Sheer Melodrama
It was Mr. Reeder who planned the raid on Tommy Fenalow’s snide shop and worked out all the details except the composition of the raiding force. Tommy had a depot at Golders Green whither trusted agents came, purchasing Treasury notes for £7 10s. per hundred, or £70 a thousand. Only experts could tell the difference between Tommy’s currency and that authorised by and printed for H.M. Treasury. They were the right shades of brown and green, the numbers were of issued series, the paper was exact. They were printed in Germany at £3 a thousand, and Tommy made thousands percent profit.
Mr. Reeder discovered all about Tommy’s depot in his spare time, and reported the matter to his chief, the Director of Public Prosecutions. From Whitehall to Scotland Yard is two minutes’ walk, and in just that time the information got across.
“Take Inspector Greyash with you and superintend the raid,” were his instructions.
He left the inspector to make all the arrangements, and amongst those who learnt of the projected coup was a certain detective officer who made more money from questionable associations than he did from Government. This officer “blew” the raid to Tommy, and when Mr. Reeder and his bold men arrived at Golders Green, there was Tommy and three friends playing a quiet game of auction bridge, and the only Treasury notes discoverable were veritable old masters.
“It is a pity,” sighed J. G. when they reached the street; “a great pity. Of course I hadn’t the least idea that Detective-Constable Wilshore was in our party. He is—er—not quite loyal.”
“Wilshore?” asked the officer, aghast. “Do you mean he ‘blew’ the raid to Tommy?”
Mr. Reeder scratched his nose and said gently, that he thought so.
“He has quite a big income from various sources—by the way, he banks with the Midland and Derbyshire, and his account is in his wife’s maiden name. I tell you this in case—er—it may be useful.”
It was useful enough to secure the summary ejection of the unfaithful Wilshore from the force, but it was not sufficiently useful to catch Tommy, whose parting words were:
“You’re clever, Reeder; but you’ve got to be lucky to catch me!”
Tommy was in the habit of repeating this scrap of conversation to such as were interested. It was an encounter of which he was justifiably proud, for few dealers in “slush” and “snide” have ever come up against Mr. J. G. and got away with it.
“It’s worth a thousand pounds to me—ten thousand! I’d pay that money to make J. G. look sick, anyway, the old dog! I guess the Yard will think twice before it tries to shop me again, and that’s the real kick in the raid. J. G.’s name is Jonah at headquarters, and if I can do anything to help, it will be mud!”
To a certain Ras Lal Punjabi, an honoured (and paying) guest, Mr. Fenalow told this story, with curious results.
A good wine tastes best in its own country, and a man may drink sherry by the cask in Jerez de la Frontena and take no ill, whereas if he attempted so much as a bottle in Fleet Street, he would suffer cruelly. So also does the cigarette of Egypt preserve its finest bouquet for such as smoke it in the lounge of a Cairo hotel.
Crime is yet another quantity which does not bear transplanting. The American safe-blower may flourish in France just so long as he acquires by diligent study, and confines himself to, the Continental method. It is possible for the European thief to gain a fair livelihood in oriental countries, but there is no more tragic sight in the world than the Eastern mind endeavouring to adapt itself to the complexities of European roguery.
Ras Lal Punjabi enjoyed a reputation in Indian police circles as the cleverest native criminal India had ever produced. Beyond a short term in Poona Jail, Ras Lal had never seen the interior of a prison, and such was his fame in native circles that, during this short period of incarceration, prayers for his deliverance were offered at certain temples, and it was agreed that he would never have been convicted at all but for some pretty hard swearing on the part of the police commissioner sahib—and anyway, all sahibs hang together, and it was a European judge who sent him down.
He was a general practitioner of crime, with a leaning towards specialisation in jewel thefts. A man of excellent and even gentlemanly appearance, with black and shiny hair parted at the side and curling up over one brow in an inky wave, he spoke English, Hindustani and Tamil very well indeed, had a sketchy knowledge of the law (on his visiting cards was the inscription “Failed LL.B.”) and a very full acquaintance with the science of precious stones.
During Mr. Ras Las Punjabi’s brief rest in Poona, the police commissioner sahib, whose unromantic name was Smith, married a not very good-looking girl with a lot of money. Smith Sahib knew that beauty was only skin deep and that she had a kind heart, which is notoriously preferable to the garniture of coronets. It was honestly a love match. Her father owned jute mills in Calcutta, and on festive occasions, such as the Governor-General’s ball, she carried several lakhs of rupees on her person; but even rich people are loved for themselves alone.
