Mystery Villa Read Free

but the ducking, he still felt, had been carrying the thing too far – he might easily have died of it, pneumonia or something, and where would his thoughtless assailants have been then? Why, he had swallowed pints of the stuff as they held him down in it with brooms, and altogether it was not an experience he cared to think about or be reminded of. His tone was more than a little reproachful as he answered:
    â€˜Now, guv’nor, Mr Owen, sir. If it had been like that, wouldn’t there be the whole lot of ’em piling after me, like, like’ – he said pathetically – ‘a ’orde of ’ungry dawgs persooing of the ’unted fawn? Now, wouldn’t there?’
    That this observation was as true as it was picturesque, Bobby was obliged to admit to himself. And though he remained convinced it was something very strange indeed that had driven Conway on at such desperate speed, that had made even the meeting with one of his natural enemies, a C.I.D. man, a blessed relief, yet there was no means of making him tell. A quarrel with some colleague in roguery on whose preserve he had been trespassing, perhaps. An offer of a bribe might possibly be effective, but would be more likely to produce only some new impudent invention.
    â€˜Cut along, then, if you won’t tell the truth,’ Bobby said. ‘Only, remember, I’ve seen you here, and, if any report comes in, it’ll be all the worse for you. We shall know, whatever happened, you were in it – and had your own reasons for keeping quiet, and then we shall know what to think.’
    â€˜Guv’nor,’ declared Conway earnestly, ‘if you do, you’ll do me wrong. If any job was worked round this part tonight, I wasn’t in it. I won’t deny I had a turn, but there won’t be nothing said; because for why? There wasn’t nothing done; and for that I’ll take my dying oath, straight I will, guv’nor.’
    There was a certain accent of sincerity in this that did impress Bobby. But he made no comment, and then, in a different tone, Conway said again:
    â€˜Guv’nor.’
    â€˜Well?’
    â€˜Luck’s been dead out with me, gov’nor, ever since I come out of the big house. There’s times I almost wish as I was back. I ain’t got no more nor that one brown you seed, guv’nor. It was the Waterloo Bridge hotel for me last night, and crool cold them arches is, and hard as you never would believe if you hadn’t never tried, and as for luck – why, the night afore I did ’ave the price of a doss, and, if you’ll believe me, that was the very night the Mad Millionaire, what the papers call him and no one’s ever seen, had been along that way plastering every bench almost with his one-pound notes.’
    â€˜Is that yarn really true?’ Bobby asked, for he had heard before of how some unknown, mysterious individual no one had ever seen would, at long, irregular intervals, deposit on the Embankment benches sealed envelopes, containing each a one-pound or ten-shilling note, and marked on the outside of the envelope: ‘For the finder.’
    A similar story told how a shower of such notes had once descended on the heads of a queue of unemployed and homeless waiting for admission to a casual ward, thrown to them by some person no one had seen. Another variety was a tale of how, once or twice, in East-end streets the residents had wakened in the morning to find that during the night pound or ten-shilling notes had been thrust through the letter-boxes – unexpected but welcome manna from heaven. Bobby had been a little sceptical of the truth of these stories, but Conway assured him they were accurate enough, though he himself, such was the weight of the malignant forces for ever pressing him down, had never had the luck to be the recipient of this mysterious bounty.
    â€˜Some say it’s a millionaire what’s being sorry for all he’s