The Casefiles of Mr J. G. Reeder

by Edgar Wallace

  Mr Simpson was examining some papers that were on the table before him.

  ‘If Flack’s going after bullion he’s got very little chance. The only big movement is that of a hundred and twenty thousand sovereigns which goes to Tilbury tomorrow morning or the next day from the Bank of England, and it is impossible that Flack could organise a steal at such short notice.’

  Mr Reeder was suddenly alert and interested.

  ‘A hundred and twenty thousand sovereigns,’ he murmured, rub­bing his chin irritably. ‘Ten tons. It goes by train?’

  ‘By lorry, with ten armed men – one per ton,’ said Simpson humor­ously, ‘I don’t think you need worry about that.’

  Mr J. G. Reeder’s lips were pursed as though he were whistling, but no sound issued. Presently he spoke.

  ‘Flack was originally a chemist,’ he said slowly. ‘I don’t suppose there is a better criminal chemist in England than Mr Flack.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ asked Simpson with a frown.

  Mr Reeder shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘I have a sixth sense,’ he said, almost apologetically, ‘and invariably I associate some peculiar quality with every man and woman who – um – passes under review. For example, Mr Simpson, when I think of you, I have an instinctive, shadowy thought of a prize ring where I first had the pleasure of seeing you.’ (Simpson, who had been an amateur welter-weight, grinned appreciatively.) ‘And my mind never rests upon Mr Flack except in the surroundings of a laboratory with test tubes and all the paraphernalia of experimental chemistry. As for the little affair last night, I was not unprepared for it, but I suspected a trap – literally a – um – trap. Some evilly-disposed person once tried the same trick with me; cut away the landing so that I should fall upon very unpleasant sharp spikes. I looked for sawdust the moment I went into the house, and when that was not present I guessed the gun.’

  ‘But how did you know there was anything?’ asked Big Bill cur­iously.

  Mr Reeder smiled.

  ‘I have a criminal mind,’ he said.

  He went back to his flat in Bennett Street, his mind equally divided between Margaret Belman, safe in Sussex, and the ability of one normal trolley to carry a hundred and twenty thousand sovereigns. Such little details interested Mr Reeder. Almost the first thing he did when he reached his flat was to call up a haulage contractor to discover whether such trucks were in use. For somehow he knew that if the Flack gang were after this shipment to Australia, it was necessary that the gold should be carried in one vehicle. And why he should think this, not even Mr Reeder knew. But he had, as he said, a criminal mind.

  That afternoon he addressed himself to a novel and not unpleasing task. It was a letter – the first letter he had written to Margaret Belman – and in its way it was a curiosity.

  My dear Miss Margaret [it began], I trust you will not be annoyed that I should write to you: but certain incidents which disfigured perhaps our parting, and which may cause you (I say this, knowing your kind heart) a little unhappiness, induce this letter –

  Mr Reeder paused here to discover a method by which he could convey his regret at not seeing her, without offering an embarrassing revelation of his more secret thoughts. At five o’clock, when his servant brought in his tea, he was still sitting before the unfinished letter. Mr Reeder took up the cup, carried it to his writing-table, and stared at it as though for inspiration.

  And then he saw, on the surface of the steaming cup, a thread-like formation of froth which had a curious metallic quality. He dipped his forefinger delicately in the froth and put his finger to his tongue.

  ‘Hum!’ said Mr Reeder, and rang the bell.

  His man came instantly.

  ‘Is there anything you want, sir?’ He bent his head respectfully, and for a long time Mr Reeder did not answer.

  ‘The milk, of course!’ he said.

  ‘The milk, sir?’ said the puzzled servant. ‘The milk’s fresh, sir: it came this afternoon.’

  ‘You did not take it from the milkman, naturally. It was in a bottle outside the door.’

  The man nodded.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Good!’ said Mr Reeder, almost cheerfully. ‘In future will you arrange to receive the milk from the milkman’s own hands? You have not drunk any yourself, I see?’

  ‘No, sir. I have had my tea, but I don’t take milk with it, sir,’ said the servant, and Mr Reeder favoured him with one of his rare smiles.