Ras Lal owed his imprisonment to an unsuccessful attempt he had made upon two strings of pearls the property of the lady in question, and when he learnt, on his return to freedom, that Smith Sahib had married the resplendent girl and had gone to England, he very naturally attributed the hatred and bitterness of Smith Sahib to purely personal causes, and swore vengeance.
Now in India the business of every man is the business of his servants. The preliminary inquiries, over which an English or American jewel thief would spend a small fortune, can be made at the cost of a few annas. When Ras Lal came to England he found that he had overlooked this very important fact.
Smith, sahib and memsahib, were out of town; they were, in fact, on the high seas en route for New York when Ras Lal was arrested on the conventional charge of “being a suspected person.” Ras had shadowed the Smiths’ butler, and, having induced him to drink, had offered him immense sums to reveal the place, receptacle, drawer, safe, box or casket wherein Mrs. Commissioner Smith’s jewels were kept. His excuse for asking, namely, that he had had a wager with his brother that the jewels were kept under the Memsahib’s bed, showed a lamentable lack of inventive power. The butler, an honest man, though a drinker of beer, informed the police. Ras Lal and his friend and assistant Ram were arrested, brought before a magistrate, and would have been discharged but for the fact that Mr. J. G. Reeder saw the record of the case and was able to supply from his own files very important particulars of the dark man’s past. Therefore Mr. Ras Lal was sent down to hard labour for six months, but, what was more maddening, the story of his ignominious failure was, he guessed, broadcast throughout India.
This was the thought which distracted him in his lonely cell at Wormwood Scrubbs. What would India think of him?—he would be the scorn of the bazaars, “the mocking point of third-rate mediocrities,” to use his own expression. And automatically he switched his hate from Smith Sahib to one Mr. J. G. Reeder. And his hate was very real, more real because of the insignificance and unimportance of this Reeder Sahib, whom he likened to an ancient cow, a sneaking weasel, and other things less translatable. And in the six months of his durance he planned desperate and earnest acts of reprisal.
Released from prison, he decided that the moment was not ripe for a return to India. He wished to make a close study of Mr. J. G. Reeder and his habits, and, being a man with plenty of money, he could afford the time, and, as it happened, could mix business with pleasure.
Mr. Tommy Fenalow found means of getting in touch with the gentleman from the Orient whilst he was in Wormwood Scrubbs, and the handsome limousine that met Ras Lal at the gates of the Scrubbs when he came out of jail was both hired and occupied by Tommy, a keen business man, who had been offered by his German printer a new line of one-hundred-rupee notes that might easily develop into a most profitable sideline.
“You come along and lodge at my expense, boy,” said the sympathetic Tommy, who was very short, very stout, and had eyes that bulged like a pug dog’s. “You’ve been badly treated by old Reeder, and I’m going to tell you a way of getting back on him, with no risk and a ninety percent profit. Listen, a friend of mine—”
It was never Tommy who had snide for sale: invariably the hawker of forged notes was a mysterious “friend.”
So Ras was lodged in a service flat which formed part of a block owned by Mr. Fenalow, who was a very rich man indeed. Some weeks after this, Tommy crossed St. James’s Street to intercept his old enemy.
“Good morning, Mr. Reeder.”
Mr. J. G. Reeder stopped and turned back.
“Good morning, Mr. Fenalow,” he said, with that benevolent solicitude which goes so well with a frock coat and square-toed shoes. “I am glad to see that you are out again, and I do trust that you will now find a more—er—legitimate outlet for your undoubted talents.”
Tommy went angrily red.
“I haven’t been in ‘stir’ and you know it, Reeder! It wasn’t for want of trying on your part. But you’ve got to be something more than clever to catch me—you’ve got to be lucky! Not that there’s anything to catch me over—I’ve never done a crook thing in my life, as you well know.”
He was so annoyed that the lighter exchanges of humour he had planned slipped from his memory.
He had an appointment with Ras Lal, and the interview was entirely satisfactory. Mr. Ras Lal made his way that night to an uncomfortably situated rendezvous and there met his new friend.
“This is the last place in the world old man Reeder would dream of searching,” said Tommy enthusiastically, “and if he did he would find nothing. Before he could get into the building, the stuff would be put out of sight.”
“It is a habitation of extreme convenience,” said Ras Lal.
