Red aces Being three cases of Mr. Reeder
“All right--I done nothin’… there’s a guy shot round the corner… some
feller did it.”
Two officers took him to the station, and as a precautionary measure
he was searched.
In the right hand pocket of his overcoat was found an automatic pistol
that had been recently fired.
CHAPTER II
Mr. J.G. Reeder rang his bell and sighed. He sighed because it was
the fourth time he had rung the bell without anything happening.
There were moments when he saw himself walking into the next room and
addressing Miss Gillette in firm but fatherly tones. He would point
out to her the impossible situation which was created when a secretary
ignored the summons of her employer; he would insist that she did not
bring into the office, or, if she brought, should not in business
hours read the tender or exciting fiction which she favoured; he would
say, in the same firm and fatherly way, that perhaps it would be
better for everybody concerned if she found a new occupation, or a
similar occupation in the service of somebody who had less exacting
views on the question of duty. But always, when he rose from his chair
after ringing four times, determined to settle the matter there and
then, he sat down again and rang a fifth time.
“Dear, dear!” said Mr. Reeder. “This is very trying.”
At that moment Miss Gillette came into the room. She was pretty and
slight and small. She had a tip-tilted nose and a faultless
complexion, and her dully golden hair was a little untidy.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Did you ring?”
Between her fingers she held a long, jade-green cigarette holder. Mr.
Reeder had once asked her not to come into his office smoking: she
invariably carried her cigarette in her hand nowadays, and he accepted
the compromise.
“I think I did,” he said gently.
“_I_ thought you did.”
Mr. Reeder winced as she put her cigarette holder on the mantelpiece,
and, pulling a chair forward, sat down at his desk. She carried a book
under her arm, and this she opened and laid on the table.
“Shoot,” she said, and Mr. Reeder winced again.
The trouble about Miss Gillette was her competence. If she had made
mistakes and put letters in the wrong envelopes or forgot
appointments, Mr. Reeder would have gone away to some foreign land,
such as Eastbourne or Brighton, and would have written to her a sad
letter of farewell, enclosing a month’s salary in lieu of notice. But
she was devastatingly competent: she had built up a structure of
indispensability; she had, in the shortest space of time, developed
herself into a habit and a fixture.
“You mean that I am to proceed?” he asked gravely.
Another woman would have wilted under the reproof; there was something
very wiltless about Miss Gillette. She just closed her eyes wearily.
“Let’s go,” she said, and it was Mr. Reeder who was reproved.
“This is a report on the Wimburg Case,” he said, and began his
hesitant dictation.
As he grew into his subject, he spoke with greater and greater
rapidity. Never once did Miss Gillette interrupt with a question, to
gain time for her lagging pencil. There was a ceaseless snap as the
pages of her notebook turned.
“That is all,” he said breathlessly. “I trust that I did not go too
fast for you?”
“I hardly noticed that you were moving,” she said, wetted her fingers
and flicked back the pages. “You used the word ‘unsubstantial’ three
times: once you meant ‘inadequate’ and once ‘unreal’. I would suggest
that we alter those.”
Mr. Reeder moved uncomfortably in his chair.
“Are you sure?” he asked feebly.
She was always sure, because she was always right.
It was not true to say that Mr. Reeder had ever engaged a secretary.
It was Miss Gillette who engaged him. By one of those odd coincidences
which are unacceptable to the lovers of fiction but which occur in
everyday life, she arrived at Mr. Reeder’s office on the day and at
the hour he was expecting a temporary typist from an agency. For some
reason the agency lady did not arrive, or, if she did, was interviewed
by Miss Gillette, who, fulfilling the practice of the young queen bee,
destroyed her rival--in the nicest possible sense. And when Mr.
Reeder, having concluded the work for which he had engaged her, would
have dismissed her with a ten-shilling note, shyly tendered and
brazenly accepted, he learned that she was a fixture. He lay awake for
an hour on the following Friday night, debating with himself whether
he should deduct the ten shillings from her salary.
“Are there any appointments?” he asked.
There was none. Mr. Reeder knew there was none before he asked. It was
at this point that his daily embarrassment was invariably overcome.
“Nothing in the papers, I suppose?”
“Nothing except the Pimlico murder case. The funny thing is that the
man who was killed----”
“Nothing funny about--um--that, my dear young lady,” murmured Mr.
Reeder. “Funny? Dear, dear!”
“When I said ‘funny,’ I didn’t mean ‘amusing’ but ‘odd’,” she said.
“And if you are getting back for ‘unsubstantial,’ you will be pleased
to know that you have got. He was Vladimir Litnoff--you remember, the
man who was drunk and said that he had a brooch.”
Mr. Reeder nodded calmly. Apparently Litnoff’s death was not startling
news.
“It is my--um--mind, my dear young friend. I see evil things where
other people see innocent things. And yet, in the question of human
relationships, I take the kindliest and most charitable views. H’m!
The young man who was with you at the Regal Cinema, for example----”
“Was the young man I’m going to marry when we earn enough to support
one another,” she said promptly. “But how the devil did you see us?”
“S’sh!” said Mr. Reeder, shocked. “Strong--um--language is--um--most…”
She was looking at him frowningly.
“Sit down,” she said, and Mr. Reeder, who knew little of the rights of
secretaries, but was quite sure that ordering their employers to sit
down in their own offices was outside the table of privileges, sat
down.