  ‘That, Peters,’ he said, ‘is why you are alive and well. Bring the rest of the milk to me, and a new cup of tea. I also will dispense with the lacteal fluid.’

  ‘Don’t you like milk, sir?’ said the bewildered man.

  ‘I like milk,’ replied Mr Reeder gently, ‘but I prefer it without strychnine. I think, Peters, we’re going to have a very interesting week. Have you any dependants?’

  ‘I have an old mother, sir,’ said the mystified man.

  ‘Are you insured?’ asked Mr Reeder, and Peters nodded dumbly.

  ‘You have the advantage of me,’ said J. G. Reeder. ‘Yes, I think we are going to have an interesting week.’ And his prediction was fully justified.

  Chapter 8

  London heard the news of John FIack’s escape and grew fearful or indignant according to its several temperaments. A homicidal plan­ner of great and spectacular thefts was in its midst. It was not very pleasant hearing for law-abiding citizens. And the news was more than a week old: why had Scotland Yard not taken the public into its confidence? Why suppress this news of such vital interest? Who was responsible for the suppression of this important information? Headlines asked these questions in the more sensational sheets. The news of the Bennett Street outrage was public property: to his enormous embarrassment, Mr Reeder found himself a Matter of Public Interest.

  Mr Reeder used to sit alone in his tiny bureau at the Public Prosec­utor’s Office and for hours on end do little more than twiddle his thumbs and gaze disconsolately at the virgin white of his blotting-pad.

  In what private daydreams he indulged, whether they concerned fabulous fortunes and their disposition, or whether they centred about a very pretty pink-and-white young lady, or whether indeed he thought at all and his mind was not a complete blank, those who interrupted his reveries and had the satisfaction of seeing him start guiltily had no means of knowing.

  At this particular moment his mind was, in truth, completely occ­up­ied by his newest as well as his oldest enemy.

  There were three members of the Flack gang originally – John, George, and Augustus – and they began operations in the days when it was considered scientific and a little wonderful to burn out the lock of a safe. Augustus Flack was killed by the night watchman of Carr’s Bank in Lombard Street during an attempt to rob the gold vault. GeorgeFlack, the youngest of the three, was sent to penal servitude for ten years as the result of a robbery in Bond Street, and died there; and only John, the mad master-mind of the family, escaped detection and arrest.

  It was he who brought into the organisation one O. Sweizer, the Yankee bank-smasher; he who recruited Adolphe Victoire; and those brought others to the good work. For this was Crazy Jack’s peculiar asset – that he could attract to himself, almost at a minute’s notice, the best brains of the underworld. Though the rest of the Flacks were either dead or gaoled, the organisation was stronger than ever, and strongest because lurking somewhere in the background was this kinky brain.

  Thus matters stood when Mr J. G. Reeder came into the case – being brought into the matter not so much because the London police had failed, but because the Public Prosecutor recognised that the breaking up of the Flacks was going to be a lengthy business, occupying one man’s complete attention.

  Cutting the tentacles of the organisation was an easy matter, com­paratively.

  Mr Reeder took O. Sweizer,
that stocky Swiss-American, when he and a man unknown were engaged in removing a safe from the Bedford Street post-office one Sunday morning. Sweizer was ready for fight, but Mr Reeder grabbed him just a little too quickly.

  ‘Let up!’ gasped Sweizer in Italian. ‘You’re choking me, Reeder.’

  Mr Reeder turned him on to his face and handcuffed him behind, then he lifted him by the scruff of his neck and went to the assistance of his admirable colleagues who were taking the other two men.

  Victoire was arrested one night at the Charlton, when he was dining with Denver May. He gave no trouble, because the police took him on a purely fictitious charge and one which he knew he could easily disprove.

  ‘My dear Mr Reeder,’ said he in his elegant, languid way, ‘you are making quite an absurd mistake, but I will humour you. I can prove that when the pearls were taken from Hertford Street I was in Nice.’

  This was on the way to the station.

  They searched him and put him in the dock, discovering certain lethal weapons handily disposed about his person, but he was only amused. He was less amused when he was charged with smashing the Bank of Lens, the attempted murder of a night watchman, and one or two other little matters which need not be particularised.

