“/The/ point is,” said Mr. Daver, “the only point--I think you will
agree with me here--that really has any interest for us, is that Mr.
Ravini left without paying his bill. This was the point I emphasised
to a friend of his who called me on the telephone this morning. That
is to me the supreme mystery of his disappearance--he left without
paying his bill!”
He leaned back in his chair and beamed at the girl in the manner of
one who had expounded an unanswerable problem. With his finger-tips
together he had an appearance which was oddly reminiscent.
“The fact that he left behind a pair of pyjamas which are practically
valueless merely demonstrates that he left in a hurry. You agree with
me? I am sure you do. Why he should leave in a hurry is naturally
beyond my understanding. You say he was a crook: possibly he received
information that he had been detected.”
“He had no telephone calls and no letters while he was here,” insisted
Margaret.
Mr. Daver shook his head.
“That proves nothing. Such a man would have associates. I am sorry he
has gone. I hoped to have an opportunity of studying his type. And by
the way, I have discovered something about Flack--the famous John
Flack--did you know that he had escaped from the lunatic asylum? I
gather from your alarm that you didn’t. I am an observer, Miss B.
Years of study of this fascinating subject have produced in me a sixth
sense--the sense of observation, which is atrophied in ordinary
individuals.”
He took a long envelope from his drawer and pulled out a small bundle
of press cuttings. These he sorted on to his table, and presently
unfolded a newspaper portrait of an elderly man and laid it before
her.
“Flack,” he said briefly.
She was surprised at the age of the man; the thin face, the grizzled
moustache and beard, the deep-set, intelligent eyes suggested almost
anything rather than that confirmed and dangerous criminal.
“My press-cutting agency supplied these,” he said. “And here is
another portrait which may interest you, and in a sense the arrival of
this photograph is a coincidence. I am sure you will agree with me
when I tell you why. It is a picture of a man called Reeder.”
Mr. Daver did not look up or he would have seen the red come to the
girl’s face.
“A clever old gentleman attached to the Public Prosecutor’s
Department----”
“He is not very old,” said Margaret coldly.
“He looks old,” said Mr. Daver, and Margaret had to agree that the
newspaper portrait was not a very flattering one.
“This is the gentleman who was instrumental in arresting Flack, and
the coincidence--now what do you imagine the coincidence is?”
She shook her head.
“He’s coming here to-day!”
Margaret Belman’s mouth opened in amazement.
“I had a wire from him this afternoon saying he was coming to-night,
and asking if I could accommodate him. But for my interest in this
case I should not have known his name or had the slightest idea of his
identity. In all probability I should have refused him a room.”
He looked up suddenly.
“You say he is not so old: do you know him? I see that you do. That is
even a more remarkable coincidence. I am looking forward with the
utmost delight to discussing with him my pet subject. It will be an
intellectual treat.”
“I don’t think Mr. Reeder discusses crime,” she said. “He is rather
reticent on the subject.”
“We shall see,” said Mr. Daver, and from his manner she guessed that
he at any rate had no doubt that the man from the Public Prosecutor’s
Office would respond instantly to a sympathetic audience.
Mr. Reeder came just before seven, and to her surprise he had
abandoned his frock-coat and curious hat and was almost jauntily
attired in grey flannels. He brought with him two very solid and
heavy-looking steamer trunks.
The meeting was not without its moment of embarrassment.
“I trust you will not think, Miss--um--Margaret, that I am being
indiscreet. But the truth is, I--um--am in need of a holiday.”
He never looked less in need of a holiday: compared with the Reeder
she knew, this man was most unmistakably alert.
“Will you come to my office?” she said, a little unsteadily.
When they reached her bureau, Mr. Reeder opened the door reverently.
She had a feeling that he was holding his breath, and she was seized
with an almost uncontrollable desire to laugh. Instead, she preceded
him into her sanctum. When the door closed:
“I was an awful pig to you, Mr. Reeder,” she began rapidly. “I ought
to have written… the whole thing was so absurd… the quarrel, I mean.”
“The disagreement,” murmured Mr. Reeder. “I am old-fashioned, I admit,
but an old man----”
“Forty-eight isn’t old,” she scoffed. “And why shouldn’t you wear
side-whiskers? It was unpardonable of me… feminine curiosity: I wanted
to see how you looked.”
Mr. Reeder raised his hand. His voice was almost gay.
