‘I want you, Daver!’
‘Mr Reeder!’ gasped the yellow-faced man, and turned a shade paler.
Reeder slammed the door to behind him, pulled up a chair with a crash, and sat down opposite the hotel proprietor.
‘Where is Miss Belman?’
‘Miss Belman?’
Astonishment was expressed in every feature. ‘Good gracious, Mr Reeder, surely you know? She went up to get your dactyloscope – is that the word? I intended asking you to be good enough to let me see this –’
‘Where – is – Miss – Belman? Spill it, Daver, and save yourself a lot of unhappiness.’
‘I swear to you, my dear Mr Reeder –’
Reeder leaned across the table and rang the bell.
‘Do – do you want anything?’ stammered the manager.
‘I want to speak to Mrs Flack – you call her Mrs Burton, but Mrs Flack is good enough for me.’
Daver’s face was ghastly now. He had become suddenly wizened and old.
‘I’m one of the few people who happen to know that John Flack is married,’ said Reeder; ‘one of the few who know he has a daughter! The question is, does John Flack know all that I know?’
He glowered down at the shrinking man.
‘Does he know that after he was sent to Broadmoor his sneaking worm of a secretary, his toady and parasite and slave, decided to carry on in the Flack tradition, and used his influence and his knowledge to compel the unfortunate daughter of mad John Flack to marry him?’
A frenzied, almost incoherent voice wailed: ‘For God’s sake . . . don’t talk so loud . . . !’
But Mr Reeder went on.
‘Before Flack went to prison he put into the care of his daughter his famous encyclopaedia of crime. She was the only person he trusted: his wife was a weak slave whom he had always despised. Mr Daver, the secretary, got possession of those books a year after Flack was put in gaol. He organised his own little gang at Flack’s old headquarters, which were nominally bought by you. Ever since you knew John Flack was planning an escape – an escape in which you had to assist him – you’ve been living in terror that he would discover how you had double-crossed him. Tell me I’m a liar and I’ll beat your miserable little head off! Where is Margaret Belman?’
‘I don’t know,’ said the man sullenly. ‘Flack had a car waiting for her: that’s all I know.’
Something in his tone, something in the shifty slant of his eyes, infuriated Reeder. He stretched out a long arm, gripped the man by the collar and jerked him savagely across the desk. As a feat of physical strength it was remarkable; as a piece of propaganda of the frightfulness that was to follow, it had a strange effect upon Daver. He lay limp for a second, and then, with a quick jerk of his collar, he wrenched himself from Reeder’s grip and fled from the room, slamming the door behind him. By the time Reeder had kicked an overturned chair from his path and opened the door, Daver had disappeared.
When Reeder reached the hall it was empty. He met none of the servants (he learnt later that the majority had been discharged that morning, paid a month’s wages and sent to town by the first train). He ran out of the main entrance on to the lawn, but the man he sought was not in sight. The other side of the house drew a blank. One of the detectives on duty in the grounds, attracted by Mr Reeder’s hasty exit, came running into the vestibule as he reached the bottom of the stairs.
‘Nobody came out, sir,’ he said, when Reeder explained the object of his search.
‘How many men are there in the grounds?’ asked Reeder shortly. ‘Four? Bring them into the house. Lock every door, and bring back a crowbar with you. I am going to do a little investigation that may cost me a lot of money. No sign of Brill?’
‘No, sir,’ said the detective, shaking his head sadly. ‘Poor old Brill! I’m afraid they’ve done him. The young lady get to town all right, sir?’
Mr Reeder scowled at him. ‘The young lady – what do you know about her?’ he asked sharply.
‘I saw her to the car,’ said Detective Gray.
Reeder gripped him by the coat and led him along the vestibule.
‘Now tell me, and tell me quickly, what sort of car was it?’
‘I don’t know, Mr Reeder,’ said the man in surprise. ‘An ordinary car kind of, except that the windows were shuttered, but I thought that was your idea.’
