‘It is a pity,’ sighed J G when they reached the street; ‘a great pity. Of course I hadn’t the least idea that Detective-Constable Wilshore was in our party. He is – er – not quite loyal.’
‘Wilshore?’ asked the officer, aghast. ‘Do you mean he “blew” the raid to Tommy?’
Mr Reeder scratched his nose and said gently, that he thought so.
‘He has quite a big income from various sources – by the way, he banks with the Midland and Derbyshire, and his account is in his wife’s maiden name. I tell you this in case – er – it may be useful.’
It was useful enough to secure the summary ejection of the unfaithful Wilshore from the force, but it was not sufficiently useful to catch Tommy, whose parting words were: ‘You’re clever, Reeder; but you’ve got to be
lucky
to catch me!’
Tommy was in the habit of repeating this scrap of conversation to such as were interested. It was an encounter of which he was justifiably proud, for few dealers in ‘slush’ and ‘snide’ have ever come up against Mr J G and got away with it.
‘It’s worth a thousand pounds to me – ten thousand! I’d pay that money to make J G look sick, anyway, the old dog! I guess the Yard will think twice before it tries to shop me again, and that’s the real kick in the raid. J G’s name is Jonah at headquarters, and if I can do anything to help, it will be mud!’
To a certain Ras Lal, an honoured (and paying) guest, Mr Fenalow told this story, with curious results.
A good wine tastes best in its own country, and a man may drink sherry by the cask in Jerez de la Frontera and take no ill, whereas if he attempted so much as a bottle in Fleet Street, he would suffer cruelly. So also does the cigarette of Egypt preserve its finest bouquet for such as smoke it in the lounge of a Cairo hotel.
Crime is yet another quantity which does not bear transplanting. The American safe blower may flourish in France just so long as he acquires by diligent study, and confines himself to, the Continental method. It is possible for the European thief to gain a fair livelihood in oriental countries, but there is no more tragic sight in the world than the Eastern mind endeavouring to adapt itself to the complexities of European roguery.
Ras Lal enjoyed a reputation in Indian police circles as the cleverest native criminal India had ever produced. Beyond a short term in Poona Jail, Ras Lal had never seen the interior of a prison, and such was his fame in native circles that, during this short period of incarceration, prayers for his deliverance were offered at certain temples, and it was agreed that he would never have been convicted at all but for some pretty hard swearing on the part of a certain sahib – and anyway, all sahibs hang together.
Ras Lal was a general practitioner of crime, with a leaning towards a specialization in jewel thefts. A man of excellent and even gentlemanly appearance, with black and shiny hair parted at the side and curling up over one brow in an inky wave, he spoke English, Hindi and Tamil very well indeed, had a sketchy knowledge of the law and a very full acquaintance with the science of precious stones.
During Mr Ras Lal’s brief rest in Poona, the sahib, whose evidence had been so damning and whose unromantic name was Smith, married a not very good-looking girl with a lot of money. Smith Sahib knew that beauty was only skin-deep and she had a kind heart, which is notoriously preferable to the garniture of coronets. It was honestly a love match. Her father owned jute mills in Calcutta, and on festive occasions, such as the State Governor’s reception, she carried several lakhs of rupees on her person; but even rich people are loved for themselves alone.
Ras Lal owed his imprisonment to an unsuccessful attempt he had made upon two strings of pearls, the property of the lady in question, and when he learnt, on his return to freedom, that Smith Sahib had married the resplendent girl and had gone to England, he very naturally attributed the hatred and bitterness of Smith Sahib to purely personal causes, and swore vengeance.
Now in India the business of every man is the business of his servants. The preliminary inquiries, over which an Englishman or American jewel thief would spend a small fortune, can be made at the cost of a few annas. When Ras Lal came to England he found that he had overlooked this very important fact.
Smith Sahib and Memsahib were out of town; they were, in fact, on the high seas en route for New York when Ras Lal was arrested on the conventional charge of ‘being a suspected person’. Ras had shadowed the Smiths’ butler and, having induced him to drink, had offered him immense sums to reveal the place, receptacle, drawer, safe, box or casket wherein Mrs Smith’s jewels were kept. His excuse for asking, namely, that he had had a wager with his brother that the jewels were kept under the Memsahib’s bed, showed a lamentable lack of inventive power. The butler, an honest man, though a drinker of beer, informed the police. Ras Lal and his friend and assistant Ram were arrested, brought before a magistrate, and would have been discharged but for the fact that Mr J G Reeder saw the record of the case and was able to supply from his own files very important particulars of the dark man’s past. Therefore Mr Ras Lal was sent down for six months, and, which was more maddening, the story of his ignominious failure was, he guessed, broadcast throughout India.
