Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns (10 page)

The guards saw their charge carried over their heads, and could neither fire at him nor do anything but watch helplessly.

The airship drifted across the Hudson into New Jersey, came low again.

Mr Redsack dropped. It was near a small village. Conveniently close at hand, standing unattended by the side of the road, was a dilapidated car and on the back seat a suitcase. Nobody seemed to have witnessed his surprising descent but he drove for twenty minutes before stopping the car and changing into the clothes from the suitcase. He put the prison uniform in the empty case and left it in a convenient wood.

Near the outskirts of Jersey City, he abandoned the car, walked towards the city and boarded a bus. He came by ferry to New York and eventually to the quay where the outward mail was waiting. After that everything was very simple for Mr Redsack.

Galley hands were scarce and money is an eloquent letter of recommendation. He had been assigned his watch, and was peeling potatoes with the greatest industry before the ship pulled out of New York harbour.

If you had told Mr Reeder it was a coincidence that he should at this stage have been brought into contact with one of the most remarkable criminals of our time, he would have shaken his head half-heartedly and in the most apologetic terms have differed from you.

“It is no coincidence – um – that any detective should meet, or nearly meet, any criminal, any more than it is a coincidence that the glass of water you are – er – drinking should at some time or other have been part of the Atlantic Ocean.”

When the people in Scotland Yard speculate upon this peculiar happening they always begin with the word “if”. “If” Redsack had not been in the punishment cell; “if” Mr Reeder had only seen him… Quite a lot of trouble might have been saved, and the L and O Bank was by no means the beginning or the end of it.

That Mr Reeder forgot about Redsack is unlikely. When he reached England and went through the files the man’s name was familiar. It was inevitable that his record should go down in an abbreviated form in his casebook, for Mr Reeder despised the story of no criminal, and held the view that crime, like art, knew no frontiers.

But, strangely enough, the name of Redsack did not occur to the man from Whitehall in connection with the L and O Bank affair.

Mr Reeder very seldom went to the theatre. When he did he preferred the strong and romantic drama to the more subtle problem plays which are so popular with the leisured classes.

He went to see
Killing Time
, and was a little disappointed, for he detected “the man who did it” in the first act, and thereafter the play ceased to have any great interest for him.

The unpleasant happening of the evening occurred between the first and second acts, when Mr Reeder was pacing the vestibule, smoking one of his cheap cigarettes, and speculating upon the advisability of recovering his coat and hat from the cloakroom and escaping after the interval bell had rung and the audience had gone back into the auditorium.

There approached him a resplendent man. He was stout, rather tall, very florid. He wore a perpetual smile, which was made up of nine-tenths of amused contempt. His stubby nails were manicured and polished; Mr Reeder suspected that they were faintly tinted. His clothes fitted him all too perfectly, and when he smiled his way up to Mr Reeder that gentleman had a feeling that he would like to go back and see the second act after all.

“You’re Mr Reeder, aren’t you?” he said in a tone which challenged denial. “My name is Hallaty, Gunnersbury branch of the L and O Bank. You came down to see me one day about a fellow who’d been passing dud cheques.”

Mr Reeder fixed his glasses on the end of his nose and looked over them at his new acquaintance.

“Yes, I – um – remember there was a branch of the bank at Gunnersbury,” he said. “Very interesting how these branches are spreading.”

“It’s rather funny to see you here at a theatre,” smiled Mr Hallaty.

“I – um – suppose it is,” said Mr Reeder.

“It’s a funny thing,” the loquacious man went on, “I was talking to a friend of mine, Lord Lintil – you may have met him. I know him personally; in fact, we’re quite pals.”

Mr Reeder was impressed.

“Really?” he said respectfully. “I haven’t seen Lord Lintil since his third bankruptcy. Quite an interesting man.”

Mr Hallaty was jarred but not shaken.

“Misfortune comes to everybody, even to the landed gentry,” he said, a little sternly.

“You were talking to him about me?”

Mr Reeder spared himself the admonition which was coming.

“And – um – what did you say about me?”

