A week later, Liski, returning from a vital interview with El Rahbut, heard plodding steps overtaking him, and turned to meet the pained eye of Mr Reeder.
‘How providential meeting you!’ said Reeder fervently. ‘No, no, I do not wish to speak about chickens, though I am hurt a little by your indifference to this noble and productive bird.’
‘Then what in hell do you want?’ snapped Liski. ‘I don’t want anything to do with you, Reeder, and the sooner you get that into your system the better. I don’t wish to discuss fowls, horses–’
‘Wait!’ Mr Reeder bent forward and lowered his voice. ‘Is it not possible for you and me to meet together and exchange confidences?’
Mo Lisky smiled slowly.
‘Oh, you’re coming to it at last, eh? All right. I’ll meet you anywhere you please.’
‘Shall we say in the Mall near the Artillery statue, tomorrow night at ten? I don’t think we shall be seen there.’
Liski nodded shortly and went on, still wondering what the man had to tell him. At four o’clock he was wakened by the telephone ringing furiously and learnt, to his horror, that O’Hara, the most trustworthy of his gang leaders, had been arrested and charged with a year-old burglary. It was Carter, one of the minor leaders, who brought the news.
‘What’s the idea, Liski?’ And there was a note of suspicion in the voice of his subordinate which made Liski’s jaw drop.
‘What do you mean – what’s the idea? Come round and see me. I don’t want to talk over the phone.’
Carter arrived half an hour later, a scowling, suspicious man.
‘Now what do you want to say?’ asked Mo, when they were alone.
‘All I’ve got to say is this,’ growled Carter; ‘a week ago you’re seen talking to old Reeder in Lewisham Road, and the same night Teddy Alfield is pinched. You’re spotted having a quiet talk with this old dog, and the same night another of the gang goes west. Last night I saw you with my own eyes having a confidential chat with Reeder – and now O’Hara’s gone!’
Mo looked at him incredulously.
‘Well, and what about it?’ he asked.
‘Nothing – except that it’s a queer coincidence, that’s all,’ said Carter, his lip curling. ‘The boys have been talking about it: they don’t like it, and you can’t blame them.’
Liski sat pinching his lip, a faraway look in his eyes. It was true, though the coincidence had not struck him before. So that was the old devil’s game! He was undermining his authority, arousing a wave of suspicion which, if it were not checked, would sweep him from his position.
‘All right, Carter,’ he said, in a surprisingly mild tone. ‘It never hit me that way before. Now I’ll tell you, and you can tell the other boys just what’s happened.’
In a few words he explained Mr Reeder’s invitations. ‘And you can tell ’em from me that I’m meeting the old fellow tomorrow night, and I’m going to give him something to remember me by.’
The thing was clear to him now. After the man’s departure he sat going over the events of the past week. The three men who had been arrested had been under police suspicion for a long time, and Mo knew that not even he could have saved them. The arrests had been made by arrangement with Scotland Yard to suit the convenience of the artful Mr Reeder.
‘I’ll “artful” him!’ said Mo, and spent the rest of the day making his preparations.
At ten o’clock that night he passed under the Admiralty Arch. A yellow mist covered the park, a drizzle of rain was falling, and save for the cars that came at odd intervals towards the palace there was no sign of life.
He walked steadily past the Memorial, waiting for Mr Reeder. Ten o’clock struck and a quarter past, but there was no sign of the detective.
‘He’s smelt a rat,’ said Mo Liski between his teeth, and returned to his pocket the short life-preserver he had been carrying.
It was at eleven o’clock that a patrolling police constable fell over a groaning something that lay across the sidewalk and, flashing his torch upon the still figure, saw the carved handle of a Moorish knife before he recognized the pain-distorted face of the stricken Mo Liski.
‘I don’t quite understand how it all came about,’ said Pyne thoughtfully. (He had been called into consultation from headquarters.) ‘Why are you so sure it was the Moor Rahbut?’
‘I am not sure,’ Mr Reeder hastened to correct the mistaken impression. ‘I mentioned Rahbut because I had seen him in the afternoon and searched his lodgings for the emeralds – which I am perfectly sure are still in Morocco, sir.’ He addressed his chief. ‘Mr Rahbut was quite a reasonable man, remembering that he is a stranger to our methods.’
