Red Aces E-Book

Edgar Wallace

• Herausgeber: Librorium Editions
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

J. G. Reeder is a shabby little man with red hair and weak eyes. However, his extraordinary mind is rapier sharp. Here are three thrilling episodes torn from his casebook: Red Aces about a man who gambles high and lives in fear; Kennedy the Con Man, reveals the impeccable mask stripped from a fiend, and finally The Case of Jo Attymer, a thoroughly intriguing mystery involving murder on London's Thames.

Leseprobe

Other PAN Books by Edgar Wallace

THE YELLOW SNAKE

THE VALLEY OF GHOSTS

THE DOOR WITH SEVEN LOCKS

THE JOKER

THE FORGER

THE ANGEL OF TERROR

THE CALENDAR

AGAIN THE RINGER

THE MIND OF MR. J. G. REEDER

RED ACES

EDGAR WALLACE

UNABRIDGED

First Editions,1929

First published 1929 by Hodder & Stoughton Ltd.

This edition published 1961 by Pan Books Ltd.,

8 Headfort Place, London, S.W.1

2nd Printing 1962

3rd Printing 1963

To

My Friend and Secretary

R. G. Curtis

Printed in Great Britain by

CONTENTS

Red Aces

Kennedy the Con Man

The Case of Joe Attymar

Red Aces

RED ACES

CHAPTER 1

When a young man is very much in love with a most attractive girl he is apt to endow her with qualities and virtues which no human being has ever possessed. Yet at rare and painful intervals there enter into his soul certain wild suspicions, and in these moments he is inclined to regard the possibility that she may be guilty of the basest treachery and double dealing.

Everybody knew that Kenneth McKay was desperately in love. They knew it at the bank where he spent his days in counting other people’s money, and a considerable amount of his lunch hour writing impassioned and ill-spelt letters to Margot Lynn. His taciturn father, brooding over his vanished fortune in his gaunt riverside house at Marlow, may have employed the few moments he gave to the consideration of other people’s troubles in consideration of his son’s new interest. Probably he did not, for George McKay was entirely self-centred and had little thought but for the folly which had dissipated the money he had accumulated with such care, and the development of fantastical schemes for its recovery.

All day long, summer and winter, he sat in his study, a pack of cards before him, working out averages and what he called ‘inherent probabilities’, or at a small roulette wheel, where, alternately, he spun and recorded the winning numbers.

Kenneth went over to Beaconsfield every morning on his noisy motor-cycle and came back every night, sometimes very late, because Margot lived in London. She had a small flat where she could not receive him, but they dined together at the cheaper restaurants and sometimes saw a play. Kenneth was a member of an inexpensive London club which sheltered at least one sympathetic soul. Except Mr Rufus Machfield, the confident in question, he had no friends.

“And let me advise you not to make any here,” said Rufus.

He was a military-looking man of forty-five, and most people found him rather a bore, for the views which he expressed so vehemently, on all subjects from politics to religion, which are the opposite ends of the ethical pole, he had acquired that morning from the leading article of his favourite daily. Yet he was a genial person and a likeable man.

He had a luxurious flat in Park Lane, a French valet, a couple of hacks which he rode in the park, and no useful occupation.

“The Leffingham Club is cheap,” he said, “the food’s not bad, and it is near Piccadilly. Against that you have the fact that almost anybody who hasn’t been to prison can become a member——”

“The fact that I’m a member——” began Ken.

“You’re a gentleman and a public school man,” interrupted Mr Machfield a little sonorously. “You’re not rich, I admit——”

“Even I admit that,” said Ken, rubbing his untidy hair.

Kenneth was tall, athletic, as good-looking as a young man need be, or can be without losing his head about his face. He had called at the Leffingham that evening especially to see Rufus and confide his worries. And his worries were enormous. He looked haggard and ill; Mr Machfield thought it possible that he had not been sleeping very well. In this surmise he was right.

“It’s about Margot . . .” began the young man.

Mr Machfield smiled.

He had met Margot, had entertained the young people to dinner at his flat, and twice had invited them to a theatre party.

