Terror keep
guessed the gun.”
“But how did you know there was anything?” asked Big Bill curiously.
Mr. Reeder smiled.
“I have a criminal mind,” he said.
He went back to his flat in Bennett Street, his mind equally divided
between Margaret Belman, safe in Sussex, and the ability of one normal
trolley to carry a hundred and twenty thousand sovereigns. Such little
details interested Mr. Reeder. Almost the first thing he did when he
reached his flat was to call up a haulage contractor to discover
whether such trucks were in use. For somehow he knew that if the Flack
gang were after this shipment to Australia, it was necessary that the
gold should be carried in one vehicle. And why he should think this,
not even Mr. Reeder knew. But he had, as he said, a criminal mind.
That afternoon he addressed himself to a novel and not unpleasing
task. It was a letter--the first letter he had written to Margaret
Belman,--and in its way it was a curiosity.
“My dear Miss Margaret,” it began, “I trust you will not be annoyed
that I should write to you; but certain incidents which disfigured
perhaps our parting, and which may cause you (I say this, knowing your
kind heart) a little unhappiness, induce this letter----”
Mr. Reeder paused here to discover a method by which he could convey
his regret at not seeing her, without offering an embarrassing
revelation of his more secret thoughts. At five o’clock, when his
servant brought in his tea, he was still sitting before the unfinished
letter. Mr. Reeder took up the cup, carried it to his writing-table,
and stared at it as though for inspiration.
And then he saw, on the surface of the steaming cup, a thread-like
formation of froth which had a curious metallic quality. He dipped his
forefinger delicately in the froth and put his finger to his tongue.
“Hum!” said Mr. Reeder, and rang the bell.
His man came instantly.
“Is there anything you want, sir?” He bent his head respectfully, and
for a long time Mr. Reeder did not answer.
“The milk, of course!” he said.
“The milk, sir?” said the puzzled servant, “The milk’s fresh, sir: it
came this afternoon.”
“You did not take it from the milkman, naturally. It was in a bottle
outside the door.”
The man nodded.
“Yes, sir.”
“Good!” said Mr. Reeder, almost cheerfully. “In future, will you
arrange to receive the milk from the milkman’s own hands? You have not
drunk any yourself, I see?”
“No, sir. I have had my tea, but I don’t take milk with it, sir,” said
the servant, and Mr. Reeder favoured him with one of his rare smiles.
“That, Peters,” he said, “is why you are alive and well. Bring the
rest of the milk to me, and a new cup of tea. I also will dispense
with the lacteal fluid.”
“Don’t you like milk, sir?” said the bewildered man.
“I like milk,” replied Mr. Reeder gently, “but I prefer it without
strychnine. I think, Peters, we’re going to have a very interesting
week. Have you any dependants?”
“I have an old mother, sir,” said the mystified man.
“Are you insured?” asked Mr. Reeder, and Peters nodded dumbly.
“You have the advantage of me,” said J. G. Reeder. “Yes, I think we
are going to have an interesting week.”
And his prediction was fully justified.
CHAPTER VIII
/London/ heard the news of John Flack’s escape and grew fearful or
indignant according to its several temperaments. A homicidal planner
of great and spectacular thefts was in its midst. It was not very
pleasant hearing for law-abiding citizens. And the news was more than
a week old: why had Scotland Yard not taken the public into its
confidence? Why suppress this news of such vital interest? Who was
responsible for the suppression of this important information?
Headlines asked these questions in the more sensational sheets. The
news of the Bennett Street outrage was public property: to his
enormous embarrassment, Mr. Reeder found himself a Matter of Public
Interest.
Mr. Reeder used to sit alone in his tiny bureau at the Public
Prosecutor’s Office and for hours on end do little more than twiddle
his thumbs and gaze disconsolately at the virgin white of his
blotting-pad.
In what private day-dreams he indulged, whether they concerned
fabulous fortunes and their disposition, or whether they centred about
a very pretty pink-and-white young lady, or whether indeed he thought
at all and his mind was not a complete blank, those who interrupted
his reveries and had the satisfaction of seeing him start guiltily had
no means of knowing.
At this particular moment his mind was, in truth, completely occupied
by his newest as well as his oldest enemy.
There were three members of the Flack gang originally--John, George,
and Augustus--and they began operations in the days when it was
considered scientific and a little wonderful to burn out the lock of a
safe.
Augustus Flack was killed by the night watchman of Carr’s Bank in
Lombard Street during an attempt to rob the gold vault; George Flack,
the youngest of the three, was sent to penal servitude for ten years
as the result of a robbery in Bond Street, and died there; and only
John, the mad master-mind of the family, escaped detection and arrest.
It was he who brought into the organisation one O. Sweizer, the Yankee
bank-smasher; he who recruited Adolphe Victoire; and those brought
others to the good work. For this was Crazy Jack’s peculiar
asset--that he could attract to himself, almost at a minute’s notice,
the best brains of the underworld. Though the rest of the Flacks were
either dead or gaoled, the organisation was stronger than ever, and
strongest because lurking somewhere in the background was this kinky
brain.
Thus matters stood when Mr. J. G. Reeder came into the case--being
brought into the matter not so much because the London police had
failed, but because the Public Prosecutor recognised that the breaking
up of the Flacks was going to be a lengthy business, occupying one
man’s complete attention.
