Mystery Villa by E.R. Punshon Page B

and there doesn’t seem to be anything else of the sort lying about – no bridal veil or wreath, or even another shoe. You know, it’s just struck me, perhaps it’s that trunk scared Con Conway, if she ever opened it. If he climbed up to that window and was looking in, and she opened the thing, and he saw what was in it, it would give him a large-size scare.’
    â€˜Why should Con be trying to break into a place like this?’ demanded Wild; ‘all dirt and damp and just one old woman living in it. Conway goes where the big stuff is.’
    â€˜Yes, I know,’ Bobby agreed. ‘Only, there’s that,’ he added, nodding towards the pearl – or bead – he had placed on the mantelpiece. ‘If that’s what I think it is,’ he said, ‘and if there were more of the same sort in the old jewel-case someone’s been smashing open recently, or, for that matter, if Con Conway only thought so – well, he would be after the stuff quick enough.’
    â€˜That’s right,’ Wild confessed. He went across to look at the bead – or pearl – again. ‘Looks a bit of all right,’ he said. ‘But one of our chaps – Turner, I think – saw the old party later that same night, and she seemed O.K., and didn’t say a word about having been robbed or anything.’
    â€˜Conway may have come back again later on,’ Bobby suggested. ‘Or, if he had been too badly scared for that, he may have passed his story on to some pal or another. It’s just possible that’s what that girl was doing here – the one we saw, I mean. I’m sure there was someone else in the house at the time, in spite of what she said.’
    â€˜She looked all right,’ Wild said doubtfully. ‘Of course, some of ’em do – some what’s mixed up with the Con Conway sort, I mean. Their stock-in-trade to look O.K.’
    â€˜It’s only an idea,’ Bobby went on slowly, ‘but it’s possible someone after the pearls calculated it would be easier to win the old lady’s confidence and get admittance to the house by the help of a smart nice-looking girl. Only, then, what has that fellow with the pistol Mrs Rice says she saw got to do with it? And what’s become of Miss Barton herself? Has she gone into fresh hiding because she was afraid of her secret getting known? Or has she been taken away by friends, or what’s happened? We had better make sure she’s nowhere in the house, and then one of us can report while the other waits here in case she turns up – or someone else.’
    â€˜We’ve looked everywhere already,’ Wild remarked. ‘Not in the attics,’ Bobby reminded him.
    But when they ascended the stairs leading to the second and top floor, the dust that lay thickly everywhere, covering the landing like a fall of snow, and obviously undisturbed for many years, offered good proof no one recently had visited these upper portions of the house.
    They went downstairs again, and Wild proceeded to report while Bobby waited, smoking a cigarette, till presently Mrs Rice, who from her accustomed post of observation at her window had been an interested spectator of as much, of all this as she could see, appeared and introduced herself. So Bobby was very polite and amiable, and thanked her warmly for the assistance she had been, and then proceeded, very gently, to see if she had any more information she could supply. All they knew at present, he explained, was that Miss Barton wasn’t in the house, and there was nothing to show what had become of her. Of the grisly discovery that had, in fact, been made, he said nothing as yet, for discretion is the first of all departmental virtues, but he explained that it was feared some accident might have happened, and enquiries would have to be made at the hospitals and elsewhere to see if she could be traced. He added that if Mrs Rice could tell,