it was plain enough from what you said yourself – a simple case of deduction – just putting things together.”

“Golly,” said Mr. Higson, with all the reverence that strange ejaculation demands.

“Elementary, my dear Higson,” said Bobby, who, as befitted a B.A. (Oxon.), was well acquainted with the classics.

Higson collapsed, and only after some time recovered sufficiently to say:

“You got the price wrong, though; it was 39s. 6d. reduced from seven guineas.”

Bobby clicked his tongue and tried to look very upset.

“Was it, though?” he said. “Don't know how I came to make a bloomer like that. It just shows.” He shook his head gravely at himself. “Bad slip-up,” he declared. “Big reduction, wasn't it, seven guineas to 39s. 6d.?”