Red Aces

by Edgar Wallace

  She got up and walked to the window and looked out. What was she going to say? A most ghastly thought occurred to Mr Reeder, one that made a cold shiver down his spine. But it was not that, for she turned suddenly.

  “Tommy has been robbed of twenty-three thousand pounds,” she said.

  He stared at her owlishly.

  “Robbed?” She nodded. “When?”

  “More than a year ago – before I met him. That is not why he is selling motor-cars on commission. He tries to sell them, but he isn’t very successful. His partner robbed him. They had a motor-car business. Tommy and this man Seafield were at Oxford together, and when they came down they started a motor-car agency. Tommy went to Germany to negotiate for an agency. When he came back Seafield had gone. He did not even leave a note – he just drew the money from the bank and went away.”

  She saw a new light in Mr Reeder’s eyes and could not but marvel that what to him was so small a matter should be of such immediate interest.

  “And no message with his wife?… Unmarried, eh? H’m! He lived…”

  “At an hotel – he was a bachelor. No, he didn’t tell anybody there – just said he was going away for a day or two.”

  “Left his clothes behind and did not even pay his bill,” murmured Mr Reeder.

  Miss Gillette was surprised.

  “You know all about it, then?”

  “My queer mind,” he said simply.

  There was a tap at the outer door.

  “You had better see who that is,” said Mr Reeder.

  She went to the door and opened it. Standing on the mat outside was a clergyman, wearing a long black overcoat which reached to his heels. He looked at her dubiously.

  “Is this Mr Reeder’s office – the detective?” he asked.

  She nodded, regarding the unexpected visitor with interest. He was a man of fifty, with greying hair. A mild, rather pallid man, who seemed to be ill at ease, for the fingers that gripped his umbrella, which he held about its middle as though he were all ready to signal a cab, clasped and unclasped in his agitation.

  He looked at Mr Reeder helplessly. Mr Reeder, for his part, twiddled his thumbs and gazed at the visitor solemnly. It almost seemed that he was smitten dumb by the uniform of his visitor’s rectitude.

  “Won’t you sit down, please?” There was something of the churchwarden in Mr Reeder’s benevolent gesture.

  “The matter I wish to speak about – well, I hardly know how to begin,” said the clergyman.

  Here Mr Reeder could not help him. It was on his tongue to offer the conventional suggestion that the best way to begin any story was to tell the unvarnished truth. Somehow this hardly seemed a delicate thing to say to a man of the cloth, so he said nothing.

  “It concerns a man named Ralph – the merest acquaintance of mine…hardly that. I had corresponded with him on certain matters pertaining to the higher criticism. But I can hardly remember what points he raised or how I dealt with them. I never keep correspondence, not because I am unbusinesslike, but because letters have a trick of accumulating, and a filing system is a tyranny to which I will never submit.”

  Mr Reeder’s heart could have warmed to this frank man. He loathed old letters and filing was an abominable occupation.

  “This morning I had a call from Mr Ralph’s daughter. She lives with her father at Bishop’s Stortford in Essex. Apparently she came upon my name written on an envelope which she found in a wastepaper basket in her father’s office – he had a small office in Lower Regent Street, where he attended to whatever business he had.”

  “What was his business?” asked Mr Reeder.

  “Actually he had none. He was a retired provision merchant who had made a fortune in the City. He may have had, and probably has, one or two minor interests to occupy his spare time. He came up to town last Thursday – curiously enough, I had a telephone call from him at my hotel when I was out. Since that day he has not been seen.”

  “Dear me!” said Mr Reeder. “What a coincidence!”

  Dr Ingham looked a painful enquiry.

  “That you should have thought of me,” said Mr Reeder. “It is very odd that people who lose people always come to me. And the young lady – she told you all this?”

  Dr Ingham nodded.

