Red Aces Read online

  “My dear,” broke in the host, “all this arose from a question I asked Mr Reeder: whether he carried weapons. He doesn’t.”

  “I expect poor Thomas was terribly disappointed,” said Mrs Ingham. “When he unpacked your bag he had expected to find it full of pistols and handcuffs.”

  She took them back to the drawing-room, but either she thought it was a painful subject, or she wanted to postpone the discussion till after dinner, for she made no reference to her husband’s experience.

  It was Mr Reeder who brought up that matter. They were passing through the hall on their way to the dining-room – “Which axe was it you used?” he asked.

  The panelled walls were entirely innocent of armour or battle-axes.

  “We have had them moved,” said Mrs Ingham. “It occurred to me afterwards that these dreadful people might have used the battle-axe instead of my husband.”

  They had passed the broad stairs on which the battle between Dr Ingham and his midnight intruders had been fought, and Mr Reeder tried to visualize the scene. But there were occasions when his imagination failed, and this was one.

  The dining-room had been fashioned like an Elizabethan banqueting hall in miniature. There was a big Tudor fireplace, a minstrel gallery, and he noticed with surprise that the floor was of flagstones.

  “That is the original floor of the old castle,” said Mrs Ingham proudly. “The builders unearthed it whilst they prepared the foundation, and my husband insisted that it should remain. Of course we had it levelled, and in some cases the flags had to be replaced. But it was in a marvellous state of preservation. It used to belong to the De Boisy family–”

  Mr Reeder nodded.

  “De Tonsin,” he said gently. “The De Boisys were related by marriage, and only one De Boisy occupied the castle in 1453.”

  She was a little taken aback by his knowledge.

  “Yes, I have made a study of this place,” Mr Reeder went on. “I am something of a student of archaeology.”

  He beamed up and down the room approvingly.

  “Dirty work.”

  Mrs Ingham lifted her eyebrows.

  “I don’t quite get you?”

  “On this floor,” said Mr Reeder almost jovially, “wicked old barons were slicing off their enemies’ heads and were dropping them into the deepest dungeon beneath the – um.” No, he had never heard of a moat. It could not well be that, could it?

  As the footman placed a cup of soup before him, and the tall butler poured him out a glass of wine, Mr Reeder looked at the glass, held it up to the light.

  “That’s good stuff. I can quite imagine,” he said reminiscently, “that dramatic scene when Geoffrey De Boisy induced his old rival to come to dinner. How he must have smiled as his varlets ended – um – the unfortunate gentleman with wine from a poisoned flagon.”

  He finished the scrutiny of the wine and put it down untasted.

  Mrs Ingham was amused.

  “You have a mediaeval mind, Mr Reeder.”

  “A criminal mind,” said that gentleman.

  He did not drink throughout the meal, and Dr Ingham remembered that he had merely sipped his whisky in the study.

  “Yes, I am a teetotaller in a sense,” said Mr Reeder, “but I find life so completely exciting that I require no other stimulant.”

  He had observed that the man who had valeted him was also the footman.

  He waited till the two servants were at the other end of the room, and then: “Your man is looking rather ill. Has he also been injured in the fight?”

  “Thomas? No, he did not appear on the scene until it was all over,” said Dr Ingham, in surprise. “Why?”

  “I thought I saw a bandage round his throat.”

  “I haven’t noticed it,” said the host.

  The conversation flagged. The coffee was served on the table, and Mr Reeder helped himself liberally to sugar. He refused a cigar, and, apologizing for his bad manners, took one of his own cigarettes.

  “Matches, Thomas,” said Dr Ingham, but before the footman could obey, Mr Reeder had taken a box from his pocket and struck a match.

  It was no ordinary match: the light of it blazed blindingly white so that he had to screw up his eyes to avoid the glare. Only for a moment, then it died down, leaving the party blinking.

  “What was that?” asked Ingham.

  Mr Reeder stared hopelessly at the box.

