The Casefiles of Mr J. G. Reeder

by Edgar Wallace

  She hesitated no longer. In a second she was flying; up that awful staircase, death on her right hand, but a more hideous fate behind. Higher and higher, up those unrailed stairs . . . she dared not look, she dared not think, she could only keep her eyes steadfastly upwards into the misty gloom where this interminable Jacob’s ladder ended on some solid floor. Not for a fortune would she have looked behind, or vertigo would have seized her. Her breath was coming in long sobs; her heart beat as though it would burst. She dared pause for an infinitesimal time to recover breath before she continued her flight. He was an old man; she could outdistance him. But he was a mad­man, a thing of terrible and abnormal energy. Panic was leaving her; it exhausted too much other strength. Upward and upward she climbed, until she was in gloom, and then, when it seemed that she could get no farther, she reached the head of the stairs. A broad, flat space, with a rocky roof which, for some reason, had been strengthened with concrete pillars. There were dozens of these pillars . . . once she had taken a fortnight’s holiday in Spain; there was a cathedral in Cordova, of which this broad vault reminded her . . . all sense of direction was lost now. She came with terrifying suddenness to a blank wall; ran along it until she came to a narrow opening where there were five steps, and here she stopped to turn on her light. Facing her was a steel door with a great iron handle, and the steel door was ajar.

  She pulled it towards her, ran through, pulled the door behind her; it fastened with a click. It had something attached to its inner side, a steel projection . . . as she shut the door a box fell with a crash. There was yet another door before her, and this was immovable. She was in a tiny white box of a room, three feet wide, little more in depth. She had no time to continue her observations. Someone was fumbling with the handle of the door through which she had come. She gripped in desperation at the iron shelf and felt it slide a little to the right. Though she did not know this, the back part of the shelf acted as a bolt. Again she heard the fumbling at the handle and the click of a key turning, but the steel door remained immovable, and Margaret Belman sank in a heap to the ground.

  Chapter 18

  J. G. Reeder came downstairs, and those who saw his face realised that it was not the tragedy he had almost witnessed which had made him so white and drawn.

  He found Gray in Daver’s office, waiting for his call to London. It came through as Reeder entered the room, and he took the instru­ment from his subordinate’s hand. He dismissed the death of Daver in a few words, and went on.

  ‘I want all the local policemen we can muster, Simpson, though I think it would be better if we could get soldiers. There’s a garrison town five miles from here; the beaches have to be searched, and I want these caves explored. There is another thing: I think it would be advisable to get a destroyer or something to patrol the water before Siltbury. I’m pretty sure that Flack has a motor-boat – there’s a channel deep enough to take it, and apparently there is a cave that stretches right under the cliff . . . Miss Belman? I don’t know. That is what I want to find out.’

  Simpson told him that the gold-wagon had been seen at Seven­oaks, and it required a real effort on Mr Reeder’s part to bring his mind to such a triviality.

  ‘I think soldiers will be best. I’d like a strong party posted near the quarry. There’s another cave there where Daver used to keep his wagons. I have an idea you might pick up the money tonight. That,’ he added, a little bitterly, ‘will induce the authorities to use the military!’

  After the ambulance had come and the pitiable wreck of Daver had been removed, he returned to the man’s suite with a party of masons he had brought up from Siltbury. Throwing open the lid of the divan, he pointed to the stone floor.

  ‘That flag works on a pivot,’ he said, ‘but I think it is fastened with a bolt or a bar underneath. Break it down.’

  A quarter of an hour was sufficient to shatter the stone flooring, and then, as he had expected, he found a narrow flight of stairs leading to a square stone room which remained very much as it had been for six hundred years. A dusty, bare apartment, which yielded its secret. There was a small open door and a very narrow passage, along which a stout man would walk with some difficulty, and which led to behind the panelling of Daver’s private office. Mr Reeder realised that anybody concealed here could hear every word that was spoken. And now he understood Daver’s frantic plea that he should lower his voice when he spoke of the marriage. Crazy Jack had learnt the secret of his daughter’s degradation – from that moment Daver’s death was inevitable.

