The Mind of Mr. J. G. Reeder Page 13

  ‘May I sit down?’ said the detective and, without waiting for an invitation, pulled a chair from the wall and sat down gingerly, for he knew the quality of chairs in furnished apartments.

  His self-possession, the hint of authority he carried in his voice, increased Mr Harry Carlin’s uneasiness; and when Mr Reeder plunged straight into the object of his visit, he saw the man go pale.

  ‘It is a difficult subject to open,’ said Mr Reeder, carefully smoothing his knees, ‘and when I find myself in that predicament I usually employ the plainest language.’

  And plain language he employed with a vengeance. Half way through Carlin sat down with a gasp.

  ‘What – what!’ he stammered. ‘Does that old brute dare – ! I thought you came about the bills – I mean–’

  ‘I mean,’ said Mr Reeder carefully, ‘that if you have had a little fun with your relative, I think that jest has gone far enough. Lord Sellington is prepared, when the money is refunded, to regard the whole thing as an over elaborate practical joke on your part–’

  ‘But I haven’t touched his beastly money!’ the young man almost screamed. ‘I don’t want his money–’

  ‘On the contrary, sir,’ said Reeder gently, ‘you want it very badly. You left the Hotel Continental without paying your bill; you owe some six hundred pounds to various gentlemen from whom you borrowed that amount; there is a warrant out for you in France for passing cheques which are usually described by the vulgar as er – “dud”. Indeed’ – again Mr Reeder scratched his chin and looked thoughtfully out of the window – ‘indeed I know no gentleman in Jermyn Street who is so badly in need of money as your good self.’

  Carlin would have stopped him, but the middle-aged man went on remorselessly.

  ‘I have been for an hour in the Record Department of Scotland Yard, where your name is not unknown, Mr Carlin. You left London rather hurriedly to avoid – er – proceedings of an unpleasant character. “Bills”, I think you said? You are known to have been the associate of people with whom the police are a little better acquainted than they are with Mr Carlin. You were also associated with a racecourse fraud of a peculiarly unpleasant character. And amongst your minor delinquencies there is – er – a deserted young wife, at present engaged in a city office as typist, and a small boy for whom you have never provided.’

  Carlin licked his dry lips.

  ‘Is that all?’ he asked, with an attempt at a sneer, though his voice shook and his trembling hands betrayed his agitation.

  Reeder nodded.

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you something. I want to do the right thing by my wife. I admit I haven’t played square with her, but I’ve never had the money to play square. That old devil has always been rolling in it, curse him! I’m the only relation he has, and what has he done? Left everything to these damned children’s homes of his! If somebody has caught him for five thousand I’m glad! I shouldn’t have the nerve to do it myself, but I’m glad if they did – whoever they may be. Left every penny to a lot of squalling, sticky-faced brats, and not a penny to me!’

  Mr Reeder let him rave on without interruption, until at last, almost exhausted by his effort, he dropped down into a deep chair and glared at his visitor.

  ‘Tell him that,’ he said breathlessly; ‘tell him that!’ Mr Reeder made time to call at the little office in Portugal Street wherein was housed the headquarters of Lord Sellington’s various philanthropic enterprises. Mr Arthur Lassard had evidently been in communication with his noble patron, for no sooner did Reeder give his name than he was ushered into the plainly furnished room where the superintendent sat.

  It was not unnatural that Lord Sellington should have as his assistant in the good work so famous an organizer as Mr Arthur Lassard. Mr Lassard’s activities in the philanthropic world were many. A broad-shouldered man with a jolly red face and a bald head, he had survived all the attacks which come the way of men engaged in charitable work, and was not particularly impressed by a recent visit he had had from Harry Carlin.

  ‘I don’t wish to be unkind,’ he said, ‘but our friend called here on such a lame excuse that I can’t help feeling that his real object was to secure a sheet of my stationery. I did, in fact, leave him in the room for a few minutes, and he had the opportunity to take the paper if he desired.’

  ‘What was his excuse?’ asked Mr Reeder, and the other shrugged.

