Terror keep
before. Indeed, in the excitement of her visit to Larmes Keep, she had
forgotten that this pestiferous gallant existed or was likely to be
waiting for her on her return from the country.
George Ravini stopped and waited for her approach, smiling his
approval. He liked slim girls of her colouring: girls who dressed
rather severely and wore rather nice stockings and plain little hats.
He raised his hat; the Luck Stones glittered beautifully.
“Oh!” said Margaret Belman, and stopped too.
“Good evening, Miss Belman,” said George, flashing his white teeth.
“Quite a coincidence meeting you again.”
As she went to walk past him he fell in by her side.
“I wish I had my car here, I might have driven you home,” he said
conversationally. “I’ve got a new 20 Rolls--rather a neat little
machine. I don’t use it a great deal--I like to walk from Half Moon
Street.”
“Are you walking to Half Moon Street now?” she asked quietly.
But George was a man of experience.
“Your way is my way,” he said.
She stopped.
“What is your name?” she asked.
“Smith--Anderton Smith,” he answered readily. “Why do you want to
know?”
“I want to tell the next policeman we meet,” she said, and Mr. Ravini,
not unaccustomed to such threats, was amused.
“Don’t be a silly little girl,” he said. “I’m doing no harm, and you
don’t want to get your name in the newspapers. Besides, I should
merely say that you asked me to walk with you and that we were old
friends.”
She looked at him steadily.
“I may meet a friend very soon who will need a lot of convincing,” she
said. “Will you please go away?”
George was pleased to stay, as he explained.
“What a foolish young lady you are!” he began. “I’m merely offering
you the common courtesies----”
A hand gripped his arm and slowly pulled him round--and this in broad
daylight on Waterloo Station, under the eyes of at least two of his
own tribe. Mr. Ravini’s dark eyes snapped dangerously.
And yet seemingly his assailant was a most inoffensive man. He was
tall and rather melancholy-looking. He wore a frock coat buttoned
tightly across his breast, and a high, flat-crowned, hard felt hat. On
his biggish nose a pair of steel-rimmed pince-nez were set at an
awkward angle. A slither of sandy side-whiskers decorated his cheek,
and hooked to his arm was a lightly furled umbrella. Not that George
examined these details with any care: they were rather familiar to
him, for he knew Mr. J. G. Reeder, Detective to the Public
Prosecutor’s Office, and the fight went out of his eyes.
“Why, Mr. Reeder!” he said, with a geniality that almost sounded
sincere. “This _is_ a pleasant surprise. Meet my young lady friend,
Miss Belman--I was just taking her along----”
“Not to the Flotsam Club for a cup of tea?” murmured Mr. Reeder in a
tone of pain. “Not to Harraby’s Restaurant? Don’t tell me that,
Georgio! Dear me! How interesting either experience would be!”
He beamed upon the scowling Italian.
“At the Flotsam,” he went on, “you would have been able to show the
young lady where your friends caught young Lord Fallon for three
thousand pounds only the night before last--so they tell me. At
Harraby’s you might have shown her that interesting little room where
the police come in by the back way whenever you consider it expedient
to betray one of your friends. She has missed a treat!”
George Ravini’s smile did not harmonise with his sudden pallor.
“Now listen, Mr. Reeder----”
“I’m sorry I can’t, Georgio.” Mr. Reeder shook his head mournfully.
“My time is precious. Yet, I will spare you one minute to tell you
that Miss Belman is a very particular friend of mine. If her
experience of to-day is repeated, who knows what might happen, for I
am, as you probably know, a malicious man.” He eyed the Italian
thoughtfully. “Is it malice, I wonder, which inhibits a most
interesting revelation which I have on the tip of my tongue? I wonder.
The human mind, Mr. Ravini, is a curious and complex thing. Well,
well, I must be getting along. Give my regards to your criminal
associates, and if you find yourself shadowed by a gentleman from
Scotland Yard, bear him no resentment. He is doing his duty. And do
not lose sight of my--um--warning about this lady.”
“I have said nothing to this young lady that a gentleman shouldn’t.”
Mr. Reeder peered at Ravini.
“If you have,” he said, “you may expect to see me some time this
evening--and I shall not come alone. In fact,”--this in a most
confidential tone--“I shall bring sufficient strong men with me to
take from you the keys of your box in the Fetter Lane Safe Deposit.”
That was all he said, and Ravini reeled under the threat. Before he
had quite recovered, Mr. J. G. Reeder and his charge had disappeared
into the throng.
CHAPTER III
“/An/ interesting man,” said Mr. Reeder, as the cab crossed
Westminster Bridge. “He is in fact the most interesting man I know at
this particular moment. It was fate that I should walk into him as I
did. But I wish he wouldn’t wear diamond rings!”
He stole a sidelong glance at his companion.
“Well, did you--um--like the place?”
“It is very beautiful,” she said, without enthusiasm, “but it is
rather far away from London.”
His face fell.
“Have you declined the post?” he asked anxiously.
She half turned in the seat and looked at him.
“Mr. Reeder, I honestly believe you wish to see the back of me!”
To her surprise Mr. Reeder went very red.
“Why--um--of course I do--I don’t, I mean. But it seems a very good
position, even as a temporary position.” He blinked at her. “I shall
miss you, I really shall miss you, Miss--um--Margaret. We have become
such”--here he swallowed something--“good friends, but the--a certain
business is on my mind--I mean, I am rather perturbed.”