  How had the madman escaped? That required very little explan­ation. At some remote period Larmes Keep had evidently been used as a show-place. He found an ancient wooden inscription fixed to the wall, which told the curious that this was the torture-chamber of the old Counts of Larme; it added the useful information that the dungeons were immediately beneath and approached through a stone trap. This the detectives found, and Mr Reeder had his first view of the vaulted dungeons of Larmes Keep.

  It was neither an impressive nor a thrilling exploration. All that was obvious was that there were three routes by which the murderer could escape, and that all three ways led back to the house, one exit being between the kitchen and the vestibule.

  ‘There is another way out,’ said Reeder shortly, ‘and we haven’t found it yet.’

  His nerves were on edge. He roamed from room to room, turning out boxes, breaking open cupboards, emptying trunks. One find he made: it was the marriage certificate, and it was concealed in the lining of Olga Crewe’s dressing-bag.

  At seven o’clock the first detachment of troops arrived by motor van. The local police had already reported that they had found no trace of Margaret Belman. They pointed out that the tide was falling when the girl left Larmes Keep, and that, unless she was lying on some invisible ledge, she might have reached the beach in safety. There was, however, a very faint hope that she was alive. How faint, J. H. Reeder would not admit.

  A local cook had been brought in to prepare dinner for the detec­tives, but Reeder contented himself with a cup of strong coffee – food, he felt, would have choked him.

  He had posted a detachment in the quarry, and, returning to the house, was sitting in the big hall pondering the events of the day, when Gray came flying into the room. ‘Brill!’ he gasped.

  J. G. Reeder sprang to his feet with a bound. ‘Brill?’ he repeated huskily. ‘Where is Brill?’ There was no need for Gray to point. A dishevelled and grimy figure, supported by a detective, staggered through the doorway.

  ‘Where have you come from?’ asked Reeder. The man could not speak for a second. He pointed to the ground, and then, hoarsely: ‘From the bottom of the well . . . Miss Belman is down there now!’

  Brill was in a state of collapse, and not until he had had a stiff dose of brandy was he able to articulate a coherent story. Reeder led a party to the shrubbery, and the windlass was tested.

  ‘It won’t bear even the weight of a woman, and there’s not suff­icient rope,’ said Gray, who made the test.

  One of the officers remembered that, in searching the kitchen, he had found two window cleaners’ belts, stout straps with a safety hook attached. He went in search of these, whilst Mr Reeder stripped his coat and vest.

  ‘There’s a gap of four feet half-way down,’ warned Brill. ‘The stone came away when I put my foot on it, and I nearly fell.’

  Reeder, his lamp slung round his neck, peered down into the hole.

  ‘It’s strange I didn’t see this ladder when I saw the well before,’ he said, and then remembered that he had only opened one half of the flap.

  Gray, who was also equipped with a belt, descended first, as he was the lighter of the two. By this time half a company of soldiers were on the scene, and by the greatest of good fortune the unit that had been turned out to assist the police was a company of the Royal Engineers. Whilst one party went in search of ropes, the ot
her began to extemporise a hauling gear.

  The two men worked their way down without a word. The lamps were fairly useless, for they could not show them the next rung, and after a while they began to move more cautiously. Gray found the gap and called a halt whilst he bridged it. The next rung was none too secure, Mr Reeder thought, as he lowered his weight upon it, but they passed the danger zone with no other mishap than that which was caused by big pebbles dropping on Reeder’s head.

  It seemed as though they would never reach the bottom, and the strain was already telling upon the older man, when Gray whispered: ‘This is the bottom, I think,’ and sent the light of his lamp down­wards. Immediately afterwards he dropped to the rocky floor of the passage, Mr Reeder following.

  ‘Margaret!’ he called in a whisper.

  There was no reply. He threw the light first one way and then the other, but Margaret was not in sight, and his heart sank.

