‘Well?’ he asked aggressively.
‘I’m from the Public Prosecutor’s office,’ murmured Mr Reeder. ‘I have had an anonymous letter.’
His pale eyes did not leave the face of the other man.
‘Come in,’ said Sir James gruffly. As he closed the door he glanced quickly first to the girl and then to the poplar avenue. ‘I’m expecting a fool of a lawyer,’ he said, as he flung open the door of what was evidently the library.
His voice was steady; not by a flicker of eyelash had he betrayed the slightest degree of anxiety when Reeder had told his mission.
‘Well – what about this anonymous letter? You don’t take much notice of that kind of trash, do you?’
Mr Reeder deposited his umbrella and flat-crowned hat on a chair before he took a document from his pocket and handed it to the baronet, who frowned as he read. Was it Mr Reeder’s vivid imagination, or did the hard light in the eyes of Sir James soften as he read?
‘This is a cock and bull story of somebody having seen my wife’s jewellery on sale in Paris,’ he said. ‘There is nothing in it. I can account for every one of my poor wife’s trinkets. I brought back the jewel case after that awful night. I don’t recognise the handwriting: who is the lying scoundrel who wrote this?’
Mr Reeder had never before been called a lying scoundrel, but he accepted the experience with admirable meekness.
‘I thought it untrue,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I followed the details of the case very thoroughly. You left here in the afternoon –’
‘At night,’ said the other brusquely. He was not inclined to discuss the matter, but Mr Reeder’s appealing look was irresistible. ‘It is only eighty minutes’ run to Dover. We got to the pier at eleven o’clock, about the same time as the boat train, and we went on board at once. I got my cabin key from the purser and put her ladyship and her baggage inside.’
‘Her ladyship was a good sailor?’
‘Yes, a very good sailor; she was remarkably well that night. I left her in the cabin dozing, and went for a stroll on the deck –’
‘Raining very heavily and a strong sea running,’ nodded Reeder, as though in agreement with something the other man had said.
‘Yes – I’m a pretty good sailor – anyway, that story about my poor wife’s jewels is utter nonsense. You can tell the Director that, with my compliments.’
He opened the door for his visitor, and Mr Reeder was some time replacing the letter and gathering his belongings.
‘You have a beautiful place here. Sir James – a lovely place. An extensive estate?’
‘Three thousand acres.’ This time he did not attempt to disguise his impatience. ‘Good afternoon.’
Mr Reeder went slowly down the drive, his remarkable memory at work.
He missed the bus which he could easily have caught, and pursued an apparently aimless way along the winding road which marched with the boundaries of the baronet’s property. A walk of a quarter of a mile brought him to a lane shooting off at right angles from the main road, and marking, he guessed, the southern boundary. At the corner stood an old stone lodge, on the inside of a forbidding iron gate. The lodge was in a pitiable state of neglect and disrepair. Tiles had been dislodged from the roof, the windows were grimy or broken, and the little garden was overrun with docks and thistles. Beyond the gate was a narrow, weed-covered drive that trailed out of sight into a distant plantation.
Hearing the clang of a letter-box closing, he turned to see a postman mounting his bicycle.
‘What place is this?’ asked Mr Reeder, arresting the postman’s departure.
‘South Lodge – Sir James Tithermite’s property. It’s never used now. Hasn’t been used for years – I don’t know why; it’s a short cut if they happen to be coming this way.’
Mr Reeder walked with him towards the village, and he was a skilful pumper of wells, however dry; and the postman was not dry by any means.
‘Yes, poor lady! She was very frail – one of those sort of invalids that last out many a healthy man.’
Mr Reeder put a question at random and scored most unexpectedly.
‘Yes, her ladyship was a bad sailor. I know because every time she went abroad she used to get a bottle of that stuff people take for sea-sickness. I’ve delivered many a bottle till Raikes the chemist stocked it – “Pickers’ Travellers’ Friend”, that’s what it was called. Mr Raikes was only saying to me the other day that he’d got half a dozen bottles on hand and he didn’t know what to do with them. Nobody in Climbury ever goes to sea.’