  They got him into the cells, and as he was carried, struggling and raving like a lunatic, Mr Reeder offered him a piece of advice which he rejected with considerable violence.

  ‘Say you were in Nice at the time,’ he said gently.

  Then one day the police pulled in a man in Somers Town, on the very prosaic charge of beating his wife in public. When they searched him they found a torn scrap of a letter, which was sent at once to Mr Reeder. It ran –

  Any night about eleven in Whitehall Avenue. Reeder is a man of medium height, elderly-looking, sandy-greyish hair and side-whiskers rather thick, always carries an umbrella. Recommendation to wear rubber boots and take a length of iron to him. You can easily find out who he is and what he looks like. Take your time . . . fifty on acc . . . der when the job is finished.

  This was the first hint Mr Reeder had that he was especially unpopular with the mysterious John Flack.

  The day Crazy Jack was sent down to Broadmoor had been a day of mild satisfaction for Mr Reeder. He was not exactly happy or even relieved about it. He had the comfort of an accountant who had signed a satisfactory balance-sheet, or the builder who was surveying his finished work. There were other balance-sheets to be signed, other buildings to be erected – they differed only in their shapes and quantities.

  One thing was certain, that on what other project Flack’s mind was fixed, he was devoting a considerable amount of thought to J. G. Reeder – whether in reprisal for events that had passed or as a precautionary measure to check his activities in the future, the detective could only guess: but he was a good guesser.

  The telephone bell, set in a remote corner of the room, rang sharply. Mr Reeder took up the instrument with a pained expression. The operator of the office exchange told him that there was a call from Horsham. He pulled a writing-pad towards him and waited. And then a voice spoke, and hardly was the first word uttered when he knew his man, for J. G. Reeder never forgot voices.

  ‘That you, Reeder? . . . Know who I am? . . .’

  The same thin, tense voice that had babbled threats from the dock of the Old Bailey, the same little chuckling laugh that punctured every second.

  Mr Reeder touched a bell and began to write rapidly on his pad.

  ‘Know who I am – I’ll bet you do! Thought you’d got rid of me, didn’t you, but you haven’t! . . . Listen, Reeder, you can tell the Yard I’m busy – I’m going to give them the shock of their lives. Mad, am I? I’ll show you whether I’m mad or not . . . And I’ll get you, Reeder . . .’

  A messenger came in. Mr Reeder tore off the slip and handed it to him with an urgent gesture. The man read and bolted from the room.

  ‘Is that Mr Flack?’ asked Reeder softly.

  ‘Is it Mr Flack, you old hypocrite! . . . Have you got the parcel? I wondered if you had. What do you think of it?’

  ‘The parcel?’ said Reeder, gentlier than ever, and before the man could reply: ‘You will get into serious trouble for trying to hoax the Public Prosecutor’s Office, my friend,’ said Mr Reeder reproach­fully. ‘You are not Crazy John Flack . . . I know his voice. Mr Flack spoke with a curious Cockney accent which is not easy to imitate, and Mr Flack at this moment is in the hands of the police.’

  He counted on the effect of this provocative speech, and he had made no mistake.

  ‘You lie!’ screamed the voice. ‘You know I’m Flack . . . Crazy Jack, eh? . . . Crazy old John Flack . . . Mad, am I? You’ll learn! . . . you put me in that hell upon earth, and I’m going to serve you worse than I treated that damned dago . . .’

  The voice ceased abruptly. There was a click as the receiver was put down. Reeder listened expectantly, but no other call came through. Then he rang the bell again and the messenger returned.

  ‘Yes, sir, I got through straight away to the Horsham police station. The inspector is sending three men in a car to the post-office.’

  Mr Reeder gazed at the ceiling. ‘Then I fear he has sent too late,’ he said. ‘The venerable bandit will have gone.’

  A quarter of an hour later came confirmation of his prediction. The police had arrived at the post office, but the bird had flown. The clerk did not remember anybody old or wild-looking booking a call; he thought that the message had not come from the post office itself, which was also the telephone exchange, but from an outlying call-box.

