Room 13
the past. And I’d be the last to remind you of your--er--misfortune.”
When he reached the street, two men who had been standing on the
opposite sidewalk crossed to him.
“They’ve gone,” said Mr. Reeder. “They were in that car, as I feared.
All stations must be warned, and particularly the town stations just
outside of London, to hold up the car. You have its number. You had
better watch this place till the morning,” he said to one of them.
“Very good, sir.”
“I want you especially to follow Emanuel, and keep him under
observation until to-morrow morning.”
The detective left on duty waited with that philosophical patience
which is the greater part of the average detective’s equipment, until
three o’clock in the morning; and at that hour, when daylight was
coming into the sky, Emanuel had not put in an appearance. Stevens
went off duty half an hour after Mr. Reeder’s departure. At two
o’clock the head waiter and three others left, Fernando locking the
door. Then, a few minutes before three, the squat figure of Pietro,
muffled up in a heavy overcoat, and he too locked the door behind him,
disappearing in the direction of Shaftesbury Avenue. At half-past
three the detective left a policeman to watch the house, and got on
the ’phone to Mr. Reeder, who was staying in town.
“Dear me!” said Mr. Reeder, an even more incongruous sight in pyjamas
which were a little too small for him, though happily there were no
spectators of his agitation. “Not gone, you say? I will come round.”
It was daylight when he arrived. The gate in the yard was opened with
a skeleton key (the climb so graphically described by Mr. Reeder was
entirely fictitious, and the cut in his trousers was due to catching a
jagged nail in one of the packing-cases with which the yard was
littered), and he mounted the iron stairway to the third floor.
The window through which he had made his ingress on the previous
evening was closed and fastened, but, with the skill of a professional
burglar, Mr. Reeder forced back the catch and, opening the window,
stepped in.
There was enough daylight to see his whereabouts. Unerringly he made
for Emanuel’s office. The door had been forced, and there was no need
to use the skeleton key.
There was no sign of Emanuel, and Reeder came out to hear the report
of the detective, who had made a rapid search of the club.
“All the doors are open except No. 13, sir,” he said. “That’s bolted
on the inside. I’ve got the lock open.”
“Try No. 12,” said Reeder. “There are two ways in--one by way of a
door, which you’ll find behind a curtain in the corner of the room,
and the other way through the buffet, which communicates with the
buffet in No. 13. Break nothing if you can help it, because I don’t
want my visit here advertised.”
He followed the detective into No. 12, and found that there was no
necessity to use the buffet entrance, for the communicating door was
unlocked. He stepped into No. 13; it was in complete darkness.
“Humph!” said Mr. Reeder, and sniffed. “One of you go along this wall
and find the switch. Be careful you don’t step on something.”
“What is there?”
“I think you’ll find… however, turn on the light.”
The detective felt his way along the wall, and presently his finger
touched a switch and he turned it down. And then they saw all that Mr.
Reeder suspected. Sprawled across the table was a still figure--a
horrible sight, for the man who had killed Emanuel Legge had used the
poker which, twisted and bloodstained, lay amidst the wreckage of rare
glass and once snowy napery.
CHAPTER XXVIII
It was unnecessary to call a doctor to satisfy the police. Emanuel
Legge had passed beyond the sphere of his evil activities.
“The poker came from--where?” mused Mr. Reeder, examining the weapon
thoughtfully. He glanced down at the little fire-place. The poker and
tongs and shovel were intact, and this was of a heavier type than was
used in the sitting-rooms.
Deftly he searched the dead man’s pockets, and in the waistcoat he
found a little card inscribed with a telephone number, “Horsham
98753.” Peter’s. That had no special significance at the moment, and
Reeder put it with the other documents that he had extracted from the
dead man’s pockets. Later came an inspector to take charge of the
case.
“There was some sort of struggle, I imagine,” said Mr. Reeder. “The
right wrist, I think you’ll find, is broken. Legge’s revolver was
underneath the table. He probably pulled it, and it was struck from
his hand. I don’t think you’ll want me any more, inspector.”
He was examining the main corridor when the telephone switchboard at
the back of Stevens’s little desk gave him an idea. He put through a
call to Horsham, and, in spite of the earliness of the hour, was
almost immediately answered.
“Who is that?” he asked.
“I’m Mr. Kane’s servant,” said a husky voice.
“Oh, is it Barney? Is your master at home yet?”
“No, sir. Who is it speaking?”
“It is Mr. Reeder.… Will you tell Miss Kane to come to the telephone?”
“She’s not here either. I’ve been trying to get on to Johnny Gray all
night, but his servant says he’s out.”
“Where is Miss Kane?” asked Reeder quickly.
“I don’t know, sir. Somebody came for her in the night in a car, and
she went away, leaving the door open. It was the wind slamming it that
woke me up.”
It was so long before Mr. Reeder answered that Barney thought he had
gone away.
“Did nobody call for her during the evening? Did she have any
telephone messages?”
“One, sir, about ten o’clock. I think it was her father, from the way
she was speaking.”
Again a long interval of silence, and then:
“I will come straight down to Horsham,” said Mr. Reeder, and from the
pleasant and conversational quality of his voice, Barney took comfort;
though, if he had known the man better, he would have realised that
Mr. Reeder was most ordinary when he was most perturbed.
