/The/ policeman who stood on the corner where Bennett Street meets
Hyde Lane had the world to himself. It was nearing three o’clock on a
sultry spring morning, airless, unpleasantly warm. Somewhere in South
London there was a thunderstorm; the hollow echoes of it came at odd
intervals. The good and bad of Mayfair slept--all, apparently, except
Mr. J. G. Reeder, Friend of the Law and Terror of Criminals.
Police-Officer Dyer saw the yellow light behind the casemented window
and smiled benevolently.
It was so still a night that when he heard a key turn in a lock, he
looked over his shoulder, thinking the noise was from the house
immediately behind him. But the door did not move. Instead he saw a
woman appear on the top doorstep five houses away. She wore a flimsy
négligée.
“Officer!”
The voice was low, cultured, very urgent. He moved more quickly
towards her than policemen usually move.
“Anything wrong, miss?”
Her face, he noticed in his worldly way, was “made up”; the cheeks
heavily rouged, the lips a startling red for one who was afraid. He
supposed her to be pretty in normal circumstances, but was doubtful as
to her age. She wore a long black dressing-gown, fastened up to her
chin. Also he saw that the hand that gripped the railing which flanked
the steps glittered in the light of the street lamps.
“I don’t know… quite. I am alone in the house and I thought I heard…
something.”
Three words to a breath. Obviously she was terrified.
“Haven’t you any servants in the house?”
The constable was surprised, a little shocked.
“No. I only came back from Paris at midnight--we took the house
furnished--I think the servants I engaged mistook the date of my
return. I am Mrs. Granville Fornese.”
In a dim way he remembered the name. It had that value of familiarity
which makes even the most assured hesitate to deny acquaintance. It
sounded grand, too--the name of a Somebody. And Bennett Street was a
place where Somebodies live.
The officer peered into the dark hall.
“If you would put the light on, madam, I will look round.”
She shook her head: he almost felt the shiver of her.
“The lights aren’t working. That is what frightened me. They were
quite all right when I went to bed at one o’clock. Something woke me…
I don’t know what… and I switched on the lamp by the side of my bed.
And there was no light. I keep a little portable battery lamp in my
bag. I found this and turned it on.”
She stopped, set her teeth in a mirthless smile. Police-Officer Dyer
saw the dark eyes were staringly wide.
“I saw… I don’t know what it was… just a patch of black, like somebody
crouching by the wall. Then it disappeared. And the door of my room
was wide open. I closed and locked it when I went to bed.”
The officer pushed open the door wider, sent a white beam of light
along the passage. There was a small hall table against the wall,
where a telephone instrument stood. Striding into the hall, he took up
the instrument and lifted the hook: the ’phone was dead.
“Does this----”
So far he got with the question, and then stopped. From somewhere
above him he heard a faint but sustained creak--the sound of a foot
resting on a faulty floor-board. Mrs. Fornese was still standing in
the open doorway, and he went back to her.
“Have you a key to this door?” he asked, and she shook her head.
He felt along the inner surface of the lock and found a stop-catch,
pushed it up.
“I’ll have to ’phone from somewhere. You’d better…”
What had she best do? He was a plain police-constable, and was
confronted with a delicate situation.
“Is there anywhere you could go… friends?”
“No.” There was no indecision in that word. And then: “Doesn’t Mr.
Reeder live opposite? Somebody told me…”
In the house opposite a light showed. Mr. Dyer surveyed the lighted
window dubiously. It stood for the elegant apartment of one who held a
post superior to chief constables. No. 7 Bennett Street had been at a
recent period converted into flats, and into one of these Mr. Reeder
had moved from his suburban home. Why he should take a flat in that
exclusive and interesting neighbourhood, nobody knew. He was credited
by criminals with being fabulously rich; he was undoubtedly a snug
man.
The constable hesitated, searched his pocket for the smallest coin of
the realm, and, leaving the lady on the doorstep, crossed the road and
tossed a ha’penny to the window. A second and the casement window was
pushed open.
“Excuse me, Mr. Reeder, could I see you for a second?”
The head and shoulders disappeared, and in a very short time Mr.
Reeder appeared in the doorway. He was so fully dressed that he might
have been expecting the summons. The frock coat was as tightly
buttoned, on the back of his head his flat-topped felt hat, on his
nose the pince-nez through which he never looked were askew.
“Anything wrong, constable?” he asked gently.
“Could I use your ’phone? There is a lady over there--Mrs. Fornese…
alone… heard somebody in the house. I heard it too…”
He heard a short scream… a crash, and jumped round. The door of No. 4
was closed. Mrs. Fornese had disappeared.
In six strides Mr. Reeder had crossed the road and was at the door.
Stooping, he pressed in the flap of the letter-box and listened. No
noise but the ticking of a clock… a faint sighing sound.
“Hum!” said Mr. Reeder, scratching his long nose thoughtfully. “Hum…
would you be so kind as to tell me all about this--um--happening?”
The police-constable repeated the story, more coherently.
“You fastened the spring lock so that it would not move? A wise
precaution.”
Mr. Reeder frowned. Without another word he crossed the road and
disappeared into his flat. There was a small drawer at the back of his
writing bureau, and this he unlocked. Taking out a leather hold-all,
he unrolled this, and selecting three curious steel instruments that
were not unlike small hooks, fitted one into a wooden handle and
returned to the constable.
