TERROR KEEP CHAPTER XI
Mr. Reeder closed the door, put on the lights, and set himself to unravel the inexplicable mystery of its opening. Before he went to bed he had shot home the bolt, had turned the key in the lock, and the key was still on the inside. It struck him, as he turned it, that he had never heard a lock that moved so silently or a bolt that slipped so easily into its groove. Both lock and bolt had been recently oiled. He began a scrutiny of the inside face of the door, and provided a simple solution to the somewhat baffling incident of its opening.
The door consisted of eight panels, carved in small lozenge-shaped ornaments. The panel immediately above the lock moved slightly when he pressed it, but it was a long time before he found the tiny spring which held it in place. When that was found, the panel opened like a miniature door. He could thrust his hand through the aperture and slide back the bolt with the greatest ease.
There was nothing very unusual or sinister about this. He knew that many hotels and boarding houses had methods by which a door could be unlocked from the outside—a very necessary precaution in certain eventualities. Mr. Reeder wondered whether he would find a similar safety panel on the door of Margaret Belman's room.
By the time he had completed his inspection, it was daylight, and, pulling back the curtains, he drew a chair to the window and made a survey of as much of the grounds as lay within his line of vision.
There were two or three matters which were puzzling him. If Larmes Keep was the headquarters of the Flack gang, in what manner and for what reason had Olga Crewe been brought into the confederation? He judged her age at twenty-four; she had been a constant visitor, if not a resident, at Larmes Keep for at least ten years, and he knew enough of the ways of the underworld to realise that they did not employ children. Also she had been to a public school of some kind, and that would have absorbed at least four of the ten years—Mr. Reeder shook his head in doubt.
Nothing would happen now until dark, he decided, and, stretching himself upon the bed, he pulled the coverlet over him and slept till a tapping at the door announced the coming of the housemaid with his morning tea.
She was a round-faced woman, just past her first youth, with a disagreeable cockney accent and the brusque and familiar manner of one who was an indispensable part of the establishment. Mr. Reeder remembered that the girl had waited on him at dinner.
"Why, sir, you haven't undressed!" she said.
"I seldom undress," said Mr. Reeder, sitting up and taking the tea from her. "It is such a waste of time. For no sooner are your clothes off than it is necessary to put them on again."
She looked at him hard, but he did not smile.
"You're a detective, ain't you? Everybody at the cottage knows that you are. What have you come down about?"
Now Mr. Reeder could afford to smile cryptically. There was a suppressed anxiety in the girl's voice.
"It is not for me, my dear young lady, to disclose your employer's business."
"He brought you down? Well, he's got a nerve!"
Mr. Reeder put his finger to his lips.
"About the candlesticks?"
He nodded.
"He still thinks somebody in the house took them?"
Her face was very red, her eyes snapped angrily. Here was exposed one of the minor scandals of the hotel.
It was not an uninteresting sidelight. For if ever guilt was written on a woman's face it was on hers. What these candlesticks were and how they disappeared, Mr. Reeder could guess. Petty larceny runs in well-defined channels.
"Well, you can tell him from me" she began shrilly, and he raised a solemn hand.
"Keep the matter to yourself—regard me as your friend," he begged.
He was in his lighter moments a most mischievous man, a weakness that few suspected in Mr. J. G. Reeder. Moreover, he wanted badly some inside information about the household, and he had an idea that this infuriated girl who flounced out and slammed the door behind her would supply him with that information. In his most optimistic moments he could not dream that in her raw hands she held the secret of Larmes Keep.
As soon as he came down, Mr. Reeder decided to go to Daver's office; he was curious to learn the true story of the missing candlesticks. The sound of an angry voice reached him, and as his hand was raised to knock at the door, it was opened by somebody who was holding the handle on the inside, and he heard a woman's angry voice.
"You've treated me shabbily: that's all I can say to you, Mr. Daver! I've been working for you five years and I've never said a word about your business to anybody! And now you bring a detective down to spy on me! I won't be treated as if I was a thief or something! If you think that's behaving fair and square, after all I've done for you, and minding my own business ... yes, I know I've been well paid, but I could get just as much money somewhere else ... I've got my pride, Mr. Daver, the same as you have ... and I think you've been very underhand, the way you've treated me ... I'll go to-night, don't you worry!"
