Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns (9 page)

He looked at his watch, and his attitude towards the girl suddenly changed. He had been gentle, almost grandmotherly with his “um’s” and “er’s”, and now the hectoring Mr Reeder reappeared.

“I’m not quite satisfied with your answers, Miss Leonard,” he said, “and I am going to take you up to Scotland Yard to question you still further.”

For a moment she was startled, looked at him in horror, and then she understood, and he saw the look of relief come into her eyes. The major had risen slowly to his feet.

“This is rather a high-handed proceeding,” he quavered, “and I think I can save you a lot of trouble. I’ll make a confession to you, Mr Reeder; I have been shielding this man Buckingham. Why I should do so, heaven only knows, except that I didn’t wish to incur undesirable publicity for my niece. When I visited the treasure house this morning I found that four of the containers were empty. You asked me if you might see the vault, and I refused. I think it was stupid of me; and now, if you wish, I can throw a great deal of light, not only upon the robbery, but upon the disappearance of this wretched man–”

“Let me tell you something,” said Reeder. “It is an old story, part of which was told me by a boy from your school, and part I have unearthed in my own way.”

The major licked his dry lips.

“It is a story about a namesake of yours,” Reeder went on, “a rather clever man, who had a commission in the Territorial Army. He was, in fact, of your rank, and if I remember rightly, his Christian name was – um – Digby.”

He saw the colour fade from Olbude’s face and heard his quick breathing.

“He was, unhappily, a victim of the narcotic habit,” said Mr Reeder, not taking his eyes from the man’s face, “and I will do him this justice, that he was heartily ashamed of his weakness and when he sank, as he did sink, to the level of a peddler of cocaine, he took another name. I was responsible for his arrest, with several other people engaged in that beastly traffic; and to me he confided that he had very rich relations who might help him. He even mentioned the name of a brother-in-law named Lane Leonard. At this time he had reached, as I say, a pretty low level. I am not a philanthropist, but I have a weakness for helping the hopeless, and the more hopeless they are – such is my peculiar – um – perversity – the more I endeavour to produce miracles. I rarely succeed. I did not succeed with Major Digby Olbude. I kept in touch with him after he came out of prison, but he managed to drift away beyond my reach, and I did not hear of him again till I learned that he had died in St Pancras Infirmary. He was buried in the name of Smith, but, unhappily for everybody concerned, there was an old acquaintance of his in the hospital at the same time, and this old acquaintance formed the link by which Lidgett was able to trace this unfortunate man.”

Olbude found his voice.

“There are quite a large number of Olbudes in the world,” he said, “and Digby is a family name. He may have been a connection of mine.”

“I don’t think he was any relation of yours,” said Mr Reeder gently. “I think I had better see Lidgett, and then I would like to telephone to Scotland Yard and bring down the officer in charge of the Buckingham case. I’m afraid it is going to be a rather unpleasant experience for you, my friend.”

“I know nothing about Buckingham,” said the man huskily. “I had little to do with the guards. I saw them and paid them, and that is all.”

“When you say ‘guards’ you mean ‘guard’,” said Mr Reeder. “There have been no keepers of the treasure house since shortly after Mr Lane Leonard’s death, the only man employed being Buckingham. It only needed the most elementary of inquiries to dispose of that absurd story. You have the key of the treasure house, by the way?”

The other shook his head.

“Suspended round your neck by a silver chain?” suggested Mr Reeder.

“No,” said Olbude brusquely. “I have never had it. Lidgett has it.”

Mr Reeder smiled.

“Then there is all the more reason for interviewing that enterprising chauffeur,” he said.

Pamela had stood silent through this exchange. There were significant gaps which she could fill.

“Lidgett is in his room,” said Olbude at last. “I suppose it’s going to be very serious for me?”

“I’m afraid it is,” said Reeder.

The man bit his lip and stared out of the window.

“Nothing can be very much worse than the humiliating life I have lived for the past few years,” he said. “I never dreamt that money and wealth could be purchased at such a ghastly price.”

He looked at the girl with a quizzical smile.

“In this precious treasure house there is very nearly five hundred thousand pounds,” he said. “I made a rough survey the other morning. Lidgett was kind enough to let me have the keys – in fact, he had to allow this, because I flatly refused to make any statement concerning the condition of the Treasury until he let me satisfy myself that the money was not entirely gone.

