Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns Page 9

  The president of the association looked at him incredulously.

  “You don’t mean to suggest, Mr Reeder, that there is a definite co-ordination between these various frauds?”

  Mr Reeder nodded solemnly.

  “They have that appearance. I would not care to give a definite opinion one way or the other, but I certainly would not rule that out.”

  One member of the association shook his white head.

  “There are such things as crimes of imitation, Mr Reeder. When some man steals money in a peculiar way, other weak-minded individuals follow suit.”

  Mr Reeder smiled broadly.

  “I’m afraid that won’t do, sir,” he said with the greatest kindness. “You speak as though the details of the fraud had been published. In three cases out of five the general public know nothing about these crimes. In no case have the particulars been published or have they been available even to the managers of branch banks. And yet in every case the crime has followed along exactly similar lines. In every case there has been a man, holding a responsible position in the bank, who, through gambling on the Stock Exchange or for some other reason or from habits of extravagance, has – I will not say been compelled to rob the bank, because a man is quite – um – a free agent in such matters, but has certainly succeeded in relieving your – er – various institutions of very considerable sums of money. These are the points I make.”

  He ticked them off on his fingers.

  “First of all, a manager or assistant manager in straitened circumstances. Secondly, a very carefully organised plan to draw, upon one given day, the maximum sum of money which can be drawn from headquarters, the changing over of the money into foreign currency, and the complete disappearance of the bank manager, all within twenty-four hours. It is an unusual kind of fraud, for it does not involve of itself any false bookkeeping. In several cases we have found that a petty fraud, in comparison with the greater offence, has been going on for some time and has been obviously the cause of the greater crime. Gentlemen” – Mr Reeder’s voice was serious – “there is something very big in the way of criminal activity in London, and an organisation is in existence which is not only directing these frauds and profiting by them, but is offering to the men who commit them asylum during their stay here and facilities for getting out of the country without detection. I’m going to deal with the situation from this angle, and my only chance of putting a stop to it is if I am able to catch one of the minor criminals immediately before he brings off the big coup. I want from every bank a list of all their suspected staff, and I want this list before the bank inspectors go in to examine the books, and certainly before anything like an arrest is made.”

  Instructions to this effect were immediately issued, and the very next morning Mr Reeder had before him in his bureau at the Public Prosecutor’s office a list of bank officials against whom there was a question mark. It was a very small list, representing a microscopic percentage of the enormous staffs employed in the business of banking. One man had been betting heavily, and attached to his name was a list of his bookmakers and what, to Mr Reeder, was more important, exact details as to the period of time his betting operations covered.

  Reeder’s pencil went slowly down the list until it stopped before the name of L G H Reigate. Mr Reigate was twenty-eight, and an assistant branch manager, and his “offence” was that he had been engaged in real estate speculation, had bought on a rising market, and for some time past had vainly endeavoured to get rid of his holdings. His salary was £1,500 a year; he lived with a half-sister in a small flat at Hampstead. He had apparently no other vices, spent most of his evenings at home, did not drink and was a light smoker.

  The reports were very thorough. There was not a detail which Mr Reeder did not examine with the greatest care, for on these minor details often hang great issues.

  He went through the remaining list and came back to Mr Reigate. Evidently here there was a case which might repay his private and personal investigation. He jotted down the address on a scrap of paper and made a few inquiries in the City. They were entirely satisfactory, for on the third probe he found a Canadian bank which had been asked if it could supply Canadian dollars in exchange for sterling, and if the maximum amount could be so supplied on any average day. The inquiry had come not from this branch, but from a client of the branch. Reeder spread his feelers a little wider, and stumbled on a second inquiry from the same client. He went to the general manager of the head office. Mr Reigate was known as a very conscientious young man and, except for the fact that he had been engaged in real estate speculation, the exact extent of which was unknown, there were no marks, black or red, against him.

  “Who is the Branch Manager?” asked Mr Reeder, and was told.

  The gentleman in question was a very reliable man, though inclined to be impetuous.

  “He is a most excellent fellow, but loses his head at times. As he always loses it on the side of the bank we have no serious complaints against him.”

  The name of the manager was Wallat, and that week a strange thing happened to him. He received a letter from a man whose name he did not remember, but who had apparently been an old customer of the bank.

  “I wonder if you would care to take a fortnight’s trip to the fjords on a luxury ship? A client of ours has booked two passages but is unable to go, and has asked me to present the passages to any friend of mine who may wish to make the trip. As you were so good to me in the past – I don’t suppose you remember the circumstances or even recall my name – I should be glad to pass them on to you.”

  Now, the curious thing was that only a week before the Manager had spoken enviously of a friend of his who was making that very trip. He had always wanted to see Norway and the beauties of Scandinavia, and here out of the blue came an unrivalled opportunity.

  His vacation was due; he immediately put in a request to headquarters for leave. The request went before the Assistant General Manager and was granted. The boat was due to leave on the Thursday night, but on the Tuesday the Manager, in a burst of zeal, decided to make a rough examination of certain books.