The door was flung open and a red-faced girl of twenty-five flounced out and dashed past the eavesdropper, scarcely noticing him in her fury. The door shut behind her; evidently Mr. Daver was in as bad a temper as the girl—a fortunate circumstance, as it proved, and Mr. Reeder decided it might be inadvisable to advertise that he had overheard the whole or part of the conversation.
When he strolled out into the sunlit grounds, of all the people who had been disturbed during the night he was the brightest and showed the least sign of fatigue. He met the Rev. Mr. Dean and the Colonel, who was carrying a golf bag, and they bade him a gruff good-morning. The Colonel, he thought, was a little haggard; Mr. Dean gave him a scowl as he passed.
Walking up and down the lawn, he examined the front of the house with a critical eye. The lines of the Keep were very definite: harsh and angular; not even the Tudor windows, which at some remote period had been introduced to its stony face, could disguise its ancient grimness.
Turning an angle of the house, he reached the strip of lawn that faced his own window. Behind the lawn was a mass of rhododendron bushes, which might serve a useful purpose, but which in certain circumstances might also be a danger-point.
Immediately beneath his window was an angle of the drawing-room, a circumstance that gave him cause for satisfaction. Mr. Reeder's experience favoured a bedroom that was above a public apartment.
He went back on his tracks and came to the other end of the lawn. Those three windows, brightly curtained, were evidently Mr. Daver's private suite. Beneath them, the wall was black, the actual stone being obscured by a thick growth of ivy. He wondered what this lightless and doorless space contained.
As he returned to the front of the house he saw Margaret Belman. She was standing in front of the doorway, shading her eyes from the sun, evidently searching her limited landscape for somebody. Seeing him, she came quickly to meet him.
"Oh, there you are!" she said, with a sigh of relief. "I wondered what had happened to you—you didn't come down to breakfast."
She looked a little peaked, he thought. Evidently she had not rounded off the night as agreeably as he.
"I haven't slept since I saw you," she said, answering his unspoken question. "What happened, Mr. Reeder? Did somebody really try to get into the house—a burglar?"
"I think somebody tried, and I think succeeded," said Mr. Reeder carefully. "Burglaries happen even in—um—hotels, Miss—um—Margaret. Has Mr. Daver notified the police?"
She shook her head.
"I don't know. He has been telephoning all the morning—I went to his room just now and it was locked, but I heard his voice. And, Mr. Reeder, you didn't tell me the terrible thing that happened the night I left London. I saw it in the newspaper this morning."
"Terrible thing?"
J.G. Reeder was puzzled. Almost he had forgotten the adventure of the spring gun.
"Oh, you mean the little joke?"
"Joke!" she said, shocked.
"Criminals have a perverted sense of humour," said Mr. Reeder airily. "The whole thing was—um—an elaborate jest designed to frighten me. One expects such things. They are the examination papers which are set to test one's intelligence from time to time."
"But who did it?" she asked.
Mr. Reeder's gaze wandered absently over the placid countryside. She had a feeling that it bored him even to recall so trivial an incident in a busy life.
"Our young friend," he said suddenly, and, following the direction of his eyes, she saw Olga Crewe.
She was wearing a dark grey knitted suit and a big black hat that shaded her face, and there was nothing of embarrassment in the half smile with which she greeted her fellow-guest.
"Good-morning, Mr. Reeder. I think we have met before this morning." She rubbed her arm good-humouredly.
Mr. Reeder was all apologies.
"I don't even know now what happened," she said, and Margaret Belman learned for the first time what had happened before she had made her appearance.
"I never thought you were so strong—look!" Olga Crewe pulled back her sleeve and showed a big blue-black patch on her forearm, cutting short his expression of remorse with a little laugh.
"Have you shown Mr. Reeder all the attractions of the estate?" she asked, a hint of sarcasm in her tone. "I almost expected to find you at the bathing-pool this morning."
"I didn't even know there was a bathing pool," said Mr. Reeder. "In fact, after my terrible scare last night, this—um—beautiful house has assumed so sinister an aspect that I expect to bathe in nothing less dramatic than blood!"
She was not amused. He saw her eyes close quickly and she shivered a little.
"How gruesome you are! Come along, Miss Belman."
