Read Online Mystery Villa by E.R. Punshon - Free Book Online Page B

Home Secretary next time there’s a conference. Gold-mounted, best silk cover,’ Mitchell pointed out appreciatively. ‘Why, I haven’t felt such a swell since I went courting... gives a man a leg up to be seen in the company of an umbrella like that.’
    â€˜Yes, sir,’ said Bobby, eyeing longingly his lost treasure, as Mitchell, with a friendly nod, passed on.
    But then the Superintendent turned back.
    â€˜After all,’ he said, ‘I don’t much think it’ll rain to-day, so you can keep it for me for the present, will you? I’ll let you know when I want it again; next time I’m going to Buckingham Palace probably – and,’ added Mitchell, ‘take a tip from me. Next time a chap like Con Conway tries to touch you, watch out. Walking pensions some of his sort would make us, if we let them. I should like to see, Mitchell went on, with a grim smile, ‘any of them trying to get anything out of me, or Con Conway trying to touch me for two bob for bed and breakfast with a yarn about sleeping on the Embankment when he has a comfortable room of his own down Brixton way, and as likely as not something still left in the bank from the last job he did. There, take your umbrella, my lad; and remember, in our work it doesn’t do to be soft with men like Con Conway. Let you down, they do, nine times out of ten, or a lot oftener than that.’

CHAPTER EIGHT
The Young Man
    Fortunately the spate of letters, anonymous and other, in the Notting Hill case had begun to abate, the later posts that day brought in a bare score of them, and Bobby, in spite of his lunch-time excursion, was able to get finished in quite reasonable time.
    Next morning when he reached the Yard he was told there was a phone call for him, and when he answered it he found it was from Brush Hill – from Sergeant Wild.
    â€˜It’s a bit rummy,’ Wild explained over the wire, when Bobby got through to him. ‘A lady came in last night about that Tudor Lodge. Says she lives next door.’ (Bobby remembered, with some alarm, the patient watcher he had noticed at a near-by window the day before.) Says she used to see Miss Barton at night sometimes moving about, though she never gave anyone a chance to speak to her. Then she says, too, there used to be a light in the upstairs windows quite often, but there hasn’t been recently, or any sign of the old woman herself either, and as the lady had seen us knocking – seems she saw you there yesterday, or so she says – she thought she would have a closer look herself. And when she was in the drive, prying around — only she doesn’t put it that way – one of the windows on the ground floor next the front door on the left hand opened, and she saw a young man inside.’
    â€˜A young man?’ Bobby repeated.
    â€˜She gives quite a good description of him – quite smart looking, she says; quite the gentleman. Only – this is the funny part – she says he had a pistol in his hand, and was looking at it. What do you make of that for a yarn?’
    â€˜Sounds funny,’ Bobby agreed. ‘Is she sure it was a pistol?’ he added, with arrogant masculine incredulity. ‘Could it have been a cigar lighter, do you think?’
    â€˜Well, there’s that,’ admitted Wild, ‘but she tells a good clear story, and she seems to have noticed everything about him from the colour of his tie to the shape of his nose. We think, here, we had better have a look round. Nothing in it, most likely, but you never know. Like to come along, if you can be spared, as you were with me when that girl came to the door? – and then there was that business about Con Conway.’
    Thanks awfully for telling me,’ Bobby exclaimed eagerly. ‘I’ll come, if I can possibly wangle it. I’m sure it ought to be looked into.’
    Probably the fact that he was a bit of a favourite with Superintendent