  “Somebody has been playing a joke on me,” he said. “I am terribly sorry.”

  They were very ordinary looking matches. He passed the box across to his host, who struck one, but produced nothing more startling than a mild yellow flame.

  “I have never seen anything so extraordinary,” said the beautiful lady who sat on his left. “It was almost like a magnesium flare. We see them sometimes when ships are in distress.”

  The incident of the match passed. It was the doctor who led the conversation to the Pizarros and Mrs Ingham who elaborated her theory. J G Reeder sat listening, apparently absorbed.

  “I don’t think he was a really bad man,” Mrs Ingham was saying when he interrupted.

  “Pizarro was a blackguard,” said Mr Reeder. “But he had the kind of nature one would have expected in a half-bred Dago.” If he saw Mrs Ingham stiffen, he gave no sign.

  “Kennedy, his confederate,” he went on, “was, as I said this afternoon, a man to be pitied. His mother was a moral leper, a woman of no worth, the merest chattel.”

  Dr Ingham’s face had gone white and tense, his eyes glowed like red coals, but J G Reeder, sitting there with his hands thrust into his trouser pockets, his cigarette hanging limply from his lower lip, continued as though he had the fullest approval of the company.

  “Kennedy was really the brain of the gang, if you can call it a brain, the confidence man with some sort of college education. He married Pizarro’s daughter, who was not a nice young lady. He was, I think, her fourth lover before he married her – if they were married at all…”

  “Take that back, you damned liar!”

  The woman was on her feet, glowering down at him, her shrill voice almost a scream.

  “You liar, you beast!”

  “Shut up!”

  It was Dr Ingham’s voice – harsh, commanding. But the injunction came too late. One of Mr Reeder’s hands had come out from his pocket and it held an automatic of heavy calibre. He came to his feet so quickly that they were unprepared for the manoeuvre.

  Mr Reeder pushed the chair behind, and leant back against the wall. Thomas, the footman, had come in running, but stopped now at the sight of the pistol. Mr Reeder addressed him: “I’m afraid I hurt you Thursday night,” he said, pleasantly. “A pellet from an air pistol can be very painful. I owe you an apology – I intended it to be for your friend.”

  He nodded towards the butler.

  “It was very stupid of you, Dr Ingham, to allow your two men to come to London, and it led to very unpleasant consequences. I saw the dead man today. Rather a powerful looking fellow named Gelpin. The knuckles of his hand were bruised. I presume that, in an unguarded moment you went too near to him without your body-guard.”

  He reached one of the long windows, and with a quick movement of his hand he drew the curtain aside. The window was open. The military-looking man who had accompanied him from London climbed through. Then followed the three who had followed Mr Reeder to the house. Dr Ingham stood paralysed to inaction.

  Suddenly he turned and darted towards the small door in a corner of the room. Mr Reeder’s pistol exploded and the panel of the door split noisily. Ingham stood stock still – a pitiable, panic-stricken thing, and he came staggering back.

  “It wasn’t my idea, Reeder,” he said. “I will tell you everything. I can prove I had nothing to do with it. They are all safe, all of them.
”

  Stooping, almost beneath his feet he turned back the heavy carpet, and Reeder saw a large stone flag in which was inserted a heavy metal ring.

  “They are all alive…every one of them. I shot Gelpin in self-defence. He would have killed me if I hadn’t killed him.”

  “And Litnoff?” asked Mr Reeder, almost good humouredly.

  Dr Ingham was silent.

  Mr Reeder wrote in his case book:

  Dr Ingham’s real name was Casius Kennedy. He was born in England, convicted at the age of seventeen for obtaining money under false pretences. He afterwards became a reformed character and addressed many revival meetings, and he was known as a boy preacher. He was again convicted on a charge of obtaining money by a trick, sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment, and on his discharge emigrated to America, where he fell in with Pizarro and assisted him in most of his swindles.

  He was very useful to Pizarro, gaining, as he did, the confidence of victims by his appeals in various pulpits. He either acquired, or assumed, the title of doctor of divinity.