“It is yours, boy,” replied Tommy magnificently. “I only keep this place to get-in and put-out. The stuff’s not here for an hour and the rest of the time the store’s empty. As I say, old man Reeder has gotta be something more than clever—he’s gotta be lucky!”
At parting he handed his client a key, and with that necessary instrument tendered a few words of advice and warning.
“Never come here till late. The police patrol passes the end of the road at ten, one o’clock and four. When are you leaving for India?”
“On the twenty-third,” said Ras, “by which time I shall have uttered a few reprisals on that cad Reeder.”
“I shouldn’t like to be in his shoes,” said Tommy, who could afford to be sycophantic, for he had in his pocket two hundred pounds’ worth of real money which Ras had paid in advance for a vaster quantity of money which was not so real.
It was a few days after this that Ras Lal went to the Orpheum Theatre, and it was no coincidence that he went there on the same night that Mr. Reeder escorted a pretty lady to the same place of amusement.
When Mr. J. G. Reeder went to the theatre (and his going at all was contingent upon his receiving a complimentary ticket) he invariably chose a melodrama, and preferably a Drury Lane melodrama, where to the thrill of the actors’ speeches was added the amazing action of wrecked railway trains, hair-raising shipwrecks and terrific horse-races in which the favourite won by a nose. Such things may seem wildly improbable to blasé dramatic critics—especially favourites winning—but Mr. Reeder saw actuality in all such presentations.
Once he was inveigled into sitting through a roaring farce, and was the only man in the house who did not laugh. He was, indeed, such a depressing influence that the leading lady sent a passionate request to the manager that “the miserable-looking old man in the middle of the front row” should have his money returned and be requested to leave the theatre. Which, as Mr. Reeder had come in on a free ticket, placed the manager in a very awkward predicament.
Invariably he went unaccompanied, for he had no friends, and fifty-two years had come and gone without bringing to his life romance or the melting tenderness begot of dreams. In some manner Mr. Reeder had become acquainted with a girl who was like no other girl with whom he had been brought into contact. Her name was Belman, Margaret Belman, and he had saved her life, though this fact did not occur to him as frequently as the recollection that he had imperilled that life before he had saved it. And he had a haunting sense of guilt for quite another reason.
He was thinking of her one day—he spent his life thinking about people, though the majority of these were less respectable than Miss Margaret Belman. He supposed that she would marry the very good-looking young man who met her street car at the corner of the Embankment every morning and returned with her to the Lewisham High Road every night. It would be a very nice wedding, with hired motorcars, and the vicar himself performing the ceremony, and a wedding breakfast provided by the local caterer, following which bride and bridegroom would be photographed on the lawn surrounded by their jovial but unprepossessing relatives. And after this, one specially hired car would take them to Eastbourne for an expensive honeymoon. And after that all the humdrum and scrapings of life, rising through villadom to a little car of their own and Saturday afternoon tennis parties.
Mr. Reeder sighed deeply. How much more satisfactory was the stage drama, where all the trouble begins in the first act and is satisfactorily settled in the last. He fingered absently the two slips of green paper that had come to him that morning. Row A, seats 17 and 18. They had been sent by a manager who was under some obligation to him. The theatre was the Orpheum, home of transpontine drama, and the play was The Fires of Vengeance. It looked like being a pleasant evening.
He took an envelope from the rack, addressed it to the box office, and had begun to write the accompanying letter returning the surplus voucher, when an idea occurred to him. He owed Miss Margaret Belman something, and the debt was on his conscience. He had once, for reasons of expediency, described her as his wife. This preposterous claim had been made to appease a mad woman, it is true, but it had been made. She was now holding a good position—a secretaryship at one of the political headquarters, for which post she had to thank Mr. J. G. Reeder, if she only knew it.
He took up the phone and called her number, and, after the normal delay, heard her voice.
“Er—Miss Belman,” Mr. Reeder coughed, “I have—er—two tickets for a theatre tonight. I wonder if you would care to go?”
Her astonishment was almost audible.
“That is very nice of you, Mr. Reeder. I should love to come with you.”
Mr. J. G. Reeder turned pale.
“What I mean is, I have two tickets—I thought perhaps that your—er—your—er—that somebody else would like to go—what I mean was—”
He heard a gentle laugh at the other end of the phone.
“What you mean is that you don’t wish to take me,” she said, and for a man of his experience he blundered badly.
