Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns Page 11

  “That is quite new to me,” he said, with a suggestion of shamefacedness which made the girl want to laugh. “I’ll have a search made of the newspapers and see how often this has appeared,” he said. “Do you know when your brother applied for a loan?”

  She shook her head.

  “I remember the morning he cut it out. That was months ago. And then one night, when he had a friend here, I brought him in some coffee and I heard Mr Hallaty say something about his brotherhood–”

  “Mr Hallaty?” Reeder almost squeaked the words. “Did your brother know Hallaty?”

  She hesitated.

  “Ye-es, he knew him. I told you there was a man who I thought had a bad influence on Johnny.”

  He saw a faint flush come to her face, and realised how pretty a girl she was.

  “I was introduced to him at the dance of the United Banks, but he was rather a difficult man to – to get rid of.”

  Reeder’s eyes twinkled.

  “Did you ever tell him to go away? It’s a very rude but simple process.”

  She smiled.

  “Yes, I did once. He came home one night when my brother wasn’t in, and he was so objectionable that I asked him not to come again. I don’t know how he met my brother, but he often came to the flat, and the curious thing was that after the time I spoke of–”

  “When he was unpleasant to you?”

  She nodded.

  “…He made no attempt to see me, apparently he was no longer interested.”

  “Did you know Hallaty had disappeared after robbing the bank of a quarter of a million?”

  She nodded.

  “It very much upset Johnny; he couldn’t talk about anything else. He was so nervous and worried, and I know he didn’t sleep – I could hear him walking up and down in his room all night. He bought every edition of the papers to find out what had happened to Mr Hallaty.”

  Mr Reeder sat for a long time, pinching his upper lip.

  “Does anybody know you found this book and this cutting?”

  To his surprise she answered in the affirmative.

  “It was the caretaker of the flat. He was helping me to turn out one of the cupboards and he found it,” she said. “In fact he brought it to me. I think it must have fallen out of one of my brother’s pockets. He used to hang some of his clothes there.”

  It was late in the afternoon when Mr Reeder turned into Lincoln’s Inn Fields, found No. 297, and climbed to the fourth floor, where a small board affixed to the wall indicated the office of this most benevolent institution.

  He knocked, and a voice asked who was there. It was a husky, foreign voice. Presently the door was unlocked and opened a few inches.

  Reeder saw a man of sixty, his face blotched and swollen, his white hair spread untidily over his forehead. He was meanly dressed and not too clean.

  “What you want?” he asked, in a thick, guttural voice.

  “I’ve come to inquire about the Brotherhood–”

  “You write, please.”

  He tried to shut the door, but Mr Reeder’s square-toed shoe was inside. He pushed the door open and went in. It was a disorderly little office, grimy and cheerless. Though the day was warm, a small gas fire burnt on the hearth. The dingy windows looked as if they had never been opened.

  “Where do you keep all your vast wealth?” asked Mr Reeder pleasantly.

  The old man blinked at him.

  Reeder had evidence, apart from a bottle on the table, that this gentleman took a kindly interest in raw spirits. There was more than a suggestion that he slept in this foul room, for an old couch had the appearance of considerable use.

  “You write here – we are agents. We are not to see callers.”

  “May I ask whom I have the pleasure of addressing?”

  The old man glowered at him.

  “My name is Jones,” he said. “That is for you sufficient.”

  There were one or two objects in the room which interested Reeder. On the window sill was a small wooden stand containing three test tubes, and nearby half a dozen bottles of various sizes.

  “You do a lot of writing?” said Reeder.

  The little desk was covered with manuscript, and the man’s grimy hands were smothered with ink stains.

  “Yes, I do writing,” said Mr Jones sourly. “We do much correspondence; we never see people who call. We are agents only.”

  “For whom?” asked Reeder.

  “For the Brotherhood. They live in France – in the south of France.”

  He spoke quickly and glibly.

  “They do not desire that their benevolence shall be publicised. All letters are answered secretly. They are very rich men. That is all I can tell you, mister.”

  As he went down the stairs Mr Reeder was whistling softly to himself – and that was a practice in which he did not often indulge – although all his questions and all his cajoling had not produced the address of these Brothers of Benevolence, who lived in the south of France and did good by stealth.

  It was too late for afternoon tea and too early to go home. Mr Reeder called a cab and drove back to Whitehall. He was crossing Trafalgar Square when he saw a car pass his, and had a glimpse of its occupant. Dr Jansen was looking the other way, his attention distracted by an accident which had overtaken a cyclist. Mr Reeder slid back the partition.

  “Follow that car,” he said to the taxi driver, “and keep it in sight. I will see that the police do not stop you.”

  The car went leisurely through the Mall, up Birdcage Walk and, circling the war memorial, turned left into Belgravia. Reeder saw it stop before a pretentious-looking building, and told the cabman to drive on. Through the rear window he saw Dr Jansen alight and, when he was out of sight, stopped the cab, paid him off and walked slowly back.

  He met a policeman, who recognised and saluted him.