  What he found there put all ideas of holiday out of his mind. On the Wednesday morning he called before him Mr Reigate, and the pale-faced young man listened with growing terror to a recital of the irregularities which had been discovered. At this sign of his guilt the Manager, true to his tradition, lost his head, threatened a prosecution and, in a moment of hysteria, sent for a policeman. It was an irregular act, for prosecutions are initiated by the directors.

  Panic engendered panic; Reigate put on his hat, walked from the bank, and was immediately pursued by a bareheaded Manager. The young man, in blind terror, leapt on the back of an ambulance which happened to be passing, and was immediately dragged off by a policeman who had joined in the pursuit. If the Manager had only kept his head the matter could have been corrected. As it was, he charged his assistant with the defalcations. Reigate admitted them and was put into a cell.

  Bank headquarters was furious. They had been committed to a prosecution, and, as a sequel, the possibility of an action for damages. Mr Reeder was called in at once, and went into consultation with the bank’s solicitors. He interviewed the young man, and found him incoherent with terror and quite incapable of giving any information. The next morning he was brought before a magistrate and remanded.

  Apparently the magistrate took a serious view, for although Reigate, who was now a little calmer, asked for bail, that bail was put at a prohibitive sum. The young man was taken to prison.

  That afternoon, however, there appeared before the magistrate Sir George Polkley, who offered himself as surety. The name apparently was a famous one. Sir George was a well-known north country shipbuilder. He was accompanied at the police court by a gentleman who gave the name of an eminent firm of Newcastle solicitors. The surety was accepted, and Reigate was released from Brixto
n prison that afternoon.

  At seven o’clock that night Scotland Yard rang up Mr Reeder.

  “You know Reigate was bailed out this afternoon?”

  “Yes, I saw it in the newspapers,” said Mr Reeder. “Sir George Polkley stood surety – how on earth did he know Sir George?”

  “We’ve just had a wire from Polkley’s solicitors in Newcastle. They know nothing whatever about it. Sir George is in the south of France, and his solicitors have sent nobody to London to represent them. What is more, they have never heard of Reigate.”

  Mr Reeder, lounging in his chair, sat bolt upright.

  “Then the bail was a fake? Where is Reigate?”

  “He can’t be found. He drove away from Brixton in a taxi, accompanied by the alleged solicitor, and he has not been seen since.”

  Here was a problem for Mr Reeder, and one after his own heart. Who had gone to all that trouble to get Reigate released – and why? His frauds, if they were provable, did not involve more than three or four hundred pounds. Who wanted him released on bail – immediately released? There was no question at all that, high as the bail was, the necessary sureties would have been forthcoming in twenty-four hours. But somebody was very anxious to get Reigate out of prison with the least possible delay.

  Mr Reeder interviewed the Public Prosecutor.

  “It’s all very, very odd,” he said, running his fingers through his thin hair. “I suppose it is susceptible of a very simple explanation, but unfortunately I’ve got the mind of a criminal.”

  The Public Prosecutor smiled.

  “And how does your criminal mind interpret this happening?” he asked.

  Mr Reeder shook his head.

  “Rather badly, I’m afraid. I – um – should not like to be Mr Reigate!”

  He had sent for the cowed and agitated Manager. He was a pompous little man, rotund of figure and round of face, and he perspired very easily. For half an hour he sat on the edge of a chair, facing Mr Reeder, and he spent most of that half-hour mopping his brow and his neck with a large white handkerchief.

  “Headquarters have been most unkind to me, Mr Reeder,” he quavered. “After all the years of faithful service… The worst they can say about me is that I was misled through my zeal for the bank. I suppose it was wrong of me to have this young man arrested, but I was so shocked, so – if I may use the expression – devastated.”

  “Yes, I’m sure,” murmured Mr Reeder. “You were going on vacation, you tell me? That is news to me.”

  It was now that he learned for the first time about the two passages for the fjords. Fortunately the Manager had the letter with him. Mr Reeder read it quickly, reached for his telephone and put through an inquiry.

  “I seem to remember the address,” he said as he hung up the ’phone. “It has a familiar sound to it. I think you will find it is an accommodation address, and the gentleman who wrote to you has in fact no existence.”

  “But he sent the tickets! They’re made out in my name,” said the Manager triumphantly, and then his face fell. “I shan’t be able to go now, of course.”

  Mr Reeder looked at him, and in his eyes there was pained reproach.

  “I’m afraid you won’t be able to go now, and I’m quite satisfied in my mind that you would have been very sorry if you had gone! Those tickets were intended to serve one purpose – to get you out of the bank and out of England, and to give young Mr Reigate an opportunity of bringing home the beans – if you’ll excuse that vulgarity.”

  Mr Reeder was both puzzled and enlightened. Here was another typical bank case, planned on exactly the same lines as the others, and revealing, beyond any question of doubt, the operation of a mastermind.