Inwardly Margaret resented the tone, which was almost a command, but she walked by their side. Clear of the house, Olga stopped and pointed.
"You must see the well. Are you interested in old things?" asked Olga, as she led the way to the shrubbery.
"I am more interested in new things, especially new experiences," said Mr. Reeder, quite gaily. "And new people fascinate me!"
Again that quick, frightened smile of hers.
"Then you should be having the time of your life, Mr. Reeder," she said, "for you're meeting people here whom you've never met before."
He screwed up his forehead in a frown.
"Yes, there are two people in this house I have never met before," he said, and she looked round at him quickly.
"Only two? You've never met me before!"
"I've seen you," said Mr. Reeder, "but I have never met you."
By this time they had arrived at the well, and he read the inscription slowly before he tested the board that covered the top of the well with his foot.
"It has been closed for years," said the girl. "I shouldn't touch it," she added hastily, as Reeder stooped and, catching the edge of the board, swung it back trap fashion, leaving an oblong cavity.
The trap did not squeak or creak as he turned it back; the hinges were oiled; there was no accumulation of dust between the two doors. Going on to his hands and knees, he looked down into the darkness.
"How many loads of rubble and rock were used to fill up this well?" he asked.
Margaret read from the little notice-board.
"Hum!" said Mr. Reeder, groped in his pockets, took out a two-shilling piece, poised the silver coin carefully and let it drop.
For a long, long time he listened, and then a faint metallic tinkle came up to him.
"Nine seconds!" He looked up into Olga's face. "Deduct from the velocity of a falling object the speed at which sound travels, and tell me how deep this hole is."
He got to his feet, dusted the knees of his trousers, and carefully dropped the trap into position.
"Rock there may be," he said, "but there is no water. I must work out the number of loads requisite to fill this well entirely—it will be an interesting morning's occupation for one who in his youth was something of a mathematical genius."
Olga Crewe led the way back to the shrubbery in silence. When they came to the open:
"I think you had better show Mr. Reeder the rest of the establishment," she said. "I'm rather tired."
And with a nod, she turned away and walked toward the house, and Mr. Reeder gazed after her with something like admiration in his eyes.
"The rouge would, of course, make a tremendous difference," he said, half speaking to himself, "but it is very difficult to disguise voices—even the best of actors fail in this respect."
Margaret stared at him.
"Are you talking to me?"
"To myself," said Mr. Reeder humbly. "It is a bad habit of mine, peculiar to my age, I fear."
"But Miss Crewe never uses rouge."
"Who does—in the country?" asked Mr. Reeder, and pointed with his walking stick to the wall along the cliff. "Where does that lead? What is on the other side?"
"Sudden death," said Margaret, and laughed.
For a quarter of an hour they stood leaning on the parapet of the low wall, looking down at the strip of beach below. The small channel that led to the cave interested him. He asked her how deep it was. She thought that it was quite shallow, a conclusion with which he did not agree.
"Underground caves sound romantic, and that channel is deeper than most. I think I must explore the cave. How does one get down?"
He looked left and right. The beach was enclosed in a deep little bay, circled on one side by sheer cliff, on the other by a high reef of rock that ran far out to sea. Mr. Reeder pointed to the horizon.
"Sixty miles from here is France."
He had a disconcerting habit of going off at a tangent.
"I think I will do a little exploring this afternoon. The walk should freshen me."
They were returning to the house when he remembered the bathing-pool and asked to see it.
"I wonder Mr. Daver doesn't let it run dry," Margaret said. "It is an awful expense. I was going through the municipality's account yesterday, and they charge a fabulous sum for pumping up fresh water."
"How long has it been built?"
"That is the surprising thing," she said. "It was made twelve years ago, when private swimming-pools were things unheard of in this country."
The pool was oblong in shape; one end of it was tiled and obviously artificially created. The farther end, however, had for its sides and bottom natural rock. A great dome-shaped mass served as a diving-platform. Mr. Reeder walked all round, gazing into the limpid water. It was deepest at the rocky end, and here he stayed longest, and his inspection was most thorough. There seemed a space—how deep he could not tell—at the bottom of the bath, where the rock overhung.
"Very interesting," said Mr. Reeder at last. "I think I will go back to the house and get my bathing-suit. Happily I brought one."
"I didn't know you were a swimmer," smiled the girl.
