Big wins on race courses, investments in stocks and shares, all things which are natural, just chancy enough to make big money at, and all apparently genuine transactions. There’s a lot of money stacked up abroad in different countries and different places. It’s a great big, vast, money-making concern – and the money’s always on the move – going from place to place.’ ‘Well,’ said Tommy, ‘good luck to you. I hope you get your
‘I think I shall, you know, some day. There might be a hope if one could jolt him out of his routine.’ ‘Jolt him with what?’ ‘Danger,’ said Ivor. ‘Make him feel he’s in danger. Make him feel someone’s on to him. Get him uneasy. If you once get a man uneasy, he may do something foolish. He may make a mistake. That’s the way you get chaps, you know. Take the cleverest man there is, who can plan brilliantly and never put a foot wrong. Let some little thing rattle him and he’ll make a mistake. So I’m hoping. Now let’s hear your story. You might know something that would be useful.’ ‘Nothing to do with crime, I’m afraid – very small beer.’ ‘Well, let’s hear about it.’ Tommy told his story without undue apologies for the triviality of it. Ivor, he knew, was not a man to despise triviality.
Ivor, indeed, went straight to the point which had brought Tommy on his errand.
‘And your wife’s disappeared, you say?’ ‘It’s not like her.’ ‘That’s serious.’ Serious to me all right.’ ‘So I can imagine. I only met your missus once. She’s sharp.’ ‘If she goes after things she’s like a terrier on a trail,’ said Thomas.
‘You’ve not been to the police?’
‘Why not?’ ‘Well, tn’st because I can’t believe that she’s anything but all right. Tuppence is always all right. She just goes all out after any hare that shows itself. She mayn’t have had time to communicate.’ ‘Mmm. I don’t like it very much. She’s looking for a house, you say? That just might be interesting because among various odds and ends that we followed, which incidentally have not led to much, are a kind of trail of house agents.’ ‘House agents?’ Tommy looked surprised.
‘Yes. Nice, ordinary, rather mediocre house agents in small provincial towns in different parts of England, but none of them so very far from London. Mr Eccles’s fLrm does a lot of business with and for house agents. Sometimes he’s the solidtor for the buyers and sometimes for the sellers, and he employs various house agencies, on behalf of clients. Sometimes we rather wondered why. None of it seems very profitable, you see ‘ ‘But you think it might mean something or lead to something?’ ‘Well, if you remember the big London Southern Bank robbery some years ago, there was a house in the country – a lonely house. That was the thieves’ rendezvous. They weren’t very noticeable there, but that’s where the stuff was brought and cached away. People in the neighbourhood began to have a few stories about them, and wonder whothese people were who came and went at rather unusual hours. Different kinds of cars arriving in the middle of the night and going away again.
People are curious about their neighbours in the country. Sure enough, the police raided the place, they got some of the loot, and they got three men, including one who was recognized and identified.’ ‘Well, didn’t that lead you somewhere?’ ‘Not really. The men wouldn’t talk, they were well defended and represented, they got long sentences in jail and within a year and a half they were all out of the jug again. Very clever rescues.’ ‘I seem to remember reading about it. One man disappeared from a criminal court where he was brought up by two warders.’ ‘That’s right. All very cleverly arranged and an enormous amount of money spent on the escape.
‘But we think that whoever was responsible for the staff work realized he made a mistake in having one house for too long a time, so that the local people got interested. Somcbndy, perhaps, thought it would be a better idea to get subsidiaries living in, say, as many as thirty houses in dtfferent places. People come and take a house, mother and daughter, say, a widow, or a retired army man and his wife. Nice quiet people. They have a few repairs done to the house, get a local builder in and improve the phimbing, and perhaps some other firm down from London to decorate, and then after a year or a year and a half circumstances arise, and the occupiers sell the house and go off abroad to live. Something like that. All very natural and pleasant. During their tenancy that house has been used perhaps for rather unusual purposes! But no one suspects such a thing. Friends come to see them, not very often. Just occasionally. One night, perhaps, a kind of anniversary party for a middle-aged, or elderly couple; or a coming of age party.