Mystery Villa by E.R. Punshon Read Free Book Online

himself that it had come into his mind to ask the question.
    â€˜Well, that’s the way I feel about it,’ he said, with an air of finality.
    â€˜Strange to think,’ agreed Bobby, ‘of anyone like that now as once a jolly little child or a happy young girl, and then growing into such a life. I suppose it comes about gradually. There may have been some reason at first; something happened perhaps, or perhaps it was just a gradual dying away of every interest.’
    He turned and stared at the gloomy, deserted house behind as if in challenge; as if daring it to hold any longer its secret from him; as if, once again, he felt that odd, indefinable demand upon his mind that every unsolved problem seemed to make.
    â€˜Do you never see her? Does she never come to the door?’ he asked Humphreys.
    â€˜Never set eyes on her since I don’t know when,’ Humphreys declared. ‘There’s an outhouse near the back door – sort of tool-shed or something. She hangs a basket on a nail in it, with the money and a bit of paper to say what she wants, and next time I leave the order and the change, if any.’
    â€˜About the money?’ Bobby asked. ‘What is it, paper or silver, or gold?’
    â€˜Gold?’ repeated Humphreys, astonished. ‘Why, I ain’t seen gold since – why, not since a gent came in to buy some cheese, and paid for it with a half sovereign the boy I had then didn’t want to take, never having seen nothing like it; thought it was a counter or something. Luckily I came in in time, only, of course, I got rid of it again before the price went up the way it has now – which was sure to be the way of it,’ he added, with a kind of early-Christian-martyr sigh. ‘Once in a while,’ he went on, ‘she puts in a pound note, and I bring back the change; and then it always seems like I get the change again till it’s all done, and then there’s another pound note, and it’s like that all the time.’
    â€˜First there were sovereigns,’ Bobby remarked, ‘then Treasury notes came in, and now we’ve Bank of England notes – if she’s used them all in turn, she must have some regular source of income, some way of getting money somewhere to carry on with.’
    â€˜Looks like it,’ agreed Wild. ‘Gets it sent, perhaps – anyhow, it’s not a police matter. How’s business?’ he added to Humphreys.
    Humphreys hesitated, looked round, swelled perceptibly, and said, in a voice of mysterious importance:
    â€˜Working it up.’
    â€˜Are you, though?’ said Wild, evidently astonished at the idea. ‘Getting on all right?’
    â€˜Not so dusty,’ admitted Humphreys. ‘Working it up,’ he said again, as though he repeated some magic formula. ‘When we have, we’ll sell out; and then, maybe, we’ll buy another in Bournemouth, just for something to do and keep going on. In Bournemouth,’ he repeated, and it was almost as though he sang the word, so that his little, worn, worried face lit up, while for an instant he stood in a glow of ecstasy, as the drab London scene faded from his sight, and he walked in a dream of Paradise, amidst perpetual sunshine and soft sea air and the scent of pines. ‘Bournemouth,’ he said once more, very softly. ‘Me and the missus went there August Bank Holiday after we were married – before the war, that was – and, ever since, we’ve said, that’s where we would go if we ever got the chance.’
    He was so lost in this dream that had haunted all the days of his poor meagre little life, and that it seemed he thought might soon become a fact, as happens to so few, so very few, of the dreams of men, that Wild had to speak to him twice over before he realised he was being addressed again.
    â€˜Glad to hear it,’ Wild was saying. ‘I had an idea things down your way weren’t so bright