"I am the merest tyro in most things," said Mr. Reeder modestly.
He went up to his room, undressed and slipped into a bathing-suit, over which he put his overcoat. Olga Crewe and Mr. Daver had gone down to Siltbury. To his satisfaction, he saw the hotel car descending the hill road cautiously in a cloud of dust.
When Mr. Reeder threw off his coat to make the plunge there was something comically ferocious in his appearance, for about his waist he had fastened a belt to which was fastened in a sheath a long-bladed hunting knife, and in addition there dangled a waterproof bag in which he had placed one of the many little hand-lamps that he invariably carried about with him. He made the most human preparations: put his toes into the cold water, and shivered ecstatically before he made his plunge. Losing no time in preliminaries, he swam along the bottom to the slit in the rock which he had seen.
It was about two feet high and eight feet in length, and into this he pulled his way, gripping the roof to aid his progress. The roof ended abruptly; he found nothing but water above him, and he allowed himself to come to the surface, catching hold of a projecting ledge to keep himself afloat whilst he detached the waterproof bag from his belt, and, planting it upon the shelf, took out his flash-lamp.
He was in a natural stone chamber, with a broad, vaulted roof. He was, in fact, inside the dome-shaped rock that formed one end of the pool. At the farthermost corner of the chamber was an opening about four feet in height and two feet in width. A rock passage that led downward, he saw. He followed this for about fifty yards and noted that, although nature had hewn or worn this queer corridor at some remote age—possibly it had been an underground waterway before some gigantic upheaval of nature had raised the land above water level—the passage owed something of its practicability to human agency. At one place there were marks of a chisel; at another, unmistakable signs of blasting. Mr. Reeder retraced his steps and came back to the water. He fastened and resealed his lamp, and, drawing a long breath, dived to the bottom and wormed his way through the aperture to the bath and to open air. He came to the surface to gaze into the horror-stricken face of Margaret Belman.
"Oh, Mr. Reeder!" she gasped. "You—you frightened me! ... I heard you jump in, but when I came here and found the bath empty I thought I must have been mistaken.... Where have you been? You couldn't stay under water all that time."
"Will you hand me my overcoat?" said Mr. Reeder modestly, and when he had hastily buttoned this about his person: "I have been to see that the County Council's requirements are fully satisfied," he said solemnly.
She listened, dazed.
"In all theatres, as you probably know, my dear Miss— um—Margaret, it is essential that there should be certain exits in case of necessity. I have already inspected two this morning, but I rather imagine that the most important of all has so far escaped my observation. What a man! Surely madness is akin to genius!"
He lunched alone, and apparently no man was less interested in his fellow guests than Mr. J.G. Reeder. The two golfers had returned and were eating at the same table. Miss Crewe, who came in late and favoured him with a smile, sat at a little table facing him.
"She is uneasy," said Mr. Reeder to himself. "That is the second time she has dropped her fork. Presently she will get up, sit with her back to me ... I wonder on what excuse?"
Apparently no excuse was necessary. The girl called a waitress toward her and had her glass and tableware shifted to the other side of the table. Mr. Reeder was rather pleased with himself.
Daver minced into the dining room as Mr. Reeder was peeling an apple.
"Good morning, Mr. Reeder. Have you got over your nightmare? I see that you have! A man of iron nerve. I admire that tremendously. Personally, I am the most dreadful coward, and the very hint of a burglar makes me shiver. You wouldn't believe it, but I had a quarrel with a servant this morning and she left me shaking! You are not affected that way? I see that you are not! Miss Belman tells me that you tried our swimming-pool this morning. You enjoyed it? I am sure you did!"
"Won't you sit down and have coffee?" asked Mr. Reeder politely, but Daver declined the invitation with a flourish and a bow.
"No, no, I have my work—I cannot tell you how grateful I am to Miss Belman for putting me on the track of the most fascinating character of modern times. What a man!" said Mr. Daver, unconsciously repeating J. G. Reeder's tribute. "I've been trying to trace his early career—no, no, I'll stand: I must run away in a minute or two. Is anything known about his early life? Was he married?"
Mr. Reeder nodded. He had not the slightest idea that John Flack was married, but it seemed a moment to assert the universality of his knowledge. He was quite unprepared for the effect upon Daver. The jaw of the yellow-faced man dropped.
