Francis Durbridge - Beware of Johnny Washington - Based on ‘Send for Paul Temple’

‘In the first place,’ replied Locksley, ‘Johnny says he has never set foot in Gloucester in his life.’

‘Well, you know what a confounded liar the fellow is,’ retorted Hargreaves. ‘Have you checked on him at all?’

‘The jewellers say they have never set eyes on him,’ said Locksley.

‘I don’t suppose they’ve set eyes on any of the gang that did the job,’ grunted the commissioner. ‘Did you find out if he had an alibi?’

‘Yes, he had an alibi all right. He was up in Town for the night to see a girl named Candy Dimmott in a new musical—seems he knew her in New York. He stayed at the St Regis—got in soon after midnight. According to the doctor, the night watchman had been chloroformed about that time—and the constable found him soon after 2 a.m. So Washington simply couldn’t have been in Gloucester then.’

‘You never can tell with that customer,’ said Kennard dubiously.

‘I questioned the night porter at the St Regis—he knows Washington well, and swears he never left the place while he was on duty,’ said Locksley. He turned to his chief again. ‘There’s another thing about that card, sir.’

‘Eh? What’s that?’

‘There are no fingerprints on it. I used rubber gloves when I put it together, and whoever tore it up and put it in that waste-paper basket must have done the same. Now, if Mr Washington left that card deliberately, why should he go to the trouble of using gloves?’

‘He might have been wearing them anyhow,’ pointed out Kennard.

Locksley shrugged.

‘Yet again, if he wanted to leave a card, why tear it up?’ he demanded earnestly.

Sir Robert rested his chin on his hand and gazed thoughtfully at the fire.

‘I begin to see what you’re driving at,’ he murmured. ‘You think this card business is a plant—presumably to distract attention from the real master mind.’

‘That’s about it, sir,’ agreed Locksley. ‘Washington’s name has been in the papers several times—and there was that silly article about Johnny being the modern Robin Hood. It’s given somebody an idea.’

Sir Robert picked up a wire paper fastener and very deliberately clipped the card to the report of the Gloucester robbery.

‘You haven’t seen Washington?’ he asked.

‘No, sir. I spoke to him twice on the telephone. He seemed a bit surprised, then amused. But he helped me all he could about the alibi when he saw how serious it was.’

‘Alibi or not, I think we should keep an eye on that gentleman,’ suggested Kennard.

‘That sounds like a good idea,’ replied Hargreaves. ‘You know him fairly well, don’t you, Locksley?’

‘I certainly saw something of him in the Blandford case.’

‘All right, then you can pop down to his place and have a talk to him as soon as you can get away from here today. And if you get the slightest hint that he is the brains behind this gang, don’t take any chances. Just tell him you are rechecking his alibi.’

‘It isn’t easy to fool Johnny Washington,’ said Locksley, slipping his little black notebook back into his inside pocket.

‘I must say, sir, I’m not convinced that it is a real organization we’re up against,’ insisted Kennard. ‘What makes you so sure about that?’

Sir Robert began to pace up and down between his desk and the fireplace.

‘It’s more a hunch than anything,’ he confessed. ‘For one thing, they’ve tackled such a variety of jobs—the average safe-buster sticks to one line as a rule and goes after the sort of stuff he can get rid of without much trouble. This gelignite gang have already robbed a cinema, a bank, two jewellers and a factory office. It takes a very unusual brain to plan such a variety of jobs in a comparatively short time.’

‘A brain like Johnny Washington’s?’ queried Kennard.

Sir Robert Hargreaves did not reply.

CALDICOTT MANOR is a sturdy four-square white house standing about half a mile outside the village of Caldicott Green, near the junction of the main road to Sevenoaks, which is some four miles away.

From the moment he set eyes on it in an agent’s catalogue, the manor had intrigued Johnny Washington, who had been suddenly overcome with the idea of retiring into the heart of the English countryside and getting back to nature for a spell after his exciting but profitable incursions into the London underworld.

He also liked the look of Caldicott Green, with its small stream running parallel with the main street and draining into a large pool near the manor which offered possibilities for fishing, one of his favourite forms of relaxation. Mr Washington was burdened with over-large and slightly troublesome feet which debarred him from most forms of sport. Angling, however, was ideal, for it allowed him to relax at full length for long periods on sunny afternoons, taking the weight off his pedal extremities. Johnny claimed that many of his best ideas had come to him while sitting beside a placid stream, hopefully awaiting a bite that never materialized.

His enemies were wont to declare that Johnny suffered with his feet because he was too big for his boots, and there was possibly something in this accusation, for this young man from America could have bluffed his way into the secret councils of the Atomic Control Commission as nonchalantly as if he were the man who originally split the atom.

But the secret of his success lay in the fact that he never over-estimated himself; his bluffs were always a part of a coolly calculated scheme and designed for a specific purpose.

Naturally, having enriched himself to some considerable extent at the expense of a wide variety of social parasites, he had made a number of bitter enemies, so he was not in the least surprised to hear of the attempt to implicate him in the jewel robbery at Gloucester. It was by no means the first time such a thing had happened; in fact, he was often surprised that it did not occur more often.

Johnny Washington lay on the enormous settee in his drawing-room (that was what the previous tenant had called it) awaiting the arrival of his nearest neighbours, Doctor Randall and his niece, Shelagh Hamilton, with whom he had scraped acquaintance at a nearby point-to-point meeting. They had promptly invited him to lunch, and he was now about to return their hospitality. Johnny had not planned to intermingle with the local country folk, but he had to admit that the doctor and his niece rather intrigued him. The niece in particular. Shelagh, who bore not the slightest resemblance in features to her uncle, seemed right out of place in the heart of the Kent countryside. Johnny had met plenty of her type in the night spots of New York; in fact she awakened vague murmurings of nostalgia inside him.

Blonde, brittle, perfectly made-up, exquisitely manicured, Shelagh looked as if she had been born with a lipstick in one hand and a drink in the other. She had a lively turn of conversation which amused Johnny; she was a cynic to the tips of her blood-red fingernails and he liked meeting people who had no respect for those who sat in the seats of the mighty. But he found it hard to believe that she was Doctor Randall’s niece, and found it idly intriguing to speculate upon their exact relationship.

Randall was a man in his early fifties, a very energetic type, somewhat wizened by many tropical suns, for he had told Johnny that he had worked on the Gold Coast for some years before his retirement, and he certainly talked knowledgeably about certain parts of the world, so that he made a very agreeable dining companion. But there was again an air of mystery about him; he ran a couple of large cars and horses for himself and Shelagh, and to all outward appearance seemed to live at the rate of about ten thousand pounds a year.