Red aces Being three cases of Mr. Reeder
J.G. wrote down three words, one of which, she saw, was “Pizarro.” The
second seemed to bear some resemblance to “Murphy.” She thought the
association of the two names was a little incongruous. He questioned
her shortly about her own situation. She had a small private income
and there was no immediate urgency so far as money was concerned.
And then she asked if she could see him alone. Mr. Reeder had a happy
feeling that Miss Gillette entirely disapproved of the request. She
could do no less than withdraw, taking her Tommy with her. He found
himself being sorry for that dumb and ordinary young man--so ordinary
indeed that Mr. Reeder for the first time became conscious of his
mental superiority to his secretary.
He had even the courage to open the door and look out. The murmur of
voices from Miss Gillette’s room assured him that they were safe from
the eavesdropping propensities of that curious young lady.
“Mr. Reeder,” he realized from her tone that Joan Ralph was finding
some difficulty in fitting her thoughts into words, “I suppose it has
occurred to you that my father may have gone off with--somebody. I am
not stupid about these things and I know that men of his age do
have--well, affairs. But I am perfectly sure that Daddy had none. Dr.
Ingham hinted tactfully that this might be the situation; the doctor
was awfully sweet about it, but I know that theory is wrong. Daddy had
no friends. I used to open all his letters and there was never one
that he objected to my seeing.”
“The letters that came to the office too?” he asked.
She smiled at the question.
“Naturally I did not see those--those were very few, and Daddy had
nothing furtive in his composition. I did know that he was
corresponding with Dr. Ingham; my father was what is known as a High
Churchman and wrote letters to the Church papers. That is practically
the only friend he had outside our little circle at Bishop’s
Stortford.”
Mr. Reeder looked at her thoughtfully.
“Did you think Frank Seafield had--um--a lady friend?” he asked.
She was emphatic on this point. He would have been surprised if she
had not been.
He guided her to Miss Gillette’s room and presently he heard the three
go out. That Miss Gillette should have left the office without asking
permission was not remarkable.
With great care he composed three telegrams, and, calling at the post
office, handed them in. One was certainly addressed to Murphy.
A tramcar deposited him within walking distance of Brixton Prison,
where men under remand are segregated.
Mr. Reeder was not unknown at Brixton, though his visits were rare,
and within a few minutes of his arrival he was taken to a bare waiting
room where he was joined by Jake Alsby.
The man was shaken. The rather defiant impertinent criminal Mr. Reeder
had known had disappeared, and in his place was a man terror-stricken
by the fate which had overcome him.
“You know me, Mr. Reeder.” His manner was a little wild, and the hand
that emphasized almost every sentence was trembling. “I never had a
gun in my life, and I would no more think of shooting a man than I
would of cutting my own throat. I bashed a fellow or two----”
“And there are one or two that you intended bashing,” said Mr. Reeder,
pleasantly.
“It was drink, Mr. Reeder,” pleaded Jake. “I suppose Gaylor told you
that I was coming to see you. That dirty dog would say anything to put
me wrong. Besides, Mr. Reeder, I didn’t know this Russian--why should
I want to shoot him?”
Mr. Reeder shook his head.
“People sometimes shoot the merest acquaintances,” he said brightly.
“Now tell me all about it, Alsby, with fewer lies than usual. Maybe I
can help you. I don’t say that I can, but it may be possible.”
Alsby told his story as coherently as he could. Occasionally Mr.
Reeder had to bring him back from rambling side issues, but, on the
whole, the tale he had to tell was convincing. He forgot, however, one
important detail.
“When that man was charged with being drunk some days ago,” said Mr.
Reeder, “he talked to the police in his--um--intoxication, of a
diamond clasp----”
“That’s right, sir,” interrupted the man eagerly. “He mentioned it to
me, too. I’d forgotten all about that. He told me I could see it. I
thought it was just being soused that made him speak that way, and, to
tell you the truth, I’d forgotten all about it.” And then a new note
of anxiety came into his tone: “Has that been lost? I swear I never
saw it.”
J.G. Reeder looked at him long and fixedly. A gentle glow of
satisfaction came to him. He had spoken of the clasp to Joan Ralph for
no other reason than his recollection of the police court proceedings
against Litnoff. That reference to the diamond brooch had intrigued
him at the time he had read of it. Litnoff had no history as a
receiver--that fact had been brought out in court.
“Try to remember, Alsby, what other things he said.”
Alsby knitted his forehead in an agony of recollection.
“I can’t remember anything, Mr. Reeder. I wasn’t with him long after
we left the boozer--the public house. He was going home; he lived in
Bloomsbury--Lammington Buildings. That was a funny thing: I had known
of Lammington Buildings through a pal of mine, who got five years for
slush printing. He had a friend who lived there.”
Mr. Reeder was interested mainly because the only address which the
police knew in connection with Litnoff was his lodging in Pimlico.
“How did all this come out, that he was living in Lammington
Buildings?” he asked.
“He wanted to take a taxi. I told him I was living in Holborn. He said
‘You can drop me at Lammington Buildings.’ After that he sort of
corrected himself, but I knew he had let his address slip out. You are
going to do something for me, ain’t you, Mr. Reeder? You have always
been fair to me.”