"Married?" he squeaked. "Who told you he was married? Where was he married?"
"That is a matter," said Mr. Reeder gravely, "which I cannot discuss."
"Married!" Daver rubbed his little round head irritably, but did not pursue the subject. He made some inane reference to the weather and bustled out of the room.
Mr. Reeder settled himself in what he called the banqueting-hall with an illustrated paper, awaiting an opportunity which he knew must present itself sooner or later. The servants he had passed under review. Girls were employed to wait at table, and these lived in a small cottage on the Siltbury side of the estate. The man servants, including the hall porter, seemed above suspicion. The porter was an old army man with a row of medals across his uniform jacket; his assistant was a chinless youth recruited from Siltbury. He apparently was the only member of the staff that did not live in one of the cottages. In the main, the women servants were an unpromising lot—tThe infuriated waitress was his only hope, although as likely as not she would talk of nothing but her grievances.
From where he sat he had a view of the lawn. At three o'clock the Colonel and the Rev. Mr. Dean and Olga Crewe passed out of the main gate, evidently bound for Siltbury. He rang the bell and, to his satisfaction, the aggrieved waitress came and took his order for tea.
"This is a nice place," said Mr. Reeder conversationally.
The girl's "Yes, sir" was snappy.
"I suppose," mused Mr. Reeder, looking out of the window, "that this is the sort of situation that a lot of girls would give their heads to get and break their hearts to lose?"
Evidently she did not agree.
"The upstairs work isn't so bad," she said, "and there's not much to do in the dining-room. But it's too slow for me. I was at a big hotel before I came here. I'm going to a better job—and the sooner the better."
She admitted that the money was good, but she had a longing for that imponderable quantity which she described as "life." She also expressed a preference for men guests.
"Miss Crewe—so called—gives more trouble than all the rest of the people put together," she said. "I can't make her out. First she wants one room, then she wants another. Why she can't stay with her husband, I don't know."
"With her?" Mr. Reeder looked at her in pained surprise. "Perhaps they don't get on well together?"
"They used to get on all right. If they weren't married, I could understand all the mystery they're making—pretending they're not, him in his room and she in hers, and meeting like strangers. When all that kind of deceit is going on, things are bound to get lost," she added inconsequently.
"How long has this been—er—going on?" asked Mr. Reeder.
"Only the last week or so," said the girl viciously. "I know they're married, because I've seen her marriage certificate—they've been married six years. She keeps it in her dressing-case."
She looked at him with sudden suspicion.
"I oughtn't to have told you that. I don't want to make trouble for anybody, and I bear them no malice, though they've treated me worse'n a dog," she said. "Nobody else in the house but me knows. I was her maid for two years. But if people don't treat me right, I don't treat them right."
"Married six years? Dear me!" said Mr. Reeder.
And then he suddenly turned his head and faced her.
"Would you like fifty pounds?" he asked. "That is the immense sum I will give you for just one little peep at that marriage certificate."
The girl went red.
"You're trying to catch me," she said, hesitated, and then: "I don't want to get her into trouble."
"I am a detective," said Mr. Reeder, "but I am working on behalf of the Chief Registrar, and we have a doubt as to whether that marriage was legal. I could, of course, search the young lady's room and find the certificate for myself, but if you would care to help me, and fifty pounds has any attraction for you"
She paused irresolutely and said she would see. Half an hour later she came into the hall with the news that she had been unsuccessful in her search. She had found the envelope in which the certificate had been kept, but the document itself was gone.
Mr. Reeder did not ask the name of the bridegroom, nor was he mentioned, for he was pretty certain that he knew that fortunate man. He put the question, and the girl answered as he had expected.
"There is one thing I would like to ask you: do you remember the name of the girl's father?"
"John Crewe, merchant," she said promptly. "The mother's name was Hannah. He made me swear on the Bible I'd never tell a soul that I knew they were married."
"Does anybody else know? You said 'nobody,' I think?"
The girl hesitated.
"Yes, Mrs. Burton knows. She knows everything."
"Thank you," said Mr. Reeder, and, opening his pocketbook, took out two five-pound notes. "What was the husband's profession—do you remember that?"
The woman's lips curled.
"Secretary—why call himself secretary, I don't know, and him an independent gentleman!"