“I like you, John or Jonas or whatever the ‘J’ stands for,” she said,
with outrageous coolness. “I didn’t realize that you were a detective
when I came to you. I’ve worked for successions of tired business men,
who bucked up sufficiently towards evening to ask me out to supper,
but never a detective. And you’re different from all the men I’ve ever
met. You’ve never tried to hold my hand----”
“I should hope not!” said Mr. Reeder, going very red. “I’m old enough
to be your father!”
“There isn’t such an age,” she said. And then, very seriously: “Would
you speak to Tommy Anton if I brought him here?”
“Tommy--you mean your--um----”
“My ‘um’--that describes him,” she nodded. “He’s a wonderful
fellow--terribly awkward and shy, and he’ll probably make a bad
impression, as you do, but he’s a really nice man.”
Now Mr. Reeder had been many things, but he had never acted _in loco
parentis_, and the prospect was a trifle terrifying.
“You wish me to ask him--er--what his intentions are?”
She smiled at this, and she had a dazzling and beautiful smile.
“My dear, I know what his intentions are, all right. You don’t meet a
man day after day for over a year without finding out something about
his private ideas. No--it is something else.”
Mr. Reeder waited.
“If you were an ordinary employer,” she went on, “you’d take me by the
scruff of my neck and fire me.” Mr. Reeder disclaimed such a ferocious
quality with a feeble shake of his head. “But you’re not.”
She got up and walked to the window and looked out. What was she going
to say? A most ghastly thought occurred to Mr. Reeder, one that made a
cold shiver down his spine. But it was not that, for she turned
suddenly.
“Tommy has been robbed of twenty-three thousand pounds,” she said.
He stared at her owlishly.
“Robbed?” She nodded. “When?”
“More than a year ago--before I met him. That is not why he is selling
motor-cars on commission. He tries to sell them, but he isn’t very
successful. His partner robbed him. They had a motor-car business.
Tommy and this man Seafield were at Oxford together, and when they
came down they started a motor-car agency. Tommy went to Germany to
negotiate for an agency. When he came back Seafield had gone. He did
not even leave a note--he just drew the money from the bank and went
away.”
She saw a new light in Mr. Reeder’s eyes and could not but marvel that
what to him was so small a matter should be of such immediate
interest.
“And no message with his wife?… Unmarried, eh? H’m! He lived…”
“At an hotel--he was a bachelor. No, he didn’t tell anybody
there--just said he was going away for a day or two.”
“Left his clothes behind and did not even pay his bill,” murmured Mr.
Reeder.
Miss Gillette was surprised.
“You know all about it, then?”
“My queer mind,” he said simply.
There was a tap at the outer door.
“You had better see who that is,” said Mr. Reeder.
She went to the door and opened it. Standing on the mat outside was a
clergyman, wearing a long black overcoat which reached to his heels.
He looked at her dubiously.
“Is this Mr. Reeder’s office--the detective?” he asked.
She nodded, regarding the unexpected visitor with interest. He was a
man of fifty, with greying hair. A mild, rather pallid man, who seemed
to be ill at ease, for the fingers that gripped his umbrella, which he
held about its middle as though he were all ready to signal a cab,
clasped and unclasped in his agitation.
He looked at Mr. Reeder helplessly. Mr. Reeder, for his part, twiddled
his thumbs and gazed at the visitor solemnly. It almost seemed that he
was smitten dumb by the uniform of his visitor’s rectitude.
“Won’t you sit down, please?” There was something of the churchwarden
in Mr. Reeder’s benevolent gesture.
“The matter I wish to speak about--well, I hardly know how to begin,”
said the clergyman.
Here Mr. Reeder could not help him. It was on his tongue to offer the
conventional suggestion that the best way to begin any story was to
tell the unvarnished truth. Somehow this hardly seemed a delicate
thing to say to a man of the cloth, so he said nothing.
“It concerns a man named Ralph--the merest acquaintance of mine…
hardly that. I had corresponded with him on certain matters pertaining
to the higher criticism. But I can hardly remember what points he
raised or how I dealt with them. I never keep correspondence, not
because I am unbusinesslike, but because letters have a trick of
accumulating, and a filing system is a tyranny to which I will never
submit.”
Mr. Reeder’s heart could have warmed to this frank man. He loathed old
letters and filing was an abominable occupation.
“This morning I had a call from Mr. Ralph’s daughter. She lives with
her father at Bishop’s Stortford in Essex. Apparently she came upon my
name written on an envelope which she found in a wastepaper basket in
her father’s office--he had a small office in Lower Regent Street,
where he attended to whatever business he had.”
“What was his business?” asked Mr. Reeder.
“Actually he had none. He was a retired provision merchant who had
made a fortune in the City. He may have had, and probably has, one or
two minor interests to occupy his spare time. He came up to town last
Thursday--curiously enough, I had a telephone call from him at my
hotel when I was out. Since that day he has not been seen.”
“Dear me!” said Mr. Reeder. “What a coincidence!”
Dr. Ingham looked a painful enquiry.
“That you should have thought of me,” said Mr. Reeder. “It is very odd
that people who lose people always come to me. And the young lady--she
told you all this?”
Dr. Ingham nodded.
“Yes. She is naturally worried. It appears that she had a friend, a
young man, who did exactly the same thing. Just walked out of his