The Casefiles of Mr J. G. Reeder

by Edgar Wallace

  The girl smiled.

  ‘You might have warned them before they left the station,’ she said good-humouredly, ‘and saved them the cab fare. Yes, I have an appointment.’

  From where she stood by the gate she had a clear view of Larmes Keep. It bore no resemblance to an hotel and less to the superior boarding-house that she knew it to be. That part of the house which had been the original keep was easily distinguished, though the grey, straight walls were masked with ivy that covered also part of the buildings which had been added in the course of the years.

  She looked across a smooth green lawn, on which were set a few wicker chairs and tables, to a rose garden which, even in late autumn, was a blaze of colour. Behind this was a belt of pine trees that seemed to run to the cliff’s edge. She had a glimpse of a grey-blue sea and a blur of dim smoke from a steamer invisible below the straight horizon. A gentle wind carried the fragrance of the pinks to her, and she sniffed ecstatically.

  ‘Isn’t it gorgeous?’ she breathed.

  The cabman said it ‘wasn’t bad’, and pointed with his whip again.

  ‘It’s that little square place – only built a few years ago. Mr Daver is more of a writing gentleman than a boarding-house gentleman.’

  She unlatched the oaken gate and walked up the stone path towards the sanctum of the writing gentleman. On either side of the crazy pavement was a deep border of flowers – she might have been passing through a cottage garden.

  There was a long window and a small green door to the annexe. Evidently she had been seen, for, as her hand went up to the brass bell-push, the door opened.

  It was obviously Mr Daver himself. A tall thin man of fifty, with a yellow, elf-like face and a smile that brought all her sense of humour into play. Very badly she wanted to laugh. The long upper lip overhung the lower, and except that the face was thin and lined, he had the appearance of some grotesque and foolish mascot. The staring, round, brown eyes, the puckered forehead, and a twist of hair that stood upright on the crown of his head, made him more brownie-like than ever.

  ‘Miss Belman?’ he asked, with a certain eagerness.

  He lisped slightly, and had a trick of clasping his hands as if he were in an agony of apprehension lest his manner should displease.

  ‘Come into my den,’ he said, and gave such emphasis to the last word that she nearly laughed again.

  The ‘den’ was a very comfortably furnished study, one wall of which was covered with books. Closing the door behind her, he pushed up a chair with a little nervous laugh.

  ‘I’m so very glad you came. Did you have a comfortable journey? I’m sure you did. And is London hot and stuffy? I’m afraid it is. Would you like a cup of tea? Of course you would.’

  He fired question and answer so rapidly that she had no chance of replying, and he had taken up a telephone and ordered the tea before she could express a wish on the subject.

  ‘You are young – very young ’ – he shook his head sadly. ‘Twenty-four – no? Do you use the typewriter? What a ridiculous question to ask!’

  ‘It is very kind of you to see me, Mr Daver,’ she said, ‘and I don’t suppose for one moment that I shall suit you. I have had no exper­ience of hotel management, and I realise, from the salary you offer –’

  ‘Quiet,’ said Mr Daver, shaking his head solemnly, ‘that is what I require. There is very little work, but I wished to be relieved even of that little. My own labours’ – he waved his hand to a pedestal desk littered with papers – ‘are colossal. I need a lady to keep accounts – to watch my interests. Somebody I can trust. I believe in faces, do you? I see that you do. And in the character of handwriting? You believe in that also. I have advertised for three months and have interviewed thirty-five applicants. Impossible! Their voices – terrible! I judge people by their voices – so do you. On Monday when you telephoned I said to myself, “The Voice!”’

  He was clasping his hands together so tightly that his knuckles showed white, and this time her laughter was almost beyond arrest.

  ‘But, Mr Daver, I know nothing of hotel management. I think I could learn, and I want the position, naturally. The salary is terribly generous.’

  ‘ “Terribly generous,”’ repeated the man in a murmur. ‘How curious those words sound in juxtaposition! My housekeeper. How kind of you to bring the tea, Mrs Burton!’

