Terror keep
the panel above his head.
Mr. Reeder emitted a deep groan and crawled rapidly and noiselessly
across the floor.
Again came Daver’s voice:
“What on earth was that? Has anything happened, Mr. Reeder?”
The detective made no reply. Nearer and nearer he was crawling towards
where Daver stood. And then, as unexpectedly as they had been
extinguished, the lights went up. Daver was standing in front of the
curtained doorway, and on the proprietor’s face was a look of blank
dismay as Mr. Reeder rose at his feet.
Daver shrank back, his big white teeth set in a fearful grin, his
round eyes wide open. He tried to speak, and his mouth opened and
closed, but no sound issued. From Reeder his eyes strayed to the
panelled wall--but Reeder had already seen the knife buried in the
wood.
“Let me think,” he said gently. “Was that the Colonel or the highly
intelligent representative of the church?”
He went across to the wall and with an effort pulled out the knife. It
was long and broad.
“A murderous weapon,” said Mr. Reeder.
Daver found his voice.
“A murderous weapon,” he echoed hollowly. “Was it--thrown at you, Mr.
Reeder?… how very terrible!”
Mr. Reeder was gazing at him sombrely.
“Your idea?” he asked, but by now Mr. Daver was incapable of replying.
Reeder left the shaken proprietor lying limply in one of the big
arm-chairs, and walked up the carpeted stairs to the corridor. And if
against his black coat the automatic was not visible, it was
nevertheless there.
He stopped before his door, unlocked it, and threw it wide open. The
lamp by the side of the bed was still burning. Mr. Reeder switched on
the wall light, peeped through the crack between the door and the wall
before he ventured inside.
He shut the door, locked it, and walked over to the cupboard.
“You may come out, Brill,” he said. “I presume nobody has been here?”
There was no answer, and he pulled open the cupboard door quickly.
It was empty!
“Well, well!” said Mr. Reeder, and that meant that matters were
everything but well.
There was no sign of a struggle; nothing in the world to suggest that
Detective Brill had not walked out of his own free will and made his
exit by the window, which was still open.
Mr. Reeder tiptoed back to the light-switch and turned it; stretched
across the bed and extinguished the lamp; and then he sidled
cautiously to the window and peeped round the stone framing. It was a
very dark night, and he could distinguish no object below.
Events were moving only a little faster than he had anticipated: for
this, however, he was responsible. He had forced the hands of the
Flack confederation, and they were extremely able hands.
He was unlocking his trunk when he heard a faint sound of steel
against steel. Somebody was fitting a key into the lock, and he
waited, his automatic covering the door. Nothing further happened, and
he went forward to investigate. His flash-lamp showed him what had
happened. Somebody outside had inserted a key, turned it and left it
in the lock, so that it was impossible for the door to be unlocked
from the inside.
“I am rather glad,” said Mr. Reeder, speaking his thoughts aloud,
“that Miss--um--Margaret is on her way to London!”
He pursed his lips reflectively. Would he be glad if he also was at
this moment en route for London? Mr. Reeder was not very certain about
this.
On one point he was satisfied--the Flacks were going to give him a
very small margin of time, and that margin must be used to the best
advantage.
So far as he could tell, the trunks had not been opened. He pulled out
the rope-ladder, groped down to the bottom, and presently withdrew his
hand, holding a long white cardboard cylinder. Crawling under the
window, he put up his hand and fixed an end of the cylinder in one of
the china flower-pots that stood on the broad window-sill and which he
had moved to allow the ingress of Brill. When this had been done to
his satisfaction, he struck a match and, reaching up, set fire to a
little touch-paper at the cylinder’s free end. He brought his hand
down just in time; something whizzed into the room and struck the
panelling of the opposite wall with an angry smack. There was no sound
of explosion. Whoever fired was using an air pistol. Again and again
in rapid succession came the pellets, but by now the cylinder was
burning and spluttering, and in another instant the grounds were
brilliantly illuminated as the flare burst into a dazzling red flame
that, he knew, could be seen for miles.
He heard a scampering of feet below, but dared not look out. By the
time the first tender-load of detectives had come flying up the drive,
the grounds were deserted.
With the exception of the servants, there were only two people at
Larmes Keep when the police began their search. Mr. Daver and the
faded Mrs. Burton alone remained. “Colonel Hothling” and “the Rev. Mr.
Dean” had disappeared as though they had been whisked from the face of
the earth.
Big Bill Gordon interviewed the proprietor.
“This is Flack’s headquarters, and you know it. You’ll be well advised
to spill everything and save your own skin.”
“But I don’t know the man; I’ve never seen him!” wailed Mr. Daver.
“This is the most terrible thing that has happened to me in my life!
Can you make me responsible for the character of my guests? You’re a
reasonable man? I see you are! If these people are friends of Flack, I
have never heard of them in that connection. You may search my house
from cellar to garret, and if you find anything that in the least
incriminates me, take me off to prison. I ask that as a favour. Is
that the statement of an honest man? I see you are convinced!”
Neither he nor Mrs. Burton nor any of the servants who were questioned
in the early hours of the morning could afford the slightest clue to
the identity of the visitors. Miss Crewe had been in the habit of
coming every year and of staying four and sometimes five months.