“We’ve had a row, Rufus. It began a week ago. For a long time her reticence has been bothering me. Why the devil couldn’t she tell me what she did for a living? I wouldn’t say this to a living soul but you—it is horribly disloyal to her, and yet it isn’t. I know that she has no money of her own, and yet she lives at the rate of a thousand a year. She says that she is secretary to a business man, but the office where she works is in her own name. And she isn’t there more than a few days a week and then only for a few hours.”

Mr Machfield considered the matter.

“She won’t tell you any more than that?”

Kenneth looked round the smokeroom. Except for a servant counting the cigars in a small mahogany cabinet, they were alone. He lowered his voice.

“She’ll never tell me any more . . . I’ve seen the man,” he said. “Margot meets him surreptitiously!”

Mr Machfield looked at him dubiously.

“Oh . . . what sort of a man?”

Kenneth hesitated.

“Well, to tell you the truth, he’s elderly. It was queer how I came to see them at all. I was taking a ride round the country on Sunday morning. Margot told me that she couldn’t come to us—I asked her to lunch with us at Marlow—because she was going out to London. I went through Burnham and stopped to explore a little wood. As a matter of fact, I saw two animals fighting—I think they were stoats—and I went after them——”

“Stoats can be dangerous,” began Mr Machfield. “I remember once——”

“Anyway I went after them with my camera. I’m rather keen on wild life photographs. And then I saw two people, a man and a girl, walking slowly away from me. The man had his arm round the girl’s shoulder. It rather made a picture—they stood in a patch of sunlight and with the trees as a background—well, it was rather an idyllic sort of picture. I put up my camera. Just as I pressed the button the man looked over his shoulder, and then the girl turned. It was Margot!”

He dabbed his brow with a handkerchief. Rufus was lightly amused to see anybody so agitated over so trifling a matter.

Kenneth swallowed his drink; his hand trembled.

“He was elderly—fifty . . . not bad looking. God! I could have killed them both! Margot was coolness itself, though she changed colour. But she didn’t attempt to introduce me or offer any kind of explanation.”

“Her father——” began Rufus.

“She has no father—no relations except her mother, who is an invalid and lives in Florence—at least I thought so,” snapped Kenneth.

“What did she do?”

The young man heaved a deep sigh.

“Nothing—— just said: ‘How queer meeting you!’ talked about the beautiful day, and when I asked her what it all meant and what this man was to her—he had walked on and left us alone—she flatly refused to say anything. Just turned on her heel and went after him.”

“Extraordinary!” said Mr Machfield. “You have seen her since?”

Kenneth nodded grimly.

“That same night she came to Marlow to see me. She begged me to trust her—she was really wonderful. It was terribly surprising to see her there at all. When I came down into the dining-room and found her there, I was knocked out—the servant didn’t say who she was and I kept her waiting.”

“Well?” asked his companion, when he paused.

“Well,” said Kenneth awkwardly, “one has to trust people one loves. She said that he was a relation—she never told me that she had one until then.”

“Except her mother who lives in Florence—that costs money, especially an invalid mother,” mused Rufus, fingering his long, clean-shaven upper lip. “What is the trouble now? You’ve quarrelled?”

Kenneth took a letter out of his pocket and passed it across to his friend, and Mr Machfield opened and read it.

Dear Kenneth: I’m not seeing you any more. I’m broken-hearted to tell you this. Please don’t try to see me—please! M.

“When did this come?”

“Last night. Naturally, I went to her flat. She was out. I went to her office—she was out. I was late for the bank and got a terrible roasting from the manager. To make matters worse, there’s a fellow dunning me for two hundred pounds—everything comes at once. I borrowed the money for dad. What with one thing and another I’m desperate.”

Mr Machfield rose from his chair.

“Come home and have a meal,” he said. “As for the money——”

“No, no, no!” Kenneth McKay was panic-stricken. “I don’t want to borrow from you—I won’t! Gad! I’d like to find that old swine and throttle him! He’s at the back of it! He has told her not to have anything more to do with me.”

“You don’t know his name?”

“No. He may live in the neighbourhood, but I haven’t seen him. I’m going to do a little detective work.” He added abruptly: “Do you know a man named Reeder—J.G. Reeder?”