Mr Reeder went on to the village and idled his precious time in most unlikely places. At the chemist’s, at the blacksmith’s shop, at the modest building yard. He caught the last bus back to Maidstone, and by great good luck the last train to London.
And, in his vague way, he answered the Director’s query the next day with: ‘Yes, I saw Sir James: a very interesting man.’
This was on the Friday. All day Saturday he was busy. The Sabbath brought him a new interest.
On this bright Sunday morning, Mr Reeder, attired in a flowered dressing-gown, his feet encased in black velvet slippers, stood at the window of his house in Brockley Road and surveyed the deserted thoroughfare. The bell of a local church, which was accounted high, had rung for early Mass, and there was nothing living in sight except a black cat that lay asleep in a patch of sunlight on the top step of the house opposite. The hour was 7.30, and Mr Reeder had been at his desk since six, working by artificial light, the month being March towards the close.
From the half-moon of the window bay he regarded a section of the Lewisham High Road and as much of Tanners Hill as can be seen before it dips past the railway bridge into sheer Deptford.
Returning to his table, he opened a carton of the cheapest cigarettes and, lighting one, puffed in an amateurish fashion. He smoked cigarettes rather like a woman who detests them but feels that it is the correct thing to do.
‘Dear me,’ said Mr Reeder feebly.
He was back at the window, and he had seen a man turn out of Lewisham High Road. He had crossed the road and was coming straight to Daffodil House – which frolicsome name appeared on the door-posts of Mr Reeder’s residence. A tall, straight man, with a sombre brown face, he came to the front gate, passed through and beyond the watcher’s range of vision.
‘Dear me!’ said Mr Reeder, as he heard the tinkle of a bell.
A few minutes later his housekeeper tapped on the door.
‘Will you see Mr Kohl, sir?’ she asked.
Mr J. G. Reeder nodded.
Lew Kohl walked into the room to find a middle-aged man in a flamboyant dressing-gown sitting at his desk, a pair of pince-nez set crookedly on his nose.
‘Good morning. Kohl.’
Lew Kohl looked at the man who had sent him to seven and a half years of hell, and the corner of his thin lips curled.
‘Morning, Mr Reeder.’ His eyes flashed across the almost bare surface of the writing-desk on which Reeder’s hands were lightly clasped. ‘You didn’t expect to see me, I guess?’
‘Not so early,’ said Reeder in his hushed voice, ‘but I should have remembered that early rising is one of the good habits which are inculcated by penal servitude.’
He said this in the manner of one bestowing praise for good conduct.
‘I suppose you’ve got a pretty good idea of why I have come, eh? I’m a bad forgetter, Reeder, and a man in Dartmoor has time to think.’
The older man lifted his sandy eyebrows, the steel-rimmed glasses on his nose slipped further askew.
‘That phrase seems familiar,’ he said, and the eyebrows lowered in a frown. ‘Now let me think – it was in a melodrama, of course, but was it Souls in Harness or The Marriage Vow?’
He appeared genuinely anxious for assistance in solving
this problem.
‘This is going to be a different kind of play,’ said the long-faced Lew through his teeth. ‘I’m going to get you, Reeder – you can go along and tell your boss, the Public Prosecutor. But I’ll get you sweet! There will be no evidence to swing me. And I’ll get that nice little stocking of yours, Reeder!’
The legend of Reeder’s fortune was accepted even by so intelligent a man as Kohl.
‘You’ll get my stocking! Dear me, I shall have to go barefooted,’ said Mr Reeder, with a faint show of humour.
‘You know what I mean – think that over. Some hour and day you’ll go out, and all Scotland Yard won’t catch me for the killing! I’ve thought it out –’
‘One has time to think in Dartmoor,’ murmured Mr J. G. Reeder encouragingly. ‘You’re becoming one of the world’s thinkers, Kohl. Do you know Rodin’s masterpiece – a beautiful statue throbbing with life –’
‘That’s all.’ Lew Kohl rose, the smile still trembling at the corner of his mouth. ‘Maybe you’ll turn this over in your mind, and in a day or two you won’t be feeling so gay.’