This was the thought which distracted him in his lonely cell at Wormwood Scrubbs. What would India think of him? – he would be the scorn of the bazaars, ‘the mocking point of third-rate mediocrities’, to use his own expression. And automatically he switched his hate from Smith Sahib to one Mr J G Reeder. And his hate was very real, more real because of the insignificance and unimportance of this Reeder Sahib, whom he likened to an ancient sheep, a pariah dog, and other things less translatable. And in the six months of his durance he planned desperate and earnest acts of reprisal.
Released from prison, he decided that the moment was not ripe for a return to India. He wished to make a close study of Mr J G Reeder and his habits and, being a man with plenty of money, he could afford the time and, as it happened, could mix business with pleasure.
Mr Tommy Fenalow found means of getting in touch with the gentleman from the Orient whilst he was in Wormwood Scrubbs, and the luxurious car that met Ras Lal at the gates of the Scrubbs when he came out of jail was both hired and occupied by Tommy, a keen business man, who had been offered by his German printer a new line of one-hundred-rupee notes that might easily develop into a most profitable sideline.
‘You come along and lodge at my expense, boy,’ said the sympathetic Tommy, who was very short, very stout, and had eyes that bulged like a pug dog’s. ‘You’ve been badly treated by old Reeder, and I’m going to tell you a way of getting back on him, with no risk and a ninety per cent profit. Listen, a friend of mine–’
It was never Tommy who had snide for sale: invariably the hawker of forged notes was a mysterious ‘friend’.
So Ras was lodged in a service flat which formed part of a block owned by Mr Fenalow, who was a very rich man indeed. Some weeks after this, Tommy crossed St James’s Street to intercept his old enemy.
‘Good morning, Mr Reeder.’
Mr J G Reeder stopped and turned back.
‘Good morning, Mr Fenalow,’ he said, with his benevolent solicitude. ‘I am glad to see that you are out again, and I do trust that you will now find a more – er – legitimate outlet for your undoubted talents.’ Tommy went angrily red.
‘I haven’t been in “stir” and you know it, Reeder! It wasn’t for want of trying on your part. But you’ve got to be something more than clever to catch me – you’ve got to be lucky! Not that there’s anything to catch me over – I’ve never done a crook thing in my life, as you well know.’
He was so annoyed that the lighter exchanges of humour he had planned slipped from his memory.
He had an appointment with Ras Lal, and the interview was entirely satisfactory. Mr Ras Lal made his way that night to an uncomfortably situated rendezvous and there met his new friend.
‘This is the last place in the world old man Reeder would dream of searching,’ said Tommy enthusiastically, ‘and if he did he would find nothing. Before he could get into the building, the stuff would be put out of sight.’
‘It is a habitation of extreme convenience,’ said Ras Lal.
‘It’s yours, boy,’ replied Tommy magnificently. ‘I only keep this place to get-in and put-out. The stuff’s not here for an hour and the rest of the time the store’s empty. As I say, old man Reeder has gotta be something more than clever – he’s gotta be lucky!’
At parting he handed his client a key, and with that necessary instrument tendered a few words of advice and warning.
‘Never come here till late. The police patrol passes the end of the road at ten, one o’clock and four. When are you leaving for India?’
‘On the twenty-third,’ said Ras, ‘by which time I shall have uttered a few reprisals on that dog Reeder.’
‘I shouldn’t like to be in his shoes,’ said Tommy, who could afford to be sycophantic, for he had in his pocket two hundred pounds’ worth of real money which Ras had paid in advance for a vaster quantity of money which was not so real.
It was a few days after this that Ras Lal went to the Orpheum Theatre, and it was no coincidence that he went there on the same night that Mr Reeder escorted a pretty lady to the same place of amusement.
