The Casefiles of Mr J. G. Reeder

by Edgar Wallace

  ‘You lost the rubber, but I think you win on points,’ he said. ‘What do I owe you, Mr Reeder?’

  ‘What you can never pay me,’ said Mr Reeder, shaking his head. ‘Believe me, Gregory, your score and mine will never be wholly settled to your satisfaction!’

  With a shrug of his shoulders and a smile, the hard-faced clergy­man strolled away. Mr Reeder watched him out of the corner of his eye and saw him disappear towards the vestibule.

  ‘Are all your knaves masculine?’ asked Olga Crewe.

  Reeder nodded gravely. ‘I hope so, Miss Crewe.’ Her challenging eyes met his.

  ‘In other words, you don’t know me?’ she said bluntly. And then, with sudden vehemence; ‘I wish to God you did! I wish you did!’ Turning abruptly, she almost ran from the hall. Mr Reeder stood where she had left him, his eyes roving left and right. In the shadowy entrance of the hall, made all the more obscure by the heavy dark curtains which covered it, he saw a dim figure standing. Only for a second, and then it disappeared. The woman Burton, he thought.

  It was time to go to his room. He had taken only two steps from the table when all the lights in the hall went out. In such moments as these Mr Reeder was a very nimble man. He spun round and made for the nearest wall, and stood waiting, his back to the panelling. And then he heard the plaintive voice of Mr Daver.

  ‘Who on earth has put the lights out? Where are you, Mr Reeder?’

  ‘Here!’ said Mr Reeder, in a loud voice, and dropped instantly to the ground. Only just in time: he heard a whistle, a thud, and some­thing struck the panel above his head.

  Mr Reeder emitted a deep groan and crawled rapidly and noise­lessly across the floor. Again came Daver’s voice: ‘What on earth was that? Has anything happened, Mr Reeder?’

  The detective made no reply. Nearer and nearer he was crawling towards where Daver stood. And then, as unexpectedly as they had been extinguished, the lights went up. Daver was standing in front of the curtained doorway, and on the proprietor’s face was a look of blank dismay as Mr Reeder rose at his feet.

  Daver shrank back, his big white teeth set in a fearful grin, his round eyes wide open. He tried to speak, and his mouth opened and closed, but no sound issued. From Reeder his eyes strayed to the panelled wall – but Reeder had already seen the knife buried in the wood.

  ‘Let me think,’ he said gently. ‘Was that the Colonel or the highly intelligent representative of the church?’

  He went across to the wall and with an effort pulled out the knife. It was long and broad.

  ‘A murderous weapon,’ said Mr Reeder.

  Daver found his voice. ‘A murderous weapon,’ he echoed hollowly. ‘Was it – thrown at you, Mr Reeder? . . . how very terrible!’

  Mr Reeder was gazing at him sombrely.

  ‘Your idea?’ he asked, but by now Mr Daver was incapable of replying.

  Reeder left the shaken proprietor lying limply in one of the big armchairs, and walked up the carpeted stairs to the corridor. And if against his black coat the automatic was not visible, it was never­theless there.

  He stopped before his door, unlocked it, and threw it wide open. The lamp by the side of the bed was still burning. Mr Reeder switched on the wall light, peeped through the crack between the door and the wall before he ventured inside.

  He shut the door, locked it, and walked over to the cupboard.

  ‘You may come out, Brill,’ he said. ‘I presume nobody has been here?’

  There was no answer, and he pulled open the cupboard door quickly.

  It was empty!

  ‘Well, well,’ said Mr Reeder, and that meant that matters were everything but well.

  There was no sign of a struggle; nothing in the world to suggest that Detective Brill had not walked out of his own free will and made his exit by the window, which was still open.

  Mr Reeder tiptoed back to the light-switch and turned it; stretched across the bed and extinguished the lamp; and then he sidled caut­iously to the window and peeped round the stone framing. It was a very dark night, and he could distinguish no object below.

  Events were moving only a little faster than he had anticipated; for this, however, he was responsible. He had forced the hands of the Flack confederation, and they were extremely able hands.

