Terror keep
unpleasant thing to happen!”
“What has happened?” asked Mr. Reeder.
“I don’t know, but I have an uncomfortable feeling that somebody has
been trying to break into this house,” said Mr. Daver.
He was genuinely agitated; the girl could almost hear his teeth
chatter.
“I heard somebody trying the catch of my window and looked out, and
I’ll swear I saw--something! What a dreadful thing to happen! I have
half a mind to telephone for the police.”
“An excellent idea,” murmured Mr. Reeder, suddenly his old deferential
and agreeable self. “You were asleep, I suppose, when you heard the
noise?”
Mr. Daver hesitated.
“Not exactly asleep,” he said. “Between sleeping and waking. I was
very restless to-night for some reason.”
He put his hand to his throat, his dressing-gown had gaped for a
second. He was not quite quick enough.
“You were probably restless,” said Mr. Reeder softly, “because you
omitted to take off your collar and tie. I know of nothing more
disturbing.”
Mr. Daver made a characteristic grimace.
“I dressed myself rather hurriedly----” he began.
“Better to undress yourself hurriedly,” chided Mr. Reeder, almost
playfully. “People who go to bed in stiff white collars occasionally
choke themselves to death. And there is sorrow in the home of the
cheated hangman. Your burglar probably saved your life.”
Daver made as though to speak, suddenly retreated and slammed the
door.
Margaret was looking at Mr. Reeder apprehensively.
“What is the mystery--was there a burglar?--Oh, please tell me the
truth! I shall get hysterical if you don’t!”
“The truth,” said Mr. Reeder, his eyes twinkling, “is very nearly what
that curious man told you--there was somebody in the house, somebody
who had no right to be here, but I think he has gone, and you can go
to bed without the slightest anxiety.”
She looked at him oddly.
“Are you going to bed too?”
“In a very few moments,” said Mr. Reeder cheerfully.
She held out her hand with an impulsive gesture. He took it in both of
his.
“You are my idea of a guardian angel,” she smiled, though she was near
to tears.
“I’ve never heard,” said Mr. Reeder, “of guardian angels with
side-whiskers.”
It was a mean advantage to take of her, yet he was ridiculously
pleased as he repeated his little _jeu d’esprit_ to himself in the
seclusion of his room.
CHAPTER XI
/Mr. Reeder/ closed the door, put on the lights, and set himself to
unravel the inexplicable mystery of its opening. Before he went to bed
he had shot home the bolt, had turned the key in the lock, and the key
was still on the inside. It struck him, as he turned it, that he had
never heard a lock that moved so silently, or a bolt that slipped so
easily into its groove. Both lock and bolt had been recently oiled. He
began a scrutiny of the inside face of the door, and found a simple
solution of the somewhat baffling incident of its opening.
The door consisted of eight panels, carved in small lozenge-shaped
ornaments. The panel immediately above the lock moved slightly when he
pressed it, but it was a long time before he found the tiny spring
which held it in place. When that was found, the panel opened like a
miniature door. He could thrust his hand through the aperture and
slide back the bolt with the greatest ease.
There was nothing very unusual or sinister about this. He knew that
many hotels and boarding-houses had methods by which a door could be
unlocked from the outside--a very necessary precaution in certain
eventualities. Mr. Reeder wondered whether he would find a similar
safety panel on the door of Margaret Belman’s room.
By the time he had completed his inspection it was daylight, and,
pulling back the curtains, he drew a chair to the window and made a
survey of as much of the grounds as lay within his line of vision.
There were two or three matters which were puzzling him. If Larmes
Keep was the headquarters of the Flack gang, in what manner and for
what reason had Olga Crewe been brought into the confederation? He
judged her age at twenty-four; she had been a constant visitor, if not
a resident, at Larmes Keep for at least ten years, and he knew enough
of the ways of the underworld to realise that they did not employ
children. Also she had been to a public school of some kind, and that
would have absorbed at least four of the ten years--Mr. Reeder shook
his head in doubt.
Nothing would happen now until dark, he decided, and, stretching
himself upon the bed, he pulled the coverlet over him and slept till
a tapping at the door announced the coming of the maid with his
morning tea.
She was a round-faced woman, just past her first youth, with a
disagreeable Cockney accent and the brusque and familiar manner of one
who was an indispensable part of the establishment. Mr. Reeder
remembered that the girl had waited on him at dinner.
“Why, sir, you haven’t undressed!” she said.
“I seldom undress,” said Mr. Reeder, sitting up and taking the tea
from her. “It is such a waste of time. For no sooner are your clothes
off than it is necessary to put them on again.”
She looked at him hard, but he did not smile.
“You’re a detective, ain’t you? Everybody at the cottage knows that
you are. What have you come down about?”
Mr. Reeder could afford to smile cryptically. There was a suppressed
anxiety in the girl’s voice.
“It is not for me, my dear young lady, to disclose your employer’s
business.”
“He brought you down? Well, he’s got a nerve!”
Mr. Reeder put his finger to his lips.
“About the candlesticks?”
He nodded.
“He still thinks somebody in the house took them?”
Her face was very red, her eyes snapped angrily. Here was exposed one
of the minor scandals of the hotel.
It was not an uninteresting sidelight. For if ever guilt was written
on a woman’s face it was on hers. What these candlesticks were and how
they disappeared, Mr. Reeder could guess. Petty larceny runs in
well-defined channels.
