Free Mystery Villa by E.R. Punshon

Mitchell accounted for his success in obtaining this permission without too much trouble, though not without a sombre warning that if it turned out a wild-goose chase, and he proved to have wasted his morning and the time a hard-up country paid him for, then he must not be surprised if he found himself assigned to the next overtime job that came along.
    Bobby reflected bitterly – though without saying so aloud – that probably that would have been his luck anyhow, especially if the job in question were rather specially dull, and, anyhow, the conviction that there was about Tudor Lodge something that needed investigation was growing ever stronger in his mind. Con Conway first and his strange panic, and then that young girl almost swooning with fear, and next the shop assistant on whom to the house had its influence of terror, and now this odd tale of a young man with a pistol in his hand.
    Once he had the desired permission, it did not take him long to get to Brush Hill, where his ardour was a little damped by finding that the Inspector in charge didn’t seem much interested.
    â€˜Old lady getting her friends to look her up at last,’ he suggested. ‘And there’s a lot of young chaps like playing about with pistols – some of ’em don’t even know they have to have a licence and are liable to a penalty without.
    But Wild had plainly been impressed by the story told by their visitor of the night before. She was a Mrs Rice, and as her husband was a wireless operator on one of the Australian boats, and so was frequently away for long periods at a time, she had a good deal of leisure, and spent a good deal of it at her window, surveying the activities of the world in general and of her neighbours in particular. Her story had been well and clearly told, and her account of the young man she had seen a really good one. She described him as tall, slim and dark, good-looking, with a small Grecian nose over a small well-shaped mouth with ‘beautiful teeth’ (Mrs Rice had grown almost lyrical over those teeth, which had evidently impressed her a good deal), and a round, slightly prominent chin. She spoke of his thin, dark, eager face, and of his well-knit, athletic form, and of a certain grace and ease in his bearing. She had noticed, too, his smart well-cut lounge suit (‘West-end, if you ask me,’ said Mrs Rice), his soft grey Trilby hat, and fashionable pigskin gloves. She had even noticed, and could describe his necktie (‘wanted someone to choose it for him,’ commented Mrs Rice – ‘yellow and green in bars, it was, with blue and red spots, a fair horror, beats me how a smart young fellow, quite the gentleman, could go and spoil himself like that’), and equally well the pistol he had been holding, so that Bobby’s tentative theory that it had really been a cigar lighter had to be dropped. Mrs Rice described it as small, with a gleaming mother-of-pearl handle, and it was clearly a revolver, not an automatic, and probably of a somewhat old-fashioned type.
    All this had been carefully noted down, and, after Bobby had read it, he and Wild started off, the Inspector giving them a last sardonic warning to be careful what they did, and to mind they kept each other out of mischief.
    â€˜You haven’t got a search warrant in your pockets, you know,’ he reminded them; ‘and remember, you’ll easily get yourself into trouble if you try any breaking and entering and it turns out not justified.’
    â€˜Oh, no, sir,’ protested Bobby. ‘I’m sure we never thought of anything like that. We’ll just have a general look round and see if Mrs Rice has anything more to say.’
    â€˜Well, perhaps it’s best not to let people have a chance of complaining we don’t pay any attention to what they tell us,’ admitted the Inspector, returning to his pile of reports and returns he was busy filling up.
    But his observations