/Mr. Reeder/ was not an emotional man. For the first time in his life
Inspector Simpson learnt that behind the calm and imperturbable
demeanour of the Public Prosecutor’s chief detective lay an immense
capacity for violent language. He fired a question at the officer, and
Simpson nodded.
“Yes, the car returned. The driver said that he had orders to go back
to London. I thought you had changed your plans. You’re staying with
this bullion robbery, Reeder?”
Mr. Reeder glared across the desk, and despite his hardihood Inspector
Simpson winced.
“Staying with hell!” hissed Reeder.
Simpson was seeing the real and unsuspected J. G. Reeder and was
staggered.
“I’m going back to interview that monkey-faced criminologist, and I’m
going to introduce him to forms of persuasion which have been
forgotten since the Inquisition!”
Before Simpson could reply, Mr. Reeder was out of the door and flying
down the stairs.
* * * * *
It was the hour after lunch, and Daver was sitting at his desk,
twiddling his thumbs, when the door was pushed open unceremoniously
and Mr. Reeder came in. He did not recognise the detective, for a man
who in a moment of savage humour slices off his side-whiskers brings
about an amazing change in his appearance. And with the vanishing of
those ornaments there had been a remarkable transformation in Mr.
Reeder’s demeanour. Gone were his useless pince-nez which had
fascinated a generation of law-breakers; gone the gentle, apologetic
voice, the shyly diffident manner.
“I want you, Daver!”
“Mr. Reeder!” gasped the yellow-faced man, and turned a shade paler.
Reeder slammed the door to behind him, pulled up a chair with a crash,
and sat down opposite the hotel-proprietor.
“Where is Miss Belman?”
“Miss Belman?”
Astonishment was expressed in every feature. “Good gracious, Mr.
Reeder, surely you know? She went up to get your dactyscope--is that
the word? I intended asking you to be good enough to let me see
this----”
“Where--is--Miss--Belman?--Spill it, Daver, and save yourself a lot of
unhappiness.”
“I swear to you, my dear Mr. Reeder----”
Reeder leaned across the table and rang the bell.
“Do--do you want anything?” stammered the manager.
“I want to speak to Mrs. Flack--you call her Mrs. Burton, but Mrs.
Flack is good enough for me.”
Daver’s face was ghastly now. He had become suddenly wizened and old.
“I’m one of the few people who happen to know that John Flack is
married,” said Reeder; “one of the few who know he has a daughter! The
question is, does John Flack know all that I know?”
He glowered down at the shrinking man.
“Does he know that after he was sent to Broadmoor his sneaking worm of
a secretary, his toady and parasite and slave, decided to carry on in
the Flack tradition, and used his influence and his knowledge to
compel the unfortunate daughter of mad John Flack to marry him?”
A frenzied, almost incoherent voice wailed:
“For God’s sake… don’t talk so loud…!”
But Mr. Reeder went on.
“Before Flack went to prison he put into the care of his daughter his
famous encyclopaedia of crime. She was the only person he trusted: his
wife was a weak slave whom he had always despised. Mr. Daver, the
secretary, got possession of those books a year after Flack was put in
gaol. He organised his own little gang at Flack’s old headquarters,
which were nominally bought by you. Ever since you knew John Flack was
planning an escape--an escape in which you had to assist him--you’ve
been living in terror that he would discover how you had
double-crossed him. Tell me I’m a liar and I’ll beat your miserable
little head off! Where is Margaret Belman?”
“I don’t know,” said the man sullenly. “Flack had a car waiting for
her: that’s all I know.”
Something in his tone, something in the shifty slant of his eyes,
infuriated Reeder. He stretched out a long arm, gripped the man by the
collar and jerked him savagely across the desk. As a feat of physical
strength it was remarkable; as a piece of propaganda of the
frightfulness that was to follow, it had a strange effect upon Daver.
He lay limp for a second, and then, with a quick jerk of his collar,
he wrenched himself from Reeder’s grip and fled from the room,
slamming the door behind him. By the time Reeder had kicked an
overturned chair from his path and opened the door, Daver had
disappeared.
When Reeder reached the hall it was empty. He met none of the servants
(he learnt later that the majority had been discharged that morning,
paid a month’s wages and sent to town by the first train). He ran out
of the main entrance on to the lawn, but the man he sought was not in
sight. The other side of the house drew blank. One of the detectives
on duty in the grounds, attracted by Mr. Reeder’s hasty exit, came
running into the vestibule as he reached the bottom of the stairs.
“Nobody came out, sir,” he said, when Reeder explained the object of
his search.
“How many men are there in the grounds?” asked Reeder shortly. “Four?
Bring them into the house. Lock every door, and bring back a crowbar
with you. I am going to do a little investigation that may cost me a
lot of money. No sign of Brill?”
“No, sir,” said the detective, shaking his head sadly. “Poor old
Brill! I’m afraid they’ve done him. The young lady get to town all
right, sir?”
Mr. Reeder scowled at him.
“The young lady--what do you know about her?” he asked sharply.
“I saw her to the car,” said Detective Gray.
Reeder gripped him by the coat and led him along the vestibule.