“The fault was entirely mine, Miss Margaret. I am old-fashioned. You
do not think--er--it is indecorous, my paying a visit to Larmes Keep?”
He looked round at the door and lowered his voice.
“When did Mr. Ravini leave?” he asked.
She looked at him amazed.
“Did you come down about that?”
He nodded slowly.
“I heard he was here. Somebody told me. When did he go?”
Very briefly she told him the story of her night’s experience, and he
listened, his face growing longer and longer, until she had finished.
“Before that, can you remember what happened? Did you see him the
night before he left?”
She knit her forehead and tried to remember.
“Yes,” she said suddenly, “he was in the grounds, walking with Miss
Crewe. He came in rather late----”
“With Miss Crewe?” asked Reeder quickly. “Miss Crewe? Was that the
rather interesting young lady I saw playing croquet with a clergyman
as I came across the lawn?”
She looked at him in surprise.
“Did you come across the lawn? I thought you drove up to the front of
the house----”
“I descended from the vehicle at the top of the hill,” Mr. Reeder
hastily explained. “At my age a little exercise is vitally necessary.
The approaches to the Keep are charming. A young lady, rather pale,
with dark eyes… hum!”
He was looking at her searchingly, his head a little on one side.
“So she and Ravini went out. Were they acquainted?”
She shook her head.
“I don’t think Ravini had met her until he came here.”
She went on to tell him of Ravini’s agitation, and of how she had
found Olga Crewe in tears.
“Weeping… ah!” Mr. Reeder fondled his nose. “You have seen her since?”
And, when the girl shook her head:
“She got up late the next morning--had a headache possibly?” he asked
eagerly, and her eyes opened in astonishment.
“Why, yes. How did you know----”
But Mr. Reeder was not in an informative mood.
“The number of your room is----?”
“No. 4. Miss Crewe’s is No. 5.”
Reeder nodded.
“And Ravini was in No. 7: that is two doors away.” Then, suddenly:
“Where have you put me?”
She hesitated.
“In No. 7. Those were Mr. Daver’s orders. It is one of the best rooms
in the house. I warn you, Mr. Reeder, the proprietor is a
criminologist and is most anxious to discuss his hobby.”
“Delighted,” murmured Mr. Reeder, but he was thinking of something
else. “Could I see Mr. Daver?”
The quarter-of-an-hour gong had already sounded, and she took him
along to the office in the annexe. Mr. Daver’s desk was surprisingly
tidy. He was surveying an account-book through large horn-rimmed
spectacles, and looked up inquiringly as she came in.
“This is Mr. Reeder,” she said, and withdrew.
For a second they looked at one another, the detective and the
Puck-faced little proprietor; and then, with a magnificent wave of his
hand, Mr. Daver invited his visitor to a seat.
“This is a very proud moment for me, Mr. Reeder,” he said, and bent
himself double in a profound bow. “As an humble student of those great
authorities whose works, I have no doubt, are familiar to you, I am
honoured at this privilege of meeting one whom I may describe as a
modern Lombroso. You agree with me? I was certain you would.”
Mr. Reeder looked up at the ceiling.
“Lombroso?” he repeated slowly. “An--um--Italian gentleman, I think?
The name is almost familiar.”
Margaret Belman had not quite closed the door, and Mr. Daver rose and
shut it; returned to his chair with an outflung hand and seated
himself.
“I am glad you have come. In fact, Mr. Reeder, you have relieved my
mind of a great unease. Ever since yesterday morning I have been
wondering whether I ought not to call up Scotland Yard, that splendid
institution, and ask them to despatch an officer to clear up this
strange and possibly revolting mystery.”
He paused impressively.
“I refer to the disappearance of Mr. George Ravini, a guest of Larmes
Keep, who left this house at a quarter to five yesterday morning and
was seen making his way into Siltbury.”
“By whom?” asked Mr. Reeder.
“By an inhabitant of Siltbury, whose name for the moment I forget.
Indeed, I never knew. I met him quite by chance walking down into the
town.”
He leaned forward over his desk and stared owlishly into Mr. Reeder’s
eyes.
“You have come about Ravini, have you not? Do not answer me: I see you
have! Naturally, one did not expect you to carry, so to speak, your
heart on your sleeve. Am I right? I think I am.”
Mr. Reeder did not confirm this conclusion. He seemed strangely
unwilling to speak, and in ordinary circumstances Mr. Daver would not
have resented this diffidence.