  “That building, sir? Oh, that’s the Strangers Club. It used to be the Banbury Club, for hunting people, but it didn’t pay, and then a foreign gentleman opened it as a club of some kind. I don’t know what they are, but they have scientific lectures every week – they’ve got a wonderful hall downstairs, and I believe the cooking’s very good.”

  Now the Strangers Club was a stranger to Mr Reeder, and he was not unnaturally interested. He did not attempt to go in, but passed with a sidelong glance and saw a plate glass door and behind it a man in livery. The Strangers Club formed part of an island site. At the back some enterprising builder had erected a number of high buildings, tall, unlovely, their only claim to beauty being their simplicity. One of these was occupied by a dressmaking establishment. The second building had a more sedate appearance. Mr Reeder noted the chaste inscription on the little silver plate affixed to a plain door, and went on finally to circumnavigate the island, coming back to where he had started.

  Jansen’s car had disappeared. When he came again abreast with the club, the man in the hall was not in sight. He crossed the road and took a long and interested survey of the building, and when this was done, he again went round to the back. There was a pair of big gates in that building, which was indicated by a silver plate. He found a chauffeur cleaning his car, made a few inquiries, and went to his office not entirely satisfied, but with a pleasant feeling that he was on his way to making a great discovery.

  6

  Mr Reeder was a source of irritation to the staff of the Public Prosecutor’s office. He kept irregular hours, he compelled attendants to remain on duty and very often held up the work of the cleaners.

  What troubled him at the moment was the thought that in some way he had taken a wrong turning in the course of investigation, and that it might be straying into no man’s land. For his own encouragement he had dispatched cables to various parts of the world, and sat down in his office to wait for replies.

/>   He had hardly dipped again into his book of fairy tales, when the telephone rang.

  “A very urgent message, Mr Reeder,” said the operator’s precise voice. “You are through to New Scotland Yard.”

  There was a click. It was the Chief Constable speaking.

  “We found Hallaty. Will you come over?”

  In three minutes Mr Reeder was at Scotland Yard, and in the Chief Constable’s office.

  “Alive?” was the first question he asked.

  The Chief Constable shook his head.

  “No, dead.”

  Mr Reeder heaved a long sigh.

  “I was afraid of that. The trouble was that Hallaty was too clever. He wasn’t in pyjamas, of course?”

  The Chief Constable stared at him.

  “That’s curious you should say that. No, he was in a sort of uniform, looking like an elevator attendant.”

  Late that afternoon a man riding a powerful motorcycle had passed at full speed in the direction between Colchester and Clacton. He had stopped to ask the way to Harwich, for apparently he had missed the road. After he had gone on, a light van had followed, taking the same direction as the motorcyclist. A labourer, working in the field, had heard a staccato rattle of shots, and had fallen into the same error as Mr Reeder had done on a previous occasion. He thought it was the sound of the motorcycle. He saw the van stop for a short time, and then move on. He thought no more of the matter until he made his way back to the road on his way home. It was then he saw lying half in the ditch and half on the verge the body of a stout man in a dark blue uniform. He was quite dead, and had been shot through the back. There was no sign of the motorcycle, though the wheel tracks were visible on the road, and had swayed off onto the verge. Thereafter they were lost.

  Detectives, who were on the spot from Colchester within half an hour, searched the road and discovered pieces of broken glass, obviously portions of a smashed lamp. They found also a small satchel, evidently carried by the man; it was empty.

  Hallaty’s head had been completely shaved. The examination of the clothes showed neither the maker’s name nor any clue by which they could be identified, but when the clothes were stripped, it was found that underneath he wore a suit of silk pyjamas, similar in texture to that which was worn by the unfortunate Reigate.

  Mr Reeder made a rapid journey through Essex to the scene of the murder. He inspected the body and came back to London at midnight.

  Again the Big Five sat in conference and Mr Reeder offered his views.

  “Hallaty was too clever. They all suspected that he had a plan for double-crossing them. You will remember that he was a pilot and had a plane at the Axford Airport. When he went to take it out he found that it had been damaged and was unflyable. That was their precaution. Hallaty had to go either their way, or no way. Even in this eleventh hour he hoped to fool them. That empty case was probably full of loot. Harwich? Of course he went to Harwich. He had a trunk packed there and a passport. He had another at Brighton. You know you can get from Brighton to Boulogne on a day trip.”

  “Did you know this?” asked the staggered Chief.

  Mr Reeder looked guilty.

  “I had an idea it might happen,” he said. “The truth is, I have a criminal mind, Chief Constable. I put myself in their places and, having satisfied myself as to their class of mentality, I do just what they would do, and usually I am right. There isn’t a cloakroom at any sea or air port in England that my agents have not very carefully searched, and Mr Hallaty’s cases have been in my care for a fortnight.”

  He was a very tired man, and welcomed the offer of the police squad car, which was to take him home. Tired as he was, however, he took greater precautions that night than he had taken for many years. With a detective he searched his house from basement to garret. He inspected the strip of back garden which was his very own, and even descended to the coal cellar, for he realised that he had made one false move that day – and that was to call at Lincoln’s Inn Fields and interview the dirty little old man who had test tubes in his office.

