Parker Pyne Investigates

‘That should be easy,’ said Mr Pyne. ‘Get me Schedule B and let me see what we have in stock at present.’ He ran his finger down a list, finally stopping at a name. ‘Freda Clegg. Yes, I think Freda Clegg will do excellently. I had better see Mrs Oliver about it.’

II

The next day Major Wilbraham received a note, which read:

On Monday morning next at eleven o’clock go to Eaglemont, Friars Lane, Hampstead, and ask for Mr Jones. You will represent yourself as coming from the Guava Shipping Company.

Obediently on the following Monday (which happened to be Bank Holiday), Major Wilbraham set out for Eaglemont, Friars Lane. He set out, I say, but he never got there. For before he got there, something happened.

All the world and his wife seemed to be on their way to Hampstead. Major Wilbraham got entangled in crowds, suffocated in the tube and found it hard to discover the whereabouts of Friars Lane.

Friars Lane was a cul-de-sac, a neglected road full of ruts, with houses on either side standing back from the road. They were largish houses which had seen better days and had been allowed to fall into disrepair.

Wilbraham walked along peering at the half-erased names on the gate-posts, when suddenly he heard something that made him stiffen to attention. It was a kind of gurgling, half-choked cry.

It came again and this time it was faintly recognizable as the word ‘Help!’ It came from inside the wall of the house he was passing.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Major Wilbraham pushed open the rickety gate and sprinted noiselessly up the weed-covered drive. There in the shrubbery was a girl struggling in the grasp of two enormous Negroes. She was putting up a brave fight, twisting and turning and kicking. One Negro held his hand over her mouth in spite of her furious efforts to get her head free.

Intent on their struggle with the girl, neither of the blacks had noticed Wilbraham’s approach. The first they knew of it was when a violent punch on the jaw sent the man who was covering the girl’s mouth reeling backwards. Taken by surprise, the other man relinquished his hold of the girl and turned. Wilbraham was ready for him. Once again his fist shot out, and the Negro reeled backwards and fell. Wilbraham turned on the other man, who was closing in behind him.

But the two men had had enough. The second one rolled over, sat up; then, rising, he made a dash for the gate. His companion followed suit. Wilbraham started after them, but changed his mind and turned towards the girl, who was leaning against a tree, panting.

‘Oh, thank you!’ she gasped. ‘It was terrible.’

Major Wilbraham saw for the first time who it was he had rescued so opportunely. She was a girl of about twenty-one or two, fair-haired and blue-eyed, pretty in a rather colourless way.

‘If you hadn’t come!’ she gasped.

‘There, there,’ said Wilbraham soothingly. ‘It’s all right now. I think, though, that we’d better get away from here. It’s possible those fellows might come back.’

A faint smile came to the girl’s lips. ‘I don’t think they will–not after the way you hit them. Oh, it was splendid of you!’

Major Wilbraham blushed under the warmth of her glance of admiration. ‘Nothin’ at all,’ he said indistinctly. ‘All in day’s work. Lady being annoyed. Look here, if you take my arm, can you walk? It’s been a nasty shock, I know.’

‘I’m all right now,’ said the girl. However, she took the proffered arm. She was still rather shaky. She glanced behind her at the house as they emerged through the gate. ‘I can’t understand it,’ she murmured. ‘That’s clearly an empty house.’

‘It’s empty, right enough,’ agreed the major, looking up at the shuttered windows and general air of decay.

‘And yet it is Whitefriars.’ She pointed to a half-obliterated name on the gate. ‘And Whitefriars was the place I was to go.’

‘Don’t worry about anything now,’ said Wilbraham. ‘In a minute or two we’ll be able to get a taxi. Then we’ll drive somewhere and have a cup of coffee.’

At the end of the lane they came out into a more frequented street, and by good fortune a taxi had just set down a fare at one of the houses. Wilbraham hailed it, gave an address to the driver and they got in.