  He was unlocking the trunk when he heard a faint sound of steel against steel. Somebody was fitting a key into the lock, and he waited, his automatic covering the door. Nothing further happened, and he went forward to investigate. His flash-lamp showed him what had happened. Somebody outside had inserted a key, turned it and left it in the lock, so that it was impossible for the door to be unlocked from the inside.

  ‘I am rather glad,’ said Mr Reeder, speaking his thoughts aloud, ‘that Miss – um – Margaret is on her way to London!’

  He pursued his lips reflectively. Would he be glad if he also was at this moment en route for London? Mr Reeder was not very certain about this.

  On one point he was satisfied – the Flacks were going to give him a very small margin of time, and that margin must be used to the best advantage.

  So far as he could tell, the trunks had not been opened. He pulled out the rope-ladder, groped down to the bottom, and presently withdrew his hand, holding a long white cardboard cylinder. Crawl­ing under the window, he put up his hand and fixed an end of the cylinder in one of the china flower-pots that stood on the broad window-sill and which he had moved to allow the ingress of Brill. When this had been done to his satisfaction, he struck a match and, reaching up, set fire to a little touch-paper at the cylinder’s free end. He brought his hand down just in time; something whizzed into the room and struck the panelling of the opposite wall with an angry smack. There was no sound of explosion. Whoever fired was using an air pistol. Again and again in rapid succession came the pellets, but by now the cylinder was burning and spluttering, and in another instant the grounds were brilliantly illuminated as the flare burst into a dazzling red flame that, he knew, could be seen for miles.

  He heard a scampering of feet below, but dared not look out. By the time the first tender-load of detectives had come flying up the drive, the grounds were deserted.

  With the exception of the servants, there were only two people at Larmes Keep when the police began their search. Mr Daver and the faded Mrs Burton alone remained. ‘Colonel Hothling’ and ‘the Rev. Mr Dean’ had disappeared as though they had been whisked from the face of the earth.

  Big Bill Gordon interviewed the proprietor. ‘This is Flack’s head­quarters, and you know it. You’ll be well advised to spill everything and save your own skin.’

  ‘But I don’t know the man; I’ve never seen him!’ wailed Mr Daver. ‘This is the most terrible thing that has happened to me in my life! Can you make me responsible for the character of my guests? You’re a reasonable man? I see you are! If these people are friends of Flack, I have never heard of them in that connection. You may search my house from cellar to garret, and if you find anything that in the least incriminates me, take me off to prison. I ask that as a favour. Is that the statement of an honest man? I see you are convinced!’

  Neither he nor Mrs Burton nor any of the servants who were questioned in the early hours of the morning could afford the slight­est clue to the identity of the visitors. Miss Crewe had been in the habit of coming every year and of staying four and sometimes five months. Hothling was a newcomer, as also was the parson. Enquiries made by telephone of the chief of the Siltbury police confirmed Mr Daver’s statement that he had been the proprietor of Larmes Keep for twenty-five years, and that his past was blameless. He himself produced his title-deeds. A search of his papers, made at his invitation, and of the three tin boxes in the safe, produced nothing but support for his protestations of innocence.

  Big Bill interviewed Mr Reeder in the hall over a cap of coffee at three o’clock in th
e morning.

  ‘There’s no doubt at all that these people were members of the Flack crowd, probably engaged in advance against his escape, and how they got away the Lord knows! I have had six men on duty on the road since dark, and neither the woman nor the two men passed me.’

  ‘Did you see Brill?’ asked Mr Reeder, suddenly remembering the absent detective.

  ‘Brill?’ said the other in astonishment. ‘He’s with you, isn’t he? You told me to have him under your window –’

  In a few words Mr Reeder explained the situation, and together they went up to No. 7. There was nothing in the cupboard to afford the slightest clue to Brill’s whereabouts. The panels were sounded, but there was no evidence of secret doors – a romantic possibility which Mr Reeder had not excluded, for this was the type of house where he might expect to find them.

  Two men were seat to search the grounds for the missing detec­tive, and Reeder and the police chief went back to finish their coffee.

