The Casefiles of Mr J. G. Reeder

by Edgar Wallace

  Something touched the end of the rod, pushing it aside. Mr Reeder turned the switch and a blinding ray of light leapt from the lamp and focused in a circle on the opposite wall of the corridor.

  The door was open, but there was nothing human in sight.

  And then, despite his wonderful nerve, his flesh began to go goosey, and a cold sensation tingled up his spine. Somebody was there – hiding . . . waiting for the man who carried the lamp, as they thought, to emerge.

  Reaching out at full arm’s-length, he thrust the end of the rod through the doorway into the corridor.

  Swish!

  Something struck the rod and snapped it. The lamp fell on the floor, lens uppermost, and flooded the ceiling of the corridor. In an instant Reeder was off the bed, moving swiftly, till he came to the cover afforded by the wide-open door. Through the crack he had a limited view of what might happen outside.

  There was a deadly silence. In the hall downstairs a clock ticked solemnly, whirred and struck the quarter to three. But there was no movement; nothing came within the range of the upturned lamp, until . . .

  He had just a momentary flash of vision. The thin, white face, the hairy lips parted in a grin, wild, dirty white hair, and a bald crown, a short bristle of white beard, a claw-like hand reaching for the lamp . . .

  Pistol or rubber? Mr Reeder elected for the rubber. As the hand closed over the lamp he left the cover of the room and struck. He heard a snarl like that of a wild beast, then the lamp was extinguished as the apparition staggered back, snapping the thin wire.

  The corridor was in darkness. He struck again and missed; the violence of the stroke was such that he overbalanced and fell on one knee, and the truncheon flew from his grasp. He threw out his hand, gripped an arm, and with a quick jerk brought his capture into the room and switched on the light.

  A round, soft hand, covered with a silken sleeve . . .

  As the lights leapt to life, he found himself looking into the pale face of Olga Crewe!

  Chapter 10

  For a moment they stared at one another, she fearful, he amazed. Olga Crewe!

  Then he became conscious that he was still gripping the arm, and let it drop. The arm fascinated Mr Reeder; he scarcely looked at anything else.

  ‘I am very sorry,’ said Mr Reeder. ‘Where did you come from?’

  Her lips were quivering; she tried to speak, but no words came. Then she mastered her momentary paralysis and began to speak, slowly, laboriously.

  ‘I – heard – a noise – in – the – corridor – and – came – out. A noise – I – was – frightened.’

  She was rubbing her arm mechanically; he saw a red weal where his hand had gripped. The wonder was that he had not broken her arm.

  ‘Is – anything – wrong?’

  Every word was created and articulated painfully. She seemed to be considering its formation before her tongue gave it sound.

  ‘Where is the light-switch in the hall?’ asked Mr Reeder. This was a more practical matter – he lost interest in her arm.

  ‘Opposite my room.’

  ‘Turn it on,’ he said, and she obeyed meekly.

  Only when the corridor was illuminated did he step out of the room, and even then in some doubt, if the Browning in his hand meant anything.

  ‘Is anything wrong?’ she asked again. By now she had taken com­mand of herself. A little colour had come to her white face, but the live eyes were still beholding terrible visions.

  ‘Did you see anything in the passage?’ he answered.

  She shook her head slowly.

  ‘No, I saw nothing – nothing. I heard a noise and I came out.’

  She was lying; he did not trouble to doubt this. She had had time to pull on her slippers and find the flimsy wrap she wore, and the fight had not lasted more than two seconds. Moreover, he had not heard her door open; therefore it had been open all the time, and she had been spectator or audience of all that had happened.

  He went down the corridor, retrieved his rubber truncheon, and came back to her. She was half standing, half leaning against the doorpost, rubbing her arm. She was staring past him so intently that he looked round, though there was nothing to be seen.

  ‘You hurt me,’ she said simply.

  ‘Did I? I’m sorry.’

  The mark on the white flesh had gone blue, and Mr Reeder was naturally a sympathetic man. Yet, if the truth be told, there was nothing of sorrow in his mind at that moment. Regret, yes. But the regret had nothing to do with her hurt.

