Загадочные события во Франчесе / The Franchise Affair

Benjamin Carley knows more about defending accused persons than anyone between here and—”

“What! That awful little man with the striped suits!” Her deep voice ran up and cracked, and there was another momentary silence. “I am sorry,” she said presently in her normal voice. “That was silly. But you see, when I rang you up just now it wasn’t because I thought you would be clever about things” (“Wasn’t it, indeed,” thought Robert) “but because I was in trouble and wanted the advice of someone of my own sort.

And you looked my sort. Mr. Blair, do please come. I need you now. There are people from Scotland Yard here in the house. And if you feel that it isn’t something you want to be mixed up in you could always pass it on to someone else afterwards; couldn’t you? But there may be nothing after all to be mixed up in. If you would just come out here and �watch my interests’ or whatever you call it, for an hour, it may all pass over. I’m sure there is a mistake somewhere. Couldn’t you please do that for me?”

On the whole Robert Blair thought that he could. He was too good-natured to refuse any reasonable appeal – and she had given him a loophole if things grew difficult. And he did not, after all, now he came to think of it, want to throw her to Ben Carley. In spite of her bêtise about striped suits he saw her point of view. If you had done something you wanted to get away with, Carley was no doubt God’s gift to you; but if you were bewildered and in trouble and innocent, perhaps Carley’s brash personality was not likely to be a very present help.

All the same, he wished as he laid down the receiver that the front he presented to the world was a more forbidding one – Calvin or Caliban, he did not care, so long as strange females were discouraged from flinging themselves on his protection when they were in trouble.

What possible kind of trouble could “kidnapping” be, he wondered as he walked round to the garage in Sin Lane for his car? Was there such an offence in English law? And whom could she possibly be interested in kidnapping? A child? Some child with “expectations”? In spite of the large house out on the Larborough road they gave the impression of having very little money.

Or some child that they considered “ill-used” by its natural guardians? That was possible.