Terror keep
He was struggling with his tie when Daver, who seemed to have
constituted himself a sort of personal attendant, knocked at the door
and asked permission to come in. He was a little breathless, and
carried a number of press cuttings in his hand.
“You were talking about two gentlemen, Mr. Willington and Mr. Holden,”
he said. “The names seemed rather familiar. I had the irritating sense
of knowing them without knowing them, if you understand, dear Mr.
Reeder? And then I recalled the circumstances.” He flourished the
press cuttings. “I saw their names here.”
Mr. Reeder, staring at his reflection in the glass, adjusted his tie
nicely.
“Here?” he repeated mechanically, and, looking round, accepted the
printed slips which his host thrust upon him.
“I am, as you probably know, Mr. Reeder, a humble disciple of Lombroso
and of those other great criminologists who have elevated the study of
abnormality to a science. It was Miss Belman who quite unconsciously
directed my thoughts to the Flack organisation, and during the past
day or two I have been getting a number of particulars concerning
those miscreants. The names of Holden and Willington occur. They were
two detectives who went out in search of Flack and never returned--I
remember their disappearance very well now the matter is recalled to
my mind. There was also a third gentleman who disappeared.”
Mr. Reeder nodded.
“Ah, you remember?” said Mr. Daver triumphantly. “Naturally you would.
A lawyer named Biggerthorpe, who was called from his office one day on
some excuse, and was never seen again. May I add”--he smiled
good-humouredly--“that Mr. Biggerthorpe has never stayed here? Why
should you imagine he had, Mr. Reeder?”
“I never did.” Mr. Reeder gave blandness for blandness. “Biggerthorpe?
I had forgotten him. He was an important witness against Flack if he’d
ever been caught--hum!”
And then:
“You are a student of criminal practices, Mr. Daver?”
“A humble one,” said Mr. Daver, and his humility was manifest in his
attitude.
And then he suddenly dropped his voice to a hoarse whisper.
“Shall I tell you something, Mr. Reeder?”
“You may tell me,” said Mr. Reeder, as he buttoned his waistcoat,
“anything that pleases you. I am in the mood for stories. In this
delightful atmosphere, amidst these beautiful surroundings, I should
prefer--um--fairy stories--or shall we say ghost stories? Is Larmes
Keep haunted, Mr. Daver? Ghosts are my specialty. I have probably seen
and arrested more ghosts than any other living representative of the
law. Some time I intend writing a monumental work on the subject.
‘Ghosts I have Seen, or a Guide to the Spirit World,’ in sixty-three
volumes. You were about to say----?”
“I was about to say,” said Mr. Daver, and his voice was curiously
strained, “that in my opinion Flack himself once stayed here. I have
not mentioned this fact to Miss Belman, but I am convinced in my mind
that I am not in error. Seven years ago”--he was very impressive--“a
grey-bearded, rather thin-faced man came here at ten o’clock at night
and asked for a lodging. He had plenty of money, but this did not
influence me. Ordinarily I should have asked him to make the usual
application, but it was late, a bitterly cold and snowy night, and I
hadn’t the heart to turn one of his age away from my door.”
“How long did he stay?” asked Mr. Reeder. “And why do you think he was
Flack?”
“Because”--Daver’s voice had sunk until it was an eerie moan--“he left
just as Ravini left--early one morning, without paying his bill, and
left his pyjamas behind him!”
Very slowly Mr. Reeder turned his head and surveyed the host.
“That comes into the category of humorous stories, and I am too hungry
to laugh,” he said calmly. “What time do we dine?”
The gong sounded at that moment.
Margaret Belman usually dined with the other guests at a table apart.
She went red and felt more than a little awkward when Mr. Reeder came
across to her table, dragging a chair with him, and ordered another
place to be set. The other three guests dined at separate tables.
“An unsociable lot of people,” said Mr. Reeder as he shook out his
napkin and glanced round the room.
“What do you think of Mr. Daver?”
J. G. Reeder smiled gently.
“He is a very amusing person,” he said, and she laughed, but grew
serious immediately.
“Have you found out anything about Ravini?”
Mr. Reeder shook his head.
“I had a talk with the hall porter: he seems a very honest and
straightforward fellow. He told me that when he came down the morning
after Ravini disappeared, the front door had been unbolted and
unlocked. An observant fellow. Who is Mrs. Burton?” he asked abruptly.
“The housekeeper.” Margaret smiled and shook her head. “She is rather
a miserable lady, who spends quite a lot of time hinting at the good
times she should be having, instead of being ‘buried alive’--those are
her words--at Siltbury.”
Mr. Reeder put down his knife and fork.
“Dear me!” he said mildly. “Is she a lady who has seen better days?”
Margaret laughed softly.
“I should have thought she had never had such a time as she is having
now,” she said. “She’s rather common and terribly illiterate. Her
accounts that come up to me are fearful and wonderful things! But
seriously, I think she must have been in good circumstances. The first
night I was here I went into her room to ask about an account I did
not understand--of course it was a waste of time, for books are
mysteries to her--and she was sitting at a table admiring her hands.”
“Hands?” he said.
She nodded.
“They were covered with the most beautiful rings you could possibly
imagine,” said Margaret, and was satisfied with the impression she
made, for Mr. Reeder dropped knife and fork to his plate with a crash.