  The door had opened and a woman bearing a silver tray came in. She was dressed very neatly in black. The faded eyes scarcely looked at Margaret as she stood meekly waiting whilst Mr Daver spoke.

  ‘Mrs Burton, this is the new secretary to the company. She must have the best room in the Keep – the Blue Room. But – ah!’ – he pinched his lip anxiously – ‘blue may not be your colour?’

  Margaret laughed.

  ‘Any colour is my colour,’ she said. ‘But I haven’t decided –’

  ‘Go with Mrs Burton; see the house – your office, your room. Mrs Burton!’

  He pointed to the door, and before the girl knew what she was doing she had followed the housekeeper through the door. A narrow passage connected the private office of Mr Daver with the house, and Margaret was ushered into a large and lofty room which covered the superficial area of the Keep.

  ‘The Banquittin’ ’All,’ said Mrs Burton in a thin Cockney voice re-markable for its monotony. ‘It’s used as a lounge. We’ve only got three boarders. Mr Daver’s very partic’lar. We get a lot in for the winter.’

  ‘Three boarders isn’t a very paying proposition,’ said the girl.

  Mrs Burton sniffed.

  ‘Mr Daver don’t want it to pay. It’s the company he likes. He only turned it into a boardin’ house because he likes to see people come and go without having to talk to ’em. It’s a nobby.’

  ‘A what?’ asked the puzzled girl. ‘Oh, you mean a hobby?’

  ‘I said a nobby,’ said Mrs Burton, in her listless, uncomplaining way.

  Beyond the hall was a small and cosier sitting-room with French windows opening on to the lawn. Outside the window three people sat at tea. One was an elderly clergyman with a strong, hard face. He was eating toast and reading a church paper, oblivious of his companions. The second of the party was a pale-faced girl about Margaret’s own age. In spite of her pallor she was extraordinarily beautiful. A pair of big, dark eyes surveyed the visitor for a moment, and then returned to her companion, a military-looking man of forty.

  Mrs Burton waited until they were ascending the broad stairway to the upper floor before she ‘introduced’ them.

  ‘The clergyman’s a Reverend Dean from South Africa, the young lady’s Miss Olga Crewe, the other gent is Colonel Hothling – they’re boarders. This is your room, miss.’

  It was indeed a gem of an apartment; the sort of room that Margaret Belman had dreamt about. It was exquisitely furnished, and, like all the other rooms at Larmes Keep (as she discovered later), was pro­vided with its private bathroom. The walls were panelled to half their height, the ceilings heavily beamed. She guessed that beneath the parquet was the original stone-flagged floor.

  Margaret looked and sighed. It was going to be very hard to refuse this post – and why she should think of refusing at all she could not for the life of her understand.

  ‘It’s a beautiful room,’ she said, and Mrs Burton cast an apathetic eye round the apartment.

  ‘It’s old,’ she said. ‘I don’t like old houses. I used to live in Brixton –’

  She stopped abruptly, sniffed in a deprecating way, and jingled the keys that she carried in her hand.

  ‘You’re suited, I suppose?’

  ‘Suited? You mean am I taking the appointment? I don’t know, yet.’

  Mrs Burton looked round vaguely. The girl had the impression that she was trying to say something in praise of the place – some­thing that would prejudice her in favour of acc
epting the appoint­ment. Then she spoke.

  ‘The food’s good,’ she said, and Margaret smiled.

  When she came back through the hall she saw the three people she had seen at tea. The colonel was walking by himself; the clergyman and the pale-faced girl were strolling across the lawn talking to one another. Mr Daver was sitting at his desk, his high forehead resting on his palm, and he was biting the end of a pen as Mrs Burton closed the door on them.

  ‘You like the room: naturally. You will start – when? Next Monday week, I think. What a relief! You have seen Mrs Burton.’ He wagged a finger at her roguishly. ‘Ah! Now you know! It is impossible! Can I leave her to meet the duchess and speed the duke? Can I trust her to adjust the little quarrels that naturally arise between guests? You are right – I can’t. I must have a lady here – I must, I must!’

