Red aces Being three cases of Mr. Reeder
partition is called a “house,” for which people pay rent when they can
afford it. The walls which face the street have three windows and a
doorway to each division.
Joe Attymar’s house did not properly stand in the lane at all, and
Shadwick Lane was only remotely interested in the barge-master, for
the curious reason that he could reach his house and yard by Shadwick
Passage, a tortuous alley that threaded a way between innumerable
back-yards, and, under the shadow of a high warehouse, to Tooley
Street. Year after year the swarthy man with the little iron-grey
beard and the shaggy eyebrows brought his barge up the river, always
with a cargo of bricks. And invariably the barge went down empty and
without his presence--for, for some reason, there was neither
passenger nor crew on the down-river trip.
This fact was unknown to the people of Shadwick Lane. They were even
unaware that Joe Attymar did not sleep in his house more than one
night every month. They knew, of course, from the muddy old motor-car,
that he drove through the wide gates occasionally, that he went
abroad, but guessed that he was engaged in the legitimate business of
lighterman.
There are certain minor problems which from time to time cause the
chiefs of Scotland Yard to move uneasily and impatiently in their
padded chairs, and say to their immediate subordinates: “Do
something.” Mr. Attymar, though he was blissfully unaware of the fact,
was one of these minor problems.
There are gaming houses which harass the police, queer little clubs,
and other establishments less easy to write about in a reputable
magazine, but Mr. Attymar was not associated with one of these. Such
problems are, in one shape or another, perennial! Occasionally they
grow acute, and just at that moment the question of systematic
smuggling was worrying Scotland Yard considerably.
Chief Constable Mason sent for Inspector Gaylor.
“They’ve pulled in a fellow who was peddling dope in Lisle Street last
night,” he said. “You might see him after his remand. I have an idea
he will squeak.”
But the man in question was no squeaker, though he had certainly given
that impression when he was taken red-handed. He said enough, however,
to the patient detective to suggest that he might say more.
“All that I could find out,” said Gaylor, “is that this selling
organization is nearly fool-proof. The gang that we rushed last year
isn’t handling the output, but I’m satisfied that it still has the
same governor.”
“Get him,” said the chief, who was in the habit of asking for miracles
in the same tone as he asked for his afternoon tea.
And then a thought struck him.
“Go along and see Reeder. The Public Prosecutor was telling me to-day
that Reeder is available for any extra work. He may be able to help,
anyway.”
Mr. Reeder heard the request, sighed and shook his head.
“I’m afraid it is rather--um--outside my line of business. Dope? There
used to be a man named Moodle. It may not have been his name, but he
had associations with these wretched people----”
“Moodle, whose name was Sam Oschkilinski, has been dead nearly a
year,” said Gaylor.
“Dear me!” said Mr. Reeder, in a hushed voice appropriate to one who
has lost a dear friend. “Of what did he die?”
“Loss of breath,” said Gaylor vulgarly.
Mr. Reeder knew nothing more that he could recall about dope
merchants.
“Haven’t you some record on your files?” suggested Gaylor.
“I never keep files, except--um--nail-files,” said Mr. Reeder.
“Perhaps,” suggested Gaylor, “one of your peculiar friends----”
“I have no friends,” said Mr. Reeder.
But here he did not speak the exact truth.
He was cursed with a community spirit and he had a tremendous sense of
neighbourly obligations. Especially would he give up valuable time to
diagnosing and curing the mysterious diseases which attacked the
chickens in Brockley Road.
Mr. Reeder was an authority on poultry; he knew exactly why hens droop
and cockerels’ combs go pink. He had a marvellous chicken farm in
Kent--not large, but rare. Noble lords and ladies consulted him before
they exhibited their birds. He could wash and dry living chickens for
the bench: the Poultry Show at the Crystal Palace was an event to
which Mr. Reeder looked forward for eleven months and two weeks.
He would stand in his back garden for hours discussing with the man
next door the eccentricities of laying hens, and his acquaintance with
Johnny Southers began in a fowl-house. Johnny lived three doors from
Mr. Reeder. He was rather a nice young man, fair-haired and
good-looking. He had in Mr. Reeder’s eyes the overwhelming advantage
of being a very poor conversationalist.
Anna Welford lived in the house opposite, so that it may be said that
the scene was set, for the curious tragedy of Joe Attymar, on a very
small stage.
It was through the unromantic question of a disease which attacked
Johnny Southers’ prize Wyandottes that Mr. Reeder met Anna. She
happened to be in the Southers’ back garden when Mr. Reeder was
engaged in his diagnosis. She was a slim girl, rather dark, with
amazing brown eyes. Her father was a retired fish merchant, who had
made a lot of money and had sent her to a high-class school at
Brighton, where girls are taught to ride astride, use lipstick and
adore the heroes of Hollywood.
In some respects her education had been neglected, for she returned to
the dullness of Brockley a very sane, well-balanced young lady.
She did not find Brockley a “hole.” She did not smoke or do anything
which made life worth living, but settled down to the humdrum of a
stuffy home as though she had never shared a room with an earl’s
daughter or played hockey against an all-England team.