‘What sort of body was it?’
The man described the machine as accurately as possible; he had only made a superficial inspection. He thought, however, it was an all-weather body. The news was no more than Reeder had expected – neither added to nor diminished his anxiety. When Gray had gone back to his companions and the door was locked, Mr Reeder, from the landing above, called them up to the first floor. A very thorough search had already been made by the police that morning; but, so far, Daver’s room had escaped anything but superficial attention. It was situated at the far end of the corridor, and was locked when the search-party arrived. It took less than two minutes to force an entrance. Mr Daver’s suite consisted of a sitting-room, a bedroom, and a handsomely-fitted bathroom. There was a number of books in the former, a small Empire table on which were neatly arranged a pile of accounts, but there was nothing in the way of documents to reveal his relationship with the Flack gang.
The bedroom was beautifully furnished. Here, again, from Reeder’s point of view, the search was unsatisfactory.
The suite formed one of the angles of the old Keep, and Reeder was leaving the room when his eyes, roving back for a last look round, were arrested by the curious position of a brown leather divan in one corner of the room. He went back and tried to pull it away from the wall, but apparently it was a fixture. He kicked at the draped side and it gave forth a hollow wooden sound.
‘What has he got in that divan?’ he asked.
After considerable search Gray found a hidden bolt, and, this thrown back, the top of the divan came up like the lid of a box. It was empty.
‘The rum thing about this house, sir,’ said Gray as they went downstairs together, ‘is that one always seems on the point of making an important discovery, and it always turns out to be a dud.’
Reeder did not reply: he was too preoccupied with his growing distress. After a while he spoke.
‘There are many queer things about this house –’
And then there came a sound which froze the marrow of his bones. It was a shrill shriek; the scream of a human soul in agony.
‘Help! . . . Help, Reeder!’
It came from the direction of the room he had left, and he recognised Daver’s voice.
‘Oh, God . . . !’
The sound of a door slamming. Reeder took the stairs three at a time, the detectives following him. Daver’s door he had left ajar, but in the short time he had been downstairs, it had been shut and bolted.
‘The crowbar, quick!’
Gray had left it below, and, flying down, returned in a few seconds.
No sound came from the room. Pushing the claw of the crowbar between architrave and door at the point where he had seen the bolt, Reeder levered it back and the door flew open with a crash. One step into the apartment and then he stood stock still, glaring at the bed, unable to believe his eyes.
On the silken counterpane, sprawled in an indescribable attitude, his round, sightless eyes staring at the ceiling, was Daver. Mr Reeder knew that he was dead before he saw the terrible wound, or the brown-hilted knife that stuck out from his side.
Reeder listened at the heart – felt the pulse of the warm wrist, but it was a waste of time, as he knew. He made a quick search of the clothing. There was an inside pocket in the waistcoat, and here he found a thick pad of banknotes.
‘All thousands,’ said Mr Reeder, ‘and ninety-five of them. What’s in that packet?’
It was a little c
ardboard folder, and contained a steamship ticket from Southampton to New York, made out in the name of ‘Sturgeon’; and in the coat pocket Reeder found a passport which was stamped by the American Embassy and bore the same name.
‘He was ready to jump – but he delayed it too long,’ he said. ‘Poor devil!’
‘How did he get here, sir?’ asked Gray. ‘They couldn’t have carried him –’
‘He was alive enough when we heard him,’ said Reeder curtly. ‘He was being killed when we heard him shriek. There is a way into this room we haven’t discovered yet. What’s that?’
It was the sound of a muffled thud, as if a heavy door had been closed. It seemed to come from somewhere in the room. Reeder took the crowbar from the detective’s hand and attacked the panel behind the settee. Beneath was solid wall. He ripped down another strip, with no more enlightening result. Again he opened the divan. Its bottom was made of a thin layer of oak. This too was ripped off; beneath this again was the stone floor.