  He nodded emphatically, his impish brown eyes fixed on hers, the bulging upper lip grotesquely curved in a delighted grin.

  ‘My work suffers, as you say: constantly to be brought from my studies to settle such matters as the fixing of a tennis net – intol­erable!’

  ‘You write a great deal?’ she managed to ask. She felt she must postpone her decision to the last possible moment.

  ‘A great deal. On crime. Ah, you are interested? I am preparing an encyclopaedia of crime!’ He said this impressively, dramatically.

  ‘On crime?’

  He nodded.

  ‘It is one of my hobbies. I am a rich man and can afford hobbies. This place is a hobby. I lose four thousand a year, but I am satisfied. I pick and choose my own guests. If one bores me I tell him to go – that his room has been taken. Could I do that if they were my friends? No. They interest me. They fill the house; they give me company and amusement. When will you come?’

  She hesitated.

  ‘I think –’

  ‘Monday week? Excellent!’ He shook her hand vigorously. ‘You need not be lonely. If my guests bore you, invite your own friends. Let them come as the guests of the house. Until Monday!’

  She was walking down the garden path to the waiting cabman, a little dazed, more than a little undecided.

  ‘Did you get the place, miss?’ asked the friendly cabman.

  ‘I suppose I did,’ replied Margaret.

  She looked back towards Larmes Keep. The lawns were empty, but near at hand she had one glimpse of a woman. Only for a second, and then she disappeared in a belt of laurel that ran parallel with the boundary wall of the property. Evidently there was a rough path through the bushes, and Mrs Burton had sought this hiding-place. Her hands covered her face as she staggered forward blindly, and the faint sound of her sobs came back to the astonished girl.

  ‘That’s the housekeeper – she’s a bit mad,’ said the cabman calmly.

  Chapter 2

  George Ravini was not an unpleasant-looking man. From his own point of view, which was naturally prejudiced, he was extremely attractive, with his crisp brown hair, his handsome Neapolitan feat­ures, his height, and his poise. And when to his natural advant­ages were added the best suit that Savile Row could create, the most spotless of grey hats, and the malacca sword-stick on which one kid-gloved hand rested as upon the hilt of a foil, the shiniest of enamelled shoes and the finest of grey silk socks, the picture was well framed and embellished. Greatest embellishment of all were George Ravini’s Luck Rings. He was a superstitious man and was addicted to charms. On the little finger of his right hand were three gold rings, and in each ring three large diamonds. The Luck Stones of Ravini were one of the traditions of Saffron Hill.

  Most of the time he had the half-amused, half-bored smile of a man for whom life held no mysteries and could offer, in experience, little that was new. And the smile was justified, for George knew most of the things that were happening in London or likely to happen. He had worked outward from a one-room home in Saffron Hill, where he first saw the light, had enlarged the narrow horizons which surrounded his childhood, so that now, in place of the poverty-stricken child who had shared a bed with his father’s performing monkey, he was not only the possessor of a classy flat in Half Moon Street but the owner of the block in which it was situated. His balance at the Con­tinental Bank was a generous one; he had securities which brought him an income beyond his needs, and a larger revenue from the two night clubs and spieling houses which were in his control, to say nothing of the perquisites which came his way from a score of other sources. The word of Ravini was law from Leyton to Clerkenwell, his fiats were obeyed within a mile radius of Fitzroy Square, and no other gang leader in London might raise his head without George’s permission save at the risk of waking in the casualty ward of the Middlesex Hospital entirely surrounded by bandages.

  He waited patiently on the broad space of Waterloo Station, occas­ionally consulting his gold wrist-watch, and surveyed with a benevolent and proprietorial eye the stream of life that flowed from the barriers.

  The station clock showed a quarter after six: he glanced at his watch and scanned the crowd that was debouching from No. 7 platform. After a few minutes’ scrutiny he saw the girl, and with a pat to his cravat and a touch to the brim of his hat which set it tilting, he strolled to meet her.