Johnny did not fall in love with her at first sight. He had known her
since she was so high: when he was a boy she was endurable to him. As
a young man he thought her views on life were sound. He discovered he
was in love with her as he discovered he was taller than his father.
It was a subject for surprise.
It was brought home to him when Mr. Clive Desboyne called in his
glittering coupé to take Anna to a dinner-dance. He resented Mr.
Desboyne’s easy assurance, the proprietorial way he handed Anna into
the car. He thought it was appalling bad manners for a man to smoke a
cigar when he was driving a lady. Thereafter Johnny found himself
opening and examining packing-cases and casks and barrels at the
Customs House with a sense of his inferiority and the hopelessness of
his future.
In such a mood he consulted his authority on poultry, and Mr. Reeder
listened with all the interest of one who was hearing a perfectly
novel and original story that had never been told before by or to any
human being.
“I know so very little--um--about love,” said Mr. Reeder awkwardly.
“In fact--er--nothing. I would like to advise you to--um--let matters
take their course.”
Very excellent, if vague, advice. But matters took the wrong course,
as it happened.
CHAPTER II
On the following Saturday night, as Mr. Reeder was returning home,
he saw two men fighting in Brockley Road. He had what is called in
Portuguese a _repugnancio_ to fighting men. When the hour was midnight
and the day was Saturday, there was a considerable weight of
supposition in favour of the combat being between two gentlemen who
were the worse for intoxicating drink, and it was invariably Mr.
Reeder’s practice to cross like the Philistine, to the other side of
the road.
But the two young men who were engaged in such a short, silent and
bitter contest were obviously no hooligans of lower Deptford. They
were both wearing evening dress, and gentlemen in evening dress do not
as a rule wage war in the streets of Brockley. Nevertheless, Mr.
Reeder hardly felt it was the occasion to act either as mediator or
timekeeper.
He would have passed them by, and did in fact come level with them,
when one walked across the road, leaving his companion--though that
hardly seems the term to apply to one who had been so bruised and
exhausted that he was hanging on to the railings--to recover as best
he could. It was then that Mr. Reeder saw that one of the contestants
was Mr. John Southers. He was husky and apologetic.
“I’m terribly sorry to have made a fuss like this,” he said. “I hope
my father didn’t hear me. This fellow is intolerable.”
The intolerable man on the other side of the street was moving slowly
towards where a car was parked by the sidewalk. They watched him in
silence as he got in, and, turning the car violently, went off towards
the Lewisham High Road, and, from the direction he took, London.
“I’ve been to a dance,” said the young man, a little inconsequently.
“I hope,” said Mr. Reeder with the greatest gentleness, “that you
enjoyed yourself.”
Mr. Southers did not seem disposed at the moment to offer a fuller
explanation. As they neared Reeder’s gate he said:
“Thank God, Anna was inside before it started! He has been beastly
rude to me all the evening. As a matter of fact, she asked me to call
and take her home, otherwise I shouldn’t have met him.”
There had been a dance somewhere in the City, at a livery hall. Anna
had gone with Mr. Clive Desboyne, but the circumstances under which
Johnny called for her were only vaguely detailed. Nor did Mr. Reeder
hear what was the immediate cause of the quarrel which had set two
respectable young men at fisticuffs in the reputable suburban
thoroughfare.
To say that he was uninterested would not be true. The matter,
however, was hardly pressing. He hoped that both parties to the little
fracas might have forgotten the cause of their quarrel by the
following morning.
He did not see Johnny again for the remainder of the week. Mr. Reeder
went about his business, and it is doubtful whether Johnny occupied as
much as five minutes of his thoughts, until the case of Joe Attymar
came into his purview.
He was again called to Scotland Yard on a consultation. He found
Gaylor and the Chief Constable together, and they were examining a
very dingy-looking letter which had come to the Yard in the course of
the day.
“Sit down, Reeder,” said the chief. “Do you know a man called
Attymar?”
Mr. Reeder shook his head. He had never heard of Joe Attymar.
“This is a thing we could do ourselves without any bother at all,”
interrupted the chief, “but there are all sorts of complications which
I won’t bother you with. We believe there’s a member of the staff of
one of the Legations in this business, and naturally we want this fact
to come out accidentally, and not as the result of any direct
investigation by the police.”
Mr. Reeder then learned about Joe Attymar, the barge-master, of the
little wharf at the end of Shadwick Lane, and the barge _Allanuna_
that went up and down the Thames year in and year out and brought
bricks. He did not hear at that moment, or subsequently, what part the
Legation played, or which Legation it was, or if there was any
Legation at all. In justice to his acumen it must be said that he
doubted this part of the story from the first, and the theory at which
he eventually arrived, and which was probably correct, was that the
part he was called upon to play was to stampede Attymar and his
associates into a betrayal of their iniquity. For this was at a period
when Mr. Reeder’s name and appearance were known from one end of the
river to the other, when there was hardly a bargee or tug-hand who
could not have drawn, and did not draw, a passable caricature of that
worthy man who had been instrumental in breaking up one of the
best-organized gangs of river thieves that had ever amalgamated for an
improper purpose.
Mr. Reeder scratched his nose and his lips drooped dolefully.
“I was hoping--um--that I should not see that interesting stream for a