‘Don’t try to talk,’ he admonished his companion. ‘Just lie back. You’ve had a nasty experience.’

She smiled at him gratefully.

‘By the way–er–my name is Wilbraham.’

‘Mine is Clegg–Freda Clegg.’

Ten minutes later, Freda was sipping hot coffee and looking gratefully across a small table at her rescuer.

‘It seems like a dream,’ she said. ‘A bad dream.’ She shuddered. ‘And only a short while ago I was wishing for something to happen–anything! Oh, I don’t like adventures.’

‘Tell me how it happened.’

‘Well, to tell you properly I shall have to talk a lot about myself, I’m afraid.’

‘An excellent subject,’ said Wilbraham, with a bow.

‘I am an orphan. My father–he was a sea captain–died when I was eight. My mother died three years ago. I work in the city. I am with the Vacuum Gas Company–a clerk. One evening last week I found a gentleman waiting to see me when I returned to my lodgings. He was a lawyer, a Mr Reid from Melbourne.

‘He was very polite and asked me several questions about my family. He explained that he had known my father many years ago. In fact, he had transacted some legal business for him. Then he told me the object of his visit. “Miss Clegg,” he said, “I have reason to suppose that you might benefit as the result of a financial transaction entered into by your father several years before he died.” I was very much surprised, of course.

‘“It is unlikely that you would ever have heard anything of the matter,” he explained. “John Clegg never took the affair seriously, I fancy. However, it has materialized unexpectedly, but I am afraid any claim you might put in would depend on your ownership of certain papers. These papers would be part of your father’s estate, and of course it is possible that they have been destroyed as worthless. Have you kept any of your father’s papers?”

‘I explained that my mother had kept various things of my father’s in an old sea chest. I had looked through it cursorily, but had discovered nothing of interest.

‘“You would hardly be likely to recognize the importance of these documents, perhaps,” he said, smiling.

‘Well, I went to the chest, took out the few papers it contained and brought them to him. He looked at them, but said it was impossible to say off-hand what might or might not be connected with the matter in question. He would take them away with him and would communicate with me if anything turned up.

‘By the last post on Saturday I received a letter from him in which he suggested that I come to his house to discuss the matter. He gave me the address: Whitefriars, Friars Lane, Hampstead. I was to be there at a quarter to eleven this morning.

‘I was a little late finding the place. I hurried through the gate and up towards the house, when suddenly those two dreadful men sprang at me from the bushes. I hadn’t time to cry out. One man put his hand over my mouth. I wrenched my head free and screamed for help. Luckily you heard me. If it hadn’t been for you–’ She stopped. Her looks were more eloquent than further words.

‘Very glad I happened to be on the spot. By Gad, I’d like to get hold of those two brutes. You’d never seen them before, I suppose?’

She shook her head. ‘What do you think it means?’

‘Difficult to say. But one thing seems pretty sure. There’s something someone wants among your father’s papers. This man Reid told you a cock-and-bull story so as to get the opportunity of looking through them. Evidently what he wanted wasn’t there.’

‘Oh!’ said Freda. ‘I wonder. When I got home on Saturday I thought my things had been tampered with. To tell you the truth, I suspected my landlady of having pried about in my room out of curiosity. But now–’

‘Depend upon it, that’s it. Someone gained admission to your room and searched it, without finding what he was after. He suspected that you knew the value of this paper, whatever it was, and that you carried it about on your person. So he planned this ambush. If you had it with you, it would have been taken from you. If not, you would have been held prisoner while he tried to make you tell where it was hidden.’

‘But what can it possibly be?’ cried Freda.

‘I don’t know. But it must be something pretty good for him to go to this length.’

‘It doesn’t seem possible.’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Your father was a sailor. He went to out-of-the-way places. He might have come across something the value of which he never knew.’

‘Do you really think so?’ A pink flush of excitement showed in the girl’s pale cheeks.