Mr Machfield shook his head.

“He’s a detective,” explained Kenneth. “He has a big bank practice. He was down at our place today—queer-looking devil. If he could be a detective anybody could be!”

Mr Machfield said he recalled the name.

“He was in that railway robbery, wasn’t he? J. G. Reeder—yes. Pretty smart fellow—young?”

“He’s as old as—well, he’s pretty old. And rather old-fashioned.”

“Why do you mention him?” Mr Machfield was interested.

“I don’t know. Talking about detective work brought him into my mind, I suppose.”

Rufus snapped his finger to the waiter and paid his bill.

“You’ll have to take pot luck—but Lamontaine is a wonderful cook. He didn’t know that he was until I made him try.”

So they went together to the little flat in Park Lane, and Lamontaine, the pallid, middle-aged valet who spoke English with no trace of a foreign accent, prepared a meal that justified the praise of his master. In the middle of the dinner the subject of Mr Reeder arose again.

“What brought him to Beaconsfield—is there anything wrong at your bank?”

Rufus saw the young man’s face go red.

“Well—there has been money missing; not very large sums. I have my own opinion, but it isn’t fair to—well, you know.”

He was rather incoherent, and Mr Machfield did not pursue the inquiry.

“I hate the bank anyway—I mean the work. But I had to do something, and when I left Uppingham the governor put me there—in the bank, I mean. Poor dear, he lost his money at Monte Carlo or somewhere—enormous sums. You wouldn’t dream that he was a gambler. I’m not grousing, but it is a little trying sometimes.”

Mr Machfield accompanied him to the door that night and shivered.

“Cold—shouldn’t be surprised if we had snow,” he said.

In point of fact the snow did not come until a week later. It started as rain and became snow in the night, and in the morning people who lived in the country looked out upon a white world: trees that bore a new beauty and hedges that showed their heads above sloping drifts.

CHAPTER 2

There was a car coming from the direction of Beaconsfield. The horseman, sitting motionless in the centre of the snowy road, watched the lights grow brighter and brighter. Presently, in the glare of the headlamps, the driver of the car saw a mounted policeman in the centre of the road, saw the lift of his gloved hand, and stopped the machine. It was not difficult to stop, for the wheels were racing on the surface of the road, which had frozen into the worst qualities of glass. And snow was falling on top of this.

“Anything wrong——”

The driver began to shout the question, and then saw the huddled figure on the ground. It lay limply like a fallen sack; seemed at first glimpse to have nothing of human shape or substance.

The driver jumped out and went ploughing through the frozen snow.

“I just spotted him when I saw you,” said the policeman. “Do you mind turning your car just a little to the right—I want the lamps full on him.”

He swung to the ground and went, heavy-footed, to where the man lay.

The second inmate of the car got to the wheel and turned the machine with some difficulty so that the light blazed on the dreadful thing. The policeman’s horse strayed to the side of the car and thrust in his nodding head—he alone was unconcerned.

Taking his bridle with a shaking hand, the second man stepped out of the car and joined the other two.

“It is old Wentford,” said the policeman.

“Wentford . . . good God!”

The first of the two motorists fell on his knees by the side of the body and peered down into the grinning face.

Old Benny Wentford!

“Good God!” he said again.

He was a middle-aged lawyer, unused to such a horror. Nothing more terrible had disturbed the smooth flow of his life than an occasional quarrel with the secretary of his golf club. Now here was death, violent and hideous—a dead man on a snowy road . . . a man who had telephoned to him two hours before, begging him to leave a party and come to him, though the snow had begun to fall all over again.

“You know Mr Wentford—he has told me about you.”

“Yes, I know him. I’ve often called at his house—in fact, I called there tonight but it was shut up. He made arrangements with the Chief Constable that I should call . . . h’m!”

The policeman stood over the body, his hands on his hips.

“You stay here—I’ll go and phone the station,” he said.

He hoisted himself into the saddle.

“Er . . . don’t you think we’d better go?” Mr Enward, the lawyer, asked nervously. He had no desire to be left alone in the night with a battered corpse and a clerk whose trembling was almost audible.