When Mr J G Reeder went to the theatre (and his going at all was contingent upon his receiving a complimentary ticket) he invariably chose a drama, where to the excitement of the actors’ speeches was added some amazing action such as wrecked trains, or terrific horse races in which the favourite won by a nose. Such things may seem wildly improbable to blasé dramatic critics – especially favourites winning – but Mr Reeder saw actuality in all such presentations.
Once he was inveigled into sitting through a roaring farce, and was the only man in the house who did not laugh. He was, indeed, such a depressing influence that the leading lady sent a passionate request to the manager that ‘the miserable-looking old man in the middle of the front row’ should have his money returned and be requested to leave the theatre. Which, as Mr Reeder had come in on a free ticket, placed the manager in a very awkward predicament.
Invariably he went unaccompanied, for he had no friends, and fifty-two years had come and gone without bringing to his life romance or the melting tenderness begot of dreams. Now Mr Reeder had become acquainted with a girl who was like no other girl with whom he had been brought into contact. Although he had saved her life, this fact did not occur to him as frequently as the recollection that he had imperilled that life before he had saved it. And he had a haunting sense of guilt for quite another reason.
He was thinking of her one day – he spent his life thinking about people, though the majority of these were less respectable than Miss Margaret Belman. He supposed that she would marry the very good-looking young man who met her bus at the corner of the Embankment every morning and returned with her to the Lewisham High Road every night. It would be a very nice wedding, with hired cars, and the vicar performing the ceremony, and a wedding breakfast provided by the local caterer, following which bride and bridegroom would be photographed on the lawn surrounded by their jovial but unprepossessing relatives. And after this, one specially hired car would take them to Eastbourne for an expensive honeymoon. And after that all the humdrum and scrapings of life, rising through villadom to a small car of their own and afternoon tea parties.
Mr Reeder sighed deeply. How much more satisfactory was the stage drama, where all the trouble begins in the first act and is satisfactorily settled in the last. He fingered absently the two slips of green paper that had come to him that morning. Row A, seats 17 and 18. They had been sent by a manager who was under some obligation to him. The theatre was the Orpheum, and the play was
Fire of Vengeance
. It looked like being a pleasant evening.
He took an envelope from the rack, addressed it to the box office, and had begun to write the accompanying letter returning the surplus voucher, when an idea occurred to him. He owed Miss Margaret Belman something, and the debt was on his conscience, for he had described her as his wife. This preposterous claim had been made to appease a mad woman, it is true, but it had been made. She was now holding a good position – as secretary at one of the political headquarters, for which post she had to thank Mr J G Reeder, if she only knew it.
He took up the phone and called her number and, after the normal delay, heard her voice.
‘Er – Miss Belman,’ Mr Reeder coughed, ‘I have – er – two tickets for a theatre tonight. I wonder if you would care to go?’
Her astonishment was almost audible.
‘That’s very kind of you, Mr Reeder. I should love to come with you.’
Mr J G Reeder turned pale.
‘What I mean is, I have
two
tickets – I thought perhaps that your – er – your – er – that somebody else would like to go – what I mean was–’
He heard a gentle laugh at the other end of the phone.
‘What you mean is that you don’t wish to take me,’ she said, and for a man of his experience he blundered badly.
‘I should esteem it an honour to take you,’ he said, in terror that he should offend her, ‘but the truth is, I thought–’
‘I’ll meet you at the theatre – which is it? Orpheum – how lovely! At seven o’clock.’
Mr Reeder put down the instrument, feeling limp and moist. It is the truth that he had never taken a lady to any kind of social function in his life, and as there grew upon him the tremendous character of this adventure he was overwhelmed and breathless. A murderer waking from dreams of revelry to find himself in the condemned cell suffered no more poignant emotions than Mr Reeder, torn from the smooth if treacherous currents of life and drawing nearer and nearer to the horrid vortex of unusualness.
‘Bless me,’ said Mr Reeder, employing a strictly private expression which was reserved for his own crises.
He employed in his private office a young woman who combined a meticulous exactness in the filing of documents with a complete absence of those attractions which turn men into gods, and in other days set the armies of Perseus moving towards the walls of Troy. She was invariably addressed by Mr Reeder as ‘Miss’. He believed her name to be ‘Oliver’. She was in truth a married lady with two children, but her nuptials had been celebrated without his knowledge.