For a moment the Manager of the Gunnersbury branch did not seem inclined to pursue his aristocratic reminiscences.

“I was saying how clever you were.”

Mr Reeder wriggled unhappily.

“We were talking about these bank frauds that are going on, and how impossible it is to bring the – what do you call ’ems – perpetrators to justice, eh? That’s what we want to do, Mr Reeder – bring ’em to justice.”

His pale eyes never left Mr Reeder’s.

“A most admirable idea,” agreed the detective.

He wondered if any helpful advice was likely to be forthcoming.

“I suppose there must be a system by which you can stop this sort of thing going on.”

“I’m sure there must be,” said Mr Reeder.

He looked at his watch and shook his head.

“I am quite anxious to see the second act,” he said untruthfully.

“Personally,” Mr Hallaty went on with the greatest complacency, “I’d like to be put in charge of one of these cases, on the basis of the old and well-known saying of which you’ve no doubt heard.”

Mr Reeder when he was most innocent was most malignant. He was innocent now.

“‘Set a thief to catch a thief’? But surely not, Mr – I didn’t quite catch your name.”

The man went purple.

“What I meant was
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes
? – a Latin proverb,” he said loudly.

Fortunately the bell rang at that moment and Mr Reeder made his escape. But it was only temporary. When he got outside the theatre that night, after the conclusion of the third and tamest act of the play, he found his banking friend waiting.

“I wondered if you’d like to come up to my club and have a drink?”

Mr Reeder shook his head.

“It is delightful of you, Mr – um–”

Mr Hallaty told him his name for the third time.

“But I never go to clubs and I do not drink anything stronger than barley water.”

“Can I drop you anywhere?” asked Mr Hallaty.

Mr Reeder said he was walking and therefore could not be dropped.

“But I thought you lived at Brockley?”

“I walk there,” said Mr Reeder. “I find it so good for my complexion.”

He was not unduly surprised at the persistence of this very self-satisfied man. Quite a number of people did their best to scrape acquaintance with the country’s greatest authority on crime against banks; some out of morbid curiosity, some for more personal reasons, some who gave him an importance which perhaps he did not deserve, and desired to share it even to the smallest extent.

Mr Hallaty was a type, self-important, pompous, self-sufficient and quite self-satisfied. To Mr Reeder’s annoyance a few days later, when he was eating his bun and drinking his glass of milk at a teashop, the smiling man appeared before him and sat down at the same table. Mr Reeder’s bun was hardly nibbled, his milk remained untouched. There was no escape. He sat in silence, listening to Mr Hallaty’s views on crime, the detection of crime, banking methods and their inadequacy, but mainly about Mr Hallaty’s extraordinary genius, prescience and shrewdness.

“They’d be very clever to get past me, whether they’re crooks or whether they’re straight,” said Mr Hallaty.

He lit a small and disagreeable cigar. Mr Reeder looked significantly at a sign which said “No Smoking.”

“You don’t mind, do you?” asked Hallaty.

“Very much,” said Mr Reeder, and the other man laughed as though it were the best joke in the world, and went on smoking.

“Personally,” he said, “I think professional crooks are not clever. They think they are, but when they’re matched against the intelligence of the average businessman, or a man a little above the average, they’re finished.”

He chatted on in this vein until Mr Reeder put down his bun, glared solemnly over his half-glass of milk, and said, with startling distinctness: “Will you please go away? I want to have my lunch.” Thick-skinned as the man was, he was taken aback; went very red, apologised incoherently, and swaggered out of the shop without paying the bill for his cup of tea. Mr Reeder paid it gratefully.

Recalling those two conversations, Mr Reeder remembered later that most of the inquiries which the Bank Manager made had to do with systems of search for missing delinquents. When he got home that night he very carefully marked down the name of Mr Hallaty in a little book the cover of which was inscribed with a big question mark.

Yet it seemed impossible to believe that a man who was so aggressive could be anything but an honest man. Men engaged in the tiresome trade of roguery are suave men, polite men. They soothe and please – it is part of their stock in trade. Only the twenty shillings to the pound and look-the-whole-world-in-the-face man could afford to be boorish. And Mr Hallaty was undoubtedly boorish.