"Thank you," said Mr. Reeder again.
He telephoned to Siltbury for a taxicab.
"Are you going out?" asked Margaret, finding him waiting under the portico.
"I am buying a few presents for friends in London," said Mr. Reeder glibly; "a butter-dish or two, suitably inscribed, would, I feel sure, be very acceptable."
The taxi did not take him to Siltbury. Instead, he followed a road which ran parallel with the sea-coast, and which eventually landed him in an impossible sandy track, from which the ancient taxi was extricated with some difficulty.
"I told you this led nowhere, sir," said the aggrieved driver.
"Then we have evidently reached our destination," replied Mr. Reeder, applying his weight to push the machine to a more solid foundation.
Siltbury was not greatly favoured by London visitors, the driver told him on the way back. The town had a pebbly beach and people preferred sand.
"There are some wonderful beaches about here," said the driver, "but you can't reach 'em."
They had taken the left-hand road, which would bring them eventually to the town, and had been driving for a quarter of an hour when Mr. Reeder, who sat by the driver, pointed to a large scar in the face of the downs on his right.
"Siltbury Quarries," explained the cabman. "They're not worked now; there are too many holes."
"Holes?"
"The downs are like a sponge," said the man. "You could lose yourself in the caves. Old Mr. Kimpon used to work the quarries many years ago, and it broke him. There's a big cave there you can drive a coach-and-four into! About twenty years ago, three fellows went in to explore the caves and never came out again."
"Who owns the quarry now?"
Mr. Reeder wasn't very interested, but when his mind was occupied with a pressing problem he had a trick of flogging along a conversation with appropriate questions, and if he was oblivious of the answers they produced, the sound of the human voice had a sedative effect.
"Mr. Daver owns it now. He bought it after the people were lost in the caves, and had the entrance boarded up. You'll see it in a minute."
They were climbing a gentle slope. As they came to the crest, he pointed down a tidy-looking roadway to where, about two hundred yards distant, Reeder saw an oblong gap in the white face of the quarry. Across this, and falling the cavity except for an irregular space at the top, was a heavy wooden gate.
"You can't see it from here," said the driver, "but the top hole is blocked with barbed wire."
"Is that a gate or a hoarding he has fixed across?"
"A gate, sir. Mr. Daver owns all the land from here to the sea. He used to farm about a hundred acres of the downs, but it's very poor land. In those days he kept his wagons inside the cave."
"When did he give up farming?" asked Mr. Reeder, interested.
"About six years ago," was the reply, and it was exactly the reply Mr. Reeder had expected. "I used to see a lot of Mr. Daver before then," said the driver. "In the old times I had a horse cab, and I was always driving him about. He used to work like a galley slave—on the farm in the morning, down in the town buying things in the afternoon. He was more like a servant than a master. He used to meet all the trains when visitors arrived— and they had a lot of visitors in those days, more than they have now. Sometimes he went up to London to bring them down. He always went to meet Miss Crewe when the young lady was at school."
"Do you know Miss Crewe?"
Apparently the driver had seen her frequently, but his acquaintance was very limited.
Reeder got down from the cab and climbed the barred gate on to the private roadway. The soil was chalky and the road had the appearance of having been recently overhauled. He mentioned this fact to the cabman and learned that Mr. Daver kept two old men constantly at work making up the road, though why he should do so he had no idea.
"Where would you like to go now, sir?"
"To a quiet place where I can telephone," said Mr. Reeder.
These were the facts that he carried with him, and vital facts they were. During the past six years, the life of Mr. Daver had undergone a considerable change. From being a harassed man of affairs, "more like a servant than a master," he had become a gentleman of leisure. The mystery of the Keep was a mystery no longer. He got Inspector Simpson on the telephone and conveyed to him the gist of his discovery.
"By the way," said Simpson at the finish, "the gold hasn't been sent to Australia yet. There has been trouble at the docks. You don't seriously anticipate a Flack 'operation,' do you?"
Mr. Reeder, who had forgotten all about the gold-convoy, made a cautious and noncommittal reply.
By the time he returned to Larmes Keep, the other guests had returned. The hall porter said they were expecting a "party" on the morrow, but as he had volunteered that information on the previous evening Mr. Reeder did not take it very seriously. He gathered that the man spoke in good faith, without any wish to deceive, but he saw no signs of unusual activity; nor, indeed, was there accommodation at the Keep for more than a few more visitors.