Hothling was a newcomer, as also was the parson. Inquiries made by
telephone of the chief of the Siltbury police confirmed Mr. Daver’s
statement that he had been the proprietor of Larmes Keep for
twenty-five years, and that his past was blameless. He himself
produced his title-deeds. A search of his papers, made at his
invitation, and of the three tin boxes in the safe, produced nothing
but support for his protestations of innocence.
Big Bill interviewed Mr. Reeder in the hall over a cup of coffee at
three o’clock in the morning.
“There’s no doubt at all that these people were members of the Flack
crowd, probably engaged in advance against his escape, and how they
got away the Lord knows! I have had six men on duty on the road since
dark, and neither the woman nor the two men passed me.”
“Did you see Brill?” asked Mr. Reeder, suddenly remembering the absent
detective.
“Brill?” said the other in astonishment. “He’s with you, isn’t he? You
told me to have him under your window----”
In a few words Mr. Reeder explained the situation, and together they
went up to No. 7. There was nothing in the cupboard to afford the
slightest clue to Brill’s whereabouts. The panels were sounded, but
there was no evidence of secret doors--a romantic possibility which
Mr. Reeder had not excluded, for this was the type of house where he
might expect to find them.
Two men were sent to search the grounds for the missing detective, and
Reeder and the police chief went back to finish their coffee.
“Your theory has turned out accurate so far, but there is nothing to
connect Daver.”
“Daver’s in it,” said Mr. Reeder. “He was not the knife-thrower: his
job was to locate me on behalf of the Colonel. But Daver brought Miss
Belman down here in preparation for Flack’s escape.”
Big Bill nodded.
“She was to be hostage for your good behaviour.” He scratched his head
irritably. “That’s like one of Crazy Jack’s schemes. But why did he
try to shoot you up? Why wasn’t he satisfied with her being at Larmes
Keep?”
Mr. Reeder had no immediate explanation. He was dealing with a madman,
a thing of whims. Consistency was not to be expected from Mr. Flack.
He passed his fingers through his scanty hair.
“It is all rather puzzling and inexplicable,” he said. “I think I’ll
go to bed.”
He was sleeping dreamlessly, under the watchful eye of a Scotland Yard
detective, when Big Bill came bursting into the room.
“Get up, Reeder!” he said roughly.
Mr. Reeder sat up in bed, instantly awake.
“What is wrong?” he asked.
“Wrong! That gold-lorry left the Bank of England this morning at five
o’clock on its way to Tilbury and hasn’t been seen since!”
CHAPTER XIII
/At/ the last moment the bank authorities had changed their mind, and
overnight had sent £53,000 worth of gold for conveyance to the ship.
They had borrowed for the purpose an army lorry from Woolwich, a
service which is sometimes claimed by the national banking
institution.
The lorry had been accompanied by eight detectives, the military
driver being also armed. Tilbury was reached at half-past eleven
o’clock at night, and the lorry, a high-powered Lassavar, had returned
to London at two o’clock in the morning and had been loaded in the
bank courtyard under the eyes of the officer, sergeant, and two men of
the guard which is on duty on the bank premises from sunset to
sunrise. A new detachment of picked men from Scotland Yard, each
carrying an automatic pistol, loaded the lorry for its second journey,
the amount of gold this time being £73,000 worth. After the boxes had
been put into the van, they had climbed up and the lorry had driven
away from the bank. Each of the eight men guarding this treasure was
passed under review by a high officer of Scotland Yard who knew every
one personally. The lorry was seen in Commercial Road by a
detective-inspector of the division, and its progress was also noted
by a police-cyclist patrol who was on duty at the junction of the
Ripple and Barking roads.
The main Tilbury road runs within a few hundred yards of the village
of Rainham, and it was at this point, only a few miles distant from
Tilbury, that the lorry disappeared. Two motor-cyclist policemen who
had gone out to meet the gold-convoy, and who had received a telephone
message from the Ripple road to say that it had passed, grew uneasy
and telephoned to Tilbury.
It was an airless morning, with occasional banks of mist lying in the
hollows, and part of the road, especially near the river, was patchily
covered with white fog, which dispersed about eight o’clock in the
morning under a southeasterly wind. The mist had almost disappeared
when the search party from Tilbury pursued their investigations and
came upon the one evidence of tragedy which the morning was to reveal.
This was an old Ford motor car that had evidently run from the road,
miraculously missed a telegraph pole, and ditched itself. The machine
had not overturned; there were no visible marks of injury; yet the man
who sat at the wheel was stone dead when he was found. An immediate
medical examination failed to discover an injury of any kind to the
man, who was a small farmer of Rainham, and on the face of it it
looked as though he had died of a heart attack whilst on his way to
town.
Just beyond the place where he was found the road dips steeply between
high banks. It is known as Coles Hollow, and at its deepest part the
cutting is crossed by a single-track bridge which connects two
portions of the farm through which the road runs. The dead farmer and
his machine had been removed when Reeder and the chief of Scotland
Yard arrived on the spot. No news of any kind had been received of the
lorry; but the local police, who had been following its tracks, had
made two discoveries. Apparently, going through the cutting, the front