MR. J. G. REEDER SERIES: 5 Mystery Novels & 4 Detective Stories. Edgar Wallace

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      “It is the name I’m known as now, sir.”

      “A very good name, too, an excellent name,” murmured Mr. Reeder as he stepped into the elevator. “And after all, we must try to live down the past. And I’d be the last to remind you of your – er – misfortune.”

      When he reached the street, two men who had been standing on the opposite sidewalk crossed to him.

      “They’ve gone,” said Mr. Reeder. “They were in that car, as I feared. All stations must be warned, and particularly the town stations just outside of London, to hold up the car. You have its number. You had better watch this place till the morning,” he said to one of them.

      “Very good, sir.”

      “I want you especially to follow Emanuel, and keep him under observation until tomorrow morning.”

      The detective left on duty waited with that philosophical patience which is the greater part of the average detective’s equipment, until three o’clock in the morning; and at that hour, when daylight was coming into the sky, Emanuel had not put in an appearance. Stevens went off duty half an hour after Mr. Reeder’s departure. At two o’clock the head waiter and three others left, Fernando locking the door. Then, a few minutes before three, the squat figure of Pietro, muffled up in a heavy overcoat, and he too locked the door behind him, disappearing in the direction of Shaftesbury Avenue. At half-past three the detective left a policeman to watch the house, and got on the ‘phone to Mr. Reeder, who was staying in town.

      “Dear me!” said Mr. Reeder, an even more incongruous sight in pyjamas which were a little too small for him, though happily there were no spectators of his agitation. “Not gone, you say? I will come round.”

      It was daylight when he arrived. The gate in the yard was opened with a skeleton key (the climb so graphically described by Mr. Reeder was entirely fictitious, and the cut in his trousers was due to catching a jagged nail in one of the packing-cases with which the yard was littered), and he mounted the iron stairway to the third floor.

      The window through which he had made his ingress on the previous evening was closed and fastened, but, with the skill of a professional burglar, Mr. Reeder forced back the catch and, opening the window, stepped in.

      There was enough daylight to see his whereabouts. Unerringly he made for Emanuel’s office. The door had been forced, and there was no need to use the skeleton key. There was no sign of Emanuel, and Reeder came out to hear the report of the detective, who had made a rapid search of the club.

      “All the doors are open except No. 13, sir,” he said. “That’s bolted on the inside. I’ve got the lock open.”

      “Try No. 12,” said Reeder. “There are two ways in – one by way of a door, which you’ll find behind a curtain in the corner of the room, and the other way through the buffet, which communicates with the buffet in No. 13. Break nothing if you can help it, because I don’t want my visit here advertised.”

      He followed the detective into No. 12, and found that there was no necessity to use the buffet entrance, for the communicating door was unlocked. He stepped into No. 13; it was in complete darkness.

      “Humph!” said Mr. Reeder, and sniffed. “One of you go along this wall and find the switch. Be careful you don’t step on something.”

      “What is there?”

      “I think you’ll find… however, turn on the light.”

      The detective felt his way along the wall, and presently his finger touched a switch and he turned it down. And then they saw all that Mr. Reeder suspected. Sprawled across the table was a still figure – a horrible sight, for the man who had killed Emanuel Legge had used the poker which, twisted and bloodstained, lay amidst the wreckage of rare glass and once snowy napery.

Chapter XXVIII

       Table of Contents

      It was unnecessary to call a doctor to satisfy the police. Emanuel Legge had passed beyond the sphere of his evil activities.

      “The poker came from – where?” mused Mr. Reeder, examining the weapon thoughtfully. He glanced down at the little fireplace. The poker and tongs and shovel were intact, and this was of a heavier type than was used in the sittingrooms.

      Deftly he searched the dead man’s pockets, and in the waistcoat he found a little card inscribed with a telephone number, “Horsham 98753.” Peter’s. That had no special significance at the moment, and Reeder put it with the other documents that he had extracted from the dead man’s pockets. Later came an inspector to take charge of the case.

      “There was some sort of struggle, I imagine,” said Mr. Reeder. “The right wrist, I think you’ll find, is broken. Legge’s revolver was underneath the table. He probably pulled it, and it was struck from his hand. I don’t think you’ll want me any more, inspector.”

      He was examining the main corridor when the telephone switchboard at the back of Stevens’s little desk gave him an idea. He put through a call to Horsham, and, in spite of the earliness of the hour, was almost immediately answered.

      “Who is that?” he asked.

      “I’m Mr. Kane’s servant,” said a husky voice.

      “Oh, is it Barney? Is your master at home yet?”

      “No, sir. Who is it speaking?”

      “It is Mr. Reeder… Will you tell Miss Kane to come to the telephone?”

      “She’s not here either. I’ve been trying to get on to Johnny Gray all night, but his servant says he’s out.”

      “Where is Miss Kane?” asked Reeder quickly.

      “I don’t know, sir. Somebody came for her in the night in a car, and she went away, leaving the door open. It was the wind slamming it that woke me up.”

      It was so long before Mr. Reeder answered that Barney thought he had gone away.

      “Did nobody call for her during the evening? Did she have any telephone messages?”

      “One, sir, about ten o’clock. I think it was her father, from the way she was speaking.”

      Again a long interval of silence, and then: “I will come straight down to Horsham,” said Mr. Reeder, and from the pleasant and conversational quality of his voice, Barney took comfort; though, if he had known the man better, he would have realised that Mr. Reeder was most ordinary when he was most perturbed.

      Mr. Reeder pushed the telephone away from him and stood up.

      So they had got Marney. There was no other explanation. The dinner party had been arranged to dispose of the men who could protect her. Where had they been taken?

      He went back to the old man’s office, which was undergoing a search at the hands of a police officer.

      “I particularly want to see immediately any document referring to Mr Peter Kane,” he said “any road maps СКАЧАТЬ