“You couldn’t turn your car,” said the policeman—which was true, for the lane was very narrow.

They heard the jingle and thud of his horse’s canter and presently they heard it no more.

“Is he dead, Mr Enward?” The young man’s voice was hollow.

“Yes . . . I think so . . . the policeman said so.”

“Oughtn’t we to make sure? He may only be . . . injured?”

Mr Enward had seen the face in the shadow of an uplifted shoulder. He did not wish to see it again.

“Better leave him alone till a doctor comes . . . it is no use interfering in these things. Wentford . . . good God!”

“He’s always been a little bit eccentric, hasn’t he?” The clerk was young, and, curiosity being the tonic of youth, he had recovered some of his courage. “Living alone in that tiny cottage with all his money. I was bicycling past it on Sunday—a concrete box: that is what my young lady called it. With all his money——”

“He is dead, Henry,” said Mr Enward severely, “and a dead person has no property. I don’t think it quite—um—seemly to talk of him in—um—his presence.”

He felt the occasion called for an emotional display of some kind. He had never grown emotional over clients; least of all could this tetchy old man inspire such. A few words of prayer perhaps would not be out of place. But Mr Enward was a churchwarden of a highly respectable church and for forty years had had his praying done for him. If he had been a dissenter . . . but he was not. He wished he had a prayer book.

“He’s a long time gone.”

The policeman could not have been more than two hundred yards away, but it seemed a very long time since he had left.

“Has he any heirs?” asked the clerk professionally.

Mr Enward did not answer. Instead, he suggested that the lights of the car should be dimmed. They revealed this Thing too plainly. Henry went back and dimmed the lights. It became terribly dark when the lights were lowered, and eyesight played curious tricks: it seemed that the bundle moved. Mr Enward had a feeling that the grinning face was lifting to leer slyly at him over the humped shoulder.

“Put on the lights again, Henry,” the lawyer’s voice quavered. “I can’t see what I am doing.”

He was doing nothing; on the other hand, he had a creepy feeling that the Thing was behaving oddly. Yet it lay very still, just as it had lain all the time.

“He must have been murdered. I wonder where they went to?” asked Henry hollowly, and a cold shiver vibrated down Mr Enward’s spine.

Murdered! Of course he was murdered. There was blood on the snow, and the murderers were . . .

He glanced backward nervously and almost screamed. A man stood in the shadowy space behind the car: the light of the lamps reflected by the snow just revealed him.

“Who . . . who are you, please?” croaked the lawyer.

He added ‘please’ because there was no sense in being rough with a man who might be a murderer.

The figure moved into the light. He was slightly bent and even more middle-aged than Mr Enward. He wore a flat-topped felt hat, a long ulster and large, shapeless gloves. About his neck was an enormous yellow scarf, and Mr Enward noticed, in a numb, mechanical way, that his shoes were large and square toed and that he carried a tightly furled umbrella on his arm though the snow was falling heavily.

“I’m afraid my car has broken down a mile up the road.”

His voice was gentle and apologetic; obviously he had not seen the bundle. In his agitation Mr Enward had stepped into the light of the lamps and his black shadow sprawled across the deeper shadow.

“Am I wrong in thinking that you are in the same predicament?” asked the newcomer. “I was unprepared for the—er—condition of the road. It is lamentable that one should have overlooked this possibility.”

“Did you pass the policeman?” asked Mr Enward.

Whoever this stranger was, whatever might be his character and disposition, it was right and fair that he should know there was a policeman in the vicinity.

“Policeman?” The square-hatted man was surprised. “No, I passed no policeman. At my rate of progress it was very difficult to pass anything——”

“Going towards you . . . on horseback . . . a mounted policeman,” said Mr Enward rapidly. “He said that he would be back soon. My name is Enward—solicitor—Enward, Caterham and Enward.”

He felt it was a moment for confidence.

“Delighted!” murmured the other. “We’ve met before. My name—er—is Reeder—R, double E, D, E, R.”

Mr Enward took a step forward.

“Not the detective? I thought I’d seen you . . . look!”

He stepped out of the light and the heap on the ground emerged from shadow. The lawyer made a dramatic gesture. Mr Reeder came forward slowly.