  Margaret Belman was too intent with her own thoughts to be thinking about the debonair and youngish man who had so often sought an introduction by the conventional method of pretending they had met before. Indeed, in the excitement of her visit to Larmes Keep, she had forgotten that this pestiferous gallant existed or was likely to be waiting for her on her return from the country.

  George Ravini stopped and waited for her approach, smiling his approval. He liked slim girls of her colouring: girls who dressed rather severely and wore rather nice stockings and plain little hats. He raised his hat; the Luck Stones glittered beautifully.

  ‘Oh!’ said Margaret Belman, and stopped, too.

  ‘Good evening, Miss Belman,’ said George, flashing his white teeth. ‘Quite a coincidence meeting you again.’

  As she went to walk past him he fell in by her side.

  ‘I wish I had my car here, I might have driven you home,’ he said conversationally. ‘I’ve got a new Rolls – rather a neat little machine. I don’t use it a great deal – I like to walk from Half Moon Street.’

  ‘Are you walking to Half Moon Street now?’ she asked quietly.

  But George was a man of experience.

  ‘Your way is my way,’ he said.

  She stopped.

  ‘What is your name?’ she asked.

  ‘Smith – Anderton Smith,’ he answered readily. ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘I want to tell the next policeman we meet,’ she said, and Mr Ravini, not unaccustomed to such threats, was amused.

  ‘Don’t be a silly little girl,’ he said. ‘I’m doing no harm, and you don’t want to get your name in the newspapers. Besides, I should merely say that you asked me to walk with you and that we were old friends.’

  She looked at him steadily.

  ‘I may meet a friend very soon who will need a lot of convincing,’ she said. ‘Will you please go away?’

  George was pleased to stay, as he explained.

  ‘What a foolish young lady you are!’ he began. ‘I’m merely offer­ing you the common courtesies –’

  A hand gripped his arm and slowly pulled him round – and this in broad daylight on Waterloo Station, under the eyes of at least two of his own tribe, Mr Ravini’s dark eyes snapped dangerously.

  And yet seemingly his assailant was a most inoffensive man. He was tall and rather melancholy-looking. He wore a frock-coat buttoned tightly across his breast, and a high, flat-crowned, hard felt hat. On his biggish nose a pair of steel-rimmed pince-nez were set at an awkward angle. A slither of sandy side-whiskers decorated his cheek, and hooked to his arm was a tightly furled umbrella. Not that George examined
these details with any care: they were rather familiar to him, for he knew Mr J. G. Reeder, Detective to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, and the fight went out of his eyes.

  ‘Why, Mr Reeder!’ he said, with a geniality that almost sounded sincere. ‘This is a pleasant surprise. Meet my young lady friend, Miss Belman – I was just taking her along –’

  ‘Not to the Flotsam Club for a cup of tea?’ murmured Mr Reeder in a tone of pain. ‘Not to Harraby’s Restaurant? Don’t tell me that, Georgio! Dear me! How interesting either experience would be!’

  He beamed upon the scowling Italian.

  ‘At the Flotsam,’ he went on, ‘you would have been able to show the young lady where your friends caught young Lord Fallen for three thousand pounds only the night before last – so they tell me. At Harraby’s you might have shown her that interesting little room where the police come in by the back way whenever you consider it expedient to betray one of your friends. She has missed a treat!’

  George Ravini’s smile did not harmonise with his sudden pallor.

  ‘Now listen, Mr Reeder –’

  ‘I’m sorry I can’t, Georgio.’ Mr Reeder shook his head mourn­fully. ‘My time is precious. Yet, I will spare you one minute to tell you that Miss Belman is a very particular friend of mine. If her experience of today is repeated, who knows what might happen, for I am, as you probably know, a malicious man.’ He eyed the Italian thoughtfully. ‘Is it malice, I wonder, which inhibits a most inter­esting revelation which I have on the tip of my tongue? I wonder. The human mind, Mr Ravini, is a curious and complex thing. Well, well, I must be getting along. Give my regards to your criminal associates, and if you find yourself shadowed by a gentleman from Scotland Yard, bear him no resentment. He is doing his duty. And do not lose sight of my – um – warning about this lady.’