  ‘I think you’d better go to your bed, young lady. My nightmare is ended. I hope yours will end as quickly, though I shall be surprised if it does. Mine is for the moment; yours, unless I am greatly mistaken, is for life!’

  Her dark, inscrutable eyes did not leave his face as she spoke.

  ‘I think it must have been a nightmare,’ she said. ‘Will it last all my life? I think it will!’

  With a nod she turned away, and presently he heard her door close and the lock fasten. Mr Reeder went back to the far side of his bed, pulled up a chair and sat down. He did not attempt to close the door. Whilst his room was in darkness and the corridor lighted, he did not expect a repetition of his bad and substantial dream.

  The rubber truncheon was a mistake, he admitted regretfully. He wished he had not such a repugnance to a noisier weapon. He laid the pistol on the cover of the bed within reach of his hand. If the bad dream came again –

  Voices!

  The murmur of a whispered colloquy and a fierce, hissing whisper that dominated the others. Not in the corridor, but in the hall below. He tiptoed to the door and listened.

  Somebody laughed under his breath, a strange, blood-curdling little mutter of a laugh; and then he heard a key turn and a door open and a voice demand: ‘Who is there?’

  It was Margaret. Her room faced the head of the stairs, he re­mem­bered. Slipping the pistol into his pocket, he ran round the end of the bed and into the corridor. She was standing by the banisters, looking down into the dark. The whispering voices had ceased. She saw him out of the corner of her eye and turned with a start.

  ‘What is wrong, Mr Reeder? Who put the corridor light on? I heard somebody speaking in the vestibule.’

  ‘It was only me.’

  His smile would in ordinary circumstances have been very reass­uring, but now she was frightened, childishly frightened. She had an insane desire to cling to him and weep.

  ‘Something has been happening here,’ she said. ‘I’ve been lying in bed listening, and haven’t had the courage to get up. I’m horribly scared, Mr Reeder.’

  He beckoned her to him, and as she came, wondering, he slipped past her and took her place at the banisters. She saw him lean over and the light from a hand-lamp sweep the space below.

  ‘There’s nobody there,’ he said airily.

  She was whiter than he had ever seen her.

  ‘There was somebody there,’ she insisted. ‘I heard their feet mov­ing on the tiled paving after you put on your flash-lamp.’

  ‘Probably Mrs Burton,’ he suggested. ‘I thought I heard her voice –’

  And now came a newcomer on the scene. Mr Daver had appeared at the end of the corridor. He wore a flowered silk dressing-gown buttoned up to his chin.

  ‘Whatever is the matter, Miss Belman?’ he asked. ‘Don’t tell me that he tried to get into your window! I’m afraid you’re going to tell me that! I hope you’re not, but I’m afraid you will! Dear me, what an unpleasant thing to happen!’

  ‘What has happened?’ asked Mr Reeder.

  ‘I don’t know, but I have an uncomfortable feeling that somebody has been trying to break into this house,’ said Mr Daver.

  He was genuinely agitated; the girl could almost hear his teeth chatter.

  ‘I hea
rd somebody trying the catch of my window and looked out, and I’ll swear I saw – something! What a dreadful thing to happen! I have half a mind to telephone for the police.’

  ‘An excellent idea,’ murmured Mr Reeder, suddenly his old defer­ential and agreeable self. ‘You were asleep, I suppose, when you heard the noise?’

  Mr Daver hesitated.

  ‘Not exactly asleep,’ he said. ‘Between sleeping and waking. I was very restless tonight for some reason.’

  He put his hand to his throat, his dressing-gown had gaped for a second. He was not quite quick enough.

  ‘You were probably restless,’ said Mr Reeder softly, ‘because you omitted to take off your collar and tie. I know of nothing more disturbing.’

  Mr Daver made a characteristic grimace.

  ‘I dressed myself rather hurriedly –’ he began.

