Terror keep
From where he sat he had a view of the lawn. At three o’clock the
Colonel and the Rev. Mr. Dean and Olga Crewe passed out of the main
gate, evidently bound for Siltbury. He rang the bell, and to his
satisfaction the aggrieved waitress came and took his order for tea.
“This is a nice place,” said Mr. Reeder conversationally.
The girl’s “Yes, sir” was snappy.
“I suppose,” mused Mr. Reeder, looking out of the window, “that this
is the sort of situation that a lot of girls would give their heads to
get and break their hearts to lose?”
Evidently she did not agree.
“The upstairs work isn’t so bad,” she said, “and there’s not much to
do in the dining-room. But it’s too slow for me. I was at a big hotel
before I came here. I’m going to a better job--and the sooner the
better.”
She admitted that the money was good, but she had a longing for that
imponderable quantity which she described as “life.” She also
expressed a preference for men guests.
“Miss Crewe--so called--gives more trouble than all the rest of the
people put together,” she said. “I can’t make her out. First she wants
one room, then she wants another. Why she can’t stay with her husband
I don’t know.”
“With her----?” Mr. Reeder looked at her in pained surprise. “Perhaps
they don’t get on well together?”
“They used to get on all right. If they weren’t married I could
understand all the mystery they’re making--pretending they’re not, him
in his room and she in hers, and meeting like strangers. When all that
kind of deceit is going on, things are bound to get lost,” she added
inconsequently.
“How long has this been--er--going on?” asked Mr. Reeder.
“Only the last week or so,” said the girl viciously. “I know they’re
married, because I’ve seen her marriage certificate--they’ve been
married six years. She keeps it in her dressing-case.”
She looked at him with sudden suspicion.
“I oughtn’t to have told you that. I don’t want to make trouble for
anybody, and I bear them no malice, though they’ve treated me worse ’n
a dog,” she said. “Nobody else in the house but me knows. I was her
maid for two years. But if people don’t treat me right I don’t treat
them right.”
“Married six years? Dear me!” said Mr. Reeder.
And then he suddenly turned his head and faced her.
“Would you like fifty pounds?” he asked. “That is the immense sum I
will give you for just one little peep at that marriage certificate.”
The girl went red.
“You’re trying to catch me,” she said, hesitated, and then: “I don’t
want to get her into trouble.”
“I am a detective,” said Mr. Reeder, “but I am working on behalf of
the Chief Registrar, and we have a doubt as to whether that marriage
was legal. I could of course search the young lady’s room and find the
certificate for myself, but if you would care to help me, and fifty
pounds has any attraction for you----”
She paused irresolutely and said she would see. Half an hour later she
came into the hall with the news that she had been unsuccessful in her
search. She had found the envelope in which the certificate had been
kept, but the document itself was gone.
Mr. Reeder did not ask the name of the bridegroom, nor was he
mentioned, for he was pretty certain that he knew that fortunate man.
He put a question, and the girl answered as he had expected.
“There is one thing I would like to ask you: do you remember the name
of the girl’s father?”
“John Crewe, merchant,” she said promptly. “The mother’s name was
Hannah. He made me swear on the Bible I’d never tell a soul that I
knew they were married.”
“Does anybody else know? You said ‘nobody,’ I think?”
The girl hesitated.
“Yes, Mrs. Burton knows. She knows everything.”
“Thank you,” said Mr. Reeder, and, opening his pocket-book, took out
two five-pound notes. “What was the husband’s profession: do you
remember that?”
The woman’s lips curled.
“Secretary--why call himself secretary, I don’t know, and him an
independent gentleman!”
“Thank you,” said Mr. Reeder again.
He telephoned to Siltbury for a taxicab.
“Are you going out?” asked Margaret, finding him waiting under the
portico.
“I am buying a few presents for friends in London,” said Mr. Reeder
glibly; “a butter-dish or two, suitably inscribed, would, I feel sure,
be very acceptable.”
The taxi did not take him to Siltbury. Instead, he followed a road
which ran parallel to the sea-coast, and which eventually landed him
in an impossible sandy track, from which the ancient taxi was
extricated with some difficulty.
“I told you this led nowhere, sir,” said the aggrieved driver.
“Then we have evidently reached our destination,” replied Mr. Reeder,
applying his weight to push the machine to a more solid foundation.
Siltbury was not greatly favoured by London visitors, the driver told
him on the way back. The town had a pebbly beach, and people preferred
sand.
“There are some wonderful beaches about here,” said the driver, “but
you can’t reach ’em.”
They had taken the left-hand road, which would bring them eventually
to the town, and had been driving for a quarter of an hour when Mr.
Reeder, who sat by the driver, pointed to a large scar in the face of
the downs on his right.
“Siltbury quarries,” explained the cabman. “They’re not worked now:
there are too many holes.”
“Holes?”
“The downs are like a sponge,” said the man. “You could lose yourself
in the caves. Old Mr. Kimpon used to work the quarries many years ago,
and it broke him. There’s a big cave there you can drive a
coach-and-four into! About twenty years ago three fellows went in to
explore the caves and never come out again.”
“Who owns the quarry now?”
Mr. Reeder wasn’t very interested, but when his mind was occupied with
a pressing problem he had a trick of flogging along a conversation
with appropriate questions, and if he was oblivious of the answers
they produced, the sound of the human voice had a sedative effect.