“Very naturally I do not wish a scandal to attach to this house,” he
said, “and I may rely upon your discretion. The only matter which
touches me is that Ravini left without paying his bill; a small and
unimportant aspect of what may possibly be a momentous case. You see
my point of view? I am certain that you do.”
He paused, and now Mr. Reeder spoke.
“At a quarter to five,” he said thoughtfully, as though speaking to
himself, “it was scarcely light, was it?”
“The dawn was possibly breaking o’er the sea,” said Mr. Daver
poetically.
“Going to Siltbury? Carrying his bag?”
Mr. Daver nodded.
“May I see his room?”
Daver came to his feet with a flourish.
“That is a request I expected, and it is a reasonable request. Will
you follow me?”
Mr. Reeder followed him through the great hall, which was occupied
solely by a military-looking gentleman, who cast a quick sidelong
glance at him as he passed. Mr. Daver was leading the way to the wide
stairs when Mr. Reeder stopped and pointed.
“How very interesting!” he said.
The most unlikely things interested Mr. Reeder. On this occasion the
point of interest was a large safe--larger than any safe he had seen
in a private establishment. It was six feet in height and half that
width, and it was fitted under the first flight of stairs.
“What is it?” asked Mr. Daver, and turned back. His face screwed up
into a smile when he saw the object of the detective’s attention.
“Ah! My safe! I have many rare and valuable documents which I keep
here. It is a French model, you will observe--too large for my modest
establishment, you will say? I agree. Sometimes, however, we have very
rich people staying here… jewels and the like… it would take a very
clever burglar to open that, and yet I, with a little key----”
He drew a chain from his pocket and fitted one of the keys at the end
into a thin keyhole, turned a handle, and the heavy door swung open.
Mr. Reeder peeped in curiously. On the two steel shelves at the back
of the safe were three small tin boxes--otherwise the safe was empty.
The doors were of an extraordinary thickness, and their inner face
smooth except for a slab of steel the object of which apparently was
to back and strengthen the lock. All this he saw at once, but he saw
something else. The white enamelled floor of the safe was brighter in
hue than the walls. Only a man of Mr. Reeder’s powers of observation
would have noticed this fact. And the steel slab at the back of the
lock…? Mr. Reeder knew quite a lot about safes.
“A treasure-house--it almost makes me feel rich,” chuckled Mr. Daver
as he locked the door and led the way up the stairs. “The psychology
of it will appeal to you, Mr. Reeder!”
At the head of the stairs they came to a broad corridor; Daver,
stopping before the door of No. 7, inserted a key.
“This is also your room,” he explained. “I had a feeling which
amounted almost to a certainty, that your visit was not wholly
unconnected with this curious disappearance of Mr. Ravini, who left
without paying his bill.” He chuckled a little and apologised. “Excuse
me for my insistence upon this point, but it touches me rather
nearly.”
Mr. Reeder followed his host into the big room. It was panelled from
ceiling to floor and furnished with a luxury which surprised him. The
articles of furniture were few, but there was not one which a
connoisseur would not have noted with admiration. The four-poster bed
was Jacobean; the square of carpet was genuine Teheran; a
dressing-table with a settle before it was also of the Jacobean
period.
“That was his bed, where the pyjamas were found.”
Mr. Daver pointed dramatically. But Mr. Reeder was looking at the
casement windows, one of which was open.
He leaned out and looked down, and immediately began to take in the
view. He could see Siltbury lying in the shadow of the downs, its
lights just then beginning to twinkle; but the view of the Siltbury
road was shut out by a belt of firs. To the left he had a glimpse of
the hill road up which his cab had climbed.
Mr. Reeder came out from the room and cast his eyes up and down the
corridor.
“This is a very beautiful house you have, Mr. Daver,” he said.
“You like it? I was sure you would!” said Mr. Daver enthusiastically.
“Yes, it is a delightful property. To you it may seem a sacrilege that
I should use it as a boarding-house, but perhaps our dear young friend
Miss Belman has explained that it is a hobby of mine. I hate
loneliness; I dislike intensely the exertion of making friends. My
position is unique; I can pick and choose my guests.”
Mr. Reeder was looking aimlessly towards the head of the stairs.
“Did you ever have a guest named Holden?” he asked.
Mr. Daver shook his head.
“Or a guest named Willington…? Two friends of mine who may have come
here about eight years ago?”