He stooped over the dead man, took an electric torch from his pocket and shone it steadily on the face. For a long time he looked and studied. His melancholy face showed no evidence that he was sickened or pained.

“H’m!” he said, and got up, dusting the snow from his knee. He fumbled in the recesses of his overcoat, produced a pair of eyeglasses, set them crudely on his nose and surveyed the lawyer over their top.

“Very—um—extraordinary. I was on my way to see him.”

Enward stared.

“You were on your way? So was I! Did you know him?”

Mr Reeder considered this question.

“I—er—didn’t—er—know him. No, I had never met him.”

The lawyer felt that his own presence needed some explanation.

“This is my clerk, Mr Henry Greene.”

Mr Reeder bowed slightly.

“What happened was this. . . .”

He gave a very detailed and graphic description, which began with the recounting of what he had said when the telephone call came through to him at Beaconsfield, and how he was dressed and what his wife had said when she went to find his boots (her first husband had died through an ill-judged excursion into the night air on as foolish a journey), and how much trouble he had had in starting the car, and how long he had had to wait for Henry.

Mr Reeder gave the impression that he was not listening. Once he walked out of the blinding light and peered back the way the policeman had gone; once he went over to the body and looked at it again; but most of the time he was wandering down the lane, searching the ground with his handlamp, with Mr Enward following at his heels lest any of his narrative be lost.

“Is he dead . . . I suppose so?” suggested the lawyer.

“I—er—have never seen anybody—er—deader,” said Mr Reeder gently. “I should say, with all reverence and respect, that he was—er—extraordinarily dead.”

He looked at his watch.

“At nine-fifteen you met the policeman? He had just discovered the body? It is now nine-thirty five. How did you know that it was nine-fifteen?”

“I heard the church clock at Woburn Green strike the quarter.”

Mr Enward conveyed the impression that the clock struck exclusively for him. Henry halved the glory: he also had heard the clock.

“At Woburn Green—you heard the clock? H’m . . . nine-fifteen!”

The snow was falling thickly now. It fell on the heap and lay in the little folds and creases of his clothes.

“He must have lived somewhere about here?”

Mr Reeder asked the question with great deference.

“My directions were that his house lay off the main road . . . you would hardly call this a main road . . . fifty yards beyond a noticeboard advertising land for sale—desirable building land.”

Mr Enward pointed to the darkness.

“Just there—the noticeboard. Curiously enough, I am the—er—solicitor for the vendor.”

His natural inclination was to emphasize the desirability of the land, but he thought it was hardly the moment. He returned to the question of Mr Wentford’s house.

“I’ve only been inside the place once—two years ago, wasn’t it, Henry?”

“A year and nine months,” said Henry exactly.

His feet were cold, his spine chilled. He felt sick.

“You cannot see it from the lane,” Mr Enward continued. “Rather a small, one-storey cottage. He had it specially built for him apparently. It is not exactly . . . a palace.”

“Dear me!” said Mr Reeder, as though this were the most striking news he had heard that evening. “In a house he built himself! I suppose he has, or had, a telephone?”

“He telephoned to me,” said Mr Enward; “therefore he must have a telephone.”

Mr Reeder frowned as though he were trying to pick holes in the logic of this statement.

“I will go along and see if it is possible to get through to the police,” he suggested.

“The police have already been notified,” said the lawyer hastily. “I think we all ought to stay here together till somebody arrives.”

The man in the square hat, now absurdly covered with snow, shook his head. He pointed.

“Woburn Green is there. Why not go and arouse the—um—local constabulary?”

That idea had not occurred to the lawyer. His instinct urged him to return the way he had come and regain touch with realities in his own prosaic parlour.

“But do you think . . .” he blinked down at the body. “I mean, it’s hardly an act of humanity to leave him——”

“He feels nothing. He is probably in heaven,” said Mr Reeder, and added, “Probably. Anyway, the police will know exactly where they can find him.”

There was a sudden screech from Henry. He was holding out his hand in the light of the lamp.

“Look—blood!” he screamed.

There was blood on his hand certainly.