  “Yes. She is naturally worried. It appears that she had a friend, a young man, who did exactly the same thing. Just walked out of his hotel and disappeared. There may be explanations, but it is very difficult to tell a young lady–”

  “Very,” Mr Reeder coughed discreetly, and said “very” again. “She suggested that you should come to me?”

  The clergyman nodded. He appeared to be embarrassed by the nature of his mission.

  “To be exact, she wished to come herself – I thought it was a friendly thing to interview you on her behalf. I am not a poor man, Mr Reeder; I am, in fact, rather a rich man, and I feel that I should render whatever assistance is possible to this poor young lady. My dear wife would, I am sure, heartily endorse my action – I have been married twenty-three years, and I have never found myself in disagreement with the partner of my joys and sorrows. You, as a married man–”

  “Single,” said Mr Reeder, not without a certain amount of satisfaction. “Alas! Yes, I am – um – single.”

  He looked at his new client glumly.

  “The young lady is staying–”

  “In town, yes,” nodded the other. “At Haymarket Central Hotel. You will take this case?”

  Mr Reeder pulled at his nose and fingered his close-clipped side-whiskers. He settled his glasses on his nose and took them off again.

  “Which case?” he asked.

  Dr Ingham was pained.

  “The case I have outlined.” He groped beneath his clerical coat and produced a card. “I have written Mr Lance Ralph’s office address on the back of my card–”

  J G took the card and read its written inscription; turned it over and read the printed inscription. This gentleman was a doctor of divinity, and lived at Grayne Hall, near St Margaret’s Bay, in the County of Kent.

  “There isn’t a case,” said Mr Reeder with the tenderness of one who is breaking bad news. “People are entitled to – um – disappear. Quite a number of people, my dear Dr Ingham, refuse to exercise that right, I am sorry to say. They disappear to Brighton, to Paris, but re-appear at later intervals. It is a common phenomenon.”

  The cleric looked at him anxiously, and passed his umbrella from one hand to the other.

  “Perhaps I haven’t told you everything that should have been told,” he said. “Miss Ralph had a fiancé – a young man in a prosperous business, as she tells me, who also vanished, leaving his partner–”

  “You are referring to Mr Seafield?” But to his surprise, and perhaps to his annoyance, the clergyman showed no sign of amazement.

  “Joan has a great friend in your office. Am I right in surmising it is the young lady who opened the door to me? This is how your name came up. We were discussing whether she should go to the police, when she mentioned your name. I thought you were the least unpleasant alternative, if you don’t mind that description.”

  Mr Reeder bowed graciously. He did not mind.

  There followed an uncomfortable lacuna of silence, which neither of the men seemed inclined to fill. Mr Reeder ushered the visitor to the door and went back to his desk, and for five minutes scribbled aimlessly on his blotting pad. He had a weakness for making grotesque drawings, and was putting an extra long nose upon the elongated head of one of his fanciful sketches when Miss Gillette came in unannounced.

  “Well, what do you think of that?” she asked.

  Mr Reeder stared at her.

  “What do I think of what, Miss Gillette?” he demanded.

  “Poor Joan, and she is such a darling. We have kept o
ur friendship all through the Seafield business–”

  “But how did you know about it?”

  Mr Reeder was very seldom bewildered, but he was frankly bewildered now.

  “I was listening at the door,” said Miss Gillette shamelessly. “Well, not exactly listening, but I left my door open and he talks very loudly; parsons get that way, don’t they?”

  J G Reeder’s face wore an expression that was only comparable to that of a wounded fawn.

  “It is very – um – wrong to listen,” he began, but she dismissed all questions of propriety with an airy wave of her hand.

  “It doesn’t matter whether it’s right or wrong. Where is Joan staying?”

  This was a moment when Mr J G Reeder should have risen with dignity, opened the door, pressed a fortnight’s wages into her hand, and dismissed her to the outer darkness, but he allowed the opportunity to pass.

  “Can I bring Tommy to see you?”

  She leant upon the table, resting her palms on the edge. Her enthusiasm was almost infectious.