“No,” said Mr. Daver promptly. “I never forget names. You may inspect
our guest-list for the past twelve years at any time you wish. Would
they be likely to come for any reason”--Mr. Daver was amusingly
embarrassed--“in other names than their own? No, I see they wouldn’t.”
As he was speaking, a door at the far end of the corridor opened and
closed instantly. Mr. Reeder, who missed nothing, caught one glimpse
of a figure before the door shut.
“Whose room is that?” he asked.
Mr. Daver was genuinely embarrassed this time.
“That,” he said, with a nervous little cough, “is my suite. You saw
Mrs. Burton, my housekeeper--a quiet, rather sad soul, who has had a
great deal of trouble in her life.”
“Life,” said Mr. Reeder tritely, “is full of trouble,” and Mr. Daver
agreed with a sorrowful shake of his head.
Now, the eyesight of J. G. Reeder was peculiarly good, and though he
had not as yet met the housekeeper, he was quite certain that the
rather beautiful face he had glimpsed for a moment did not belong to
any sad woman who had seen a lot of trouble. As he dressed leisurely
for dinner, he wondered why Miss Olga Crewe had been so anxious that
she should not be seen coming from the proprietor’s suite. A natural
and proper modesty, no doubt; and modesty was the quality in woman of
which Mr. Reeder most heartily approved.
He was struggling with his tie when Daver, who seemed to have
constituted himself a sort of personal attendant, knocked at the door
and asked permission to come in. He was a little breathless, and
carried a number of press cuttings in his hand.
“You were talking about two gentlemen, Mr. Willington and Mr. Holden,”
he said. “The names seemed rather familiar. I had the irritating sense
of knowing them without knowing them, if you understand, dear Mr.
Reeder? And then I recalled the circumstances.” He flourished the
press cuttings. “I saw their names here.”
Mr. Reeder, staring at his reflection in the glass, adjusted his tie
nicely.
“Here?” he repeated mechanically, and, looking round, accepted the
printed slips which his host thrust upon him.
“I am, as you probably know, Mr. Reeder, a humble disciple of Lombroso
and of those other great criminologists who have elevated the study of
abnormality to a science. It was Miss Belman who quite unconsciously
directed my thoughts to the Flack organisation, and during the past
day or two I have been getting a number of particulars concerning
those miscreants. The names of Holden and Willington occur. They were
two detectives who went out in search of Flack and never returned--I
remember their disappearance very well now the matter is recalled to
my mind. There was also a third gentleman who disappeared.”
Mr. Reeder nodded.
“Ah, you remember?” said Mr. Daver triumphantly. “Naturally you would.
A lawyer named Biggerthorpe, who was called from his office one day on
some excuse, and was never seen again. May I add”--he smiled
good-humouredly--“that Mr. Biggerthorpe has never stayed here? Why
should you imagine he had, Mr. Reeder?”
“I never did.” Mr. Reeder gave blandness for blandness. “Biggerthorpe?
I had forgotten him. He was an important witness against Flack if he’d
ever been caught--hum!”
And then:
“You are a student of criminal practices, Mr. Daver?”
“A humble one,” said Mr. Daver, and his humility was manifest in his
attitude.
And then he suddenly dropped his voice to a hoarse whisper.
“Shall I tell you something, Mr. Reeder?”
“You may tell me,” said Mr. Reeder, as he buttoned his waistcoat,
“anything that pleases you. I am in the mood for stories. In this
delightful atmosphere, amidst these beautiful surroundings, I should
prefer--um--fairy stories--or shall we say ghost stories? Is Larmes
Keep haunted, Mr. Daver? Ghosts are my specialty. I have probably seen
and arrested more ghosts than any other living representative of the
law. Some time I intend writing a monumental work on the subject.
‘Ghosts I have Seen, or a Guide to the Spirit World,’ in sixty-three
volumes. You were about to say----?”
“I was about to say,” said Mr. Daver, and his voice was curiously
strained, “that in my opinion Flack himself once stayed here. I have
not mentioned this fact to Miss Belman, but I am convinced in my mind
that I am not in error. Seven years ago”--he was very impressive--“a
grey-bearded, rather thin-faced man came here at ten o’clock at night
and asked for a lodging. He had plenty of money, but this did not
influence me. Ordinarily I should have asked him to make the usual
application, but it was late, a bitterly cold and snowy night, and I
hadn’t the heart to turn one of his age away from my door.”
