Mr Fielding Goes Missing by Alice Simpson

Author:Alice Simpson [Simpson, Alice]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-07-30T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

I only dared remain at the door watching Seth Bates load the crates for another minute. My curiosity satisfied, I motioned to Flo and moved quietly away. Without speaking to Matilda Mortimer, we returned to the parked automobile.

“Well, wasn’t I right about the bootleg liquor?” Florence demanded triumphantly. “What do you think we should do?”

“I don’t know,” I confessed. “If only we had some proof.”

“You heard those crates rattling.”

“Yes, but claiming some pears were clinking together suspiciously like bottles of 80 proof is hardly sufficient evidence to convince the police to conduct a raid on the place.”

“Then you don’t intend to report to the police, Jane?”

“I want to talk to Jack about it first. We must move carefully, Flo. My main objective is to learn the names of the higher-ups.”

“And where does this garage fit into the picture?”

“If it fits at all, my guess is that Seth and Matilda are functioning as middlemen and selling to individuals and small-timers. I don’t think they are the big fish in the scheme.”

As I drove back toward Greenville, I ruminated on what I had seen. I was convinced the information was valuable, yet I didn’t know what to do with it.

“If Jack thinks that I should report it to the police, that’s what I’ll do,” I told Flo.

Enroute home, I stopped in at the garage where Bouncing Betsy was still undergoing repairs, but the grease monkey charged with effecting her full recovery was far from encouraging. It was his opinion that Betsy would be better off resigned to the scrap heap.

I tried to keep my temper in check and firmly reiterated that everything within his power must be done to return my beloved Betsy to a roadworthy condition.

“How about the Icicle?” Florence asked when I returned to the car and reported on poor old Betsy’s dire condition. “Isn’t your iceboat still sitting out at the Yacht Club?”

“She will have to stay where she is for the time being,” I said. “If she’s stolen, I won’t much care, after all that’s happened.”

At the parsonage home, Flo and I separated. I thanked Florence for the use of the car, and I returned afoot to the Examiner office. Jack was absent on assignment, so I did not linger long. As I rounded a street corner on my way home, a newsboy for a rival paper blocked my path.

“Read all about it!” he shouted. “Anthony Fielding Believed Kidnapped! Paper, Ma’am?”

I dropped a coin into the lad’s hand and hastily scanned the front page. The story of my father’s disappearance was a highly colored account but contained not a useful item of information. I tossed the sheet into a street paper-container and moved on.

I was passing the Gillman Department Store when my attention was drawn to a woman who waited for a bus. The woman wore a small black hat and a long, old-fashioned dark coat which came nearly to her ankles. It was the shape of the garment and its unusual length which struck me as familiar.

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