“Well, you can tell him from me----” she began shrilly, and he raised
a solemn hand.
“Keep the matter to yourself--regard me as your friend,” he begged.
He was in his lighter moments a most mischievous man, a weakness that
few suspected in Mr. J. G. Reeder. Moreover, he wanted badly some
inside information about the household, and he had an idea that this
infuriated girl who flounced out and slammed the door behind her would
supply him with that information. In his optimistic moments he could
not dream that in her raw hands she held the secret of Larmes Keep.
As soon as he came down Mr. Reeder decided to go to Daver’s office; he
was curious to learn the true story of the missing candlesticks. The
sound of an angry voice reached him, and as his hand was raised to
knock at the door it was opened by somebody who was holding the handle
on the inside, and he heard a woman’s angry voice.
“You’ve treated me shabbily: that’s all I can say to you, Mr. Daver!
I’ve been working for you five years and I’ve never said a word about
your business to anybody! And now you bring a detective down to spy on
me! I won’t be treated as if I was a thief or something! If you think
that’s behaving fair and square, after all I’ve done for you, and
minding my own business… yes, I know I’ve been well paid, but I could
get just as much money somewhere else… I’ve got my pride, Mr. Daver,
the same as you have… and I think you’ve been very underhand, the way
you’ve treated me… I’ll go to-night, don’t you worry!”
The door was flung open and a red-faced girl of twenty-five flounced
out and dashed past the eavesdropper, scarcely noticing him in her
fury. The door shut behind her; evidently Mr. Daver was in as bad a
temper as the girl--a fortunate circumstance, as it proved, and Mr.
Reeder decided it might be inadvisable to advertise that he had
overheard the whole or part of the conversation.
When he strolled out into the sunlit grounds, of all the people who
had been disturbed during the night he was the brightest and showed
the least sign of fatigue. He met the Rev. Mr. Dean and the Colonel,
who was carrying a golf-bag, and they bade him a gruff good-morning.
The Colonel, he thought, was a little haggard; Mr. Dean gave him a
scowl as he passed.
Walking up and down the lawn, he examined the front of the house with
a critical eye. The lines of the Keep were very definite: harsh and
angular, not even the Tudor windows, that at some remote period had
been introduced to its stony face, could disguise its ancient
grimness.
Turning an angle of the house, he reached the strip of lawn which
faced his own window. Behind the lawn was a mass of rhododendron
bushes, which might serve a useful purpose, but which in certain
circumstances might also be a danger-point.
Immediately beneath his window was an angle of the drawing-room, a
circumstance which gave him cause for satisfaction. Mr. Reeder’s
experience favoured a bedroom which was above a public apartment.
He went back on his tracks and came to the other end of the block.
Those three windows, brightly curtained, were evidently Mr. Daver’s
private suite. The wall was black beneath them, the actual stone being
obscured by a thick growth of ivy. He wondered what this lightless and
doorless space contained.
As he returned to the front of the house he saw Margaret Belman. She
was standing in front of the doorway, shading her eyes from the sun,
evidently searching her limited landscape for somebody. Seeing him,
she came quickly to meet him.
“Oh, there you are!” she said, with a sigh of relief. “I wondered what
had happened to you--you didn’t come down to breakfast.”
She looked a little peaked, he thought. Evidently she had not rounded
off the night as agreeably as he.
“I haven’t slept since I saw you,” she said, answering his unspoken
question. “What happened, Mr. Reeder? Did somebody really try to get
into the house--a burglar?”
“I think they tried, and I think they succeeded,” said Mr. Reeder
carefully. “Burglaries happen even in--um--hotels, Miss--um--Margaret.
Has Mr. Daver notified the police?”
She shook her head.
“I don’t know. He has been telephoning all the morning--I went to his
room just now and it was locked, but I heard his voice. And, Mr.
Reeder, you didn’t tell me the terrible thing that happened the night
I left London. I saw it in the newspaper this morning.”
“Terrible thing?”
J. G. Reeder was puzzled. Almost he had forgotten the adventure of the
spring gun.
“Oh, you mean the little joke?”
“Joke!” she said, shocked.
“Criminals have a perverted sense of humour,” said Mr. Reeder airily.
“The whole thing was--um--an elaborate jest designed to frighten me.
One expects such things. They are the examination papers which are set
to test one’s intelligence from time to time.”
“But who did it?” she asked.
Mr. Reeder’s gaze wandered absently over the placid countryside. She
had a feeling that it bored him even to recall so trivial an incident
in a busy life.
“Our young friend,” he said suddenly, and, following the direction of
his eyes, she saw Olga Crewe.
She was wearing a dark grey knitted suit and a big black hat that
shaded her face, and there was nothing of embarrassment in the half
smile with which she greeted her fellow-guest.
“Good morning, Mr. Reeder. I think we have met before this morning.”
She rubbed her arm good-humouredly.
Mr. Reeder was all apologies.
“I don’t even know now what happened,” she said; and Margaret Belman
learnt for the first time what had occurred before she had made her
appearance.
“I never thought you were so strong--look!” Olga Crewe pulled back her
sleeve and showed a big blue-black patch on her forearm, cutting short
his expression of remorse with a little laugh.