“Blood—I didn’t touch him! You know that, Mr Enward—I ain’t been anear him!”

Alas for our excellent system of secondary education! Henry was reverting to the illiterate stock whence he sprang.

“Not near him I ain’t been—blood!”

“Don’t squeak, please.” Mr Reeder was firm. “What have you touched?”

“Nothing—I only touched myself.”

“Then you have touched nothing,” said Mr Reeder with unusual acidity. “Let me look.”

The rays of his lamp travelled over the shivering clerk.

“It is on your sleeve—h’m!”

Mr Enward stared. There was a red, moist patch of something on Henry’s sleeve.

“You had better go on to the police station,” said Mr Reeder. “I will come and see you in the morning.”

CHAPTER 3

Mr Enward climbed into the driver’s seat gratefully, keeping some distance between himself and his shivering clerk. The car was on a declivity and would start without trouble. He turned the wheels straight and took off the brake. The machine skidded and slithered forward, and presently Mr Reeder, following in its wake, heard the sound of the running engine.

His lamp showed him the noticeboard in the field, and fifty yards beyond he came to a path so narrow that two men could not walk abreast. It ran off from the road at right angles, and up this he turned, progressing with great difficulty, for he had heavy nails in his shoes. At last he saw a small garden gate on his right, set between two unkempt hedges. The gate was open, and this methodical man stopped to examine it by the light of his lamp.

He expected to find blood and found it; just a smear. No bloodstains on the ground, but then the snow would have obliterated those. It had not obliterated the print of footmarks going up the winding path. They were rather small, and he thought they were recently made. He kept his light upon them until they led him into view of the squat house with its narrow windows and doorways. As he turned he saw a light gleam between curtains. He had a feeling that somebody was looking out at him. In another moment the light had vanished. But there was somebody in the house.

The footsteps led up to the door. Here he paused and knocked. There was no answer, and he knocked again more loudly. The chill wind sent the snowflakes swirling about him. Mr Reeder, who had a secret sense of humour, smiled. In the remote days of his youth his favourite Christmas card was one which showed a sparkling Father Christmas knocking at the door of a wayside cottage. He pictured himself as a felt-hatted Father Christmas, and the whimsical fancy slightly pleased him.

He knocked a third time and listened, then, when no answer came, he stepped back and walked to the room where he had seen the light and tried to peer between the curtains. He thought he heard a sound—a thud—but it was not in the house. It may have been the wind. He looked round and listened, but the thud was not repeated, and he returned to his ineffectual starings.

There was no sign of a fire. He came back to knock for the fourth time, then tried the other side of the building, and here he made a discovery. A narrow casement window, deeply recessed and made of iron, was swaying to and fro in the wind, and beneath the window was a double set of footmarks, one coming and one going. They went away in the direction of the lane.

He came back to the door, and stood debating with himself what steps he should take. He had seen in the darkness two small white squares at the top of the door, and had thought they were little panes of toughened glass such as one sees in the tops of such doors. But, probably in a gust of wind, one of them became detached and fell at his feet. He stooped and picked it up: it was a playing card—the ace of diamonds. He put his lamp on the second: it was ace of hearts. They had both apparently been fastened side by side to the door with pins—black pins. Perhaps the owner of the house had put them there. Possibly they had some significance, fulfilled the function of mascots.

No answer came to his knocking, and Mr Reeder heaved a deep sigh. He hated climbing; he hated more squeezing through narrow windows into unknown places; more especially as there was probably somebody inside who would treat him rudely. Or they may have gone. The footprints, he found, were fresh; they were scarcely obliterated, though the snow was falling heavily. Perhaps the house was empty, and its inmate, whose light he had seen, had got away whilst he was knocking at the door. He would not have heard him jump from the window, the snow was too soft. Unless that thud he had heard——

Mr Reeder gripped the sill and drew himself up, breathing heavily, though he was a man of considerable strength.

There were only two ways to go into the house: one was feet first, the other head first. He made a reconnaissance with his lamp and saw that beneath the window was a small table, standing in a tiny room which had evidently been used as a cloak cupboard, for there were a number of coats hanging on hooks. It was safe to go in head first, so he wriggled down on to the table, feeling extraordinarily undignified.