  ‘Better to undress yourself hurriedly,’ chided Mr Reeder, almost playfully. ‘People who go to bed in stiff white collars occasionally choke themselves to death. And there is sorrow in the home of the cheated hangman. Your burglar probably saved your life.’

  Daver made as though to speak, suddenly retreated and slammed the door.

  Margaret was looking at Mr Reeder apprehensively.

  ‘What is the mystery – was there a burglar? – Oh, please tell me the truth! I shall get hysterical if you don’t!’

  ‘The truth,’ said Mr Reeder, his eyes twinkling, ‘is very nearly what that curious man told you – there was somebody in the house, somebody who had no right to be here, but I think he has gone, and you can go to bed without the slightest anxiety.’

  She looked at him oddly.

  ‘Are you going to bed, too?’

  ‘In a very few moments,’ said Mr Reeder cheerfully.

  She held out her hand with an impulsive gesture. He took it in both of his.

  ‘You are my idea of a guardian angel,’ she smiled, though she was near to tears.

  ‘I’ve never heard,’ said Mr Reeder, ‘of guardian angels with side-whiskers.’

  It was a mean advantage to take of her, yet he was ridiculously pleased as he repeated his little jeu d’esprit to himself in the seclusion of his room.

  Chapter 11

  Mr Reeder closed the door, put on the lights, and set himself to unravel the inexplicable mystery of its opening. Before he went to bed he had shot home the bolt, had turned the key in the lock, and the key was still on the inside. It struck him, as he turned it, that he had never heard a lock that moved so silently, or a bolt that slipped so easily into its groove. Both lock and bolt had been recently oiled. He began a scrutiny of the inside face of the door, and found a simple solution of the somewhat baffling incident of its opening.

  The door consisted of eight panels, carved in small lozenge-shaped ornaments. The panel immediately above the lock moved slightly when he pressed it, but it was a long time before he found the tiny spring which held it in place. When that was found, the panel opened like a miniature door. He could thrust his hand through the aperture and slide back the bolt with the greatest ease.

  There was nothing very unusual or sinister about this. He knew that many hotels and boarding-houses had methods by which a door could be unlocked from the outside – a very necessary precaution in certain eventualities. Mr Reeder wondered whether he would find a similar safety panel on the door of Margaret Belman’s room.

  By the time he had completed his inspection it was daylight, and, pulling back the curtains, he drew a chair to the window and made a survey of as much of the grounds as lay within his line of vision.

  There were two or three matters which were puzzling him. If Larmes Keep was the headquarters of the Flack gang, in what manner and for what reason had Olga Crewe been brought into the confed­er­ation? He judged her age at twenty-four; she had been a constant visitor, if not a resident, at Larmes Keep for at least ten years, and he knew enough of the ways of the underworld to realise that they did not employ children. Also she had been to a public school of some kind, and that would have absorbed at least four of the ten years – Mr Reeder shook his head in doubt.

  Nothing would happen now until dark, he decided and, stretching himself upon the bed, he pulled the coverlet over him and slept till a tapping at the door announced the coming of the maid with his morning tea.

  She was a round-faced woman, just past her first youth, with a disagreeable Cockney accent and the brusque and familiar manner of one who was an indispensable part of the establishment. Mr Reeder remembered that the girl had waited on him at dinner.

  ‘Why, sir, you haven’t undressed!’ she said.

  ‘I seldom undress,’ said Mr Reeder, sitting up and taking the tea from her. ‘It is such a waste of time. For no sooner are your clothes off than it is necessary to put them on again.’

  She looked at him hard, but he did not smile.

  ‘You’re a detective, ain’t you? Everybody at the cottage knows that you are. What have you come down about?’

  Mr Reeder could afford to smile cryptically. There was a suppressed anxiety in the girl’s voice.

  ‘It is not for me, my dear young lady, to disclose your employer’s business.’

  ‘He brought you down? Well, he’s got a nerve!’

  Mr Reeder put his finger to his lips.

  ‘About the candlesticks?’

  He nodded.