  ‘You go farther along the passage,’ he whispered to Gray. ‘I’ll take the other direction.’

  With the light of his lamp on the ground, he half walked, half ran along the twisting gallery. Ahead of him he heard the sound of a movement not easily identified, and he stopped to extinguish the light. Moving cautiously forward, he turned an angle of the passage and saw at the far end indication of daylight. Sitting down, he looked along, and after a while he thought he saw a figure moving against this artificial skyline. Mr Reeder crept forward, and this time he was not relying upon a rubber truncheon. He thumbed down the safety-catch of his Browning and drew nearer and nearer to the figure. Most unexpectedly it spoke.

  ‘Olga, where has your father gone?’

  It was Mrs Burton, and Reeder showed his teeth in an unamused grin.

  He did not hear the reply: it came from some recessed place, and the sound was muffled.

  ‘Have they found that girl?’

  Mr Reeder listened breathlessly, craning his neck forward. The ‘No’ was very distinct.

  Then Olga said something that he could not hear, and Mrs Burton’s voice took on her old whine of complaint.

  ‘What’s the use of hanging about? That’s the way you’ve always treated me . . . Nobody would think I was your mother . . . I wonder I’m not dead, the trouble I’ve had . . . I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t murder me some day, you mark my words!’

  There came an impatient protest from the hidden girl.

  ‘If you’re sick of it, what about me?’ said Mrs Burton shrilly. ‘Where’s Daver? It’s funny your father hasn’t said anything about Daver. Do you think he’s got into trouble?’

  ‘Oh, damn Daver!’

  Olga’s voice was distinct now. The passion and weariness in it would have made Mr Reeder sorry for her in any other circum­stances. He was too busy being sorry for Margaret Belman to worry about this fateful young woman.

  She did not know, at any rate, that she was a widow. Mr Reeder derived a certain amount of gruesome satisfaction from the super­iority of his intelligence.

  ‘Where is he now? Your father, I mean?’

  A pause as she listened to a reply which was not intelligible to Mr Reeder.

  ‘On the boat? He’ll never get across. I hate ships, but a tiny little boat like that . . . ! Why couldn’t he let us go when we got him out? I begged and prayed him to . . . we might have been in Venice or somewhere by now, doing the grand.’

  The girl interrupted her angrily, and then Mrs Burton apparently melted into the wall.

  There was no sound of a closing door, but Mr Reeder guessed what had happened. He came forward stealthily till he saw the bar of light on the opposite wall, and, reaching the door, listened. The voices were clear enough now; clearer because Mrs Burton did most of the talking.

  ‘Do you think your father knows?’ She sounded rather anxious. ‘About Daver, I mean? You can keep that dark, can’t you? He’d kill me if he knew. He’s got such high ideas about you – princes and dukes and such rubbish! If he hadn’t been mad he’d have cleared out of this game years ago, as I told him, but he’d never take much notice of me.’

  ‘Has anybody ever taken any notice of you?’ asked the girl wearily. ‘I wanted the old man to let you go. I knew you would be useless in a crisis.’

  Mr Reeder heard the sound of a sob. Mrs Burton cried rather easily.

  ‘He’s only stopping to get Reeder,’ she whimpered. ‘What a fool trick! That silly old man! Why, I could have got him myself if I was wicked enough!’

  From farther along the corridor came the sound of a quick step.

  ‘There’s your father,’ said Mrs Burton, and Reeder pulled back the jacket of his Browning, sacrificing the cartridge that was already in the chamber, in order that there should be no mistake.

  The footsteps stopped abruptly, and at the same time came a booming voice from the far end of the passage. It was asking a question. Evidently Flack turned back: his footsteps died away. Mr Reeder decided that this was not his lucky day.

  Lying full length on the ground, he could see John Flack clearly. A pressure of his finger, and the problem of this evil man would be settled eternally. It was a fond idea. Mr Reeder’s finger closed around the trigger, but all his instincts were against killing in cold blood.