‘Did you mention Mo Liski at all, Mr Reeder?’ asked the Assistant Public Prosecutor.
Mr Reeder scratched his chin.
‘I think I did – yes, I’m pretty certain that I told him that I had an appointment with Mr Liski at ten o’clock. I may even have said where the appointment was to be kept. I can’t remember exactly how the subject of Liski came up. Possibly I may have tried to bluff this indigenous native – “bluff” is a vulgar word, but it will convey what I mean – into the belief that unless he gave me more information about the emeralds, I should be compelled to consult one who knew so many secrets. Possibly I did say that. Mr Liski will be a long time in hospital, I hear? That is a pity. I should never forgive myself if my incautious words resulted in poor Mr Liski being taken to the hospital – alive!’
When he had gone, the chief looked at Inspector Pyne.
Pyne smiled.
‘What’s the name of that dangerous reptile, sir?’ asked the inspector. ‘“Mamba”, isn’t it? I must remember that.’
In the days of Mr Reeder’s youth, he had been sent, in company with another young officer from Scotland Yard, to arrest a youthful inventor of Nottingham who earned more than a competence by methods which were displeasing to Scotland Yard. Not machines nor ingenious contrivances for saving labour did this young man invent – but stories. And they were not stories in the accepted sense of the word, for they were mis-statements designed to extract money from the pockets of simple-minded men and women. Mr Elter employed no fewer than twenty-five aliases and as many addresses in the broadcasting of his fiction, and he was on the way to amassing a considerable fortune when a square-toed Nemesis took him by the arm and led him to the seat of justice. An unsympathetic judge sent Mr Elter to prison for seven years – describing him as an unconscionable swindler and a menace to society – at which Willie Elter smiled, for he had a skin beside which the elephant’s was gossamer silk.
Mr Reeder remembered the case chiefly because the prosecuting attorney, commenting upon the various disguises and subterfuges which the prisoner had adopted, remarked upon a peculiarity which was revealed in every part which the convict had played – his inability to spell ‘able’ which he invariably wrote as though he were naming the victim of Cain’s envy.
‘There is this identity to be discovered in every criminal, however ingenious he may be,’ the advocate had said. ‘Whatever his disguise, no matter how cleverly he dissociates one role or pose from another, there is a distinguishable weakness common to every character he affects, and especially is this observable in criminals who live by fraud and trickery.’
This Mr Reeder remembered throughout his useful life. Few people knew that he had ever been associated with Scotland Yard. He himself evaded any question that was put to him on the subject. It was his amiable trait to pretend that he was the veriest amateur and that his success in the detection of wrongdoing was to be traced to his own evil mind that saw wrong very often where no wrong was.
He saw wrong in so many apparently innocent acts of man that it was well for his reputation that those who were acquainted with and pitied him because of his seeming inadequacy and unattractive appearance, did not know what dark thoughts filled his mind.
There was the very pretty girl who lived in Brockley Road. He did not like Miss Margaret Belman because she was pretty, but because she was sensible: two terms which are as a rule antagonistic. He liked her so well that he often travelled home on the bus with her, and they used to discuss the Prince of Wales, the Labour Government, the high cost of living, and other tender subjects with great animation. It was from Miss Belman that he learned about her fellow boarder, Mrs Carlin, and once he travelled back with her to Brockley – a frail, slim girl with experience in her face and the hint of tragedy in her fine eyes.
So it happened that he knew all about Mr Harry Carlin long before Lord Sellington sent for him, for Mr Reeder had the gift of evoking confidences by the suggestion rather than the expression of his sympathy.
She spoke of her husband without bitterness – but also without regret. She knew him rather well, despite the shortness of their married life. She hinted once, and inadvertently, that there was a rich relation to whose wealth her husband would be heir if he were a normal man. Her son would, in due course, be the possessor of a great title – and penniless. She was at such pains to rectify her statement that Mr Reeder, suspicious of peerages that come to Brockley, was assured of her sincerity, however great might be her error. Later he learned that the title was that borne by the Right Honourable the Earl of Sellington and Manford.