“This, I fear, is… I will not say ‘unlawful,’ for a gentleman of my
position is incapable of an unlawful act.… Shall I say ‘unusual’?”
All the time he talked in his soft, apologetic way he was working at
the lock, turning the instrument first one way and then the other.
Presently with a click the lock turned and Mr. Reeder pushed open the
door.
“I think I had best borrow your lamp--thank you.”
He took the electric lamp from the constable’s hand and flung a white
circle of light into the hall. There was no sign of life. He cast the
beam up the stairs, and, stooping his head, listened. There came to
his ear no sound, and noiselessly he stepped further into the hall.
The passage continued beyond the foot of the stairs, and at the end
was a door which apparently gave to the domestic quarters of the
house. To the policeman’s surprise, it was this door which Mr. Reeder
examined. He turned the handle, but the door did not move, and,
stooping, he squinted through the keyhole.
“There was somebody… upstairs,” began the policeman with respectful
hesitation.
“There was somebody upstairs,” repeated Mr. Reeder absently. “You
heard a creaky board, I think.”
He came slowly back to the foot of the stairs and looked up. Then he
cast his lamp along the floor of the hall.
“No sawdust,” he said, speaking to himself, “so it can’t be _that_.”
“Shall I go up, sir?” said the policeman, and his foot was on the
lower tread when Mr. Reeder, displaying unexpected strength in so
weary-looking a man, pushed him back.
“I think not, constable,” he said firmly. “If the lady is upstairs she
will have heard our voices. But the lady is not upstairs.”
“Do you think she’s in the kitchen, sir?” asked the puzzled policeman.
Mr. Reeder shook his head sadly.
“Alas! how few modern women spend their time in a kitchen!” he said,
and made an impatient clucking noise, but whether this was a protest
against the falling-off of woman’s domestic qualities, or whether he
“tchk’d” for some other reason, it was difficult to say, for he was a
very preoccupied man.
He swung the lamp back to the door.
“I thought so,” he said, with a note of relief in his voice. “There
are two walking-sticks in the hall stand. Will you get one of them,
constable?”
Wondering, the officer obeyed, and came back, handing a long
cherrywood stick with a crooked handle to Mr. Reeder, who examined it
in the light of his lamp.
“Dust-covered, and left by the previous owner. The spike in place of
the ferrule shows that it was purchased in Switzerland--probably you
are not interested in detective stories and have never read of the
gentleman whose method I am plagiarising?”
“No, sir,” said the mystified officer.
Mr. Reeder examined the stick again.
“It is a thousand pities that it is not a fishing-rod,” he said. “Will
you stay here?--and don’t move.”
And then he began to crawl up the stairs on his knees, waving his
stick in front of him in the most eccentric manner. He held it up,
lifting the full length of his arm, and as he crawled upwards he
struck at imaginary obstacles. Higher and higher he went, silhouetted
against the reflected light of the lamp he carried, and
Police-Constable Dyer watched him open-mouthed.
“Don’t you think I’d better----”
He got as far as this when the thing happened. There was an explosion
that deafened him; the air was suddenly filled with flying clouds of
smoke and dust; he heard the crackle of wood and the pungent scent of
something burning. Dazed and stupefied, he stood stock still, gaping
up at Mr. Reeder, who was sitting on a stair, picking little splinters
of wood from his coat.
“I think you may come up in perfect safety,” said Mr. Reeder, with
great calmness.
“What--what was it?” asked the officer.
The enemy of criminals was dusting his hat tenderly, though this the
officer could not see.
“You may come up.”
P.-C. Dyer ran up the stairs and followed the other along the broad
landing till he stopped and focussed in the light of his lamp a
queer-looking and obviously home-made spring gun, the muzzle of which
was trained through the banisters so that it covered the stairs up
which he had ascended.
“There was,” said Mr. Reeder carefully, “a piece of black thread
stretched across the stairs, so that any person who bulged or broke
that thread was certain to fire the gun.”
“But--but the lady?”
Mr. Reeder coughed.
“I do not think she is in the house,” he said, ever so gently. “I
rather imagine that she went through the back. There is a back
entrance to the mews, is there not? And that by this time she is a
long way from the house. I sympathise with her--this little incident
has occurred too late for the morning newspapers, and she will have to
wait for the sporting editions before she learns that I am still
alive.”
The police-officer drew a long breath.
“I think I’d better report this, sir.”
“I think you had,” sighed Mr. Reeder. “And will you ring up Inspector
Simpson and tell him that if he comes this way I should like to see
him?”
Again the policeman hesitated.
“Don’t you think we’d better search the house?… they may have done
away with this woman.”
Mr. Reeder shook his head.
“They have not done away with any woman,” he said decisively. “The
only thing they have done away with is one of Mr. Simpson’s pet
theories.”
“But, Mr. Reeder, why did this lady come to the door----”
Mr. Reeder patted him benignantly on the arm, as a mother might pat a
child who asked a foolish question.
“The lady had been standing at the door for half-an-hour,” he said
gently; “on and off for half-an-hour, constable, hoping against hope,
one imagines, that she would attract my attention. But I was looking
at her from a room that was not--er--illuminated. I did not show
myself because I--er--have a very keen desire to live!”
On this baffling note Mr. Reeder went into his house.