Red Aces

by Edgar Wallace

  He was gone ten minutes. Mr Reeder had an opportunity of walking round the car and admiring it.

  Rain had fallen in the night: he made this interesting discovery before Desboyne returned.

  “We’ll run up to Marlow and I’ll get a man to go down and collect the boat,” he said as he climbed in. “I’ve never heard anything more amazing. Tell me exactly what happened to you?”

  Mr Reeder smiled sadly.

  “You will pardon me if I do not?” he asked gently. “The truth is, I have been asked by a popular newspaper to write my reminiscences, and I want to save every personal experience for that important volume.”

  He would talk about other subjects, however; for example, of the fortunate circumstance that Desboyne’s car was still there though it was within reach of the enemy.

  “I’ve never met him before. I hope I’ll never meet him again,” said Desboyne. “But I think he can be traced. Naturally, I don’t want to go into court against him. I think it’s the most ridiculous experience, to be shot at without replying.”

  “Why bother?” asked Mr Reeder. “I personally never go into court to gratify a private vendetta, though there is a possibility that in the immediate future I may break the habit of years!”

  He got down at the boathouse and was a silent listener whilst Clive Desboyne rang up a Twickenham number and described the exact location of the boat.

  “They’ll collect it,” he said as he hung up. “Now, Mr Reeder, what am I to do about the police?”

  Mr Reeder shook his head.

  “I shouldn’t report it,” he said. “They’d never understand.”

  On the way back to town he grew more friendly to Clive Desboyne than he had ever been before, and certainly he was more communicative than he had been regarding the Attymar murder.

  “You’ve never seen a murder case at first hand–”

  “And I’m not very anxious to,” interrupted the other.

  “I applaud that sentiment. Young people are much too morbid,” said Mr Reeder. “But this is a crime particularly interesting, because it was obviously planned by one who has studied the art of murder and the methods of the average criminal. He had studied it to such good purpose that he was satisfied that if a crime of this character were committed by a man of intelligence and acumen, he would – um – escape the consequence of his deed.”

  “And will he?” asked the other, interested.

  “No,” said Mr Reeder, rubbing his nose. He thought for a long time. “I don’t think so. I think he will hang; I am pretty certain he will hang.”

  Another long pause.

  “And yet in a sense he was very clever. For example, he had to attract the attention of the policeman on the beat and establish the fact that a murder had been committed. He left open the wicket gate on the – um – wharf, and placed a lantern on the ground and another within the open door of his little house, so that the policeman, even if he had been entirely devoid of curiosity, could not fail to investigate.”

  Clive Desboyne frowned.

  “Upon my life I don’t know who is murdered! It can’t be Attymar, because you saw him today; and it can’t possibly be Ligsey, because, according to your statement, he is alive. Why did Johnny Southers go there?”

  “Because he’d been offered a job, a partnership with Attymar. Attymar had two or three barges, and with vigorous management it looked as if his business might grow into a more important concern. Southers didn’t even know that this man Attymar was the type of creature he was. An appointment was made on the telephone; Southers attended; he interviewed Attymar or somebody in the dark, during which time I gather he was sprinkled with blood – whose blood, we shall discover. There was a similar case in France in eighteen-forty-seven. Madame Puyeres…”

  He gave the history of the Puyeres case at length.

  “That was our friend’s cleverness, the blood-sprinkling, the lantern-placing, the removal of Mr – um – I forget his name for the moment, the theatrical agent of unsavoury reputation. But he made one supreme error. You know the house – no, of course, you’ve never been there.”

  “Which house?” asked Clive curiously.

  “Attymar’s house. It’s little more than a weighing shed. You haven’t been there? No, I see you haven’t. If you would like a little lecture, or a little demonstration of criminal error, I would like to show you at first-hand.”

  “Will it save Johnny Southers – this mistake?” asked Desboyne curiously.

  Mr Reeder nodded.

  “Nothing is more certain. How amazing are the – um – vagaries of the human mind! How peculiar are the paths into which – um – vanity leads us!”

  He closed his eyes and seemed to be communing with himself all the way through Shepherd’s Bush. Mr Desboyne put him down at Scotland Yard, and they arranged to meet at the end of Shadwick Lane that same afternoon.

  “There is no further news of Ligsey,” said Gaylor when Reeder came into his office.

  “I should have been surprised if there had been,” said Mr Reeder cheerfully, “partly because he’s dead, and partly because – well, I didn’t expect any communication from him.”

  “You know he telephoned to the chief last night?”

  “I shouldn’t be surprised at that,” said Mr Reeder, almost flippantly.

  They talked about Johnny Southers and the case against him, and of the disappointing results of a careful search of the garden. They had dug up every bed and had done incalculable damage to Mr Southers’ herbaceous borders.

  “Our information was that he had a couple of thousand pounds cached there in real money, but we found nothing.”

  “How much was there in the box you discovered in the tool shed?”

  “Oh, only a hundred pounds or so,” said Gaylor. “The big money was hidden in the garden, according to what we were told. We didn’t find a cent!”