There came a slack time for the Public Prosecutor’s office, when it seemed that sin had gone out of the world; and Mr Reeder sat for a week on end in his little room, twiddling his thumbs or reading the advertisement columns of
The Times
, or drawing grotesque men upon his blotting-pad, varying these performances with the excursions he was in the habit of making to those parts of London which very few people choose for their recreation. He loved to poke about the slum areas which lie in the neighbourhood of the Great Surrey Docks; he was not averse from frequenting the north side of the river, again in the dock areas; but when his chief asked him whether he spent much time at Limehouse, Mr Reeder replied with a pathetic smile.
‘No, sir,’ he said gently, ‘I read about such places – I find them infinitely more interesting in the pages of a – er – novel. Yes, there are Chinese there, and I suppose Chinese are romantic, but even they do not add romance to Limehouse, which is the most respectable and law abiding corner of the East End.’
One morning the Public Prosecutor sent for his chief detective, and Mr Reeder obeyed the summons with a light step and a pleasant sense of anticipation.
‘Go over to the Foreign Office and have a talk with Lord Sellington,’ said the Prosecutor. ‘He’s rather worried about a nephew of his, Harry Carlin. Do you know the name?’
Mr Reeder shook his head; for the moment he did not associate the pale girl who typed for her living.
‘He’s a pretty bad lot,’ explained the Prosecutor, ‘and unfortunately he’s Sellington’s heir. I rather imagine the old gentleman wants you to confirm his view.’
‘Dear me!’ said Mr Reeder, amid stole forth.
Lord Sellington, Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, was a bachelor and an immensely rich man. He had been rich twenty years earlier when, in a panic due to certain legislation which he thought would affect him adversely as a great landowner, he sold his estates and invested the larger bulk of his fortune (against all expert advice) in American industrial stocks. Their value had trebled and heavy investments in oil lands had made him many times a millionaire. He was a philanthropist, gave liberally to institutions devoted to the care of young children; he was the founder of the Eastleigh Children’s Home, and subscribed liberally to other similar institutions. A thin, rather sour-faced man, he glared up under his shaggy eyebrows as Mr Reeder sidled apologetically into his room.
‘So you’re Reeder, eh?’ he grumbled, and was evidently not very much impressed by his visitor, ‘Sit down, sit down,’ he said testily, walked to the door as though he were not certain that Mr Reeder had closed it, came back and flopped into his chair on the other side of the table. ‘I have sent for you in preference to notifying the police,’ he said. ‘Sir James speaks of you, Mr Reeder, as a gentleman of discretion.’
Mr Reeder bowed slightly, and there followed a long and awkward pause, which the Under-Secretary ended in an abrupt, irritable way.
‘I have a nephew – Harry Carlin. Do you know him?’
‘I know of him,’ said Mr Reeder truthfully; in his walk to the Foreign Office he had remembered the deserted wife.
‘Then you know nothing good of him!’ exploded his lordship. ‘The man is a blackguard, a waster, a disgrace to the name he bears! If he were not my brother’s son I would have him under lock and key tonight – the scoundrel! I have four bills in my possession–’
He stopped himself, pulled open a drawer savagely, took out a letter and slammed it on the table.
‘Read that,’ he snapped.
Mr Reeder pulled his glasses a little farther up his nose. It was headed ‘The Eastleigh Home for Children’, and was a brief request for five thousand pounds, which the writer said he would send for that evening, and was signed ‘Arthur Lassard’.
‘You know Lassard, of course?’ said his lordship. ‘He is the gentleman associated with me in my philanthropic work. Certain monies were due for land which we purchased adjoining the home. As you probably know, there are lawyers who never accept cheques for properties they sell on behalf of their clients. I had the cash ready and I left it with my secretary for one of Lassard’s people to call for. That it was called for, I need hardly tell you,’ said his lordship grimly. ‘Whoever planned the coup planned it well. They knew I would be speaking in the House of Lords last night; they also knew that I had recently changed my secretary and had engaged a gentleman to whom most of my associates are strangers. A bearded man came for the money at half past six, produced a note from Mr Lassard, and that was the end of the money, except that we have discovered that it was changed this morning into American bills. Of course, both letters were forged: Lassard never signed either and he made no demand whatever for the money. It wasn’t needed for another week.’
‘Did anybody know about this transaction?’ asked Mr Reeder.