  ‘He still thinks somebody in the house took them?’

  Her face was very red, her eyes snapped angrily. Here was exposed one of the minor scandals of the hotel.

  It was not an uninteresting sidelight. For if ever guilt was written on a woman’s face it was on hers. What these candlesticks were and how they disappeared, Mr Reeder could guess. Petty larceny runs in well-defined channels.

  ‘Well, you can tell him from me –’ she began shrilly, and he raised a solemn hand.

  ‘Keep the matter to yourself – regard me as your friend,’ he begged.

  He was in his lighter moments a most mischievous man, a weak­ness that few suspected in Mr J. G. Reeder. Moreover, he wanted badly some inside information about the household, and he had an idea that this infuriated girl who flounced out and slammed the door behind her would supply him with that information. In his most optimistic moments he could not dream that in her raw hands she held the secret of Larmes Keep.

  As soon as he came down, Mr Reeder decided to go to Daver’s office; he was curious to learn the true story of the missing candle­sticks. The sound of an angry voice reached him, and as his hand was raised to knock at the door it was opened by somebody who was holding the handle on the inside, and he heard a woman’s angry voice.

  ‘You’ve treated me shabbily: that’s all I can say to you, Mr Daver! I’ve been working for you five years and I’ve never said a word about your business to anybody! And now you bring a detective down to spy on me! I won’t be treated as if I was a thief or some­thing! If you think that’s behaving fair and square, after all I’ve done for you, and minding my own business . . . yes, I know I’ve been well paid, but I could get just as much money somewhere else . . . I’ve got my pride, Mr Daver, the same as you have . . . and I think you’ve been very underhand, the way you’ve treated me . . . I’ll go tonight, don’t you worry!’

  The door was flung open and a red-faced girl of twenty-five flounced out and dashed past the eavesdropper, scarcely noticing him in her fury. The door shut behind her; evidently Mr Daver was in as bad a temper as the girl – a fortunate circumstance, as it proved, and Mr Reeder decided it might be inadvisable to advertise that he had overheard the whole or part of the conversation.

  When he strolled out into the sunlit grounds, of all the people who had been disturbed during the night he was the brightest and showed the least sign of fatigue. He met the Rev. Mr Dean and the Colonel, who was carrying a golf-bag, and they bade
him a gruff good morning. The Colonel, he thought, was a little haggard; Mr Dean gave him a scowl as he passed.

  Walking up and down the lawn, he examined the front of the house with a critical eye. The lines of the Keep were very definite: harsh and angular, not even the Tudor windows, that at some remote period had been introduced to its stony face, could disguise its ancient grimness.

  Turning an angle of the house, he reached the strip of lawn which faced his own window. Behind the lawn was a mass of rhododendron bushes, which might serve a useful purpose, but which in certain circumstances might also be a danger-point.

  Immediately beneath his window was an angle of the drawing-room, a circumstance which gave him cause for satisfaction. Mr Reeder’s experience favoured a bedroom which was above a public apartment.

  He went back on his tracks and came to the other end of the block. Those three windows, brightly curtained, were evidently Mr Daver’s private suite. The wall was black beneath them, the actual stone being obscured by a thick growth of ivy. He wondered what this lightless and doorless space contained.

  As he returned to the front of the house he saw Margaret Belman. She was standing in front of the doorway, shading her eyes from the sun, evidently searching her limited landscape for somebody. Seeing him, she came quickly to meet him.

  ‘Oh, there you are!’ she said, with a sigh of relief. ‘I wondered what had happened to you – you didn’t come down to breakfast.’

  She looked a little tired, he thought. Evidently she had not rounded off the night as agreeably as he.

  ‘I haven’t slept since I saw you,’ she said, answering his unspoken question. ‘What happened, Mr Reeder? Did somebody really try to get into the house – a burglar?’

  ‘I think they tried, and I think they succeeded,’ said Mr Reeder carefully. ‘Burglaries happen even in – um – hotels, Miss – um – Margaret. Has Mr Daver notified the police?’