“How long did he stay?” asked Mr. Reeder. “And why do you think he was
Flack?”
“Because”--Daver’s voice had sunk until it was an eerie moan--“he left
just as Ravini left--early one morning, without paying his bill, and
left his pyjamas behind him!”
Very slowly Mr. Reeder turned his head and surveyed the host.
“That comes into the category of humorous stories, and I am too hungry
to laugh,” he said calmly. “What time do we dine?”
The gong sounded at that moment.
Margaret Belman usually dined with the other guests at a table apart.
She went red and felt more than a little awkward when Mr. Reeder came
across to her table, dragging a chair with him, and ordered another
place to be set. The other three guests dined at separate tables.
“An unsociable lot of people,” said Mr. Reeder as he shook out his
napkin and glanced round the room.
“What do you think of Mr. Daver?”
J. G. Reeder smiled gently.
“He is a very amusing person,” he said, and she laughed, but grew
serious immediately.
“Have you found out anything about Ravini?”
Mr. Reeder shook his head.
“I had a talk with the hall porter: he seems a very honest and
straightforward fellow. He told me that when he came down the morning
after Ravini disappeared, the front door had been unbolted and
unlocked. An observant fellow. Who is Mrs. Burton?” he asked abruptly.
“The housekeeper.” Margaret smiled and shook her head. “She is rather
a miserable lady, who spends quite a lot of time hinting at the good
times she should be having, instead of being ‘buried alive’--those are
her words--at Siltbury.”
Mr. Reeder put down his knife and fork.
“Dear me!” he said mildly. “Is she a lady who has seen better days?”
Margaret laughed softly.
“I should have thought she had never had such a time as she is having
now,” she said. “She’s rather common and terribly illiterate. Her
accounts that come up to me are fearful and wonderful things! But
seriously, I think she must have been in good circumstances. The first
night I was here I went into her room to ask about an account I did
not understand--of course it was a waste of time, for books are
mysteries to her--and she was sitting at a table admiring her hands.”
“Hands?” he said.
She nodded.
“They were covered with the most beautiful rings you could possibly
imagine,” said Margaret, and was satisfied with the impression she
made, for Mr. Reeder dropped knife and fork to his plate with a crash.
“Rings…?”
“Huge diamonds and emeralds. They took my breath away. The moment she
saw these she put her hand behind her, and the next morning she
explained that they were presents given to her by a theatrical lady
who had stayed here, and that they had no value.”
“Props, in fact,” said Mr. Reeder.
“What is a prop?” she asked curiously, and Mr. Reeder waggled his
head, and she had learnt that when he waggled his head in that fashion
he was advertising his high spirits and good humour.
After dinner he sent a waitress to find Mr. Daver, and when that
gentleman arrived Mr. Reeder had to tell him that he had a lot of work
to do, and request the loan of blotting-pad and a special
writing-table for his room. Margaret wondered why he had not asked
her, but she supposed that it was because he did not know that such
things came into her province.
“You’re a great writer, Mr. Reeder--he, he!” Daver was convulsed at
his own little joke. “So am I! I am never happy without a pen in my
hand. Tell me, as a matter of interest, do you do your best work in
the morning or in the evening? Personally, it is a question that I
have never decided to my own satisfaction.”
“I shall now write steadily till two o’clock,” said Mr. Reeder,
glancing at his watch. “That is a habit of years. From nine to two are
my writing hours, after which I smoke a cigarette, drink a glass of
milk--would you be good enough to see that I have a glass of milk put
in my room at once?--and from two I sleep steadily till nine.”
Margaret Belman was an interested and somewhat startled audience of
this personal confession. It was unusual in Mr. Reeder to speak of
himself, unthinkable that he should discuss his work. In all her life
she had not met an individual who was more reticent about his private
affairs. Perhaps the holiday spirit was on him, she thought. He was
certainly younger-looking that evening than she had ever known him.
She went out to find Mrs. Burton and convey the wishes of the guest.
The woman accepted the order with a sniff.
“Milk? He looks the kind of person who drinks milk. _He’s_ nothing to
be afraid of!”
“Why should he be afraid?” asked Margaret sharply, but the reproach
was lost upon Mrs. Burton.
“Nobody likes detectives nosing about a place--do they, Miss Belman?
And he’s not my idea of a detective.”
“Who told you he was a detective?”
Mrs. Burton looked at her for a second from under her heavy lids, and
then jerked her head in the direction of Daver’s office.