“He and Buckingham were fellow gamblers. I’ve never quite known how Buckingham came into his confidence, but I have a fancy that Buckingham was necessary for the transport of the gold. I will say this, that I was not aware that the money was being stolen, although I confess I was a little suspicious. When I taxed Lidgett with plundering the treasure house he very frankly admitted the fact, and defied me to take any action against him.

“I know they quarrelled a great deal, and, as Miss Lane Leonard will tell you, there was some fighting in which Lidgett got the worst of it. The murder was probably subsequent to this. And now I think I had better call Lidgett.”

He went out of the room and up the stairs, past the far end of the left wing and knocked at the door. A surly voice asked who was there, and when he replied he heard the shuffle of slippered feet across the bare floor and the key was turned in the lock.

Lidgett was in a dressing gown, his face covered with sticking plaster.

“Has he gone?” he growled.

Major Olbude shook his head, a smile on his good-looking face.

“No,” he said lightly. “At the moment he is in the library with Miss Lane Leonard.”

Lidgett gaped at him.

“With her? Talking to her? What the hell’s the idea?”

“The idea is that I have told Mr Reeder as much of the truth as I know. I naturally couldn’t tell him exactly the circumstances leading to the murder of Buckingham, because I don’t know what preceded it. I gather from your activity in the garage the next day, and the amount of washing down you did, that the murder was committed in the garage. I know you burnt clothes in the furnace, but all this is quite unimportant.”

Lidgett stood, speechless. And then, as he realised all that was implied: “You swine!” he screamed.

Mr Reeder heard two quick shots and then a third. He flew up the stairs, arriving simultaneously with a manservant. When he came back to the girl his face was grave.

“I’m going to take you up to London, young lady,” he said. “I have asked one of the maids to pack your things and bring them down.”

“I can go up–” she began.

“There is no need.”

“What has happened?” she asked.

“We’ll talk about it in the car,” said Reeder.

In truth he did nothing of the sort. He did not even tell her that the key attached to a silver chain, which he carried in his pocket, had been taken from the neck of the dead Lidgett and was still spotted with his blood.

“The story, so far as I can piece it together,” said Mr Reeder to his chief, “is somewhat complicated, but is not by any means as complicated as it appeared. Which, sir, is a peculiarity of most human stories.

“The real Major Olbude was a drug addict who died in St Pancras Infirmary. He was a relative of Lane Leonard’s, and at one time there had been certain business associations between them. When Lane Leonard found he was approaching his end, his mind went back to his brother-in-law and he sent Lidgett in search of him. By a stroke of luck Lidgett was able to trace Olbude, and discovered that he had died at St Pancras Infirmary and been buried under the name of Smith.

“You must realise that Lidgett was a very shrewd and possibly a clever fellow. He was certainly cunning. He knew that unless a guardian were produced the estate would be thrown into Chancery and he would lose his employment, for he had never been a favourite with Miss Pamela. He conceived the idea of producing a spurious Major Olbude, and his choice fell upon a man he had met at a gambling house in Dean Street, a rather pompous schoolmaster who had this unfortunate failing, and was in the habit of coming to London every weekend to play at the club.

“Mr Tasbitt was a master at Fernleigh College, a public school at which Larry O’Ryan was a scholar and from which he was expelled. There is no doubt whatever that the boy was innocent, and that the real thief was this same Tasbitt. Depending upon his master’s failing senses, Lidgett took Tasbitt, who probably agreed to fraud with the greatest reluctance and in some terror, to Sevenways Castle. Tasbitt was introduced and accepted as Olbude; there was very little risk; few people knew Olbude. I have only today learned that his title of major was a piece of vanity on his part, and that he had only served some twelve months in the Territorial Army and had not risen beyond the rank of second lieutenant. But that is by the way.

“All might have gone well if Buckingham and Lidgett had not quarrelled, probably over the division of the loot. The two men were running a land development company, and though this was not very successful it was by no means a failure. I have now been able to trace Lidgett’s account, and a very considerable portion of the missing money will be in time restored to its owner when certain properties are liquidated.

“It was unfortunate for Tasbitt that O’Ryan was in the vicinity of my office the day he called on me, for he was instantly recognised and, as it appeared, the recognition was mutual.”

