‘To see if there’s any vitamins in them, sir?’ she suggested.
Mr Reeder shook his head.
‘No, I hardly think so,’ he said gently. ‘Vitamins are my sole diet. I can spend a whole evening with no other company than a pair of those interesting little fellows, and take no ill from them. Thank you, Mrs Kerrel.’
When she had gone, he replaced the layer of shavings with punctilious care, closed down the lid, and as carefully rewrapped the parcel. When it was finished he addressed the package to a department at Scotland Yard, took from a small box a label printed redly ‘Poison’. When this was done, he scribbled a note to the gentleman affected, and addressed himself to his muffins and his large tea cup.
It was a quarter-past six in the evening when he had unwrapped the chocolates. It was exactly a quarter-past eleven, as he turned out the lights preparatory to going to bed, that he said aloud:
‘Marylou Plessy – dear me!’
Here began the war.
This was Wednesday evening; on Friday morning Marylou Plessy had two early visitors; two men who talked about fingerprints found on chocolates and other such matters.
Half an hour later a dazed woman sat in the cells at Harlboro Street and listened to an inspector’s recital of her offence. At the following sessions she went down for two years on a charge of ‘conveying by post to John Reeder a poisonous substance, to wit aconite, with intent to murder’.
To the last Mo Liski sat in court, his drawn, haggard face testifying to the strength of his affection for the woman in the dock. After she disappeared from the dock he went outside into the big, windy hail, and there and then he made his first mistake.
Mr Reeder was putting on his gloves when the dapper man strode up to him.
‘Name of Reeder?’
‘That is my name, sir.’
Mr Reeder surveyed him benevolently over his glasses.
He had the expectant air of one who has steeled himself to receive congratulations.
‘Mine is Mo Liski. You’ve sent down a friend of mine–’
‘Mrs Plessy?’
‘Yes – you know! Reeder, I’m going to get you for that!’
Instantly somebody behind him caught his arm in a vice and swung him round. It was a City detective,
‘Take a walk with me,’ he said.
Mo went white. Remember that he owed the strength of his position to the fact that never once had he been convicted: the register did not bear his name.
‘What’s the charge?’ he asked huskily.
‘Intimidation of a Crown witness and using threatening language,’ said the officer.
Mo came up before the Aldermen at the Guildhall the next morning and was sent to prison for three weeks and Mr Reeder, who knew the threat would come and was ready to counter with the traditional swiftness of the
mamba
, felt that he had scored a point. The gang leader was, in the parlance of the law, ‘a convicted person’.
‘I don’t think anything will happen until he comes out,’ he said to Pyne, when he was offered police protection. ‘He will find a great deal of satisfaction in arranging the details of my – um – “bashing”, and I feel sure that he will postpone action until he is free. I had better have that protection until he comes out–’
‘After he comes out, you mean?’
‘Until
he comes out,’ insisted Mr Reeder carefully. ‘After – well – um – I’d rather like to be unhampered by – um – police protection.’
Mo Liski came to his liberty with all his senses alert. The cat-caution which had, with only one break, kept him clear of trouble, dominated his every plan. Cold bloodedly he cursed himself for jeopardizing his emerald deal, and his first step was to get into touch with El Rahbut.
But there was a maddening new factor in his life: the bitter consciousness of his fallibility and the fear that the men he had ruled so completely might, in consequence, attempt to break away from their allegiance. There was something more than sentiment behind this fear. Mo drew close on fifteen thousand a year from his racecourse and club-house victims alone. There were pickings on the side: his ‘crowd’ largely controlled a continental drug traffic worth thousands a year. Which may sound romantic and imaginative, but was true. Not all the ‘bunce’ came to Mo and his men. There were pickings for the carrion fowl as well as for the wolves.
He must fix Reeder. That was the first move. And fix him so that there was no recoil. To beat him up one night would be an easy matter, but that would look too much like carrying into execution the threat which had put him behind bars. Obviously some ingenuity was called for; some exquisite punishment more poignant than the shock of clubs.
Men of Mr Liski’s peculiar calling do not meet their lieutenants in dark cellars, nor do they wear cloaks or masks to disguise their identities. The big six who controlled the interests serving Mo Liski came together on the night of his release, and the gathering was at a Soho restaurant, where a private dining-room was engaged in the ordinary way.