“He did,” she said. “Detectives! And me sitting here, slaving from
morning till night, when I might be doing the grand in Paris or one of
them places, with servants to wait on me instead of me waiting on
people. It’s sickening!”
Twice since she had been at Larmes Keep, Margaret had witnessed these
little outbursts of fretfulness and irritation. She had an idea that
the faded woman would like some excuse to make her a confidante, but
the excuse was neither found nor sought. Margaret had nothing in
common with this rather dull and terribly ordinary lady, and they
could find no mutual interest which would lead to the breakdown of the
barriers. Mrs. Burton was a weakling; tears were never far from her
eyes or voice, nor the sense of her mysterious grievances against the
world far from her mind.
“They treat me like dirt,” she went on, her voice trembling with her
feeble anger, “and she treats me worst of all. I asked her to come and
have a cup of tea and a chat in my room the other day, and what do you
think she said?”
“Whom are you talking about?” asked Margaret curiously. It did not
occur to her, that the “she” in question might be Olga Crewe--it would
have required a very powerful effort of imagination to picture the
cold and worldly Olga talking commonplaces with Mrs. Burton over a
friendly cup of tea; yet it was of Olga that the woman spoke. But at
the very suggestion that she was being questioned her thin lips closed
tight.
“Nobody in particular… milk, did you say? I’ll take it up to him
myself.”
Mr. Reeder was struggling into a dressing-jacket when she brought the
milk to him. One of the servants had already placed pen, ink, and
stationery on the table, and there were two fat manuscript-books
visible to any caller, and anticipating eloquently Mr. Reeder’s
literary activities.
He took the tray from the woman’s hand and put it on the table.
“You have a nice house, Mrs. Burton,” he said encouragingly. “A
beautiful house. Have you been here long?”
“A few years,” she answered.
She made to go, but lingered at the door. Mr. Reeder recognised the
symptoms. Discreet she might be, a gossip she undoubtedly was, aching
for human converse with any who could advance a programme of those
trivialities which made up her conversational life.
“No, sir, we never get many visitors here. Mr. Daver likes to pick and
choose.”
“And very wise of Mr. Daver. By the way, which is his room?”
She walked through the doorway and pointed along the corridor.
“Oh yes, I remember, he told me. A charming situation. I saw you
coming out this evening.”
“You have made a mistake--I never go into his room,” said the woman
sharply. “You may have seen----”
She stopped, and added:
“--somebody else. Are you going to work late, sir?”
Mr. Reeder repeated in detail his plans for the evening.
“I would be glad if you would tell Mr. Daver that I do not wish to be
interrupted. I am a very slow thinker, and the slightest disturbance
to my train of thought is fatal to my--er--power of composition,” he
said, as he closed the door upon her and, waiting until she had time
to get down the stairs, locked it and pushed home the one bolt.
He drew the heavy curtains across the open windows, pushed the
writing-table against the curtains so that they could not blow back,
and, opening the two exercise-books, so placed them that they formed a
shade that prevented the light falling upon the bed. This done, he
changed quickly into a lounge suit, and, lying on the bed, pulled the
coverlet over him and was asleep in five minutes.
Margaret Belman had it in her mind to send up to his room after
eleven, before she herself retired, to discover whether there was
anything he wanted, but fortunately she changed her mind--fortunately,
because Mr. Reeder had planned to snatch five solid hours’ sleep
before he began his unofficial inspection of the house, or
alternatively before the period arrived when it would be necessary
that he should be wide awake.
At two o’clock to the second he woke and sat up on the edge of the
bed, blinking at the light. Opening one of his trunks, he took out a
small wooden box from which he drew a spirit stove and the
paraphernalia of tea-making. He lit the little lamp, and while the
tiny tin kettle was boiling he went to the bathroom, undressed, and
lowered his shivering body into a cold bath. He returned fully
dressed, to find the kettle boiling.
Mr. Reeder was a very methodical man; he was, moreover, a careful man.
All his life he had had a suspicion of milk. He used to wander round
the suburban streets in the early hours of the morning, watch the cans
hanging on the knockers, the bottles deposited in corners of
doorsteps, and ruminate upon the enormous possibilities for wholesale
murder that this light-hearted custom of milk delivery presented to
the criminally minded. He had calculated that a nimble homicide,
working on systematic lines, could decimate London in a month.