  “Too bad,” said Mr Reeder sympathetically. Then, remembering: “Do you mind if I take a young – um – friend of mine over Attymar’s house this afternoon? He is not exactly interested in the crime of wilful murder, but as he is providing for the defence of young Mr Southers–”

  “I don’t mind,” said Gaylor, “but you had better ask the chief.”

  The Chief Constable was out, and the opportunity of meeting him was rendered more remote when Clive Desboyne rang him up, as he said, on the off-chance of getting him at Scotland Yard, and invited him out to lunch.

  “Anna Welford is coming. I have told her you think that Johnny’s innocence can be established, and she’s most anxious to meet you.”

  Mr Reeder was in something of a predicament, but, as usual, he rose to the occasion. He instantly cancelled two important engagements to meet this, and at lunch-time he sat between a delighted girl and a rather exhilarated benefactor. The one difficulty he had anticipated did not, however, arise. She had some shopping to do that afternoon, so he went alone with Clive Desboyne to what the latter described as “the most gruesome after-lunch entertainment” he had ever experienced.

  9

  A car dropped them at the end of Shadwick Lane, which had already settled down to normality and had grown accustomed to the notoriety which the murder had brought to it.

  There was a constable on duty on the wharf, but he was inside the gate. Mr Reeder opened the wicket and Clive Desboyne stepped in. He looked round the littered yard with disgust visible on his face.

  “How terribly sordid!” he said. “I am not too fastidious, but I can’t imagine anything more grim and miserable than this.”

  “It was grimmer for the – um – gentleman who was killed,” said Mr Reeder.

  He went into the house ahead of his companion, pointed out the room where the murder was committed, “as I feel perfectly sure,” he added; and then led the way up the narrow stairs into what
had been Captain Attymar’s sitting-room.

  “If you sit at that table you’ll see the plan of the house, and I may show you one or two very interesting things.”

  Mr Reeder switched on a hand-lamp on the table and Clive Desboyne sat down, and followed, apparently entranced, the recital of J G Reeder’s theory.

  “If you have time – what is the time?”

  Clive Desboyne looked up at the ceiling, stared at it for a while.

  “Let me guess,” he said slowly. “Four o’clock.”

  “Marvellous,” murmured Mr Reeder. “It is within one minute. How curious you should look up at the ceiling! There used to be a clock there.”

  “In the ceiling?” asked the other incredulously.

  He rose, walked to the window and stared out on to the wharf. From where he stood he could see the policeman on duty at the gate.

  There was nobody watching at a little door in the ragged fence which led to Shadwick Passage. Suddenly Mr Clive Desboyne pointed to the wharf.

  “That is where the murder was committed,” he said quietly.

  Mr Reeder took a step towards the window and cautiously craned his neck forward. He did not feel the impact of the rubber truncheon that crashed against the base of his skull, but went down in a heap.

  Clive Desboyne looked round, walked to the door and listened, then stepped out, locked the door, came down the stairs and on to the wharf. The policeman eyed him suspiciously, but Mr Desboyne turned and carried on a conversation with the invisible Reeder.

  He strolled round to the front of the house. Nobody saw him open the little gate into the passage. The end of Shadwick Lane was barred, but Gaylor did not remember the passage until too late. It was he who found Reeder and brought him back to consciousness.

  “I deserve that,” said Mr Reeder when he became articulate. “Twice in one day! I am getting too old for this work.”

  10

  One of those amazing things which so rarely happen, that fifty-thousand-to-one-against chance, had materialized, and the high chiefs of Scotland Yard grew apoplectic as they asked the why and the wherefore. A man wanted by the police on a charge of murder had walked through a most elaborate cordon. River police had shut off the waterway; detectives and uniform men had formed a circle through which it was impossible to escape; yet the wanted man had, by the oddest chance, passed between two detectives who had mistaken him for somebody they knew.

  Whilst Reeder was waiting at Scotland Yard he explained in greater detail the genesis of his suspicion.

  “The inquiries I made showed me that Attymar was never seen in daylight, except by his crew, and then only in the fading light. He had established buying agencies in a dozen continental cities, and for years he has been engaged in scientific smuggling. But he could only do that if he undertook the hardships incidental to a barge-master’s life. He certainly reduced those hardships to a minimum, for, except to collect the contraband which was dumped near his barge, and bring it up to the wharf he had first hired and then bought in the early stages of his activity, he spent few nights out of his comfortable bed.

  “I was puzzled to account for many curious happenings. If Clive Desboyne had not taken the trouble to appear in Brockley at almost the hour at which the crime would be discovered – he knew the time the policeman came down Shadwick Lane – my suspicions might not have been aroused. It was a blunder on his part, even with his clever assumption of frankness, to come along and tell me the story of what Ligsey had told him; for as soon as the crime was discovered and I examined the place, I was absolutely certain that Ligsey was dead, or Clive would never have dared to invent the story.