When the Assistant Public Prosecutor heard the story he asked a pertinent question.

“Will this young lady marry O’Ryan?”

Mr Reeder nodded.

“I think so,” he said gravely.

“Isn’t there a possibility that he’s after her money?”

Mr Reeder shook his head.

“He has quite a lot of money of his own,” he said, a little regretfully.

When Mr Reeder went to New York in connection with the Gessler Bank fraud he was treated as though he were a popular member of a royal family. New York policemen, who are more accustomed to seeing humanity in all sorts of odd shapes and appearances, and with that innate politeness and hospitality which is theirs, saw nothing amusing in the old-fashioned coat, which he kept tightly buttoned, in his square hat, or even his side-whiskers. They offered him the respect which was due to a very great detective. They were less deceived by his seeming timidity and his preference for everybody’s opinion but his own than were their English colleagues.

His stay was a comparatively short one, yet, in the time at his disposal, he glided through the police headquarters of four great American cities, saw Atlanta prison, and, two days before he sailed, travelled by train to Ossning, passed through the steel gates of Sing-Sing and inspected that very interesting building under the guidance of the Deputy Warden, from card index to death house.

“There’s one man I’d have liked you to see,” said the Deputy Warden just before they parted. “He’s an Englishman – he’s called Redsack. Have you ever heard of him?”

Mr Reeder shook his head.

“There are so many people I’ve never heard of,” he murmured apologetically, “and Mr Redsack is one of them. Is he staying here – er – for a long time?”

“Life,” said the other laconically, “and he’s lucky to escape the chair. He’s broken three prisons, but he won’t break Sing-Sing – the most dangerous man we have in this institution.”

Mr Reeder rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

“I – um – would like to have seen him,” he said.

The Deputy Warden smiled.

“Just now he’s not visible, but he’ll be out tomorrow,” he said. “We had to put him in a punishment cell for trying to escape. I thought you might know him. He’s had four convictions in the United States, and he’s probably guilty of more murders than any prisoner inside these walls; he certainly has the biggest brain I’ve met with since I first dealt with criminals.”

Mr Reeder smiled sadly and shook his head.

“I have never yet met – um – anything that resembled a brain in the criminal world,” he said, with a deep melancholy. “Redsack? What a pity his crimes were not committed in England.”

“Why?” asked the Deputy Warden, in surprise.

“He would be dead by now,” said Mr Reeder, and heaved a deep sigh.

The departure of Mr Reeder’s ship was delayed twenty-four hours, and he filled in the time very profitably by gluing himself to the record department at Police Headquarters, New York, and making himself acquainted with Mr Redsack.

Redsack was a consistently elusive person. There was no photograph of him that had not been cleverly distorted by his own facial manoeuvres. It was not true to say that he was an Englishman; he had been born in Vancouver and had been educated in London; and at thirty had a record that would have made him respected in any criminal circle and nowhere else. Almost Mr Reeder, albeit reluctantly, agreed with the Deputy Warden that this man showed evidence of genius. He was clever, he was ruthless. In the bare police records, and even without the assistance of an explanatory dossier, the investigator noticed three samples of the operation of a brilliant mind.

Mr Reeder sailed at midnight on the following day. As, clad in his gay pyjamas, he climbed into his bed, he could have no idea that, five decks below him, working in the galley, was the man he had left in the punishment cell at Sing-Sing and, oddly enough, there was nothing in the newspapers about this astonishing fact.

When the Deputy Warden had said again at parting, a little regretfully: “Pity you can’t see Redsack. He’ll be out tomorrow,” he was unconsciously a prophet.

It was the most daring and the most sensational escape that Sing-Sing had known. It happened on a dull, wintry afternoon, when a dozen prisoners were at their exercises in the big yard of the old prison. They were watching, with some curiosity and interest, the manoeuvres of a balloon which, caught in a half-gale, was tacking over the Hudson in a vain effort to get back on its course. Ballooning was an unusual sport. Suddenly, without warning, something seemed to go wrong, and the big gasbag, sagging in the middle, began to make a rapid and oblique descent. Its trail rope came over the wall of the prison yard, dragging along the ground and the nearest man to it seized it. As he did so, a heavy quantity of ballast was released from the gondola beneath the bag, and the balloon shot up, carrying with it a Mr Redsack.