  “Tommy doesn’t look clever, but he really is, and he’s always had a theory about Seafield’s bolting. Tommy says that Frank Seafield would never have bought a letter of credit–”

  “Did he have a letter of credit? I thought you told me that he drew the money out of the bank?”

  Miss Gillette nodded.

  “It was a letter of credit,” she said emphatically, “for £6,300. That’s how we knew he had gone abroad. The letter was cashed in Berlin and Vienna.”

  For a long time Mr J G Reeder looked out of the window.

  “I should like to talk with Tommy,” he said gravely, and when he looked round Miss Gillette had gone.

  For a quarter of an hour he sat with his hands folded on his lap, his pale eyes fixed vacantly on the chimney-pot of a house on the opposite side of the street, and then he heard a knock on the outer door. Rising slowly, he went out and opened it. The last person he expected to see was Inspector Gaylor.

  “The Litnoff murder – are you interested?”

  Mr Reeder was interested in all murders, but not especially in the Litnoff case.

  “Do you know that Jake Alsby was on his way to see you?”

  Jake Alsby – Mr Reeder frowned; he knew the name, and, going over the file of his mind, could place him.

  “So far as my own opinion goes, Jake is a dead man,” said Gaylor. “He had been drinking with the Russian, who had quite a lot of money in his possession. A few minutes after they left the bar Litnoff was shot, and Jake, bolting for his life, was found in possession of a loaded pistol. Men have been hanged on less evidence than that.”

  “I – um – doubt it. Not the fact that men have been – er – hanged on insufficient evidence, but that our poor friend was the guilty person. Jake is a ‘regular’, and regulars do not carry guns – not in this country.”

  Gaylor smiled significantly.

  “He was searching for you,” he said. “He admits as much, and that makes his present attitude a little queer. For now he wants you to get him out of his trouble!”

  “Dear me!” said Mr Reeder, faintly amused.

  “He thinks if he could see you for a few minutes and tell you what happened, you would walk out of Brixton Prison and lay your hand upon the man who committed the murder. There’s a compliment for you!”

  “Seriously?” J G Reeder was frowning again.

  Gaylor nodded.

  “It’s rum, isn’t it? The fellow was undoubtedly on his way to give you hell and yet the first thing he does when he gets into trouble is to squeak to you for help! Anyway, the Public Prosecutor says he would like you to see him. Brixton has been notified. They know you there, and if you feel like listening to a few more or less fantastic lies, you ought to have an interesting evening.”

  He had in his pocket-book two press cuttings which fairly covered the Litnoff shooting. Mr Reeder accepted them with every evidence of gratitude, although he had very complete particulars of the case in the drawer of his writing table.

  Gaylor had one quality which Mr Reeder admired – he was no “lingerer”. There were many interesting people in the world who did not know where their interest ended: men who outstayed the excuse for their presence and dawdled from subject to subject. Gaylor was blessed with a sense of drama and could make his abrupt exit upon an effective line. He made such an exit now.

  “You needn’t ask him to tell you about the diamond clasp,” he said. “He’ll tell you that! But don’t forget that the last time Litnoff was charged that bizarre note came into the evidence.”

  Inspector Gaylor was a well read man and used words like “bizarre” without self-conscious effort.

  When he had gone, Mr Reeder fixed his glasses and read the cuttings which the detective had left. He found nothing that he did not already know. Jake Alsby was, as he had said, a “regular”, an habitual criminal with a working knowledge of the common law in so far as it affected himself. No old lag carries firearms, especially an old lag who is a convict on licence, and is liable to be arrested at sight. Judges are most unsympathetic in their attitude toward armed criminals, and Jake and his fellows knew too well the penalties of illicit armament to take the dreadful risk of being found in possession of an automatic pistol.

  J G had a criminal mind. He knew exactly what he would have done had he been Jake Alsby and had shot his companion. He would have thrown away the pistol before he bolted. That Jake had not done so was proof to him that he was unaware that the pistol was in his pocket.

