Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns (12 page)

“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.

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.

He had very few visitors and practically no friends. In Brockley Road opinion was divided on his occupation. There was one school of thought that believed he was “retired”, and this was by far the largest section of public opinion, for everything about him suggested retirement from bygone and respectable activities.

No neighbour dropped in on him for a quiet smoke and a chat. He had been invited to sedate family parties during the festive season, but had declined. And the method of his refusal was responsible for the legend that he had once been in love and had suffered; for invariably his letter contained references to a painful anniversary which he wished to keep alone. It didn’t matter what date was chosen for the party, Mr Reeder had invariably a painful anniversary which he wished to celebrate in solitude.

He sat at his large desk with a huge cup of tea and a large dish full of hot and succulent muffins before him, and went over and over every phase of these bank cases without securing a single inspiration which would lead him to that unknown force which was not only co-ordinating and organising a series of future frauds and robberies but had already robbed the banks of close on a million pounds.

Lewisham High Road at that hour was a busy thoroughfare, and nobody saw the extraordinary apparition until a taxi driver, swerving violently, missed him. It was the figure of a man in a dressing gown and pyjamas, darting from one side of the road to the other. His feet and his head were bare, and he ran with incredible speed up the hill and darted into Brockley Road. Nobody saw where he came from. A policeman made a grab at him as he passed, and missed him. In another second he was speeding along Brockley Road.

He hesitated before Mr Reeder’s house, looked up at the lighted window of his study, then, dragging open the gate, flew up the stone steps. Mr Reeder heard the shouts, went to the window and looked out. He saw somebody run up the flagged pathway to the door, and immediately afterwards a motorcyclist speeding up the road ahead of a small crowd. The motorcyclist slowed before the door, and stopped for a second. At first Mr Reeder thought that the explosions he heard were the backfire of the machine. Then he saw the flame of the third and fourth shots. They came from the driver’s hand, and instantly the motorcycle moved on, gathering speed, and went roaring out of his line of vision.

Reeder ran down the stairs and pulled open the door as a policeman came through the gate. A man was lying on the top step. He wore a red silk dressing gown and pyjamas.

They bore him into the passage, and Mr Reeder switched on all the lights. One glance at the white face told him the staggering story.

The policeman pushed back the crowd, shut the door and went down on his knees by the side of the prostrate figure.

“I’m afraid he’s dead,” said Mr Reeder, as he unbuttoned the pyjama jacket with deft fingers and saw the ugliness of a violent dissolution.

“I think he was shot by the motorcyclist.”

“I saw him,” said the policeman breathlessly. “He fired four shots.”

Reeder made another and more careful examination of the man. He judged his age to be about thirty. His hair was dark, almost raven black; he was clean-shaven, and a peculiar feature which Reeder noticed was that he had no eyebrows.

The policeman looked and frowned, put his hand in his pocket and took out his notebook. He examined something that was written inside and shook his head.

“I thought he might be that fellow they’re looking for tonight.”

“Reigate?” asked Mr Reeder.

“No, it can’t be him,” said the policeman. “He was a fair man with bushy eyebrows.”

The dressing gown was new, the pyjamas were of the finest silk. They made a quick examination of the pockets and the policeman produced a sealed envelope.

“I think I ought to hand this to the inspector, sir–” he began.

Without a word Mr Reeder took it from his hand, and, to the constable’s horror, broke the seal and took out the contents. They were fifty bills each for a hundred dollars.

“H’m!” said Mr Reeder.

Where had he come from? How had he appeared suddenly in the heart of the traffic? The next hour Mr Reeder spent making personal inquiries, without, however, finding a solution to the mystery.

A newsboy had seen him running on the sidewalk, and thought he had come out of Malpas Road, a thoroughfare which runs parallel with Brockley Road. A point-duty constable had seen him run along the middle of the road, dodging the traffic, and the driver of a delivery van was equally certain he had seen him on the opposite side of the road to that where he had been observed by the newspaper boy, running not up the hill but down. The motorcyclist seemed to have escaped observation altogether.

At ten o’clock that night the chief officers of Scotland Yard met in Reeder’s room. The dead man’s fingerprints had been sent to the Yard for inspection, but had not been identified. The only distinguishing feature of the body was a small strawberry mark below the left elbow.

The Chief Constable scratched his head in bewilderment.

“I’ve never had a case like this before. The local police have called at every house in the neighbourhood where this fellow might have come from, and nobody is missing. What do you make of it, Mr Reeder? You’ve had another look at the body, haven’t you?”

Mr Reeder nodded. He had had that gruesome experience and had made a much more thorough examination than had been possible in the passage.

“And what do you think?”

Mr Reeder hesitated.

“I have sent a car for the young lady.”

“Which young lady?”

“Miss – er – Reigate, the sister of our young friend.”

He heard the ring of the bell and himself went down to open the door. It was the girl he had sent for. He took her into a small room on the ground floor.

“I’m going to ask you a question, Miss Reigate, which I’ll be glad if you can answer. Had your brother any distinguishing marks on his body that you would be able to recognise?”

She nodded without hesitation.

“Yes,” she said, a little breathlessly. “He had a small strawberry mark on his forearm, just below the elbow.”

“The left forearm?” asked Mr Reeder quickly.

“Yes, the left forearm. Why? Has he been found?”

“I’m afraid he has,” said Mr Reeder gently.

He told her his suspicion and left her with his housekeeper whilst he went up to explain to the men from the Yard just what he had discovered.

“It was very clear to me,” he said, “that the hair had been dyed and the eyebrows shaved.”

“Reigate?” said the Chief Constable incredulously. “If that’s Reigate I’m a Dutchman. I’ve got a photograph of him. He’s fair, almost a light blonde.”

“The hair is dyed, very cleverly and by an expert.” Reeder pointed to the dollar bills lying on the table. “The money was part of the system, the disguise was part of the system. Did you notice anything about the clothes?”

“I noticed they smelt strongly of camphor,” said one of the detectives. “I’ve just been remarking to the Chief Constable that it almost seems as if the pyjamas and dressing gown had been kept packed away from moths. My theory is that he must have had an outfit stowed away all ready for his getaway.”

Mr Reeder shook his head.

“Not exactly that,” he said; “but the camphor smell is a very important clue. I can’t tell you why, gentlemen, because I am naturally secretive.”

The body was identified beyond any question by the distressed and weeping girl. It was that of Jonathan Reigate, sometime Assistant Manager of the Wembley branch of the London and Northern Banking Corporation. He had been killed by four shots fired from a .38 automatic pistol, and any three of the four shots would have been fatal. As for the motorcyclist, there was no one who could identify him or give the least clue.

At nine o’clock the next morning Reeder, accompanied by a detective-sergeant, made a minute search of the Reigate flat. It was a small, comfortably furnished apartment consisting of four rooms, a kitchen and a bathroom.

Reigate had occupied the larger of the two bedrooms, and in one corner was a small roll-top writing desk which was locked when they arrived.

The dead man was evidently very methodical. The pigeon-holes were crammed with methodical memoranda, mainly dealing with the properties he had bought and sold. These the two men inspected item by item before they made a search of the drawers.

In the last drawer they found a small steel box which, after very considerable difficulty, they succeeded in opening. Inside were two insurance policies, a small memorandum book, in which apparently Reigate had kept a very full record of his family accounts and, in a small pay envelope, sealed down, they discovered two Yale keys. They were quite new and were fastened together by a flat steel ring. An inspection of these showed Reeder that they were intended for different locks, one being slightly larger than the other. There was no name on them and no indication whatever as to their purpose.