Mystery Villa Read Online Free Page B

have the pluck to face an angry mouse even. How does the old lady live, do you know? She must get food and coal, and so on, somehow, mustn’t she?’
    â€˜I think I’ve heard she leaves an order for a small general shop round the corner by Battenberg Prospect – Humphreys, I think the name is. But I don’t think they ever see her. She leaves the money with the order, and they leave the stuff at the back door, and she takes it in after they’ve gone.’
    â€˜Poor old soul. It sounds rather an awful existence,’ Bobby remarked, with pity in his voice, though, indeed, he knew the case was by no means rare, and that here and there in London, as in almost all big towns indeed, are strange old people, living strange, aloof, solitary lives, hermits amidst crowds, lone islands in the midst of the vast flowing tides of modern city populations. ‘Has she no friends or relations?’ he asked.
    â€˜Don’t look like it,’ Wild answered. ‘No one who calls ever gets an answer. You can spend all day knocking, and no notice taken. She’s never seen out, except sometimes after dark, and then, if anyone speaks to her, she runs like she did from Turner. They tried to get in touch with her from the church once, but it wasn’t any good – nothing to be done, if you ask me.’
    Bobby did not answer. He was musing vaguely, a little confusedly, on life that might be so rich and splendid rolling on like a great river carrying with it limitless cargoes of joy and wisdom, but, instead, so often runs to waste, like the stream losing itself in the desert sands that choke it up. Was it the fault, he wondered, of life, or of the life bearer? But Bobby was too young and too healthy minded to burden his mind for long with such useless and morbid speculations, and he got to his feet.
    â€˜I must be pushing on,’ he remarked.
    â€˜Half a tick, and I’ll come with you,’ Wild said. ‘I’m going your way. I’ve to see if there’s anything in this football complaint, and turn in a report. In writing,’ he added moodily, for, though he could talk as well and as long as anyone, when he sat down before a sheet of blank paper his mind was apt to go as blank as the paper.
    Bobby waited accordingly till Wild was ready, and then walked with him towards Windsor Crescent where, when they turned into it, about half-way down from Battenberg Prospect, they found a busy, animated, and extremely noisy game of football in full swing, the players taking no more notice of the protests of one or two indignant residents than cup players at Wembley would of the yapping of a small dog in a neighbouring street.
    â€˜Well, I’m blessed,’ exclaimed Wild, and at the same moment the hefty youngster who was just kicking off, after a goal won and lost, caught sight of him.
    â€˜Look out. P’leece,’ he yelled.
    He could not quite stop the kick he was in the act of delivering – a good kick, too, it would have been, bestowed with skill and zeal and force, that most excellent of trinities – but its aim and impulse were deflected, and, instead of sailing straight down the Crescent to where two piles of hats and coats marked the opposing goal, the ball flew to one side, over the Tudor Lodge front garden, till a crash of broken glass announced that it had found its predestined billet.
    Thereon, all in a moment, as in the twinkling of an eye, as dissolves the baseless fabric of a dream, those football players had vanished as though they had never been, only a little rising dust at each end of the street left to tell that they had passed that way. After them pounded the sixteen-stone sergeant, in gallant but ineffective pursuit, much as a prize bull might chase a fleeing hare, and after him followed Bobby, running with a great appearance of zeal and a great stamping of feet, but somehow managing to get over less ground than legs so long might have been expected to