Young Petrella by Michael Gilbert Read Free Book Online Page B

Petrella.
    Sergeant Gwilliam looked at him suspiciously. He distrusted young detective constables who got ideas. Petrella went off to look for the Bird, who had been somewhat elusive lately. He had a feeling that some useful information might by now be forthcoming from that source.
    The matron at Highside Children’s Home was a single-minded extravert. A daily life spent in grappling with local authorities, keeping together an underpaid staff, and composing the difficulties of a hundred children left her with little time for reflection.
    There came a time in every day, though. The last half hour before she sought her own bed; when her charges were asleep, and the telephone had stopped wrangling. She liked to spend it out in the summerhouse. It was a beautiful little baroque temple, lovingly transported, stone by stone, from its native Arezzo by the enthusiastic Sir Louis, as a wedding present for his third wife. In it he had placed, as a sort of table, a pediment of great antiquity, unearthed at Capua. A heavy square of old, hewn stone. On it the matron would place her knitting bag, her spare glasses, and her evening newspaper. Beside it she erected her deckchair.
    Her thoughts, as usual, were on the problems of the day. That funny old man. She was inclined to believe the children, when they said he meant no harm.
    “Sometimes he talks to us,” Lizzie Ferrers had said, “sometimes he asks us questions.” What about? “Oh, anything. Getting up time. Meal time. Bedtime. The habits of the staff. The routine of the home.” Very odd, thought the matron. Looking up, she saw him.
    Clear, in the bright moonlight. Then he was gone. He had dodged in among the trees on the far side of the lawn. Her first thought was to go back and ring for the police. Being a resolute woman she decided to wait for a moment, and watch. The back door of the summerhouse led directly to the garden door of the house and there was no chance of being cut off. And there was something else, too. The matron had spent part of her professional life in a home for old people, and as the Prophet came out again into the moonlight at the edge of the trees, she noticed that he was holding himself and moving like a man of half his age.
    The next thing she saw was that he was not alone. There were flitting figures behind him, among the trees. Three – no, four – men following him.
    She decided that it was time to move. As she turned, the attack developed. Two men flung themselves at the Prophet, who whirled to meet them. A twisting knot of figures went to the ground with a thud which could be heard clear across the intervening distance.
    As the matron panted up to the garden door, she received a further shock. A police car was already coming up the drive. Sergeant Gwilliam jumped from it before it had stopped.
    “They’re over there.” She pointed. “Fighting. Quick, and you’ll get them.”
    “They won’t get out without wings,” said the Sergeant. “We’ve had the place surrounded an hour.”
    He disappeared with his followers at the double. The matron went in and mixed herself a strong drink of brandy from the emergency store.
     
    Chief Inspector Haxtell counted up the score later that evening with Sergeant Gwilliam and Petrella, who had got too close to a flailing Len and had picked up a black eye and a broken nose. They were in matron’s sitting room, which had been turned into a temporary first-aid post.
    “First,” said the Chief Inspector, “we’ve got the Prophet, alias Dicky Bird, alias ninety-five other things, who came out of Parkhurst three weeks ago, where he’d been doing a long stretch for burglary. As soon as we get him out of the hospital we’ll charge him with – what?”
    “Being on enclosed premises,” suggested Sergeant Gwilliam.
    “I suppose so. I take it that it’s some sort of felony to try and re-steal stolen goods.”
    “Would you very much mind explaining what it’s all about,” said the matron.
    “Certainly,