Reeder’s face was pathetic in its sadness. His untidy sandy-grey hair seemed to be standing on end; the large ears, that stood out at right angles to his face, gave the illusion of quivering movement.
Lew Kohl’s hand was on the door-knob.
‘Womp!’
It was the sound of a dull weight striking a board; something winged past his cheek, before his eyes a deep hole showed in the wall, and his face was stung by flying grains of plaster. He spun round with a whine of rage.
Mr Reeder had a long-barrelled Browning in his hand, with a barrel-shaped silencer over the muzzle, and he was staring at the weapon open-mouthed.
‘Now how on earth did that happen?’ he asked in wonder.
Lew Kohl stood trembling with rage and fear, his face yellow-white.
‘You – you swine!’ he breathed. ‘You tried to shoot me!’
Mr Reeder stared at him over his glasses.
‘Good gracious – you think that? Still thinking of killing me, Kohl?’
Kohl tried to speak but found no words, and, flinging open the door, he strode down the stairs and through the front entrance. His foot was on the first step when something came hurtling past him and crashed to fragments at his feet. It was a large stone vase that had decorated the window-sill of Mr Reeder’s bedroom. Leaping over the debris of stone and flower mould, he glared up into the surprised face of Mr J. G. Reeder.
‘I’ll get you!’ he spluttered.
‘I hope you’re not hurt?’ asked the man at the window in a tone of concern. ‘These things happen. Some day and some hour –’
As Lew Kohl strode down the street, the detective was still talking.
Mr Stan Bride was at his morning ablutions when his friend and sometime prison associate came into the little room that overlooked Fitzroy Square.
Stan Bride, who bore no resemblance to anything virginal, being a stout and stumpy man with a huge, red face and many chins, stopped in the act of drying himself and gazed over the edge of the towel.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ he asked sharply. ‘You look as if you’d been chased by a busy. What did you go out so early for?’
Lew told him, and the jovial countenance of his room-mate grew longer and longer –
‘You poor fish!’ he hissed. ‘To go after Reeder with that stuff! Don’t you think he was waiting for you? Do you suppose he didn’t know the very moment you left the Moor?’
‘I’ve scared him, anyway,’ said the other, and Mr Bride laughed.
‘Good scout!’ he sneered. ‘Scare that old person!’ (He did not say ‘person’.) ‘If he’s as white as you, he is scared! But he’s not. Of course he shot past you – if he’d wanted to shoot you, you’d have been stiff by now. But he didn’t. Thinker, eh – he’s given you somep’n’ to think about.’
‘Where that gun came from I don’t –’
There was a knock at the door and the two men exchanged glances.
‘Who’s there?’ asked Bride, and a familiar voice answered.
‘It’s that busy from the Yard,’ whispered Bride, and opened the door.
The ‘busy’ was Sergeant Allford, C.I.D., an affable and portly man and a detective of some promise.
‘Morning, boys – not been to church, Stan?’
Stan grinned politely.
‘How’s trade, Lew?’
‘Not so bad.’ The forger was alert, suspicious.
‘Come to see you about a gun – got an idea you’re carrying one, Lew – Colt automatic R.7/94318. That’s not right, Lew – guns don’t belong to this country.’
‘I’ve got no gun,’ said Lew sullenly.
Bride had suddenly become an old man, for he also was a convict on licence, and the discovery might send him back to serve his unfinished sentence.
‘Will you come a little walk to the station, or will you let me go over you?’
‘Go over me,’ said Lew, and put out his arms stiffly whilst the detective rubbed him down.
‘I’ll have a look round,’ said the detective, and his ‘look round’ was very thorough.
‘Must have been mistaken,’ said Sergeant Allford. And then, suddenly: ‘Was that what you chucked into the river as you were walking along the Embankment?’