He looked from one window to the other as though he suspected an
eavesdropper riding on the step of the cab, and then, lowering his
voice:
“I have never discussed with you, my dear Miss--um--Margaret, the
rather unpleasant details of my trade; but there is, or was, a
gentleman named Flack--F-l-a-c-k,” he spelt it. “You remember?” he
asked anxiously, and when she shook her head: “I hoped that you would.
One reads about these things in the public press. But five years ago
you would have been a child----”
“You’re very flattering,” she smiled. “I was in fact a grown-up young
lady of eighteen.”
“Were you really?” asked Mr. Reeder in a hushed voice. “You surprise
me! Well… Mr. Flack was the kind of person one so frequently reads
about in the pages of the sensational novelist--who has not too keen a
regard for the probabilities and facts of life. A master criminal, the
organiser of--um--a confederation, or, as vulgar people would call it,
gang.”
He sighed and closed his eyes, and she thought for one moment he was
praying for the iniquitous criminal.
“A brilliant criminal--it is a terrible thing to confess, but I have
had a reluctant admiration for him. You see, as I have so often
explained to you, I am cursed with a criminal mind. But he was mad.”
“All criminals are mad: you have explained that so often,” she said, a
little tartly, for she was not anxious that the conversation should
drift from her immediate affairs.
“But he was really mad,” said Mr. Reeder with great earnestness, and
tapped his forehead deliberately. “His very madness was his salvation.
He did daring things, but with the cunning of a madman. He shot down
two policemen in cold blood--he did this at midday in a crowded City
street and got away. We caught him at last, of course. People like
that are always caught in this country. I--um--assisted. In fact,
I--well, I assisted! That is why I am thinking of our friend Georgio;
for it was Mr. Ravini who betrayed him to us for two thousand pounds.
I negotiated the deal, Mr. Ravini being a criminal…”
She stared at him open-mouthed.
“That Italian man? You don’t mean that?”
Mr. Reeder nodded.
“Mr. Ravini had dealings with the Flack gang, and by chance learnt of
Old John’s whereabouts. We took old John Flack in his sleep.” Mr.
Reeder sighed again. “He said some very bitter things about me.
People, when they are arrested, frequently exaggerate the shortcomings
of their--er--captors.”
“Was he tried?” she asked.
“He was tried,” said Mr. Reeder, “on a charge of murder. But of course
he was mad. ‘Guilty but insane’ was the verdict, and he was sent to
Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum.”
He searched feebly in his pockets, produced a very limp packet of
cigarettes, extracted one and asked permission to smoke. She watched
the damp squib of a thing drooping pathetically from his lower lip.
His eyes were staring sombrely through the window at the green of the
park through which they were passing, and he seemed entirely absorbed
in his contemplation of nature.
“But what has that to do with my going into the country?”
Mr. Reeder brought his eyes round to survey her.
“Mr. Flack was a very vindictive man,” he said. “A very brilliant
man--I hate confessing this. And he has--um--a particular grudge
against me, and being what he is, it would not be long before he
discovered that I--er--I--am rather attached to you, Miss--Margaret.”
A light dawned on her, and her whole attitude towards him changed as
she gripped his arm.
“You mean, you want me out of London in case something happens? But
what could happen? He’s in Broadmoor, isn’t he?”
Mr. Reeder scratched his chin and looked up at the roof of the cab.
“He escaped a week ago--hum! He is, I think, in London at this
moment.”
Margaret Belman gasped.
“Does this Italian--this Ravini man--know?”
“He does not know,” said Mr. Reeder carefully, “but I think he will
learn--yes, I think he will learn.”
A week later, after Margaret Belman had gone, with some misgivings, to
take up her new appointment, all Mr. Reeder’s doubts as to the
location of John Flack were dissipated.
* * * * *
There was some slight disagreement between Margaret Belman and Mr.
Reeder, and it happened at lunch on the day she left London. It
started in fun--not that Mr. Reeder was ever kittenish--by a certain
suggestion she made. Mr. Reeder demurred. How she ever summoned the
courage to tell him he was old-fashioned, Margaret never knew--but she
did.
“Of course, you could shave them off,” she said scornfully. “It would
make you look ten years younger.”
“I don’t think, my dear--Miss--um--Margaret, that I wish to look ten
years younger,” said Mr. Reeder.
A certain tenseness followed, and she went down to Siltbury feeling a
little uncomfortable. Yet her heart warmed to him as she realised that
his anxiety to get her out of London was dictated by a desire for her
own safety. It was not until she was nearing her destination that she
realised that he himself was in no ordinary danger. She must write and
tell him she was sorry. She wondered who the Flacks were; the name was
familiar to her, though in the days of their activity she gave little
or no attention to people of their kind.
Mr. Daver, looking more impish than ever, gave her a brief interview
on her arrival. It was he who took her to her bureau and very briefly
explained her duties. They were neither heavy nor complicated, and she
was relieved to discover that she had practically nothing whatever to
do with the management of Larmes Keep. That was in the efficient hands
of Mrs. Burton.
The staff of the hotel were housed in two cottages about a quarter of
a mile from the Keep, only Mrs. Burton living on the premises.
“This keeps us more select,” said Mr. Daver. “Servants are an
abominable nuisance. You agree with me? I thought you would. If they
are needed in the night, both cottages have telephones, and Grainger,
the porter, has a pass-key to the outer door. That is an excellent