  After the biggest of the Pizarro swindles he escaped to California and in some way, which is not known, acquired a very considerable fortune, most of which he lost in speculation subsequent to his arrival in England.

  In his statement to me he was emphatic on this one point: that after he had built Grayne Hall on the foundations of the old castle, and he discovered the commodious dungeons which, I can testify, were in a remarkable state of preservation beneath the house, he had no intention of making illicit use of them until his heavy losses compelled him to look around for a method of replenishing his exchequer.

  Five years ago he met a Russian actor named Litnoff, a drunkard who was on the point of being arrested for debt, and who was afraid that he might be deported to his own country, where he was wanted by the Tcheka for a number of political offences.

  Kennedy and his wife, with the approval and assistance of Litnoff, evolved a scheme whereby big money could be made. Litnoff took a small flat in London mansions, which was cheaply furnished, and it was here that the swindle was worked. Very carefully and with all his old cleverness, Kennedy got into touch with the likely victims, and naturally he chose the credulous people who would subscribe money to the Pizarro Syndicate. One by one the “doctor” made their acquaintance. He studied their habits, their methods of life, found out at what hotels they stayed when they were in London, their hobbies and their weaknesses. In some cases it took three months to establish confidence, and when this was done, Kennedy mentioned casually the story of the dying Russian who had escaped from Petrograd with a chest full of jewellery looted from the palaces of the nobility.

  Mr Ralph’s statement may be taken as typical of them all: “I met Dr Ingham, or Kennedy, after some correspondence. He was very charming and obviously well-to-do. He was staying at the best hotel in London, and I dined with him twice – on one occasion with his wife.

  “He told me he was engaged in voluntary mission work, in the course of which he had attended a dying Russian, who put up a most extraordinary proposition, namely: that he should buy a small farm in Switzerland, the property of Litnoff, on which he had buried half a million pounds’ worth of jewellery. The story, though seemingly far-fetched, could be confirmed. His brother was living on the farm. Both men had been chased and watched until life had become unendurable.

  “‘There is something in this story,’ said the clergyman. ‘This fellow, Litnoff, has in his possession a piece of jewellery which must be worth at least a thousand pounds. He keeps it under his pillow.’

  “I was intrigued by the story. It appealed to my romantic fancy, and when the doctor asked me if I would like to see the man, I agreed to meet him one night, promising not to mention to a soul the Russian’s secret.

  “Dr Ingham called for me at midnight. We drove to a place in Bloomsbury and I was admitted to a very poorly furnished flat. In one of the rooms was a very sick-looking man, who spoke with difficulty in broken English. He told me of all the espionage to which he and his brother were subjected. He was in fear of his life, he said. He dared not offer the jewels for fear that the agents of the Russian government traced him. The scheme he had seemed, from my point of view, to be beyond risk to myself. It was that I should go out to Montreux, see his brother, inspect the jewels and buy the farm, the purchase money to include the contents of the chest. If I was not satisfied, or if I thought there was any trick, I needn’t pay my money until I was sure that the deal was genuine.

  “He showed me a diamond clasp, bid me to take it away with me and have it valued.

  “This conversation took a very long time: he spoke with great difficulty, sometimes we had to wait for ten minutes whilst he recovered his breath. I took the clasp with me and had it valued, returning it to Dr Ingham the same night.

  “It was he who suggested that my safest plan was to carry no money at all, but buy a letter of credit. He was most anxious, he said, that I should take no risk.

  “I was much impressed by the seeming genuineness of the scheme and by the fact that the risk was apparently negligible. He asked me to respect the Russian’s urgent plea that I should not speak a word to a soul either about my intentions or my plans. I bought the letter of credit, and it was arranged that I should travel to Dr Ingham’s house by car, spend the night there and go on by the midday boat to Calais and Switzerland.

  “I arrived at Grayne Hall at about six o’clock in the evening, and I was impressed by the luxury of the place. I hadn’t the slightest suspicion that anything was wrong.