  ‘Your theory has turned out accurate so far, but there is nothing to connect Daver.’

  ‘Daver’s in it,’ said Mr Reeder. ‘He was not the knife-thrower: his job was to locate me on behalf of the Colonel. But Daver brought Miss Belman down here in preparation for Flack’s escape.’

  Big Bill nodded.

  ‘She was to be hostage for your good behaviour.’ He scratched his head irritably. ‘That’s like one of Crazy Jack’s schemes. But why did he try to shoot you up? Why wasn’t he satisfied with her being at Larmes Keep?’

  Mr Reeder had no immediate explanation. He was dealing with a madman, a thing of whims. Consistency was not to be expected from Mr Flack.

  He passed his fingers through his scanty hair.

  ‘It is all rather puzzling and inexplicable,’ he said. ‘I think I’ll go to bed.’

  He was sleeping dreamlessly, under the watchful eye of a Scotland Yard detective, when Big Bill came bursting into the room.

  ‘Get up, Reeder!’ he said roughly.

  Mr Reeder sat up in bed, instantly awake.

  ‘What is wrong?’ he asked.

  ‘Wrong! That gold-lorry left the Bank of England this morning at five o’clock on its way to Tilbury and hasn’t been seen since!’

  Chapter 13

  At the last moment the bank authorities had changed their mind, and overnight had sent £53,000 worth of gold for conveyance to the ship. They had borrowed for the purpose an army lorry from Woolwich, a service which is sometimes claimed by the national banking institution.

  The lorry had been accompanied by eight detectives, the military driver being also armed. Tilbury was reached at half-past eleven o’clock at night, and the lorry, a high-powered Lassavar, had returned to London at two o’clock in the morning and had been loaded in the bank courtyard under the eyes of the officer, sergeant, and two men of the guard which is on duty on the bank premises from sunset to sunrise. A new detachment of picked men from Scotland Yard, each carrying an automatic pistol, loaded the lorry for its second journey, the amount of gold this time being £73,000 worth. After the boxes had been put into the van, they had climbed up and the lorry had driven away from the bank. Each of the eight men guarding this treasure was passed under review by a high officer of Scotland Yard who knew everyone personally. The lorry was seen in Commercial Road by a detective-inspector of the division, and its progress was also noted by a police-cyclist patrol who was on duty at the junction of the Ripple and Barking roads.

  The main Tilbury road runs within a few hundred yards of the village of Rainham, and it was at this point, only a few miles distant from Tilbury, that the lorry disappeared. Two motor-cyclist police­men who had gone out to meet the gold-convoy, and who had received a telephone message from the Ripple road to say that it had passed, grew uneasy and telephoned to Tilbury.

  It was an airless morning, with occasional banks of mist rising in the hollows, and part of the road, especially near the river, was patchily covered with white fog, which dispersed about eight o’clock in the morning under a south-easterly wind. The mist had almost disappeared when the search party from Tilbury pursued their in­vest­ig­ations and came upon the one evidence of tragedy which the morning was to reveal. This was an old Ford motor car that had evidently run from the road, miraculously missed a tele­graph pole, and ditched itself. The machine had not over­turned; there were no visible marks of injury; yet the man who sat at the wheel was stone dead when he was found. An immediate medical examination failed to discover an injury of any kind to the man, who was a small farmer of Rainham, and on the face of it, it looked as though he had died of a heart attack whilst on his way to town.

  Just beyond the place where he was found the road dips steeply between high banks. It is known as Coles Hollow, and at its deepest part the cutting is crossed by a single-track bridge which connects two portions of the farm through which the road runs. The dead farmer and his machine had been removed when Reeder and the chief of Scotland Yard arrived on the spot. No news of any kind had been received of the lorry; but the local police, who had been following its tracks, had made two discoveries. Apparently, going through the cutting, the front wheels of the trolley had collided with the side, for there was a deep scoop in the clayey soil which the impact had hollowed out.

  ‘It almost appears,’ said Simpson, who had been put in charge of the case, ‘that the trolley swerved here to avoid the farmer’s car. There are his wheel tracks, and you notice they were wobbling from side to side. Probably the man was already dying.’