“Now tell me, and tell me quickly, what sort of car was it?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Reeder,” said the man in surprise. “An ordinary
kind of car, except that the windows were shuttered, but I thought
that was your idea.”
“What sort of body was it?”
The man described the machine as accurately as possible; he had only
made a superficial inspection. He thought, however, it was an
all-weather body. The news was no more than Reeder had
expected--neither added to nor diminished his anxiety. When Gray had
gone back to his companions and the door was locked, Mr. Reeder, from
the landing above, called them up to the first floor. A very thorough
search had already been made by the police that morning; but, so far,
Daver’s room had escaped anything but superficial attention. It was
situated at the far end of the corridor, and was locked when the
search-party arrived. It took less than two minutes to force an
entrance. Mr. Daver’s suite consisted of a sitting-room, a bedroom,
and a handsomely-fitted bathroom. There was a number of books in the
former, a small Empire table on which were neatly arranged a pile of
accounts, but there was nothing in the way of documents to reveal his
relationship with the Flack gang.
The bedroom was beautifully furnished. Here again, from Reeder’s point
of view, the search was unsatisfactory.
The suite formed one of the angles of the old Keep, and Reeder was
leaving the room when his eyes, roving back for a last look round,
were arrested by the curious position of a brown leather divan in one
corner of the room. He went back and tried to pull it away from the
wall, but apparently it was a fixture. He kicked at the draped side
and it gave forth a hollow wooden sound.
“What has he got in that divan?” he asked.
After considerable search Gray found a hidden bolt, and, this thrown
back, the top of the divan came up like the lid of a box. It was
empty.
“The rum thing about this house, sir,” said Gray as they went
downstairs together, “is that one always seems on the point of making
an important discovery, and it always turns out to be a dud.”
Reeder did not reply: he was too preoccupied with his growing
distress. After a while he spoke.
“There are many queer things about this house----” he began.
And then there came a sound which froze the marrow of his bones. It
was a shrill shriek; the scream of a human soul in agony.
“Help!… Help, Reeder!”
It came from the direction of the room he had left, and he recognised
Daver’s voice.
“Oh, God…!”
The sound of a door slamming. Reeder took the stairs three at a time,
the detectives following him. Daver’s door he had left ajar, but in
the short time he had been downstairs it had been shut and bolted.
“The crowbar, quick!”
Gray had left it below, and, flying down, returned in a few seconds.
No sound came from the room. Pushing the claw of the crowbar between
architrave and door at the point where he had seen the bolt, Reeder
levered it back and the door flew open with a crash. One step into the
apartment and then he stood stock still, glaring at the bed, unable to
believe his eyes.
On the silken counterpane, sprawled in an indescribable attitude, his
round, sightless eyes staring at the ceiling, was Daver. Mr. Reeder
knew that he was dead before he saw the terrible wound, or the
brown-hilted knife that stuck out from his side.
Reeder listened at the heart--felt the pulse of the warm wrist, but it
was a waste of time, as he knew. He made a quick search of the
clothing. There was an inside pocket in the waistcoat, and here he
found a thick pad of banknotes.
“All thousands,” said Mr. Reeder, “and ninety-five of them. What’s in
that packet?”
It was a little cardboard folder, and contained a steamship ticket
from Southampton to New York, made out in the name of “Sturgeon”; and
in the coat pocket Reeder found a passport which was stamped by the
American Embassy and bore the same name.
“He was ready to jump--but he delayed it too long,” he said. “Poor
devil!”
“How did he get here, sir?” asked Gray. “They couldn’t have carried
him----”
“He was alive enough when we heard him,” said Reeder curtly. “He was
being killed when we heard him shriek. There is a way into this room
we haven’t discovered yet. What’s that?”
It was the sound of a muffled thud, as if a heavy door had been
closed. It seemed to come from somewhere in the room. Reeder took the
crowbar from the detective’s hand and attacked the panel behind the
settee. Beneath was solid wall. He ripped down another strip, with no
more enlightening result. Again he opened the divan. Its bottom was
made of a thin layer of oak. This too was ripped off; beneath this
again was the stone floor.
“Strip it,” said Reeder, and when this was done he stepped inside the
divan and seesawed gingerly from one end to the other.
“There’s nothing here,” he said. “Go downstairs and ’phone Mr.
Simpson. Tell him what has happened.”
When the man had gone he resumed his examination of the body. Daver
had carried, attached to one of the buttons of his trousers, a long
gold chain. This was gone: he found it broken off close to the link,
and the button itself hanging by a thread. It was whilst he was making
his examination that his hand touched a bulky package in the dead
man’s hip pocket. It was a worn leather case, filled with scraps of
memoranda, mostly undecipherable. They were written in a formless
hand, generally with pencil, and the writing was large and irregular,
whilst the paper used for these messages was of every variety. One was
a scrawled chemical formula; another was a brief note which ran:
“House opposite Reeder to let. Engage or get key. Communicate usual
place.”
Some of these notes were understandable, some beyond Mr. Reeder’s
comprehension. But he came at last to a scrap which swept the colour
from his cheeks. It was written in the same hand on the selvedge of a
newspaper, and was crumpled into a ball:
“Belman fell over cliff 6 miles west Larme. Send men to get body
before police discover.”
Mr. J. G. Reeder read and the room spun round.