  ‘He wanted money. At first he was civil and asked me to persuade his uncle; then he grew abusive, said that I was conspiring to rob him – I and my “infernal charities”!’

  He chuckled, but grew grave again.

  ‘I don’t understand the situation,’ he said. ‘Evidently Carlin has committed some crime against his lordship, for he is terrified of him!’

  ‘You think Mr Carlin forged your name and secured the money?’

  The superintendent spread out his arms in despair.

  ‘Who else can I suspect?’ he asked.

  Mr Reeder took the forged letter from his pocket and read it again.

  ‘I’ve just been on the phone to his lordship,’ Mr Lassard went on. ‘He is waiting, of course, to hear your report, and if you have failed to make this young man confess his guilt, Lord Sellington intends seeing his nephew tonight and making an appeal to him. I can hardly believe that Mr Carlin could have done this wicked thing, though the circumstances seem very suspicious. Have you seen him, Mr Reeder?’

  ‘I have seen him,’ said Mr Reeder shortly. ‘Oh, yes, I have seen him!’

  Mr Arthur Lassard was scrutinizing his face as though he were trying to read the conclusion which the detective had reached, but Mr Reeder’s face was notoriously expression less.

  He offered a limp hand and went back to the Under Secretary’s house. The interview was short and on the whole disagreeable.

  ‘I never dreamt he would confess to you,’ said Lord Sellington with ill-disguised contempt. ‘Harry needs somebody to frighten him, and, my God! I’m the man to do it! I’m seeing him tonight.’

  A fit of coughing stopped him and he gulped savagely from a little medicine bottle that stood on his desk.

  ‘I’ll see him tonight,’ he gasped, ‘and I’ll tell him what I intend doing! I’ve spared him so far because of his relationship and because he inherits the title. But I’m through. Every cent I have goes to charity. I’m good for twenty years yet, but every penny–’

  He stopped. He was a man who never disguised his emotion, and Mr Reeder, who understood men, saw the struggle that was going on in Sellington’s mind.

  ‘He says he hasn’t had a chance. I may have treated him unfairly – we shall see.’

  He waved the detective from his office as though he were dismissing a strange dog that had intruded upon his privacy, and Mr Reeder went out reluctantly, for he had something to tell his lordship.

  It was peculiar to him that, in his more secretive moments, he sought the privacy of his old-fashioned study in Brockley Road. For two hours he sat at his desk calling a succession of numbers – and curiously enough, the gentlemen to whom he spoke were bookmakers. Most of them he knew. In the days when he was the greatest expert in the world on forged currency notes, he had been brought into contact with a class which is often the innocent medium by which the forger distributes his handicraft – and more often the instrument of his detection.

  It was a Friday, a day on which most of the principals were in their offices till a late hour. At eight o’clock he finished, wrote a note and, phoning for a messenger, sent his letter on its fateful errand.

  He spent the rest of the evening musing on past experiences and in refreshing his memory from the thin scrapbooks which filled two shelves in his study.

  What happened elsewhere that evening can best be told in the plain language of the witness box. Lord Sellington had gone home after his interview with Mr Reeder suffering from a fev
erish cold; and he was disposed, according to the evidence of his secretary, to put off the interview which he had arranged with his nephew but Mr Carlin was not at his flat and could not be contacted. Until nine o’clock his lordship was busy with the affairs of his numerous charities, Mr Lassard being in attendance. Lord Sellington was working in a small study which opened from his bedroom.

  At a quarter past nine Carlin arrived and was shown upstairs by the butler, who subsequently stated that he heard voices raised in anger. Mr Carlin came downstairs and was shown out as the clock struck half past nine, and a few minutes later the bell rang for Lord Sellington’s valet, who went up to assist his master to bed.

  At half past seven the next morning, the valet, who slept in an adjoining apartment, went into his master’s room to take him a cup of tea. He found his employer lying face downwards on the floor; he was dead, and had been dead for some hours. There was no sign of wounds, and at first glance it looked as though this man of sixty had collapsed in the night. But there were circumstances which pointed to some unusual happening. In Lord Sellington’s bedroom was a small steel wall-safe, and the first thing the valet noticed was that this was open, papers were lying on the floor, and in the grate was a heap of paper which, except for one corner, was entirely burnt.