‘I’m glad nobody touched him whilst I was away,’ said Mo with a smile. ‘I’d like to manage this game myself. I’ve been doing some thinking whilst I was in bird, and there’s a good way to deal with him.’
‘He had two coppers with him all the time, or I’d have coshed him for you, Mo,’ said Teddy Alfield, his chief of staff.
‘And I’d have coshed you, Teddy,’ said Mr Liski ominously. ‘I left orders that he wasn’t to be touched, didn’t I? What do you mean by “you’d have coshed him”?’
Alfield, a big-shouldered man whose speciality was the ‘knocking-off’ of unattended motor cars, grew incoherent.
‘You stick to your job,’ snarled Mo. ‘I’ll fix Reeder. He’s got a girl in Brockley; a young woman who’s always going about with him – Belman’s her name and she lives nearly opposite his house. We don’t want to beat him up – yet. What we want to do is to get him out of his job, and that’s easy. They fired a man in the Home Office last week because he was found at the “95” Club after drinking hours.’
He outlined a simple plan.
Margaret Belman left her office one evening, walked to the corner of Westminster Bridge and the Embankment and looked around for Mr Reeder. Usually, if his business permitted, he was to be found hereabouts, though of late the meetings had been very few, and when she had seen him he was usually in the company of two glum men who seated themselves on either side of him.
She let one bus pass, and had decided to catch the second which was coming slowly along the Embankment, when a parcel dropped at her feet. She looked round to see a pretty, well-dressed woman swaying with closed eyes, and had just time to catch her by the arm before she half collapsed. With her arm round the woman’s waist she assisted her to a nearby seat.
‘I’m so sorry – thank you so much. I wonder if you would call me a taxi?’ gasped the fainting lady.
She spoke with a slightly foreign accent, and had the indefinable manner of a great lady; so Margaret thought.
Beckoning a cab, she assisted the woman to enter.
‘Would you like me to go home with you?’ asked the sympathetic girl.
‘It would be good of you,’ murmured the lady, ‘but I fear to inconvenience you – it was so silly of me. My address is 105, Great Claridge Street.’
She recovered sufficiently on the journey to tell Margaret that she was Madame Lemaire, and that she was the widow of a French banker. The beautiful appointments of the big house in the most expensive part of Mayfair suggested that Madame Lemaire was a woman of some wealth. A butler opened the door, a maid brought in the tea which Madame insisted on the girl taking with her.
‘You are too good. I cannot be thankful enough to you, mademoiselle. We must meet again. Will you come one night to dinner? Shall we say Thursday?’
Margaret Belman hesitated. She was human enough to be impressed by the luxury of her surroundings, and this Madame Lemaire had a charm which was difficult to resist.
‘We will dine together, and after – some people may come for dancing. Perhaps you have a friend you would like to invite?’
Margaret smiled and shook her head. Curiously enough, the word ‘friend’ suggested only the rather awkward figure of Mr Reeder, and somehow she could not imagine Mr Reeder in this setting.
When she came out into the street and the butler had closed the door behind her, she had the first shock of the day. The object of her thoughts was standing on the opposite side of the road, a furled umbrella hooked to his arm.
‘Why, Mr Reeder!’ she greeted him.
‘You had seven minutes to spare,’ he said, looking at his pocket watch. ‘I gave you half an hour – you were exactly twenty-three minutes and a few odd seconds.’
‘Did you know I was there?’ she asked unnecessarily. ‘Yes – I followed you. I do not like Mrs Annie Feltham – she calls herself Madame something or other. It is not a nice club.’
‘Club!’ she gasped.
Mr Reeder nodded.
‘They call it the Muffin Club. Curious name – curious members. It is not nice.’
She asked no further questions, but allowed herself to be escorted to Brockley, wondering just why Madame had picked upon her as a likely recruit to the gaieties of Mayfair.
And now occurred the succession of incidents which at first had so puzzled Mr Liski. He was a busy man, and almost regretted that he had not postponed putting his plan of operation into action. That he had failed in one respect he discovered when by accident, as it seemed, he met Mr Reeder face to face in Piccadilly.
‘Good
morning, Liski,’ said Mr Reeder, almost apologetically. ‘I was so sorry for that unfortunate contretemps, but believe me, I bear no malice. And whilst I realize that in all probability you do not share my sentiments, I have no other wish than to live on the friendliest terms with you.’