Lew started. It was the first intimation he had received that he had been ‘tailed’ that morning.
Bride waited till the detective was visible from the window crossing Fitzroy Square; then he turned in a fury on his companion.
‘Clever, ain’t you! That old hound knew you had a gun – knew the number. And if Allford had found it you’d have been “dragged” and me too!’
‘I threw it in the river,’ said Lew sulkily.
‘Brains – not many but some!’ said Bride, breathing heavily. ‘You cut out Reeder – he’s hell and poison, and if you don’t know it you’re deaf! Scared him? You big stiff! He’d cut your throat and write a hymn about it.’
‘I didn’t know they were tailing me,’ growled Kohl; ‘but I’ll get him! And his money too.’
‘Get him from another lodging,’ said Bride curtly. ‘A crook I don’t mind, being one; a murderer I don’t mind, but a talking jackass makes me sick. Get his stuff if you can – I’ll bet it’s all invested in real estate, and you can’t lift houses – but don’t talk about it. I like you, Lew, up to a point; you’re miles before the point and out of sight. I don’t like Reeder – I don’t like snakes, but I keep away from the Zoo.’
So Lew Kohl went into new diggings on the top floor of an Italian’s house in Dean Street, and here he had leisure and inclination to brood upon his grievances and to plan afresh the destruction of his enemy. And new plans were needed, for the schemes which had seemed so watertight in the quietude of a Devonshire cell showed daylight through many crevices.
Lew’s homicidal urge had undergone considerable modification. He had been experimented upon by a very clever psychologist – though he never regarded Mr Reeder in this light, and, indeed, had the vaguest idea as to what the word meant. But there were other ways of hurting Reeder, and his mind fell constantly back to the dream of discovering this peccant detective’s hidden treasure.
It was nearly a week later that Mr Reeder invited himself into the Director’s private sanctum, and that great official listened spellbound while his subordinate offered his outrageous theory about Sir James Tithermite and his dead wife. When Mr Reeder had finished, the Director pushed back his chair from the table.
‘My dear man,’ he said, a little irritably, ‘I can’t possibly give a warrant on the strength of your surmises – not even a search warrant. The story is so fantastic, so incredible, that it would be more at home in the pages of a sensational story than in a Public
Prosecutor’s report.’
‘It was a wild night, and yet Lady Tithermite was not ill,’ suggested the detective gently. ‘That is a fact to remember, sir.’
The Director shook his head.
‘I can’t do it – not on the evidence,’ he said. ‘I should raise a storm that’d swing me into Whitehall. Can’t you do anything – unofficially?’
Mr Reeder shook his head.
‘My presence in the neighbourhood has been remarked,’ he said primly. ‘I think it would be impossible to – er – cover up my traces. And yet I have located the place, and could tell you within a few inches –’
Again the Director shook his head.
‘No, Reeder,’ he said quietly, ‘the whole thing is sheer deduction on your part. Oh, yes, I know you have a criminal mind – I think you have told me that before. And that is a good reason why I should not issue a warrant. You’re simply crediting this unfortunate man with your ingenuity. Nothing doing!’
Mr Reeder sighed and went back to his bureau, not entirely despondent, for there had intruded a new element into his investigations.
Mr Reeder had been to Maidstone several times during the week, and he had not gone alone; though seemingly unconscious of the fact that he had developed a shadow, for he had seen Lew Kohl on several occasions, and had spent an uncomfortable few minutes wondering whether his experiment had failed.
On the second occasion an idea had developed in the detective’s mind, and if he were a laughing man he would have chuckled aloud when he slipped out of Maidstone station one evening and, in the act of hiring a cab, had seen Lew Kohl negotiating for another.
Mr Bride was engaged in the tedious but necessary practice of so cutting a pack of cards that the ace of diamonds remained at the bottom, when his former co-lodger burst in upon him, and there was a light of triumph in Lew’s cold eye which brought Mr Bride’s heart to his boots.
‘I’ve got him!’ said Lew.
The Casefiles of Mr J. G. Reeder Page 23