‘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, madame, 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 he heard a faint but sustained creak – the sound of a foot resting on a faulty floorboard. 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.
‘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 plagiarisin
g?’
‘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 focused 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.
Chapter 5
Mr Reeder sat at his ease, wearing a pair of grotesquely painted velvet slippers, a cigarette hanging from his lips, and explained to the detective inspector, who had called in the early hours of the morning, his reason for adopting a certain conclusion.
‘I do not imagine for one moment that it was my friend Ravini. He is less subtle, in addition to which he has little or no intelligence. You will find that this coup has been planned for months, though it has only been put into execution today. No. 307, Bennett Street, is the property of an old gentleman who spends most of his life in Italy. He has been in the habit of letting the house furnished for years: in fact, it was vacated only a month ago.’
‘You think, then,’ said the puzzled Simpson, ‘that the people, whoever they were, rented the house –’
Mr Reeder shook his head.
‘Even that I doubt,’ he said. ‘They have probably an order to view, and in some way got rid of the caretaker. They knew I would be at home last night, because I am always at home – um – on most nights since . . .’ Mr Reeder coughed in his embarrassment. ‘A young friend of mine has recently left London . . . I do not like going out alone.’
And, to Simpson’s horror, a pinkish flush suffused the sober countenance of Mr Reeder.
‘A few weeks ago,’ he went on, with a pitiable attempt at airiness, ‘I used to dine out, attend a concert or one of those exquisite melodramas which have such an appeal for me.’
‘Whom do you suspect?’ interrupted Simpson, who had not been called from his bed in the middle of the night to discuss the virtues of melodrama. ‘The Gregorys or the Donovans?’ He named two groups that had excellent reason to be annoyed with Mr Reeder and his methods. J. G. Reeder shook his head.
‘Neither,’ he said. ‘I think – indeed I am sure – that we must go back to ancient history for the cause.’
Simpson opened his eyes. ‘Not Flack?’ he asked incredulously. ‘He’s hiding – he wouldn’t start anything so soon.’
Mr Reeder nodded.
‘John Flack. Who else could have planned such a thing? The art of it! And, Mr Simpson’ – he leaned over and tapped the inspector on the breast – ‘there has not been a big robbery in London since Flack went to Broadmoor. You’ll get the biggest of all in a week! The coup of coups! His mad brain is planning it now!’
‘He’s finished,’ said Simpson with a frown.
Mr Reeder smiled wanly.
‘We shall see. This little affair of tonight is a sighting shot – a mere nothing. But I am rather glad I am not – er – dining out in these days. On the other hand, our friend Georgio Ravini is a notorious diner-out – would you mind calling up Vine Street police station and finding out whether they have any casualties to report?’
Vine Street, which knew the movements of so many people, replied instantly that Mr Georgio Ravini was out of town; it was believed he was in Paris.
‘Dear me!’ said Mr Reeder in his feeble, aimless way. ‘How very wise of Georgio – and how much wiser it will be if he stays there!’
Inspector Simpson rose and shook himself. He was a stout, hearty man who had that habit.
‘I’ll get down to the Yard and report this,’ he said ‘It may not have been Flack after all. He’s a gang leader and he’d be useless without his crowd, and they are scattered. Most of them are in the Argentine –’
‘Ha, ha!’ said Mr Reeder, without any evidence of joy.
‘What the devil are you laughing about?’
The other was instantly apologetic.
‘It was what I would describe as a sceptical laugh. The Argentine! Do criminals really go to the Argentine except in those excellent works of fiction which one reads on trains? A tradition, Mr Simpson, dating back to the ancient times when there was no extradition treaty between the two countries. Scattered, yes. I look forward to the day when I shall gather them all together under one roof. It will be a very pleasant morning for me, Mr Simpson, when I can walk along the gallery, looking through the little peep-holes, and watch them sewing mail-bags – I know of no more sedative occupation than a little needlework! In the meantime, watch your banks – old John is seventy years of age and has no time to waste. History will be made in the City of London before many days are past! I wonder where I could find Mr Ravini?’
* * *
George Ravini was not the type of man whose happiness depended upon the good opinion which others held of him. Ot
herwise, he might well have spent his life in abject misery. As for Mr Reeder – he discussed that interesting police official over a glass of wine and a good cigar in his Half Moon Street flat. It was a showy, even a flashy, little ménage, for Mr Ravini’s motto was everything of the best and as much of it as possible, and his drawing-room was rather like an over-ornamented French clock – all gilt and enamel where it was not silk and damask. To his subordinate, one Lew Steyne, Mr Ravini revealed his mind.
‘If that old So-and-so knew half he pretends to know, I’d be taking the first train to Bordighera,’ he said. ‘But Reeder’s a bluff. He’s clever up to a point, but you can say that about almost any bogey you ever met.’
‘You could show him a few points,’ said the sycophantic Lew, and Mr Ravini smiled and stroked his trim moustache.
‘I wouldn’t be surprised if the old nut is crazy about that girl. May and December – can you beat it!’
‘What’s she like?’ asked Lew. ‘I never got a proper look at her face.’
Mr Ravini kissed the tips of his fingers ecstatically and threw the caress to the painted ceiling.
‘Anyway, he can’t frighten me. Lew – you know what I am: if I want anything I go after it, and I keep going after it till I get it! I’ve never seen anybody like her. Quite the lady and everything, and what she can see in an old such-and-such like Reeder licks me!’
‘Women are funny,’ mused Lew. ‘You wouldn’t think that a typist would chuck a man like you –’
‘She hasn’t chucked me,’ said Mr Ravini curtly. ‘I’m simply not ac-quainted with her, that’s all. But I’m going to be. Where’s this place?’
‘Siltbury,’ said Lew. He took a piece of paper from his waistcoat pocket, unfolded it and read the pencilled words.
‘Larmes Keep, Siltbury – it’s on the Southern. I trailed her when she left London with her boxes – old Reeder came down to see her off, and looked about as happy as a wet cat.’
‘A boarding-house,’ mused Ravini. ‘That’s a queer sort of job.’
‘She’s secretary,’ reported Lew. (He had conveyed this information at least four times, but Mr Ravini was one of those curious people who like to treat old facts as new sensations.)
The Casefiles of Mr J. G. Reeder Page 38