He drank his tea without milk, munched a biscuit, and then,
methodically clearing away the spirit-stove and kettle, he took from
his grip a pair of thick-soled felt slippers and drew them on his
feet. In his trunk he found a short length of stiff rubber, which, in
the hands of a skilful man, was as deadly a weapon as a knife. This he
put in the inside pocket of his jacket. He put his hand in the trunk
again and brought out something that looked like a thin rubber
sponge-bag, except that it was fitted with two squares of mica and a
small metal nozzle. He hesitated about this, turning it over and over
in his hand, and eventually this went back into the trunk. The stubby
Browning pistol, which was his next find, Mr. Reeder regarded with
disfavour, for the value of firearms, except in the most desperate
circumstances, had always seemed to him to be problematical.
The last thing to be extracted was a hollow bamboo, which contained
another, and was in truth the fishing-rod for which he had once
expressed a desire. At the end of the thinner was a spring loop, and
after he had screwed the two lengths together he fitted upon this loop
a small electric hand-lamp and carefully threaded the thin wires
through the eyelets of the rod, connecting them up with a tiny switch
at the handle, near where the average fisherman has his grip. He
tested the switch, found it satisfactory, and when this was done he
gave a final look round the room before extinguishing the table lamp.
In the broad light of day he would have presented a somewhat comic
figure, sitting cross-legged on his bed, his long fishing-rod reaching
out to the middle of the room and resting on the footboard; but at the
moment Mr. J. G. Reeder had no sense of the ridiculous, and moreover
there were no witnesses. From time to time he swayed the rod left and
right, like an angler making a fresh cast. He was very wide awake, his
ears tuned to differentiate between the normal noises of the
night--the rustle of trees, the soft purr of the wind--and the sounds
which could only come from human activity.
He sat for more than half an hour, his fishing-rod moving to and fro,
and then he was suddenly conscious of a cold draught blowing from the
door. He had heard no sound, not so much as the clink of a lock; but
he knew that the door was wide open.
Noiselessly he drew in the rod till it was clear of the posts of the
bed, brought it round towards the door, paying out until it was a
couple of yards from where he sat--with one foot on the ground now,
ready to leap or drop, as events dictated.
The end of the rod met with no obstruction. Reeder held his breath…
listening. The corridor outside was heavily carpeted. He expected no
sound of footsteps. But people must breathe, thought Mr. Reeder, and
it is difficult to breathe noiselessly. Conscious that he himself was
a little too silent for a supposedly sleeping man, he emitted a
lifelike snore and gurgle which might be expected from a middle-aged
man in the first stages of slumber.…
Something touched the end of the rod, pushing it aside. Mr. Reeder
turned the switch and a blinding ray of light leapt from the lamp and
focussed in a circle on the opposite wall of the corridor.
The door was open, but there was nothing human in sight.
And then, despite his wonderful nerve, his flesh began to go goosey,
and a cold sensation tingled up his spine. Somebody was there--hiding…
waiting for the man who carried the lamp, as they thought, to emerge.
Reaching out at full arm’s-length, he thrust the end of the rod
through the doorway into the corridor.
_Swish!_
Something struck the rod and snapped it. The lamp fell on the floor,
lens uppermost, and flooded the ceiling of the corridor. In an instant
Reeder was off the bed, moving swiftly, till he came to the cover
afforded by the wide-open door. Through the crack he had a limited
view of what might happen outside.
There was a deadly silence. In the hall downstairs a clock ticked
solemnly, whirred and struck the quarter to three. But there was no
movement; nothing came within the range of the upturned lamp, until…
He had just a momentary flash of vision. The thin, white face, the
hairy lips parted in a grin, wild, dirty white hair, and a bald crown,
a short bristle of white beard, a claw-like hand reaching for the
lamp.…
Pistol or rubber? Mr. Reeder elected for the rubber. As the hand
closed over the lamp he left the cover of the room and struck. He
heard a snarl like that of a wild beast, then the lamp was
extinguished as the apparition staggered back, snapping the thin wire.
The corridor was in darkness. He struck again and missed; the violence
of the stroke was such that he overbalanced and fell on one knee, and
the truncheon flew from his grasp. He threw out his hand, gripped an
arm, and with a quick jerk brought his capture into the room and
switched on the light.
A round, soft hand, covered with a silken sleeve…
As the lights leapt to life, he found himself looking into the pale
face of Olga Crewe!