‘Strip it,’ said Reeder, and when this was done he stepped inside the divan and see-sawed gingerly from one end to the other.
‘There’s nothing here,’ he said. ‘Go downstairs and ’phone Mr Simpson. Tell him what has happened.’
When the man had gone he resumed his examination of the body. Daver had carried, attached to one of the buttons of his trousers, a long gold chain. This was gone: he found it broken off close to the link, and the button itself hanging by a thread. It was whilst he was making his examination that his hand touched a bulky package in the dead man’s hip pocket. It was a worn leather case, filled with scraps of memoranda, mostly undecipherable. They were written in a formless hand, generally with pencil, and the writing was large and irregular, whilst the paper used for these messages was of every variety. One was a scrawled chemical formula: another was a brief note which ran –
House opposite Reeder to let. Engage or get key. Communicate usual place.
Some of these notes were understandable, some beyond Mr Reeder’s comprehension. But he came at last to a scrap which swept the colour from his cheeks. It was written in the same hand on the selvedge of a newspaper, and was crumpled into a ball –
Belman fell over cliff 6 miles west Larme. Send men to get body before police discover.
Mr J. G. Reeder read, and the room spun round.
Chapter 16
When Margaret Belman recovered consciousness she was in the open air, lying in a little recess, effectively hidden from the mouth of the cave. A man in a torn shirt and ragged trousers was standing by her side, looking down at her. As she opened her eyes she saw him put his finger to his mouth, as though to signal silence. His hair was unkempt; streaks of dried blood zigzagged down his face, and the hair above, she saw, was matted. Yet there was a certain kindliness in his disfigured face which reassured her as he knelt down and, making a funnel of his hands, whispered: ‘Be quiet! I’m sorry to have frightened you, but I was scared you’d shout if you saw me. I suppose I look pretty awful.’ His grin was very reassuring.
‘Who are you?’ she asked in the same tone.
‘My name’s Brill, C.I.D.’
‘How did you get here?’ she asked.
‘I’d like to be able to tell you,’ he answered grimly. ‘You’re Miss Belman, aren’t you?’
She nodded. He lifted his head, listening, and, flattening himself against the rock, craned out slowly and peeped round the edge of his hiding-place. He did not move for about five minutes, and by this time she had risen to her feet. Her knees were dreadfully shaky; she felt physically sick, and once again her mouth was dry and parched. Apparently satisfied, he crept back to her side. ‘I was left on duty in Reeder’s room. I thought I heard him calling from the window – you can’t distinguish voices when they whisper – and asking me to come out quick, as he wanted me. I’d hardly dropped to the ground before – cosh!’ He touched his head gingerly and winced. ‘That’s all I remember till I woke up and found myself drowning. I’ve been in the cave all the morning – naturally.’
‘Why naturally?’ she whispered.
‘Because the beach is covered with water at high tide and the cave’s the only place. It is a little too densely populated for me just now.’
She stared at him in amazement.
‘Populated? What do you mean?’
‘Whisper!’ he warned her, for she had raised her voice.
Again he listened.
‘I’d like to know how they got down – Daver and that old devil.’
She felt herself going white.
‘You mean . . . Flack?’
He nodded.
‘Flack’s only been here about an hour, and how he got down God knows. I suppose our fellows are patrolling the house?’
‘The police?’ she asked in astonishment.
‘Flack’s headquarters – didn’t you know it? I suppose you wouldn’t. I thought Reeder – I mean Mr Reeder – told you everything.’
He was rather a talkative young man, more than a little exuberant at finding himself alive, and with good reason.
‘I’ve been dodging in and out the cave all the morning. They’ve got a sentry on duty up there ’ – he nodded towards Siltbury. ‘It’s a marvellous organisation. They held up a gold convoy this morning and got away with it – I heard the old man telling his daughter. The funny thing is that, though he wasn’t there to superintend the steal, his plan worked out like clockwork. It’s a curious thing, any crook will work for old Flack. He’s employed the cleverest people in the business, and Ravini is the only man that ever sold him.’