He looked around for the aggrieved servant and missed her. A discreet inquiry revealed the fact that she had left that afternoon.
Mr. Reeder went to his room, locked the door, and busied himself in the examination of two great scrap-books which he had brought down with him. They were the official records of Flack and his gang. Perhaps "gang" was hardly a proper description, for he seemed to use and change his associates as a theatrical manager uses and changes his cast. The police knew close on a score of men who from time to time had assisted John Flack in his nefarious transactions. Some had gone to prison, and had spent the hours of their recovered liberty in a vain endeavour to reëstablish touch with so generous a paymaster. Some, known to be in his employ, had vanished, and were generally supposed to be living in luxury abroad.
Reeder went through the book, which was full of essential facts, and jotted down the amounts which this strange man had acquired in the course of twenty years' depredations. The total was a staggering one. Flack had worked feverishly, and though he had paid well he had spent little. Somewhere in England was an enormous reserve. And that somewhere, Mr. Reeder guessed, was very close to his hand.
For what had John Flack worked? To what end was this accumulation of money? Was the sheer greed of the miser behind his thefts? Was he working aimlessly, as a madman works, toward some visionary objective?
Flack's greed was proverbial. Nothing satisfied him. The robbery of the Leadenhall Bank had been followed a week later by an attack upon the London Trust Syndicate, carried out, the police discovered, by an entirely new confederation, gathered within a few days of the robbery and yet so perfectly rehearsed that the plan was carried through without a hitch.
Mr. Reeder locked away his books and went downstairs in search of Margaret Belman. The crisis was very near at hand, and it was necessary for his peace of mind that the girl should leave Larmes Keep without delay.
He was half-way down the stairs when he met Daver coming up, and at that moment he received an inspiration.
"You are the very gentleman I wished to meet," he said, "I wonder if you would do me a great favour?"
Daver's careworn face wreathed in smiles.
"My dear Mr. Reeder," he said enthusiastically, "do you a favour? Command me!"
"I have been thinking about last night and my extraordinary experience," said Mr. Reeder.
"You mean the burglar?" interrupted the other quickly.
"The burglar," agreed Mr. Reeder. "He was an alarming person, and I am not disposed to let the matter rest where it is. Fortunately for me, I have found a finger-print on the panel of my door."
He saw Daver's face change.
"When I say I have found a finger-print, I have found something which has the appearance of a finger-print, and I can only be sure if I examine it by means of a dactyscope. Unfortunately, I did not imagine that I should have need for such an instrument, and I am wondering if you could send somebody to London to bring it down for me?"
"With all the pleasure in life," said Daver, though his tone lacked heartiness. "One of the men"
"I was thinking of Miss Belman," interrupted J.G. Reeder, "who is a friend of mine and would, moreover, take the greatest possible care of that delicate mechanism."
Daver was silent for a moment, turning this over in his mind.
"Would it not be better if a man ... and the last train down"
"She could come down by car; I can arrange that."
Mr. Reeder fumbled his chin.
"Perhaps it would be better if I brought down a couple of men from the Yard."
"No, no," said Daver quickly. "You can send Miss Belman. I haven't the slightest objection. I will tell her."
Mr. Reeder looked at his watch.
"The next train is at eight thirty-five, and that is the last train, I think. The young lady will be able to get her dinner before she starts."
It was he who brought the news to the astonished Margaret Belman.
"Of course I'll go up to town; but don't you think somebody else could get this instrument for you, Mr. Reeder? Couldn't you have it sent down"
She saw the look in his eyes and stopped.
"What is it?" she asked, in a lower voice.
"Will you do this for—um—me, Miss—um—Margaret?" said Mr. Reeder, almost humbly.
He went to the lounge and scribbled a note, while Margaret telephoned for the cab. It was growing dark when the closed landau drew up before the hotel and J. G. Reeder, who accompanied her, opened the door.
"There's a man inside," he said, dropping his voice to a whisper. "Please don't scream: he's an officer of police and he's going with you to London."
"But—but" she stammered.
"And you'll stay in London to-night," said Mr. Reeder. "I will join you in the morning—I hope."