Cutting the tentacles of the organisation was an easy matter,
comparatively.
Mr. Reeder took O. Sweizer, that stocky Swiss-American, when he and a
man unknown were engaged in removing a safe from the Bedford Street
post-office one Sunday morning. Sweizer was ready for fight, but Mr.
Reeder grabbed him just a little too quickly.
“Let up!” gasped Sweizer in Italian. “You’re choking me, Reeder.”
Mr. Reeder turned him on to his face and handcuffed him behind, then
he lifted him by the scruff of his neck and went to the assistance of
his admirable colleagues who were taking the other two men.
Victoire was arrested one night at the Charlton, when he was dining
with Denver May. He gave no trouble, because the police took him on a
purely fictitious charge and one which he knew he could easily
disprove.
“My dear Mr. Reeder,” said he in his elegant, languid way, “you are
making quite an absurd mistake, but I will humour you. I can prove
that when the pearls were taken from Hertford Street I was in Nice.”
This was on the way to the station.
They put him in the dock and searched him, discovering certain lethal
weapons handily disposed about his person, but he was only amused. He
was less amused when he was charged with smashing the Bank of Lens,
the attempted murder of a night watchman, and one or two other little
matters which need not be particularised.
They got him into the cells, and as he was carried, struggling and
raving like a lunatic, Mr. Reeder offered him a piece of advice which
he rejected with considerable violence.
“Say you were in Nice at the time,” he said gently.
Then one day the police pulled in a man in Somers Town, on the very
prosaic charge of beating his wife in public. When they searched him
they found a torn scrap of a letter, which was sent at once to Mr.
Reeder. It ran:
“Any night about eleven in Whitehall Avenue. Reeder is a man of medium
height, elderly-looking, sandy-greyish hair and side-whiskers rather
thick, always carries an umbrella. Recommend you to wear rubber boots
and take a length of iron to him. You can easily find out who he is
and what he looks like. Take your time… fifty on acc… der when the job
is finished…”
This was the first hint Mr. Reeder had that he was especially
unpopular with the mysterious John Flack.
The day Crazy Jack was sent down to Broadmoor had been a day of mild
satisfaction for Mr. Reeder. He was not exactly happy or even relieved
about it. He had the comfort of an accountant who had signed a
satisfactory balance-sheet, or the builder who was surveying his
finished work. There were other balance-sheets to be signed, other
buildings to be erected--they differed only in their shapes and
quantities.
One thing was certain, that on what other project Flack’s mind was
fixed, he was devoting a considerable amount of thought to J. G.
Reeder--whether in reprisal for events that had passed or as a
precautionary measure to check his activities in the future, the
detective could only guess: but he was a good guesser.
The telephone bell, set in a remote corner of the room, rang sharply.
Mr. Reeder took up the instrument with a pained expression. The
operator of the office exchange told him that there was a call from
Horsham. He pulled a writing-pad towards him and waited. And then a
voice spoke, and hardly was the first word uttered when he knew his
man, for J. G. Reeder never forgot voices.
“That you, Reeder?… Know who I am?…”
The same thin, tense voice that had babbled threats from the dock of
the Old Bailey, the same little chuckling laugh that punctured every
second.
Mr. Reeder touched a bell and began to write rapidly on his pad.
“Know who I am?--I’ll bet you do! Thought you’d got rid of me, didn’t
you? but you haven’t!… Listen, Reeder, you can tell the Yard I’m
busy--I’m going to give them the shock of their lives. Mad, am I? I’ll
show you whether I’m mad or not… And I’ll get you, Reeder…”
A messenger came in. Mr. Reeder tore off the slip and handed it to him
with an urgent gesture. The man read and bolted from the room.
“Is that Mr. Flack?” asked Reeder softly.
“Is it Mr. Flack, you old hypocrite!… Have you got the parcel? I
wondered if you had. What do you think of it?”
“The parcel?” said Reeder, gentlier than ever, and before the man
could reply: “You will get into serious trouble for trying to hoax the
Public Prosecutor’s Office, my friend,” said Mr. Reeder reproachfully.
“You are not Crazy John Flack… I know his voice. Mr. Flack spoke with
a curious Cockney accent which is not easy to imitate, and Mr. Flack
at this moment is in the hands of the police.”
He counted on the effect of this provocative speech, and he had made
no mistake.
“You lie!” screamed the voice. “You know I’m Flack… Crazy Jack, eh?…
Crazy old John Flack… Mad, am I? You’ll learn!… you put me in that
hell upon earth, and I’m going to serve you worse than I treated that
damned dago…”
The voice ceased abruptly. There was a click as the receiver was put
down. Reeder listened expectantly, but no other call came through.
Then he rang the bell again and the messenger returned.
“Yes, sir, I got through straight away to the Horsham police station.
The inspector is sending three men in a car to the post-office.”
Mr. Reeder gazed at the ceiling.
“Then I fear he has sent too late,” he said. “The venerable bandit
will have gone.”
A quarter of an hour later came confirmation of his prediction. The
police had arrived at the post-office, but the bird had flown. The
clerk did not remember anybody old or wild-looking booking a call; he
thought that the message had not come from the post-office itself,
which was also the telephone exchange, but from an outlying call-box.
Mr. Reeder went in to report to the Public Prosecutor, but neither he