He was, as he claimed, the Manager of the Gunnersbury branch of the London and Orient Bank, and was a man of style and importance. He had a flat in Albemarle Street, drove his own car, had a chauffeur, a valet and quite a nice circle of reliable friends. He had also a very humble flat in Hammersmith, and this was his official address.

The Gunnersbury branch of the L and O was in its way rather important. It carried the accounts of half a dozen big plants on the Great West Road, The Kelson Gas Works, and the Brite-Lites Manufacturing Corporation, and was therefore responsible for very heavy payrolls.

About a month after the teashop talk Mr Hallaty called at the London office of the Ninth Avenue Bank on Lombard Street, and said that he had had a request from the most important of his customers for a large supply of American currency. The customer in question was an Anglo-American concern, and in order to celebrate some new amalgamation the directors had decided to pay a big bonus in dollars. Could the Ninth Avenue Bank supply the necessary greenbacks – fifty-seven thousand dollars, no less?

The American bank, after the way of American banks, was obliging. It undertook to sell dollars to the required amount, and on the Friday afternoon at two o’clock Hallaty called and exchanged English currency for American.

At the headquarters of the L and O Bank there was rather an urgent conference of general and assistant general managers that afternoon.

“I’m worried about this man Hallaty,” said the chief. “One of our secret service people has discovered that he is living at the rate of ten thousand a year.”

“What is his salary?” somebody asked.

“Two thousand five hundred.”

There was a little silence.

“He is a very careful man,” said one. “He may have some very good investments.”

The question became instantly urgent, for at that moment came an official with a telephone message from yet another American bank – the Dyers Bank of New York. Mr Hallaty had just purchased a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of American currency. He had negotiated the purchase in the morning, giving as a reason the requirements of the Brite-Lite Corporation. The Dyers Bank had certain misgivings after the departure of Mr Hallaty with a thousand notes for one hundred dollars tucked away in a briefcase, and those misgivings were caused by a glimpse which one of the commissionaires had of the contents of the briefcase – already half-full of American notes.

The bank detectives sped to Gunnersbury – Mr Hallaty was not there. He had the key of the vault, but the detectives had taken with them a duplicate key from the safe at the head office.

There should have been, in preparation for the next day’s pay-out, some £72,000 in the vaults. In point of fact, there were a few odd bundles of ten-shilling and pound notes.

Mr Hallaty was not at the flat where he was supposed to live, nor at the flat in Albemarle Street, where he actually lived. His valet was there, and his chauffeur.

The Axford airport had a clue to give. Mr Hallaty had arrived that afternoon, seemingly with the intention of flying the small aeroplane which he kept there. He was well known as an amateur flyer and was a skilled pilot. When the aeroplane was removed from the hangar it was discovered that the wings had been slashed and other damage done which made the machine unusable. How it had happened was a mystery which nobody could explain.

Mr Hallaty, on seeing the damage, had turned deathly pale and had re-entered his car and driven away, carrying with him his two suitcases.

From that moment Mr Hallaty was not seen. He vanished into London and was lost.

If the losses to the bank had been £72,000 only, it would have been serious enough. Unfortunately, Hallaty was a very ingenious man, with a very complete knowledge of the English banking system. When accounts came in and were checked, when the clearing-house made its quick report and certain northern and midland banking branches presented their claims, it was found that considerably over a quarter of a million of money had vanished.

There was much to admire here in the way of perfect training and clever expedient, but the L and O directors were not sufficiently broad-minded to offer any testimonial to their missing Manager.

Three days after he had vanished, Mr Reeder came upon the scene. He was in his most apologetic mood. He apologised for being called in three days after he should have been called in; he apologised to the gloomy Chairman for the offence of his unfaithful servant; he apologised for being wet (he carried a furled umbrella on his arm) and by inference regretted his side-whiskers, his hat and his tightly-fitting coat.

The Chairman, by some odd process of mind, felt that a considerable amount of responsibility had been lifted from his shoulders.