  The valet telephoned immediately for the doctor and Mr Reeder scratched his chin with some sign of embarrassment, for the police, and from that moment the case went out of Mr Reeder’s able hands.

  Later that morning he reported briefly to his superior the result of his inquiries.

  ‘Murder, I am afraid,’ he said sadly. ‘The Home Office pathologist is perfectly certain that it is a case of aconitine poisoning. The paper in the hearth has been photographed, and there is no doubt whatever that the burnt document is the will by which Lord Sellington left all his property to various charitable institutions.’

  He paused here.

  ‘Well?’ asked his chief, ‘what does that mean?’

  Mr Reeder coughed.

  ‘It means that if this will cannot be proved, and I doubt whether it can, his lordship died intestate. The property goes with the title–’

  ‘To Carlin?’ asked the startled Prosecutor.

  Mr Reeder nodded.

  ‘There were other things burnt; four small oblong slips of paper, which had evidently been fastened together by a pin. These are quite indecipherable.’ He sighed again. The Public Prosecutor looked up.

  ‘You haven’t mentioned the letter that arrived by district messenger after Lord Sellington had retired for the night.’

  Mr Reeder rubbed his chin.

  ‘No, I didn’t mention that,’ he said reluctantly.

  ‘Has it been found?’

  Mr Reeder hesitated.

  ‘I don’t know. I rather think that it has not been,’ he said.

  ‘Would it throw any light upon the crime, do you think?’

  Mr Reeder scratched his chin with some sign of embarrassment.

  ‘I should think it might,’ he said. ‘Will you excuse me, sir? Inspector Salter is waiting for me.’ And he was out of the room before the Prosecutor could frame any further inquiry.

  Inspector Salter was striding impatiently up and down the little room when Mr Reeder came back. They left the building together. The car that was waiting for them brought them to Jermyn Street in a few minutes. Outside the flat three plain-clothes men were waiting, evidently for the arrival of their chief, and the inspector passed into the building, followed closely by Mr Reeder. They were half way up the stairs when Reeder asked: ‘Does Carlin know you?’

  ‘He ought to,’ was the grim reply. ‘I did my best to send him to prison before he skipped from England.’

  ‘Humph!’ said Mr Reeder. ‘I’m sorry he knows you.’

  ‘Why?’ The inspector stopped on the stairs to ask the question.

  ‘Because he saw us getting out of the cab. I caught sight of his face, and–’

  He stopped suddenly. The sound of a shot thundered through the house, and in another second the inspector was racing up the stairs two at a time and had burst into the suite which Carlin occupied.

  A glimpse of the prostrate figure told them they were too late. The inspector bent over the dead man.

  ‘That has saved the country the cost of a murder trial,’ he said.

  ‘I think not,’ said Mr Reeder gently, and explained his reasons.

  Half an hour later, as Mr Lassard walked out of his office, a detective tapped him on the shoulder.

  ‘Your name is Elter,’ he said, ‘and I want you for murder.’

  ‘It was a very simple case really, sir,’ explained Mr Reeder to his chief. ‘Elter, of course, was known to me personally, but I remember especially that he could not spell the word “able”, and I recognized this peculiarity in our friend the moment I saw the letter which he wrote to his patron asking for the money. It was Elter himself who drew the five thousand pounds; of that I am convinced. The man is, and always has been, an inveterate gambler, and I did not have to make many inquiries before I discovered that he was owing a large sum of money and that one bookmaker had threatened to bring him before Tattersall’s Committee unless he paid. That would have meant the end of Mr Lassard, the philanthropic custodian of children. Which, by the way, was always Elter’s role. He ran bogus charitable societies – it is extraordinarily easy to find dupes who are willing to subscribe for philanthropic objects. Many years ago, when I was a young man, I was instrumental in getting him seven years. I’d lost sight of him since then until I saw the letter he sent to Lord Sellington. Unfortunately for him, one line ran: “I shall be glad if you are able to let my messenger have the money” – and he spelt “able” in the Elter way. I called on him and made sure. And then I wrote to his lordship, who apparently did not open the letter till late that night.