  Somebody was coming from the other direction, Gray, he guessed. He must go back and warn him. Coming to his feet, he went gingerly along the passage. The thing he feared happened. Gray must have seen him, for he called out in stentorian tones: ‘There’s nothing at the other end of the passage, Mr Reeder –’

  ‘Hush, you fool!’ snarled Reeder, but he guessed that the mischief was done. He turned round, stooped again and looked. Old John Flack was standing at the entrance of the tunnel, his head bent. Somebody else had heard the detective’s voice. With a squeak of fear, Mrs Burton had bolted into the passage, followed by her daughter – an excursion which effectively prevented the use of the pistol, for they completely masked the man whose destruction J. G. Reeder had privately sworn.

  By the time he came to the end of the passage overlooking the great cave, the two women and Flack had disappeared.

  Mr Reeder’s eyesight was of the keenest. He immediately located the boat, which was now floating on an even keel, and presently saw the three fugitives. They had descended to the water’s edge by a continuance of the long stairway which led to the roof, and were making for the rocky platform which served as a pier for the craft . . .

  Something smacked against the rock above his head. There was a shower of stone and dust, and the echoes of the explosion which followed were deafening.

  ‘Firing from the boat,’ said Mr Reeder calmly. ‘You had better lie down. Gray – I should hate to see so noisy a man as you reduced to compulsory silence.’

  ‘I am very sorry, Mr Reeder,’ said the penitent detective. ‘I had no idea –’

  ‘Ideas!’ said Mr Reeder accurately.

  Smack! . . . smack!

  One bullet struck to the left of him, the other passed exactly between him and Gray. He was lying down now, with a small pro­jection of rock for cover.

  Was Margaret on the boat? Even as the thought occurred to him, he remembered ‘Mrs Burton’s’ enquiry. As he saw another flash from the deck of the launch, he threw forward his hand. There was a double explosion which reverberated back from the arched roof, and although he could not see the effect of his shots, he was satisfied that the bullets fell on the launch.

  She was pushing off from the side. The three Flacks were aboard. And now he heard the crackle and crash of her engine as her nose swung round to face the cave opening. And then into his eyes from the darkening sea outside the cave flashed a bright light that illum­inated the rocky shelf on which he lay, and threw the motor-boat into relief.

  The destroyer!

  ‘Thank God for that!’ said Mr Reeder fervently. Those on the motor
-launch had seen the vessel and guessed its portent. The launch swung round until her nose pointed to where the two detectives lay, and from her deck came a roar louder than ever. So terrible was the noise in that confined space that for a second Mr Reeder was too dazed even to realise that he was lying half buried in a heap of debris, until Gray pulled him back to the passage. ‘They’re using a gun, a quick-firer!’ he gasped.

  Mr Reeder did not reply. He was gazing, fascinated, at something that was happening in the middle of the cave, where the water was leaping at irregular intervals from some mysterious cause. Then he realised what was taking place. Great rocks, disturbed by the con­cussion, were falling from the roof. He saw the motor-boat heel over to the right, swing round again, and head for the open. It was less than a dozen yards from the cave entrance when, with a sound that was indescribable, so terrific, so terrifying, that J. G. Reeder was rooted to the spot, the entrance to the cave disappeared!

  Chapter 19

  In an instant the air was filled with choking dust. Roar followed roar as the rocks continued to fall.

  ‘The mouth of the cave has collapsed!’ roared Reeder in the other’s ear. ‘And the subsidence hasn’t finished.’

  His first instinct was to fly along the passage to safety, but some­where in that awful void were two women. He switched on his light and crept gingerly back to the bench whence he had seen the cata­strophe. But the rays of the lamp could not penetrate into the fog of dust for more than a few yards.

  Crawling forward to the edge of the platform, he strove to pierce the darkness. All about him, above, below, on either side, a terrible cracking and groaning was going on, as though the earth itself was in mortal pain. Rocks, big and small, were falling from the roof; he heard the splash of them as they struck the water – one fell on the edge of the platform with a terrific din and bounded into the pit below.