Mystery of Mr. Jessop by E.R. Punshon Read Free Book Online

Fellows had shown to the enraptured eyes of the firm her magnificent necklace she had purchased in the days when the mere lifting of her eyebrows shook Hollywood to its depths, when a regular clause in her contracts stipulated that at least a million dollars had to be spent on any picture in which she was to appear, when no palpitating director had ever known until she had actually signed whether she might not ask for another ten thousand dollars a week he knew he would have to concede if she made the demand.
    But now things were different, as they so often are. She had even been asked to call on a director instead of being able to regard it as mere routine to keep the fellow waiting an hour or two while she finished her grape-fruit – true, he had apologised, but it was a sign, even a portent – and the public had shown a disgraceful tendency to flock in less enthusiastic and embarrassing numbers than usual to her last two or three pictures. So she had decided that diamonds were a little vulgar, and, one or two firms in Paris and New York having ridiculously refused to give her its full value of £100,000, the sum she had herself paid for it, she had come incognito to London – she always preferred to travel incognito, as she found it attracted so much more attention – and, the sale still hanging fire, had left it with Messrs. Jessop & Jacks for them to dispose of at the best figure available over the reserve of £50,000.
    â€œAnd, in the present state of the market, lucky to get as much,” Mr. Jacks had declared gloomily, though Mr. Jessop’s views were slightly more optimistic.
    The basement of the building, where once had been the kitchen and domestic offices, and below them the wine and coal and other cellars, had been transformed into a strong-room in concrete and steel, fitted up with a door in armour plate that after business hours could only be opened by three keys, one each in the possession of Mr. Jessop and of Mr. Jacks, and one in that of their manager. On the second floor were the workrooms, and storerooms for articles of small value, and above them again were the attics, converted to serve as living-rooms for the caretaker, who was also the magnificent commissionaire of business hours, and whose wife presided over, and even assisted in, the labours of the charwomen responsible for the cleaning and tidying of the premises.
    No caretaker or charwoman answered, however, the summons Bobby beat upon the front door, using for that purpose a knocker that was a remarkably fine piece of eighteenth-century ironwork, though that was not a fact Bobby was in any mood to notice. There was a bell, too, that he rang with equal vigour and equal lack of success, and he was turning away to find a call-box wherefrom to ring up Scotland Yard, report his failure to obtain a reply, and ask for the further instruction he was gloomily certain would condemn him to sit on the doorstep till someone did arrive, even though that were not till the following Monday morning, when by good luck the constable on the beat came by, and, seeing another uniform man where none was to be expected, came across to investigate.
    Bobby introduced himself, explained his presence, learnt that a caretaker did live on the premises, that his name was Kendrick, and that on Saturday nights he and his wife always went to visit relatives from whose house they did not return till late; but by good luck the constable knew that Mr. Jessop’s new secretary occupied a one-room flat in a block not far away.
    â€œKendrick told me about her,” the constable explained. “Quite swanky about it he was – young lady name of Hilda May come to them straight from being secretary to a duchess, no less.”
    â€œWhat’s the joke?” asked Bobby, for the constable was smiling broadly.
    â€œWell, it’s funny,” he said. “Bit of a coincidence, but I’ve just been pulling in the young fellow that took her job