“Mr. Daver owns it now. He bought it after the people were lost in the
caves, and had the entrance boarded up. You’ll see it in a minute.”
They were climbing a gentle slope. As they came to the crest he
pointed down a tidy-looking roadway to where, about two hundred yards
distant, Reeder saw an oblong gap in the white face of the quarry.
Across this, and filling the cavity except for an irregular space at
the top, was a heavy wooden gate.
“You can’t see it from here,” said the driver, “but the top hole is
blocked with barbed wire.”
“Is that a gate or a hoarding he has fixed across?”
“A gate, sir. Mr. Daver owns all the land from here to the sea. He
used to farm about a hundred acres of the downs, but it’s very poor
land. In those days he kept his wagons inside the cave.”
“When did he give up farming?” asked Mr. Reeder, interested.
“About six years ago,” was the reply, and it was exactly the reply Mr.
Reeder had expected. “I used to see a lot of Mr. Daver before then,”
said the driver. “In the old times I had a horse cab, and I was always
driving him about. He used to work like a galley slave--on the farm in
the morning, down in the town buying things in the afternoon. He was
more like a servant than a master. He used to meet all the trains when
visitors arrived--and they had a lot of visitors in those days, more
than they have now. Sometimes he went up to London to bring them
down--he always went to meet Miss Crewe when the young lady was at
school.”
“Do you know Miss Crewe?”
Apparently the driver had seen her frequently, but his acquaintance
with her was very limited.
Reeder got down from the cab and climbed the barred gate on to the
private roadway. The soil was chalky and the road had the appearance
of having been recently overhauled. He mentioned this fact to the
cabman, and learnt that Mr. Daver kept two old men constantly at work
making up the road, though why he should do so he had no idea.
“Where would you like to go now, sir?”
“To a quiet place where I can telephone,” said Mr. Reeder.
These were the facts that he carried with him, and vital facts they
were. During the past six years the life of Mr. Daver had undergone a
considerable change. From being a harassed man of affairs, “more like
a servant than a master,” he had become a gentleman of leisure. The
mystery of the Keep was a mystery no longer. He got Inspector Simpson
on the telephone and conveyed to him the gist of his discovery.
“By the way,” said Simpson at the finish, “the gold hasn’t been sent
to Australia yet. There has been trouble at the docks. You don’t
seriously anticipate a Flack ‘operation,’ do you?”
Mr. Reeder, who had forgotten all about the gold-convoy, made a
cautious and non-committal reply.
By the time he returned to Larmes Keep the other guests had returned.
The hall porter said they were expecting a “party” on the morrow, but
as he had volunteered that information on the previous evening, Mr.
Reeder did not take it very seriously. He gathered that the man spoke
in good faith, without any wish to deceive, but he saw no signs of
unusual activity; nor, indeed, was there accommodation at the Keep for
more than a few more visitors.
He looked round for the aggrieved servant and missed her. A discreet
inquiry revealed the fact that she had left that afternoon.
Mr. Reeder went to his room, locked the door, and busied himself in
the examination of two great scrap-books which he had brought down
with him. They were the official records of Flack and his gang.
Perhaps “gang” was hardly a proper description, for he seemed to use
and change his associates as a theatrical manager uses and changes his
cast. The police knew close on a score of men who from time to time
had assisted John Flack in his nefarious transactions. Some had gone
to prison, and had spent the hours of their recovered liberty in a
vain endeavour to re-establish touch with so generous a paymaster.
Some, known to be in his employ, had vanished, and were generally
supposed to be living in luxury abroad.
Reeder went through the book, which was full of essential facts, and
jotted down the amounts which this strange man had acquired in the
course of twenty years’ depredations. The total was a staggering one.
Flack had worked feverishly, and though he had paid well he had spent
little. Somewhere in England was an enormous reserve. And that
somewhere, Mr. Reeder guessed, was very close to his hand.
For what had John Flack worked? To what end was this accumulation of
money? Was the sheer greed of the miser behind his thefts? Was he
working aimlessly, as a madman works, towards some visionary
objective?
Flack’s greed was proverbial. Nothing satisfied him. The robbery of
the Leadenhall Bank had been followed a week later by an attack upon
the London Trust Syndicate, carried out, the police discovered, by an
entirely new confederation, gathered within a few days of the robbery
and yet so perfectly rehearsed that the plan was carried through
without a hitch.
Mr. Reeder locked away his books and went downstairs in search of
Margaret Belman. The crisis was very near at hand, and it was
necessary for his peace of mind that the girl should leave Larmes Keep
without delay.
He was half-way down the stairs when he met Daver coming up, and at
that moment he received an inspiration.
“You are the very gentleman I wished to meet,” he said. “I wonder if
you would do me a great favour?”
Daver’s careworn face wreathed in smiles.
“My dear Mr. Reeder,” he said enthusiastically, “do you a favour?
Command me!”
“I have been thinking about last night and my extraordinary
experience,” said Mr. Reeder.
“You mean the burglar?” interrupted the other quickly.
“The burglar,” agreed Mr. Reeder. “He was an alarming person, and I am
not disposed to let the matter rest where it is. Fortunately for me, I