  He was musing on this matter when he heard the door of the outer office open and the sound of low voices. A moment later Miss Gillette came in, a little out of breath. She closed the door behind her.

  “I’ve brought them both,” she said rapidly. “I ’phoned to Joan – she was just going out… Can I ask them to come in?”

  He felt that it was almost an act of humility that she should ask his permission, and bowed his assent.

  Tommy Anton was a tall young man; the sort that perhaps two women in the course of the years would regard as good-looking, but the rest would scarcely notice. Joan Ralph, on the other hand, was distinctly pretty and unusual. She was dark and clear-skinned, and had one of those supple figures that gave Mr Reeder the impression that its owner did not wear sufficient clothes for warmth or safety.

  “This is Tommy, and this is Joan.” Miss Gillette introduced them unnecessarily, for Mr Reeder could hardly have mistaken one for the other.

  The moment he saw them, he knew they would have nothing new to tell him if they were left to tell their own stories. He listened with great patience to the repetition of all he knew.

  Tommy Anton gave a graphic description of his own amazement, consternation and emotions when he had discovered that his partner had vanished. He paid a loyal tribute to the character and qualities of the missing man –

  “Did Mr Seafield ever talk to you about a diamond brooch?” interrupted Mr Reeder.

  Tommy stared at him.

  “No – we were in the car trade. He seldom discussed his private affairs. Of course, I knew about Joan–”

  “Did your father ever speak of a diamond brooch or clasp?” Mr Reeder addressed the girl, and she shook her head.

  “Never…he never spoke about jewellery except – that was years ago when I first met Frank – Daddy put some money into the Pizarro expedition and so did Frank; they were awfully enthusiastic about it.”

  Mr Reeder looked up at the ceiling and went rapidly over the folders of his memory. When she was on the point of explaining, he stopped her with a gesture.

  “Pizarro expedition…1923…to recover the buried treasure of the Incas. It was organized by Antonio Pizarro, who claimed to be a descendant of the conqueror of Peru…his real name was Bendini –a New York Italian with three convictions f
or high-class swindles…the company was registered in London, and all the people who put money into the scheme lost it – isn’t that right?”

  He beamed at her triumphantly and she smiled.

  “I don’t know so much about it as you. Daddy put five hundred pounds into it and Frank put a hundred – he was at Oxford then. I know they lost their money. Frank didn’t mind very much, but Daddy was annoyed, because he was sure there were great treasure houses in Peru that had yet to be discovered.”

  “And was there a talk of diamond brooches?” asked Mr Reeder.

  She hesitated.

  “Jewels – I don’t remember that there was anything said about brooches.”

  J G wrote down three words, one of which, she saw, was “Pizarro”. The second seemed to bear some resemblance to “Murphy”. She thought the association of the two names was a little incongruous. He questioned her shortly about her own situation. She had a small private income and there was no immediate urgency so far as money was concerned.

  And then she asked if she could see him alone. Mr Reeder had a happy feeling that Miss Gillette entirely disapproved of the request. She could do no less than withdraw, taking her Tommy with her. He found himself being sorry for that dumb and ordinary young man – so ordinary indeed that Mr Reeder for the first time became conscious of his mental superiority to his secretary.

  He had even the courage to open the door and look out. The murmur of voices from Miss Gillette’s room assured him that they were safe from the eavesdropping propensities of that curious young lady.

  “Mr Reeder,” he realized from her tone that Joan Ralph was finding some difficulty in fitting her thoughts into words, “I suppose it has occurred to you that my father may have gone off with – somebody. I am not stupid about these things and I know that men of his age do have – well, affairs. But I am perfectly sure that Daddy had none. Dr Ingham hinted tactfully that this might be the situation; the doctor was awfully sweet about it, but I know that theory is wrong. Daddy had no friends. I used to open all his letters and there was never one that he objected to my seeing.”