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

now they’ve changed the bus route.’
    â€˜And a dirty trick that was, too; and quite uncalled for,’ exclaimed Humphreys, jerked back to present-day surroundings by the memory of this outrage. ‘And something ought to have been done about it, but we’re working it up all right..Working it up, we are,’ he repeated, his tongue lingering lovingly over this phrase that was to him the key to open the earthly Paradise he knew as Bournemouth of the sea and the sun and the pine-scented air. ‘Going in for gardening stuff, we are now; one window full of it – tools and seeds and manures, and lawn sand and lime, and what not. Doing well, too; big profits in them lines.’ He nodded, and went on towards the house, and as they, too, continued on their way, Wild remarked:
    â€˜About the first time I’ve heard anyone say business was doing well, and I shouldn’t have thought there was much of a demand for garden-stuff down where he is, or so much profit in it, either. If you ask me, they’ve as much chance of selling out for anything worthwhile as they have of winning the Irish Sweepstake. They’ll never see Bournemouth on what they get for their little one-horse show.’
    â€˜It’s a queer affair altogether,’ Bobby said, and he and Wild were still standing talking when Humphreys came back with an empty basket, Miss Barton’s purchases having been deposited in the accustomed place. He made some vague remark as he passed, and Bobby was thinking, with gentle amusement, that the light in the little man’s eyes and the smile lingering at the corners of his mouth were both due to his dear dream of Bournemouth, when there appeared from across the road an indignant housewife, who had evidently been watching for him.
    She was in a state of high indignation. It seemed that the previous Saturday night an order of hers had been delivered all wrong – nothing that she wanted, and everything she didn’t want, and too late for any correction to be made. There had been nothing for Sunday-morning breakfast, and she had had to leave her washing on Monday morning to go out and buy things. Her opinion of Mr Humphreys was emphatic and little flattering, and she was very scornful of his efforts to put the blame on his new man – ‘well-meaning and ’ard-working’, Humphreys declared, but with no experience. The indignant lady denounced the new assistant in question as a great, tall, stupid thing, fit for nothing but standing outside the pictures and a way of talking as if he didn’t think you good enough for his lordship’s notice; and Humphreys protested that his new assistant was doing his best, but not used to the grocery business, having only come into it as a result of the general economic crisis, and glad of the chance, too.
    But the indignant lady, memory of that meagre Sunday breakfast rankling in her mind, refused to accept this as an excuse, and leaving her still venting her wrath, and Humphreys still proffering meek excuse, Wild and Bobby walked away, the sergeant evidently very much impressed by so unexpected a revelation of a prosperity in the Humphreys’ establishment sufficiently pronounced to permit of the employment of a full-time, grown-up assistant.
    â€˜Though him doing well, and working it up on garden-stuff and suchlike,’ said Wild, shaking his head in a mystified manner as he bade farewell to Bobby, ‘beats me clean, so it does; especially now the buses have changed their route.’

CHAPTER SIX
The Shopkeeper’s Assistant
    Again a day or two passed, and Bobby, busy with uninteresting routine work, found often breaking in upon his thoughts as he drew up statements, filled in forms, went here and there on one dull errand or another, the teasing, troubling memory of the shuttered house in Windsor Crescent, of the old woman he had never seen dragging out there her strange and drear existence, of the mystery of