  “Desboyne prides himself on being a clever criminal. Like all criminals who have that illusion, he made one or two stupid blunders. When I called at his flat I found the walls covered with photographs, some of which showed him in costume. It was the first intimation I had that he had been on the stage. There was also a photograph of the Zaira when it was going upstream, with the House of Commons in the background. Attached by the painter at the stern was a small canoe-shaped tender, which had been faithfully described to me that day by the boy Hobbs. Desboyne knew he had blundered, but hoped I saw no significance in those two photographs, especially the photograph of him dressed as a coster, with the identical make-up that Attymar wore.

  “I started inquiries, and discovered that there had been a C Desboyne who worked in music-halls, giving imitations of popular characters and making remarkably quick changes on the stage. I met people who remembered him, some who gave me the most intimate details about his beginnings. For ten years he masqueraded as Attymar, sunk all his savings in a barge, rented the wharf and house, and eventually purchased it. He is an extraordinary organizer, and there is no doubt that in the ten years he has been working he has accumulated a pretty large fortune. Nobody, of course, associated the barge-master with this elegant young man who lived in Park Lane.

  “What Ligsey knew about him I don’t know. Personally, I believe that Ligsey knew very little, and could have told us very little. Attymar discovered that Ligsey was communicating with me. Do you remember the letter he sent to me? I told you the envelope had been opened – and so it had, probably by ‘Attymar’. From that moment Ligsey was doomed. Clive’s vanity was such that he thought he could plan a remarkable crime, throw the suspicion upon the man he hated, and at the same time remove Ligsey, the one danger, from his path. I should think that he had been planning Johnny Southers’ end for about three weeks before the murder. The money that was found in the tool house was planted there on the actual night of the murder, while the money in the garden–”

  “Money in what garden?” asked Mason. “The garden was searched but none was found.”

  Mr Reeder coughed.

  “At any rate, the money in the tool house was put there to support the suspicion. It was clumsily done. The message on the piece of paper, the old invoices, as well as the story that Desboyne told me with such charming effect, were designed with two objects. One was to cover the disappearance of Attymar and the other to ruin Southers.

  “But perhaps his cleverest and most audacious trick was the one he performed this morning. He had me in his boat; he had been waiting for me; probably had watched me from the moment I arrived at Bourne End. Then, wearing his fantastic get-up, and jealous to the very last that I should suspect him, he planned his scheme for my – um – unpleasant exit. I give him credit for his resourcefulness. As a quick change artist he has probably few equals. He could go on to the bank and deceive the boat-builder from Bourne End. Who could believe that he was a little old man with a humped shoulder? He could equally come to my rescue when there was no other way of throwing suspicion from himself. Unfortunately for him, I saw not only that the car had been in the grounds all night, and that his story of having driven down from town was a lie, but – um – certain other things.”

  The telephone bell rang, and Mason took up the instrument.

  “He went out a quarter of an hour ago – you don’t know where?… It was Desboyne, was it? She didn’t say where she was meeting him?”

  Reeder sighed and rose wearily.

  “Do I understand that Miss Anna Welford has been allowed to leave her house?” There was a quality of exasperation in his tone, and Mr Mason could not but agree that it was justified. For the first request that Reeder had made, and that by telephone from Rotherhithe, was that a special guard should be put over Anna Welford. Certain of Mr Mason’s local subordinates, however, thought that the least likely thing that could happen would be that Desboyne would come into the neighbourhood, and here they were right. Matters had been further complicated by the fact that the girl had gone out that day, and was still out when the police officers called. She had rung up, however, a moment before Desboyne had telephoned, and had given her number, which was transferred to him. Later, when she was called up at the address s
he had given, it was discovered that she had gone out to meet him; nobody knew where.

  “So really,” said Gaylor, “nobody is to blame.”

  “Nobody ever is!” snapped Mr Reeder.

  It was Mr Clive Desboyne’s little conceit that he should arrange to meet the girl at the corner of the Thames Embankment, within fifty yards of Scotland Yard. When she arrived in some hurry, she saw nothing that would suggest that anything unusual had happened, except the good news he had passed to her over the telephone.

  “Where is Johnny?” she asked, almost before she was within talking distance, and he was amused.

  “I really ought to be very jealous,” he bantered her.

  He called a taxicab as he spoke, and ordered the man to drive him to an address in Chiswick.

  “Reeder hasn’t been on to you, of course? I’m glad – I wanted to be the first to tell you.”

  “Is he released?” she asked, a little impatiently.

  “He will be released this evening. I think that is best. The authorities are very chary of demonstrations, and Scotland Yard have particularly asked that he should give no newspaper interviews, but shall spend the night, if possible, out of town. I have arranged with my cousin that he shall stay at his place till tomorrow.”

  It all seemed very feasible, and when of his own accord he stopped the cab and, getting out to telephone, returned to tell her that he had ’phoned her father that she would not be back before eight, the thought of his disinterestedness aroused a warm little glow of friendship towards him.

  “I have been besieged by reporters myself, and I’m rather anxious to avoid them. These damned papers will do anything for a sensation.”

  The swift express van of one of these offending newspapers passed the taxi at that moment. On its back doors was pasted a placard.