  He was sleeping heavily at six o’clock the next morning, when the telephone by the side of his bed woke him. He got up and to his surprise he heard and recognised the voice of Jean Reigate. It was weak and tremulous.

  “Can I see you, Mr Reeder?… Soon… Something terrible has happened.”

  Mr Reeder was now wide awake.

  At his request the squad car had been held for him all night. It had remained parked outside his house not, as he explained, because he was afraid of dying, but because it would have been considerably inconvenient for everybody concerned if he did die that night.

  He sat by the weary driver as the car sped through the empty streets and explained his system to a wholly uncomprehending and, if the truth be told, bored police officer.

  “I think my weakness is a sense of the dramatic,” he said. “I like to keep all my secrets to the very last, and then reveal them as though it were with – um – a bang. You may think that weakness is contemptible in a police officer, or one who has the honour to associate in the most amateur fashion with police officers, but there it is. It’s my method, and it pleases me.”

  The driver felt it was necessary for him to offer some comment, and said: “That was a very queer case.” And Mr Reeder, realising that his confidence if not rejected had been at least slighted, relapsed into silence for the remainder of the journey.

  The caretaker had opened the main doors when Reeder arrived and was a little scandalised at this early morning call.

  “I don’t think the young lady is up yet, sir.”

  “I assure you she is not only up, but dressed,” said Mr Reeder.

  As he was being taken up in the lift, he remembered something.

  “Are you the man who found the small book belonging to the late Mr Reigate?”

  “Yes, sir,” said the man. “Rather remarkable finding it. He had some press cutting about some brothers. I didn’t rightly understand it.”

  “Have you told anybody about finding the book?”

  The man considered.

  “Yes, sir, I did. A reporter from a paper came up here and asked me if there was any news. He was a very nice fellow. As a matter of fact, he gave me a pound.”

  Mr Reeder shook his head.

  “My friend, you have no knowledge of papers. If you had, you’d know that a reporter never gives you money for anything. And you told him about the book, I suppose?”

  “As a matter of fact, I did, sir.”

  “And the newspaper cutting?”

  The janitor pleaded guilty to that also.

  Jean Reigate opened the door to him. She was white and shaking, and even now she was trembling from head to foot. The previous night she had arrived home at eleven o’clock. She had been to see some relations of her stepmother and they had kept her too late. She opened the door with her key, went inside the flat and was reaching for the light switch, when somebody came out of the hall cupboard behind her. Before she could scream a hand was placed over her mouth and she was forcibly held. Somebody whispered to her that if she did not scream no harm would come to her, and almost on the point of collapse she allowed the men – there were two apparently – to blindfold her, and, when this was done, she heard the light turned on.

  She was led into her sitting room and sat upon a chair. It was then that she became aware that a third man was in the flat. He was a foreigner and spoke with a harsh accent. Even though he whispered she noticed this, for there was an argument between two of the men.

  Presently she felt somebody hold her by the arm and pull up the sleeve of her blouse, and immediately afterwards she felt a sharp pain in the forearm.

  “This won’t hurt you,” said the voice that had first spoken to her, and then somebody else said:

  “Turn out the light
.”

  The man was still holding her arm and apparently sitting by her side.

  “Keep quiet and don’t get excited,” said the first man. “Nobody is going to hurt you.”

  She remembered very little after that. When she woke up she was lying on her bed, still fully dressed, and she was alone. The curtains and the blinds had been drawn up and she had a dim idea that as she woke she heard the door close softly. It was then about five o’clock. Her head was swimming, but not aching. She had a strange taste in her mouth and when she dragged herself to her feet, her legs gave way, and she had to support herself with a chair.

  “Did you send for the police?”

  “No,” she said. “The first person I thought of was you. What have they done, Mr Reeder?”

  He examined her arm. There were three separate punctures. Then he went in and looked at the bedroom. Two chairs had been drawn up by the side of the bed. The atmosphere was still thick with cigarette and cigar smoke. There were butts of a dozen smoked cigarettes on the hearth. But what interested Mr Reeder most was something the intruders had left behind. It was a fountain pen, and it had been overlooked, probably because the pen was the same colour as the table. He handled it gingerly, using a piece of paper, and carried it to the light. The pen was of a very popular make, but it offered a wonderful surface for fingerprints.

  When he came back to the girl Mr Reeder’s face was very grave.

  “They’ve done you no harm at all. I don’t think they had any intention to hurt you. I was the gentleman they were out for.”

  “But how?” asked the bewildered girl.

  Mr Reeder did not reply immediately. He got on the telephone and called up a doctor he knew.

  “I don’t think you will have any after-effects.”

  “What did they give me?” she asked.

  “Scapolamin. Its main effect was to make you speak the truth. Not,” said Mr Reeder hastily, “that you ever speak anything but the truth, but rather it was to remove certain inhibitions. The questions they asked you were, I imagine, mainly about myself; what did you tell me, how much I knew. And I’m afraid” – he shook his head – “I am very much afraid that you told them much more than is good for me.”