Liski looked at him sharply. The old man was getting scared, he thought. There was almost a tremble in his anxious voice when he put forward the olive branch.
‘That’s all right, Mr Reeder,’ said Mo, with his most charming smile. ‘I don’t bear any malice either. After all, it was a silly thing to say, and you have your duty to do.’
He went on in this strain, stringing platitude to platitude, and Mr Reeder listened with evidence of growing relief.
‘The world is full of sin and trouble,’ he said, shaking his head sadly; ‘both in high and low places vice is triumphant, and virtue thrust, like the daisies, underfoot. You don’t keep chickens, do you, Mr Liski?’
Mo Liski shook his head.
‘What a pity!’ sighed Mr Reeder. ‘There is so much one can learn from the domestic fowl! They are an object lesson to the unlawful. I often wonder why the Prison Commissioners do not allow the convicts at Dartmoor to engage in this harmless and instructive hobby. I was saying to Mr Pyne early this morning, when they raided the Muffin Club – what a quaint title it has–’
‘Raided the Muffin Club?’ said Mo quickly. ‘What do you mean? I’ve heard nothing about that.’
‘You wouldn’t. That kind of institution would hardly appeal to you. Only we thought it was best to raid the place, though in doing so I fear I have incurred the displeasure of a young lady friend of mine who was invited to dinner there tomorrow night. As I say, chickens–’
Now Mo Liski knew that his plan had miscarried. Yet he was puzzled by the man’s attitude.
‘Perhaps you would like to come down and see my chickens, Mr Liski? I live in Brockley.’ Reeder removed his glasses and glared owlishly at his companion. ‘Say at nine o’clock tonight; there is so much to talk about. At the same time, it would add to the comfort of all concerned if you did not arrive – um – conspicuously: do you understand what I mean? I should not like the people of my office to know, for example.’
A slow smile dawned on Liski’s face. It was his faith that all men had their price, whether it was paid in cash or terror: and this invitation to a secret conference was in a sense a tribute to the power he wielded.
At nine o’clock he came to Brockley, half hoping that Mr Reeder would go a little farther along the road which leads to compromise. But, strangely enough, the elderly detective talked of nothing but chickens. He sat on one side of the table, his hands clasped on the cloth, his voice vibrant with pride as he spoke of a new breed that he was introducing to the English fowl-house and, bored to extinction, Mo waited.
‘There is something I wanted to say to you, but I fear that I must postpone that until another meeting,’ said Mr Reeder, as he helped his visitor on with his coat. ‘I will walk with you to the corner of Lewisham High Road: the place is full of bad characters, and I shouldn’t like to feel that I had endangered your well-being by bringing you to this lowly spot.’
Now, if there is one place in the world which is highly respectable and free from the footpads which infest wealthier neighbourhoods, it is Brockley Road. Liski submitted to the company of his host, and walked to the church at the end of the road.
‘Goodbye, Mr Liski,’ said Reeder earnestly. ‘I shall never forget this pleasant meeting. You have been of the greatest help and assistance to me. You may be sure that neither I nor the department I have the honour to represent will ever forget you.’
Liski went back to town, a frankly bewildered man. In the early hours of the morning the police arrested his chief lieutenant, Teddy Alfield, and charged him with a car robbery which had been committed three months before.
That was the first of the inexplicable happenings. The second came when Liski, returning to his flat off Portland Place, was suddenly confronted by the awkward figure of the detective.
‘Is that Liski?’ Mr Reeder peered forward in the darkness. ‘I’m so glad I’ve found you. I’ve been looking for you all day. I fear I horribly misled you the other evening when I was telling you that White Sussex are unsuitable for sandy soil. Now on the contrary–’
‘Look here, Mr Reeder, what’s the game?’ demanded the other brusquely.
‘The game?’ asked Reeder in a pained tone.
‘I don’t want to know anything about chickens. If you’ve got anything to tell me worth while, drop me a line and I’ll come to your office, or you can come to mine.’
He brushed past the man from the Public Prosecutor’s Department and slammed the door of his flat behind him. Within two hours a squad from Scotland Yard descended upon the house of Harry Merton, took Harry and his wife from their respective beds, and charged them with the unlawful possession of stolen jewellery which had been traced to a safe deposit.