  ‘Elter had called on him earlier in the evening and had had a long talk with him. I only surmise that Lord Sellington had expressed a doubt as to whether he ought to leave his nephew penniless, scoundrel though he was; and Elter was terrified that his scheme for getting possession of the old man’s money was in danger of failing. Moreover, my appearance in the case had scared him. He decided to kill Lord Sellington that night, took aconitine with him to the house and introduced it into the medicine, a bottle of which always stood on Sellington’s desk. Whether the old man destroyed the will which disinherited his nephew before he discovered he had been poisoned, or whether he did it after, we shall never know. When I had satisfied myself that Lassard was Elter, I sent a letter by special messenger to Stratford Place–’

  ‘That was the letter delivered by special messenger?’

  Mr Reeder nodded.

  ‘It is possible that Sellington was already under the influence of the drug when he burnt the will, and burnt too the four bills which Carlin had forged and which the old man had held over his head as a threat. Carlin may have known his uncle was dead; he certainly recognized the inspector when he stepped out of the cab, and, thinking he was to be arrested for forgery, shot himself.’

  Mr Reeder pursed his lips and his melancholy face grew longer.

  ‘I wish I had never known Mrs Carlin – my acquaintance with her introduces that element of coincidence which is permissible in stories but is so distressing in actual life. It shakes one’s confidence in the logic of things.’

  The Investors

  There are eight million people in Greater London and each one of those eight millions is in theory and practice equal under the law and commonly precious to the community. So that, if one is wilfully wronged, another must be punished; and if one dies of premeditated violence, his slayer must hang by the neck until lie be dead.

  It is rather difficult for the sharpest law-eyes to keep tag of eight million people, at least one million of whom never keep still and are generally unattached to a
ny particular domicile. It is equally difficult to place an odd twenty thousand or so who have domiciles but no human association. These include tramps, aged maiden ladies in affluent circumstances, peripatetic members of the criminal classes and other friendless individuals.

  Sometimes uneasy inquiries come through to headquarters. Mainly they are most timid and deferential. Mr X has not seen his neighbour, Mr Y, for a week. No, he doesn’t know Mr Y. Nobody does. A little old man who had no friends and spent his fine days pottering in a garden overlooked by his more gregarious neighbour. And now Mr Y potters no more. His milk has not been taken in; his blinds are drawn. Comes a sergeant of police and a constable who breaks a window and climbs through, and Mr Y is dead somewhere – dead of starvation or a fit or suicide. Should this be the case, all is plain sailing. But suppose the house empty and Mr Y disappeared. Here the situation becomes difficult and delicate.

  Miss Elver went away to Switzerland. She was a middle-aged spinster who had the appearance of being comfortably circumstanced. She went away, locked up her house and never came back. Switzerland looked for her; the police of Italy searched north Italy from Domodessola to Montecattini. And the search did not yield a thin-faced maiden lady with a slight squint.

  And then Mr Charles Boyson Middlekirk, an eccentric and overpowering old man who quarrelled with his neighbours about their noisy children, he too went away. He told nobody where he was going. He lived alone with his three cats and was not on speaking terms with anybody else. He did not return to his grimy house.

  He too was well off and reputedly a miser. So was Mrs Athbell Marting, a dour widow who lived with her drudge of a niece. This lady was in the habit of disappearing without any preliminary announcement of her intention. The niece was allowed to order from the local tradesmen just sufficient food to keep body and soul together, and when Mrs Marting returned (as she invariably did) the bills were settled with a great deal of grumbling, and that was that. It was believed that Mrs Marting went to Boulogne or to Paris or even to Brussels. But one day she went out and never came back. Six months later her niece advertised for her; she chose the cheapest papers – having an eye to the day of reckoning.