“That is not my recollection of your expressed opinion,” said Mr.
Reeder acidly.
Going back to town he pondered on the possibility that Litnoff also
might have had a “friend” in this block of flats.
It was raining heavily when his ’bus dropped him at the corner of
Southampton Row; but it had been raining more or less all day, and
since he wore his shabby yellow mackintosh which, coming almost to his
heels, gave him, despite his bent shoulders, a giant-like appearance,
he did not think it necessary to unfurl the umbrella which he carried
on his arm, summer and winter, although it was never known to be
opened.
He found Lammington Buildings without much trouble. It was situate in
a side turning off Gower Street.
Mr. Reeder opened his enquiries with the hall porter. The name of
Litnoff was unknown; but the hall porter was a reader of newspapers
and had seen a portrait of the murdered man. Almost before Mr. Reeder
could put a question, the porter blurted out his suspicion.
“I bet that’s Schmidt. If it isn’t, it’s his twin brother. In fact, I
was just writing a letter to the _Daily Megaphone_. I always thought
that Schmidt was a queer customer. He only slept here once or twice a
month. I was talking to Mrs. Adderly this afternoon about him. As a
matter of fact, she’s in his flat now, though she’s one of those kind
of women who wouldn’t talk. You can’t get a word out of her. I says to
her ‘Suppose the police come here and want to know?’ ‘Let ’em come,’
she says. What can you do with a woman like that?”
Mr. Reeder could supply no reply to this pertinent question, and then,
surprisingly, the hall porter said:
“I knew you, Mr. Reeder, the moment I put my eyes on you. You were in
the Orderley Street affair. I was the porter at the hotel, if you will
remember, who saw the man getting out of the window.…”
He went, with surprising accuracy, into the particulars of a case in
which the detective had figured many years before.
Mr. Reeder was a good listener. He discovered at the very early stages
of his career that the art of listening was the art of detection, and
he allowed the porter to continue his reminiscences before he asked:
“Is Mrs. Adderly in the flat now?”
The porter pointed dramatically to a door that led to the front of the
vestibule.
“Do you want to see her?”
“I should like,” said Mr. Reeder.
The porter rang and knocked. After a considerable time the door was
opened a little way, and the space was filled by a suspicious looking
and bare-armed lady, who wore a soiled apron and had a face which was
equally in need of hot water and soap.
“This is Mr. Reeder,” said the porter, with such satisfaction that it
was evident he had no deep affection for the untidy charwoman. “The
well-known detective,” he added.
Mrs. Adderly wilted at the word.
“Everything can be explained,” she said, a little incoherently, and as
Mr. Reeder followed her into the hall, she slammed the door in the
face of the outraged porter, who at least expected to participate in
the portion of the confidences which hitherto she had withheld from
him.
“Will you come in, sir.”
She led the way into a barely furnished little room which obviously
had served as a sitting-room. There was a table, a sideboard, a small
square carpet on the floor, and a couple of chairs. On one wall was a
map printed, as Mr. Reeder discovered, in Switzerland. It showed a
section of the Canton of Vaud, and there was an irregular patch
outlined in red ink from the contours; it evidently stood at some
considerable height upon the lake. Its significance Mr. Reeder did not
grasp till much later.
“I don’t know what to say or what to do next,” said Mrs. Adderly. She
spoke very rapidly, without full stops, commas, or any other form of
punctuation. “The money was honestly come by and is in the post office
bank except the rent which I paid and I have a receipt with the stamp
on it and I have done what Mr. Schmidt told me to do as I can prove by
his letter. I am a widow with five mouths to fill.…”
She went on to explain that they were the property of her five
legitimate offspring, that she “did” for respectable families, and
that she had never been in trouble, or accepted out-door relief from
the parish even in her most difficult times.
“What money is this?” interrupted Mr. Reeder when he thought she had
gone far enough.
The money that had come to her on Wednesday. She had found it on the
table in the dining room with a letter. Beneath her skirt she had a
pocket. Mr. Reeder looked discreetly away while she explored this
receptacle, and presently brought out an envelope from which she took
a single sheet of notepaper.
“Please pay the rent with the enclosed. I am going away to France, and
shall not be back for three months. You may take double wages while I
am gone, and I do not wish you to discuss my business.”
The letter was written in a neat clerkly hand.
“You found this on the table, you say?”
“On Wednesday morning; I put the money into the Post Office saving
bank,” she went on even more rapidly. “I paid the rent and I have got
a printed receipt with a stamp on it----”
“Nobody doubts that,” said Mr. Reeder soothingly.
“If you are in the police----”
“I am not,” said Mr. Reeder. “I really am not a policeman at all, I
am--um--an investigator.”
She knew very little about her employer. Three days a week she used to
come to tidy the flat. For this purpose she was entrusted with a key.
She had very strict orders that, if the door did not yield when she
turned the key and was obviously bolted on the inside, she was to go
away. This had happened three times in the course of the past year.
Mr. Schmidt, though a very healthy-looking gentleman, was an invalid.
Sometimes he had very bad spells, and she had come to find the
atmosphere of his bedroom sickly with the smell of drugs. He never
spoke about his business, and when he spoke at all, it was with a very