‘Do you know what has happened to Mr Ravini?’ she asked, and he shook his head.
‘He’s dead, I expect. There are a lot of things in the cave that I haven’t seen, and some that I have. They’ve got a petrol boat in-side . . . as big as a church! . . . the boat, I mean . . . hush!’
Again he shrank against the cliff. Voices were coming nearer and nearer. Perhaps it was the peculiarity of the cave which gave him the illusion that the speakers were standing almost at their elbow. Brill recognised the thin, harsh voice of the old man and grinned again, but it was not a pleasant smile to see.
‘There’s something wrong, something damnably wrong. What is it, Olga?’
‘Nothing, father.’
Margaret recognised the voice of Olga Crewe.
‘You have been very good and very patient, my love, and I would not have planned to come out, but I wanted to see you settled in life. I am very ambitious for you, Olga.’
A pause, and then –
‘Yes, father.’
Olga Crewe’s voice was a little dispirited, but apparently the old man did not notice this.
‘You are to have the finest husband in the land, my dear. You shall have a house that any princess would envy. It shall be of white marble with golden cupolas . . . you shall be the richest woman in the land, Olga. I have planned this for you. Night after night as I lay in bed in that dreadful place I said to myself: “I must go out and settle Olga’s future.” That is why I came out – only for that reason. All my life I have worked for you.’
‘Mother says –’ began the girl.
‘Pah!’ Old John Flack almost spat the word. ‘An unimaginative commoner, with the soul of a housekeeper! She has looked after you well? Good. All the better for her. I would never have forgiven her if she had neglected you. And Daver? He has been respectful? He has given you all the money you wanted?’
‘Yes, father.’
Margaret thought she detected a catch in the girl’s voice.
‘Daver is a good servant. I will make his fortune. The scum of the gutter – but faithful. I told him to be your watch-dog. I am pleased with him. Be patient a little while longer. I am going to see all my dreams come true.’
The voice of the madman was te
nder, so transfigured by love and pride that it seemed to be a different man who was speaking. Then his voice changed again.
‘The Colonel will be back tonight. He is a trustworthy man . . . Gregory also. They shall be paid like ambassadors. You must bear with me a little while, Olga. All these unpleasant matters will be cleared up. Reeder we shall dispose of. Tomorrow at high tide we leave . . .’
The sound of the voices receded until they became an indistinguishable murmur. Brill looked round at the girl and smiled again.
‘Can you beat him?’ he asked admiringly. ‘Crazy as a barn coot! But he has the cleverest brain in London: even Reeder says that. God! I’d give ten years’ salary and all my chance of promotion for a gun!’
‘What shall we do?’ she asked after a long silence.
‘Stay here till the tide turns, then we’ll have to take our chance in the cave. We’d be smashed to pieces if we waited on the beach.’
‘There’s no way up the cliff?’
He shook his head. ‘There’s a way out through the cave if we can only find it,’ he said. ‘One way? A dozen! I tell you that this cliff is like a honeycomb. One of these days it will collapse like froth on a glass of beer. I heard Daver say so, and the mad fellow agreed. Mad? I wish I had his brain! He’s going to dispose of Reeder, is he? The cemeteries are full of people who’ve tried to dispose of Reeder!’
Chapter 17
It seemed an eternity before the tide turned and began slowly to make its noisy way up the beach. Most of the time she was alone in the little recess, for Brill made periodical reconnaissances into the mouth of the cave. She would have accompanied him, but he explained the difficulties she would find.
‘It is quite dark until the tide comes in, and then we get the reflected light from the water and you can see your way about quite easily.’
‘Is there anybody there?’
He nodded.
‘Two chaps who are tinkering about with a boat. She’s high and dry at present on the bed of the channel, but she floats out quite easily.’
The Casefiles of Mr J. G. Reeder Page 48
