Reilly on the Case
The rain was coming down in torrents by the time the village was reached,
and, going at once to Reilly’s garage, the girls found him seated in his
narrow little office reading a newspaper.
He smiled jovially as she saw them, his little blue eyes almost hidden
behind many wrinkles.
“Afternoon, ladies!” he exclaimed. “How’s this for weather? A cat can
look at a king.”
But Arden had no time for polite preliminaries.
“Mr. Reilly,” she began, “we have something very important to tell you.”
“Have you, now? What’s happened? Rain leakin’ through into your dinin’
room table? It never pours but the salt gets damp.”
“Please, I’m serious,” Arden said firmly, and taking a deep breath she
announced:
“Dimitri Uzlov has disappeared!”
“Disappeared! What do you mean?”
“He’s been gone from the houseboat for days, and nobody has heard from
him. You said, yourself, you hadn’t seen him lately. Remember?”
“Yes, I remember,” agreed the chief. “But what makes you think he’s
disappeared?”
“His dog came over to our house, starving, with a piece of frayed rope on
her collar,” Terry burst out.
“The door of the houseboat was open, and the rain was pouring in,”
volunteered Sim.
“Both his car and rowboat are there, and there’s a cupboard broken open
on the houseboat,” Arden added excitedly.
“But perhaps he’s just gone for a day or two,” suggested the chief,
obviously not wanting to start on a “case” in the riotous weather.
“Oh, you must believe us!” Arden exclaimed. “It takes more than a day or
two to starve a big dog. And we inquired all around the village. No one
has seen Mr. Uzlov.”
“Have you told anyone else about this?” Reilly asked professionally. “How
many people know he’s gone?”
“Just us and my mother and that woman who came to see him,” Terry
answered.
“Oh, Terry!” Arden exclaimed. “And we don’t even know her last name or
her license number. We let her go away without asking.”
“How stupid! That’s just what we did, and I’m sure she knew more than she
let on,” Sim said in dismay.
“Mr. Reilly,” Arden pleaded, “won’t you come with us to the _Merry Jane_?
We’ll feel better if you take a look around, because we’d never forgive
ourselves if anything was wrong.”
“Why—” Reilly rubbed his chin thoughtfully—“yes, I’ll come. Might as well
go right now. Just in case——”
“Good! You follow us in your car, as we won’t be coming back this way
again,” Arden decided as Chief Reilly slipped into his warm uniform coat
whereon a large shiny badge was prominently displayed.
He followed them back along the road in his ancient flivver, his fat
cheeks shaking as he bounced over the ruts and puddles.
He slung one plump leg over the door without opening it and slid, rather
than climbed, out. The girls waited impatiently as he stood surveying the
lonely stretch of Marshlands from all angles.
Terry fidgeted. “What does he think he’s going to see, looking around
like this? White pebbles as in the fairy tale?” she hissed.
“Shsh-h! he’ll hear you,” Arden cautioned.
Chief Reilly, having had his look around, mounted the wooden steps at the
rear side of the houseboat and asked, in his most businesslike manner:
“Everything just as you found it last?”
“Everything; except for the closed window,” Arden replied.
Tania, delighted at seeing her friends again, “woofed” happily, and
apparently Chief Reilly was her friend, too, for she allowed him to rub
her silky ears.
“We came over here the day Tania ran to us, begging for food. And we
found the place deserted and this cupboard broken open,” said Arden.
“Huhm-um,” Reilly grunted, peering into the small compartment with its
shattered door.
“These paint brushes,” Sim said, showing him one, “were never left by Mr.
Dimitri to harden up like this. They were scattered about when we first
came over.”
“That so?” the chief asked. “I wouldn’t know about that. I’m no painter.”
“There’s something else that’s very odd,” Arden stated. “Dimitri Uzlov
had in his possession a very valuable gold box. Besides ourselves, we
don’t know just how many people knew about it, but we think the woman
Olga did. Anyway, it’s gone, too.”
Reilly raised his eyebrows. The case was beginning to be interesting.
What he had imagined to be the silly idea of excitable “summer folks”
seemed now to have something to it after all.
“Did this artist have many visitors?” he asked.
“Two that we know about,” replied Terry.
“The woman Olga, and a man who rowed over here in our boat a few nights
ago. He came back toward morning,” said Sim.
“The woman came first and asked the way over here. Terry rowed her over.
Dimitri and she seemed to be very angry about something. We rowed her
back again, and she took Melissa Clayton for a ride in her car, a green
sport roadster,” supplied Arden.
“Funny I never saw it go through town,” Reilly remarked at this point.
“But what you don’t know can’t set the river on fire.” He grinned.
“It’s more than that,” Terry agreed. “That woman didn’t seem to want to
be seen in town at all.”
“And something very queer about the whole thing,” Sim interrupted, “is
where has Melissa been all this while? She usually hangs around our
house.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t consider that,” Reilly suggested. “This bad weather
probably accounts for it. She’s home.”
“Well, then, after that,” Arden went on with her story of events, “a man,
dark, tall, and somewhat like Dimitri, drove up one night and he, too,
asked the way to the _Merry Jane_. He wouldn’t let us row him over. He
was very polite about it, and he took our boat. Toward morning I saw him
drive away in his car that he had left parked at Terry’s house, and—and—”
Arden faltered as she realized another surprising fact—“that’s the last
time we heard from Dimitri!”