Mr. Reeder pushed the telephone away from him and stood up.
So they had got Marney. There was no other explanation. The dinner
party had been arranged to dispose of the men who could protect her.
Where had they been taken?
He went back to the old man’s office, which was undergoing a search at
the hands of a police officer.
“I particularly want to see immediately any document referring to Mr.
Peter Kane,” he said, “any road maps which you may find here, and
especially letters addressed to Emanuel Legge by his son. You know, of
course, that this office was broken into? There should be something in
the shape of clues.”
The officer shook his head.
“I’m afraid, Mr. Reeder, we won’t find much here,” he said. “So far,
I’ve only come across old bills and business letters which you might
find in any office.”
The detective looked round.
“There is no safe?” he asked.
All the timidity and deference in his manner had gone. He was patently
a man of affairs.
“Yes, sir, the safe’s behind that panelling. I’ll get it open this
morning. But I shouldn’t imagine that Legge would leave anything
compromising on the premises. Besides, his son has had charge of the
Highlow for years. Previous to that, they had a manager who is now
doing time. Before him, if I remember right, that fellow Fenner, who
has been in boob for burglary.”
“Fenner?” said the other sharply. “I didn’t know he ever managed this
club.”
“He used to, but he had a quarrel with the old man. I’ve got an idea
they were in jug together.”
Fenner’s was not the type of mentality one would expect to find among
the officers of a club, even a club of the standing of the Highlow;
but there was this about the Highlow, that it required less
intelligence than sympathy with a certain type of client.
Reeder was assisting the officer by taking out the contents of the
pigeon-holes, when his hand touched a knob.
“Hallo, what is this?” he said, and turned it.
The whole desk shifted slightly, and, pulling, he revealed the door to
the spiral staircase.
“This is very interesting,” he said. He ascended as far as the top
landing. There was evidently a door here, but every effort he made to
force it ended in failure. He came down again, continuing to the
basement, and this time he was joined by the inspector in charge of
the case.
“Rather hot,” said Mr. Reeder as he opened the door. “I should say
there is a fire burning here.”
It took him some time to discover the light connections, and when he
did, he whistled. For, lying by the side of the red-hot stove, he saw
a piece of shining metal and recognised it. It was an engraver’s
plate, and one glance told him that it was the finished plate from
which £5 notes could be printed.
The basement was empty, and for a second the mystery of the copper
plate baffled him.
“We may not have found the Big Printer, but we’ve certainly found the
Big Engraver,” he said. “This plate was engraved somewhere upstairs.”
He pointed to the shaft. “What is it doing down here? Of course!” He
slapped his thigh exultantly. “I never dreamt he was right--but he
always is right!”
“Who?” asked the officer.
“An old friend of mine, whose theory was that the plates from which
the slush was printed were engraved within easy reach of a furnace,
into which, in case of a police visitation, they could be pushed and
destroyed. And, of course, the engraving plant is somewhere upstairs.
But why they should throw down a perfectly new piece of work, and at a
time when the attendant was absent, is beyond me. Unless… Get me an
axe; I want to see the room on the roof.”
The space was too limited for the full swing of an axe, and it was
nearly an hour before at last the door leading to the engraver’s room
was smashed in. The room was flooded with sunshine, for the skylight
had not been covered. Reeder’s sharp eyes took in the table with a
glance, and then he looked beyond, and took a step backward. Lying by
the wall, dishevelled, mud-stained, his white dress-shirt crumpled to
a pulp, was Peter Kane, and he was asleep!
They dragged him to a chair, bathed his face with cold water, but even
then he took a long time to recover.
“He has been drugged: that’s obvious,” said Mr. Reeder, and
scrutinised the hands of the unconscious man for a sign of blood. But
though they were covered with rust and grime, Reeder found not so much
as one spot of blood; and the first words that Peter uttered, on
recovering consciousness, confirmed the view that he was ignorant of
the murder.
“Where is Emanuel?” he asked drowsily. “Have you got him?”
“No; but somebody has got him,” said Reeder gently, and the shock of
the news brought Peter Kane wide awake.
“Murdered!” he said unbelievingly. “Are you sure? Of course, I’m mad
to ask you that.” He passed his hand wearily across his forehead. “No,
I know nothing about it. I suppose you suspect me, and I don’t mind
telling you that I was willing to murder him if I could have found
him.”
Briefly he related what had happened at the dinner.
“I knew that I was doped, but dope works slowly on me, and the only
chance I had was to sham dead. Emanuel gave me a thump in the jaw, and
that was my excuse for going out. They got me downstairs into the yard
and put me into the car first. I slipped out the other side as soon as
the nigger went up to get Johnny. There were a lot of old cement sacks
lying about, and I threw a couple on to the floor, hoping that in the
darkness they would mistake the bundle for me. Then I lay down amongst
the packing-cases and waited. I guessed they’d brought down Johnny,
but I was powerless to help him. When the car had gone, and Pietro had
gone up again, I followed. I suppose the dope was getting busy, and if
I’d had any sense, I should have got over the gate. My first thought
was that they might have taken my gun away and left it in the room. I