  Mr Reeder went in to report to the Public Prosecutor, but neither he nor his assistant was in the office. He rang up Scotland Yard and passed on his information to Simpson.

  ‘I respectfully suggest that you should get into touch with the French police and locate Ravini. He may not be in Paris at all.’

  ‘Where do you think he is?’ asked Simpson.

  ‘That,’ replied Mr Reeder in a hushed voice, ‘is a question which has never been definitely settled in my mind. I should not like to say that he was in heaven, because I cannot imagine Georgio Ravini with his Luck Stones –’

  ‘Do you mean that he’s dead?’ asked Simpson quickly.

  ‘It is very likely; in fact, it is extremely likely.’

  There was a long silence at the other end of the telephone.

  ‘Have you had the parcel?’

  ‘That I am awaiting with the greatest interest,’ said Mr Reeder, and went back to his office to twiddle his thumbs and stare at his white blotting-pad.

  The parcel came at three o’clock that afternoon, when Mr Reeder had returned from his frugal lunch, which he invariably took at a large and popular teashop in Whitehall. It was a very small parcel, about three inches square; it was registered, and had been posted in London. He weighed it carefully, shook it and listened, but the lightness of the package precluded any possibility of there being concealed behind the paper wrapping anything that bore a resem­blance to an infernal machine. He cut the paper tape that fastened it, took off the paper, and there was revealed a small cardboard box such as jewellers employ. Removing the lid, he found a small pad of cotton-wool, and in the midst of this three gold rings, each with three brilliant diamonds. He put them on his blotting-pad, and gazed at them for a long time.

  They were George Ravini’s Luck Stones, and for ten minutes Mr Reeder sat in a profound reverie, for he knew that George Ravini was dead, and it did not need the card which accompanied the rings to know who was responsible for the drastic and gruesome ending to Mr Ravini’s life. The sprawling ‘J. F.’ on the little card was in Mr Flack’s writing, and the three words ‘Your turn next’ were instructive, even if they were not, as they were intended to be, terrifying.

  Half an hour later Mr Reeder met Inspector Simpson by appointment at Scotland Yard. Simp
son examined the rings curiously, and pointed out a small, dark-brown speck at the edge of one of the Luck Stones.

  ‘I don’t doubt that Ravini is dead,’ he said. ‘The first thing to discover is where he went when he said he was going to Paris.’

  This task presented fewer difficulties than Simpson had imagined. He remembered Lew Steyne and his association with the Italian, and a telephone call put through to the City police located Lew in five minutes.

  ‘Bring him along in a taxi,’ said Simpson, and, as he hung up the receiver: ‘The question is, what is Crazy Jack’s coup? Murder on a large scale, or just picturesque robbery?’

  ‘I think the latter,’ said Mr Reeder thoughtfully. ‘Murder, with Mr Flack, is a mere incidental to the – er – more important business of money-making.’

  He pinched his lip thoughtfully.

  ‘Forgive me if I seem to repeat myself, but I would again remind you that Mr Flack’s speciality is bullion, if I remember aright,’ he said. ‘Didn’t he smash the strong room of the Megantic . . . bullion, hum!’ He scratched his chin and looked up over his glasses at Simpson.

  The inspector shook his head.

  ‘I only wish Crazy Jack was crazy enough to try to get out of the country by steamer – he won’t. And the Leadenhall Bank stunt couldn’t be repeated today. No, there’s no chance of a bullion steal.’

  Mr Reeder looked unconvinced.

  ‘Would you ring up the Bank of England and find out if the money has gone to Australia?’ he pleaded.

  Simpson pulled the instrument towards him, gave a number and, after five minutes’ groping through various departments, reached an exclusive personage. Mr Reeder sat, with his hands clasped about the handle of his umbrella, a pained expression on his face, his eyes closed, and seemingly oblivious of the conversation. Presently Simpson hung up the receiver.

  ‘The consignment should have gone this morning, but the sailing of the Olanic has been delayed by a stevedore strike – it goes to­morrow morning,’ he reported. ‘The gold is taken on a lorry to Tilbury with a guard. At Tilbury it is put into the Olanic’s strong-room, which is the newest and safest of its kind. I don’t suppose that John will begin operations there.’