  “At half-past seven I joined Dr Ingham and his wife at dinner. I didn’t drink anything until the port came round, but after that I have no recollection of what happened until I woke and found myself in a small stone chamber. There was a candle fixed to a stone niche, with half a dozen other candles and a box of matches to supply the light, the only light I saw until I was rescued. There was an iron bed, a patch of carpet on the floor, and a washing set, but no other furniture. Twice in the twenty-four hours the two men, who are known as Thomas and Leonard, and whom I remember having seen wearing the livery of servants, took me out for exercise up and down a long stone corridor which ran the length of the house. I did not see any other prisoner, but I knew they were there because I had heard one shouting. My letter of credit had been taken from me. I only saw the man Kennedy once, when he came down and asked me to write a letter on the notepaper of a foreign hotel, addressed to my daughter, and telling her I was well and that she was not to worry about me.”

  It was clear that the success of the scheme depended upon the discretion of Litnoff. The man was a drunkard, but so long as he gave no hint as to where his money came from, there was no danger to the gang. It was when he began to talk about the diamond clasp that the Kennedys decided that, for their own safety, they must silence him. They knew the game was up and made preparations for a getaway, but to the end they hoped they might avoid this. I discovered by enquiry that a small yacht had been chartered provisionally a week before their arrest. It was at the time in Dover Harbour, and if their plans were carried out, they were leaving a few days after my arrival at Grayne Hall.

  A new complication arose when Kennedy went down to carry food to the prisoners on the night of Gelpin’s death. The two servants were away in London. They had been commissioned to stop Edelsheim from seeing me. It is possible that Kennedy overrated his strength, or placed too much reliance upon the revolver which he carried – one which he had taken from another prisoner – Frank Seafield.

  Kennedy states that Gelpin, who was a very strong man, attacked him without provocation, but as to this we shall never know the truth; but he was killed in the corridor, because the other prisoners heard the shot.

  In the early hours of the morning the two servants returned, and the body was driven straight away to London and deposited in Epping Forest.

  I cannot exa
ctly state when my own suspicions concerning Dr Ingham were aroused. I rather think it was on the occasion of his first visit to me. His obvious anxiety to anticipate the arrival of Joan Ralph, Alsby’s statement, my talk with the chemist, and Edelsheim’s narrative all pointed to one conclusion; obviously here was a confidence trick on a large scale, and, after I had seen the survey map of the district in which Grayne Hall is situated, and made a few enquiries about the old castle, the possibility that this was a case of wholesale kidnapping became a certainty.

  I had to be sure that “Dr Ingham” was Kennedy, and on the last occasion we met in my office, I was compelled, I regret to say, to slander his mother. Though he was livid with rage, he kept control of himself, but he showed me enough to satisfy me that my suspicions were correct.

  I tried the same trick at Grayne Hall, but I only did it after lighting a magnesium match, which was a signal agreed upon between myself and the police who, I knew, were outside the house, that it was time for them to make a move.

  Underneath he wrote:

  Casius Kennedy, convicted of murder at the CCC. Executed at Pentonville Prison. (Elford – executioner.)

  Elsa Kennedy, convicted at CCC. Life.

  Thomas J. Pentafard, convicted at CCC. Criminal conspiracy and accessory to murder. Life.

  Leonard Polenski, convicted at CCC. Criminal conspiracy and accessory to murder. Life.

  THE CASE OF JOE ATTYMAR

  1

  In the dusk of the evening the rower brought his skiff under the overshadowing hull of the Baltic steamer and rested on his oars, the little boat rising and falling gently in the swell of the river. A grimy second officer looked down from the open porthole and spat thoughtfully into the water. Apparently he did not see the swarthy-faced waterman with the tuft of grey beard, and as apparently the waterman was oblivious of his appearance. Presently the unshaven man, with the faded gold band on the wrist of his shabby jacket, drew in his head and shoulders and disappeared.