  As soon as he got rid of the Bank Manager he took a cab and drove to Hampstead. Miss Jean Reigate had just returned from work when he arrived. She had read of her brother’s misfortune in the evening newspaper on her way back from her office, and it struck Mr Reeder that she was not as agitated by the news as the world would expect her to be. She was a pretty girl, a slim brunette, and looked much younger than her twenty-four years.

  “I haven’t heard from my brother,” she said. “He’s really my half-brother, but we’ve been very great friends all our lives, and I’m terribly upset about all this.”

  She crossed to the window and looked out. Mr Reeder thought that she was not a young lady who very readily showed her feelings. She was obviously exercising great self-control now. Her lips were pressed closely together; her eyes were filled with unshed tears, and he sensed rather than observed the tension she was enduring.

  Suddenly she turned.

  “I’ll tell you, Mr Reeder.”

  She saw his eyebrows go up and smiled faintly.

  “Oh, yes, I realise you haven’t told me your name, but I know you. You’re quite famous in the City.”

  Mr Reeder was covered in genuine confusion, but came instantly to business when she hesitated.

  “Well, what are you going to tell me?” he asked gently.

  “I’m almost relieved. That is what I was going to say. I’ve been expecting something to happen for a long time. Johnny hasn’t been himself; he’s been terribly worried over his land deals, and I know he’s been short of cash – in fact, I lent him a hundred pounds last month. But I thought he’d got over the worst because he returned the money the following week – in fact much more than the money; five hundred dollars is worth nearly two hundred pounds.”

  “Dollars?” said Mr Reeder sharply. “Did he repay you in dollars?”

  She nodded.

  “In dollar bills?”

  “Yes, five bills of a hundred dollars. I put them in my bank.”

  Mr Reeder was now very alert.

  “Where did he get them?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “I don’t know. He had quite a lot of money in dollars, a big roll.”

  Reeder scratched his chin thoughtfully, but made no comment, and the girl went on. “I thought maybe there was something wrong at the bank, and I had an idea that he’d borrowed this money and was putting things right. And yet he wasn’t very happy about it. He told me that he might have to go out of the country for a few months, and that if he did I wasn’t to worry.”

  “Was he a cheerful sort of fellow?”

  “Very,” she said emphatically, “until the past year, when property went down. He used to do quite a lot of buying and selling, and I think he made a lot of money before the slump came.”

  “Had he any friends in London?”

  She shook her head.

  “None you know? You’ve not met any?” he insisted. “No,” she said. “There used to be a man who called here, but he was not a friend.” She hesitated. “I don’t know whether I’m doing him any harm by telling you all this, but Johnny is really a very good man, a man of the highest principles. Something has gone wrong with him in the past few months, but I haven’t the slightest idea what it was. He has been having terrible fits of depression, and one night he told me that it was much better that his conscience should be at rest than that he should tide over his difficulties. He wrote a long statement, which I knew was intended for the bank. He sat up half one night writing, and then he must have changed his mind because in the morning, while we were at breakfast, he took it out of his pocket, reread it and put it in the fire. I have a feeling, Mr Reeder, that he was not acting entirely on his own; that there was somebody behind him directing him.”

  Reeder nodded. “That is the feeling I have, Miss Reigate,” he said, “and if your brother is as you describe him, I think we shall learn a lot from him.”

  “He has been under somebody’s influence,” said the girl, “and I am sure I know who that somebody was.”

  She would say no more than this, though he pressed her.

  “Can
I send him food in prison?” she asked, and learned now for the first time about the bail and Reigate’s mysterious disappearance. She did not know Polkley, and so far as she was aware her brother had no association with Newcastle.

  “But he knows you, Mr Reeder,” she said surprisingly. “He’s mentioned you twice and once he told me that he thought of having a talk with you.”

  “Dear me!” said Mr Reeder. “I don’t think he kept his promise. He has never been to my office–”

  She shook her head. “He wouldn’t have come to your office. He knows your address in Brockley Road.” She gave the number, to his amazement. “In fact, one night he went to your house, because afterwards he said that at the last moment his courage failed him.”

  “When was this?” asked Reeder.

  “About a month ago,” she answered.

  4

  Mr Reeder went back to Brockley that night in a discontented frame of mind. Give him the end of the thread, and he would follow it through all its complicated entanglements. He would sit patiently, untying knots, for days, for weeks, for months, even for years. But now he had not even the end of his thread. He had two isolated cases, distinct from one another, except that they were linked together by a similarity of method but, looking in all directions, he saw no daylight.

  The quietude of Brockley Road was very soothing to him. From near at hand came the gentle whirr of traffic passing up and down the Lewisham High Road, the rumble of lorries and the shrill voices of boys calling the final editions of the evening newspapers.

  In the serenity of his home Mr Reeder recuperated his dissipated energies. Here he could sit sometimes throughout the night, ambling through the dreams out of which his theories were constructed. Here he could put in order the vital little facts which so often meant the destruction of those enemies of society against whom he waged a ceaseless war.