“Rings…?”
“Huge diamonds and emeralds. They took my breath away. The moment she
saw these she put her hand behind her, and the next morning she
explained that they were presents given to her by a theatrical lady
who had stayed here, and that they had no value.”
“Props, in fact,” said Mr. Reeder.
“What is a prop?” she asked curiously, and Mr. Reeder waggled his
head, and she had learnt that when he waggled his head in that fashion
he was advertising his high spirits and good humour.
After dinner he sent a waitress to find Mr. Daver, and when that
gentleman arrived Mr. Reeder had to tell him that he had a lot of work
to do, and request the loan of blotting-pad and a special
writing-table for his room. Margaret wondered why he had not asked
her, but she supposed that it was because he did not know that such
things came into her province.
“You’re a great writer, Mr. Reeder--he, he!” Daver was convulsed at
his own little joke. “So am I! I am never happy without a pen in my
hand. Tell me, as a matter of interest, do you do your best work in
the morning or in the evening? Personally, it is a question that I
have never decided to my own satisfaction.”
“I shall now write steadily till two o’clock,” said Mr. Reeder,
glancing at his watch. “That is a habit of years. From nine to two are
my writing hours, after which I smoke a cigarette, drink a glass of
milk--would you be good enough to see that I have a glass of milk put
in my room at once?--and from two I sleep steadily till nine.”
Margaret Belman was an interested and somewhat startled audience of
this personal confession. It was unusual in Mr. Reeder to speak of
himself, unthinkable that he should discuss his work. In all her life
she had not met an individual who was more reticent about his private
affairs. Perhaps the holiday spirit was on him, she thought. He was
certainly younger-looking that evening than she had ever known him.
She went out to find Mrs. Burton and convey the wishes of the guest.
The woman accepted the order with a sniff.
“Milk? He looks the kind of person who drinks milk. _He’s_ nothing to
be afraid of!”
“Why should he be afraid?” asked Margaret sharply, but the reproach
was lost upon Mrs. Burton.
“Nobody likes detectives nosing about a place--do they, Miss Belman?
And he’s not my idea of a detective.”
“Who told you he was a detective?”
Mrs. Burton looked at her for a second from under her heavy lids, and
then jerked her head in the direction of Daver’s office.
“He did,” she said. “Detectives! And me sitting here, slaving from
morning till night, when I might be doing the grand in Paris or one of
them places, with servants to wait on me instead of me waiting on
people. It’s sickening!”
Twice since she had been at Larmes Keep, Margaret had witnessed these
little outbursts of fretfulness and irritation. She had an idea that
the faded woman would like some excuse to make her a confidante, but
the excuse was neither found nor sought. Margaret had nothing in
common with this rather dull and terribly ordinary lady, and they
could find no mutual interest which would lead to the breakdown of the
barriers. Mrs. Burton was a weakling; tears were never far from her
eyes or voice, nor the sense of her mysterious grievances against the
world far from her mind.
“They treat me like dirt,” she went on, her voice trembling with her
feeble anger, “and she treats me worst of all. I asked her to come and
have a cup of tea and a chat in my room the other day, and what do you
think she said?”
“Whom are you talking about?” asked Margaret curiously. It did not
occur to her, that the “she” in question might be Olga Crewe--it would
have required a very powerful effort of imagination to picture the
cold and worldly Olga talking commonplaces with Mrs. Burton over a
friendly cup of tea; yet it was of Olga that the woman spoke. But at
the very suggestion that she was being questioned her thin lips closed
tight.
“Nobody in particular… milk, did you say? I’ll take it up to him
myself.”
Mr. Reeder was struggling into a dressing-jacket when she brought the
milk to him. One of the servants had already placed pen, ink, and
stationery on the table, and there were two fat manuscript-books
visible to any caller, and anticipating eloquently Mr. Reeder’s
literary activities.
He took the tray from the woman’s hand and put it on the table.
“You have a nice house, Mrs. Burton,” he said encouragingly. “A
beautiful house. Have you been here long?”
“A few years,” she answered.
She made to go, but lingered at the door. Mr. Reeder recognised the
symptoms. Discreet she might be, a gossip she undoubtedly was, aching
for human converse with any who could advance a programme of those
trivialities which made up her conversational life.
“No, sir, we never get many visitors here. Mr. Daver likes to pick and
choose.”
“And very wise of Mr. Daver. By the way, which is his room?”
She walked through the doorway and pointed along the corridor.
“Oh yes, I remember, he told me. A charming situation. I saw you
coming out this evening.”
“You have made a mistake--I never go into his room,” said the woman
sharply. “You may have seen----”
She stopped, and added:
“--somebody else. Are you going to work late, sir?”
Mr. Reeder repeated in detail his plans for the evening.
“I would be glad if you would tell Mr. Daver that I do not wish to be
interrupted. I am a very slow thinker, and the slightest disturbance
to my train of thought is fatal to my--er--power of composition,” he
said, as he closed the door upon her and, waiting until she had time
to get down the stairs, locked it and pushed home the one bolt.
He drew the heavy curtains across the open windows, pushed the
writing-table against the curtains so that they could not blow back,
and, opening the two exercise-books, so placed them that they formed a
shade that prevented the light falling upon the bed. This done, he
changed quickly into a lounge suit, and, lying on the bed, pulled the