  ‘Have you traced the trolley tracks from here?’ asked Reeder.

  Simpson nodded, and called a sergeant of the Essex Constabulary, who had charted the tracks.

  ‘They seem to have turned up north towards Becontree,’ he said. ‘As a matter of fact, a policeman at Becontree said he saw a large trolley come out of the mist and pass him, but that had a tilt on it and was going towards London. It was an army trolley, too, and was driven by a soldier.’

  Mr Reeder had lit a cigarette and was holding the flaming match in his hand, staring at it solemnly.

  ‘Dear me!’ he said, and dropped the match and watched it ex­tinguish.

  And then he began what seemed to be a foolish search of the ground, striking match after match.

  ‘Isn’t there light enough for you, Mr Reeder?’ asked Simpson irritably.

  The detective straightened his back and smiled. Only for a second was he amused, and then his long face went longer than ever.

  ‘Poor fellow!’ he said softly. ‘Poor fellow!’

  ‘Who are you talking about?’ demanded Simpson, but Mr Reeder did not reply. Instead, he pointed up to the bridge, in the centre of which was an old and rusted water-wagon, the type which certain English municipalities still use. He climbed up to the bank and examined the iron tank, opened the hatches and groped inside, lighting matches to aid his examination. ‘Is it empty?’ asked Simpson.

  ‘I am afraid it is,’ said Mr Reeder, and inspected the worn hose leading from its iron spindles. He descended the cutting, more melan­choly than ever.

  ‘Have you ever thought how easy it is to disguise an ordinary army lorry?’ he asked. ‘A tilt, I think the sergeant said, and on its way to London.’

  ‘Do you think that was the gold-van?’

  Mr Reeder nodded.

  ‘I’m certain,’ he said.

  ‘Where was it attacked?’

  Mr Reeder pointed to the mark of the wheels on the side of the road.

  ‘There,’ he said simply, and Simpson growled impatiently.

  ‘Stuff! Nobody heard a shot fired, and you don’t think our people would go down without a fight, do you? They could have held their own against five times their number, and no crowd has been seen on this road!’

  Mr Reeder nodded.

  ‘Nevertheless, this is where the convoy wa
s attacked and over­come,’ he said. ‘I think you ought to look for the trolley with the tilt, and get on to your Becontree man and get a closer description of the machine he saw.’

  In a quarter of an hour the police car brought them to the little Essex village, and the policeman who had seen the wagon was inter­viewed. It was a few minutes before he went off duty, he said. There was a thick mist at the time, and he heard the rumble of the lorry wheels before it came into sight. He described it as a typical army wagon. So far as he could tell, it was grey, and had a black tilt with ‘W. D.’ and a broad-arrow painted on the side, ‘W. D.’ standing for War Department, the broad-arrow being the sign of Government. He saw one soldier driving and another sitting by his side. The back of the tilt was laced up and he could not see into the interior. The soldier as he passed had waved his hand in greeting, and the police­man had thought no more about the matter until the robbery of the gold-convoy was reported.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he said, in answer to Reeder’s enquiry, ‘I think it was loaded. It went very heavily on the road. We often get these trolleys coming up from Shoeburyness.’

  Simpson had put through a telephone enquiry to the Barking police, who had seen the military wagon. But army convoys were no unusual sight in the region of the docks. Either that or one similar was seen entering the Blackwall Tunnel, but the Greenwich police, on the south side of the river, had failed to identify it, and from there on all trace of the lorry was lost.

  ‘We’re probably chasing a shadow anyway,’ said Simpson. ‘If your theory is right, Reeder – it can’t be right! They couldn’t have caught these men of ours so unprepared that somebody didn’t shoot, and there’s no sign of shooting.’

  ‘There was no shooting,’ said Mr Reeder, shaking his head.

  ‘Then where are the men?’ asked Simpson.

  ‘Dead,’ said Mr Reeder quietly.

  It was at Scotland Yard, in the presence of an incredulous and horri-fied Commissioner, that Mr J. G. Reeder reconstructed the crime.