He was on his feet in a moment, gripped the handle of the door gingerly and opened it. He was in a small hall, from which one door opened. He tried this: it was fast, and yet not fast. It was as though somebody was leaning against it on the other side. A quick jerk of his shoulder, and it flew open. Somebody tried to dash past him, but Mr Reeder was expecting that and worse. He gripped the fugitive . . .

“I’m extremely sorry,” he said in his gentle voice. “It is a lady, isn’t it?”

He heard her heavy breathing, a sob . . .

“Is there a light?”

He groped inside the lintel of the door, found a switch and turned it. Nothing happened for a moment, and then the lights came on suddenly. There was apparently a small light-making machine at the back of the house which operated when any switch was turned.

“Come in here, will you, please?”

He pressed her very gently into the room. Pretty, extraordinarily pretty. He did not remember ever having met a young lady who was quite as pretty as this particular young lady, though she was very white and her hair was in disorder, and on her feet were snow-boots the impression of which he had already seen in the snow.

“Will you sit down, please?”

He closed the door behind him.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of. My name is Reeder.”

She had been terrified for that moment; now she looked up at him intensely.

“You’re the detective?” she shivered. “I’m so frightened. I’m so frightened!”

Then she drooped over the table at which she sat, her face buried in her folded arms.

Mr Reeder looked round the room. It was pleasantly furnished—not luxuriously so but pleasantly. Evidently a sitting-room. Except that the mantelboard had fallen or had been dragged on the floor, there was no sign of disorder. The hearth was littered with broken china pots and vases; the board itself was still held in position at one end by some attachment to the mantelpiece. That and the blue hearthrug before the fire, which was curiously stained. And there were other little splodges of darkness on the surface of the carpet, and a flowerpot was knocked down near the door.

He saw a wastepaper basket and turned over its contents. Covers of little books apparently—there were five of them, but no contents. By the side of the fireplace was a dwarf bookcase. The books were dummies. He pulled one end of the case and it swung out, being hinged at the other end.

“H’m!” said Mr Reeder, and pushed the shelves back into their original position.

There was a cap on the floor by the table and he picked this up. It was wet. This he examined, thrust into his pocket, and turned his attention to the girl.

“How long have you been here, Miss—— I think you had better tell me your name.”

She was looking up at him; he saw her wet her dry lips.

“Half an hour. I don’t know . . . it may be longer.”

“Miss——?” he asked again.

“Lynn—Margot Lynn.”

He pursed his lips thoughtfully.

“Margot Lynn. And you’ve been here half an hour. Who else has been here?”

“Nobody,” she said, springing to her feet. “What has happened? Did he—did they fight?”

He put his hand on her shoulder gently, and pressed her down into the chair.

“Did who fight whom?” asked Mr Reeder. His English was always very good on these occasions.

“Nobody has been here,” she said inconsequently.

Mr Reeder passed the question.

“You came from——?”

“I came from Bourne End station. I walked here. I often come that way. I am Mr Wentford’s secretary.”

“You walked here at nine o’clock because you’re Mr Wentford’s secretary? That was a very odd thing to do.”

She was searching his face fearfully.

“Has anything happened? Are you a police detective? Has anything happened to Mr Wentford? Tell me, tell me!”

“He was expecting me: you knew that?”

She nodded. Her breath was coming quickly. He thought she found breathing a painful process.

“He told me—yes. I didn’t know what it was about. He wanted his lawyer here too. I think he was in some kind of trouble.”

“When did you see him last?”

She hesitated.

“I spoke to him on the telephone—once, from London. I haven’t see him for two days.”

“And the person who was here?” asked Mr Reeder after a pause.

“There was nobody here! I swear there was nobody here!” She was frantic in her desire to convince him. “I’ve been here half an hour—waiting for him. I let myself in—I have a key. There it is.”

She fumbled with trembling hands in her bag and produced a ring with two keys, one larger than the other.

“He wasn’t here when I came in. I—I think he must have gone to town. He is very—peculiar.”

Mr J. G. Reeder put his hand in his pocket, took out two playing cards and laid them on the table.