“I should esteem it an honour to take you,” he said, in terror that he should offend her, “but the truth is, I thought—”
“I will meet you at the theatre—which is it? Orpheum—how lovely! At eight o’clock.”
Mr. Reeder put down the instrument, feeling limp and moist. It is the truth that he had never taken a lady to any kind of social function in his life, and as there grew upon him the tremendous character of this adventure he was overwhelmed and breathless. A murderer waking from dreams of revelry to find himself in the condemned cell suffered no more poignant emotions than Mr. Reeder, torn from the smooth if treacherous currents of life and drawing nearer and nearer to the horrid vortex of unusualness.
“Bless me,” said Mr. Reeder, employing a strictly private expression which was reserved for his own crises.
He employed in his private office a young woman who combined a meticulous exactness in the filing of documents with a complete absence of those attractions which turn men into gods, and in other days set the armies of Perseus moving towards the walls of Troy. She was invariably addressed by Mr. Reeder as “Miss.” He believed her name to be “Oliver.” She was in truth a married lady with two children, but her nuptials had been celebrated without his knowledge.
To the top floor of a building in Regent Street Mr. Reeder repaired for instruction and guidance.
“It is not—er—a practice of mine to—er—accompany ladies to the theatre, and I am rather at a loss to know what is expected of me, the more so since the young lady is—er—a stranger to me.”
His frosty-visaged assistant sneered secretly. At Mr. Reeder’s time of life, when such natural affections as were not atrophied should in decency be fossilised!
He jotted down her suggestions.
“Chocolates indeed? Where can one procure—? Oh, yes, I remember seeing the attendants sell them. Thank you so much, Miss—er—”
And as he went out, closing the door carefully behind him, she sneered openly.
“They all go wrong at seventy,” she said insultingly.
Margaret hardly knew what to expect when she came into the flamboyant foyer of the Orpheum. What was the evening equivalent to the square-topped derby and the tightly-buttoned frock coat of ancient design which he favoured in the hours of business? She would have passed the somewhat elegantly dressed gentleman in the correct pique waistcoat and the perfectly tied butterfly bow, only he claimed her attention.
“Mr. Reeder!” she gasped.
It was indeed Mr. Reeder: with not so much as a shirt-stud wrong; with a suit of the latest mode, and shoes glossy and V-toed. For Mr. Reeder, like many other men, dressed according to his inclination in business hours, but accepted blindly the instructions of his tailor in the matter of fancy raiment. Mr. J. G. Reeder was never conscious of his clothing, good or bad—he was, however, very conscious of his strange responsibility.
He took her cloak (he had previously purchased programmes and a large box of chocolates, which he carried by its satin ribbon). There was a quarter of an hour to wait before the curtain went up, and Margaret felt it incumbent upon her to offer an explanation.
“You spoke about ‘somebody’ else; do you mean Roy—the man who sometimes meets me at Westminster?”
Mr. Reeder had meant that young man. “He and I were good friends,” she said, “no more than that—we aren’t very good friends anymore.”
She did not say why. She might have explained in a sentence if she had said that Roy’s mother held an exalted opinion of her only son’s qualities, physical and mental, and that Roy thoroughly endorsed his mother’s judgment, but she did not.
“Ah!” said Mr. Reeder unhappily. Soon after this the orchestra drowned further conversation, for they were sitting in the first row near to the noisiest of the brass and not far removed from the shrillest of the woodwind. In odd moments, through the thrilling first act, she stole a glance at her companion. She expected to find this man mildly amused or slightly bored by the absurd contrast between the realities which he knew and the theatricalities which were presented on the stage. But whenever she looked, he was absorbed in the action of the play; she could almost feel him tremble when the hero was strapped to a log and thrown into the boiling mountain stream, and when the stage Jove was rescued on the fall of the curtain, she heard, with something like stupefaction, Mr. Reeder’s quivering sigh of relief.
“But surely, Mr. Reeder, this bores you?” she protested, when the lights in the auditorium went up.
“This—you mean the play—bore me? Good gracious, no! I think it is very fine, remarkably fine.”
“But it isn’t life, surely? The story is so wildly improbable, and the incidents—oh, yes, I’m enjoying it all; please don’t look so worried! Only I thought that you, who knew so much about criminology—is that the word?—would be rather amused.”
Mr. Reeder was looking very anxiously at her.
“I’m afraid it is not the kind of play—”
“Oh, but it is—I love melodrama. But doesn’t it strike you as being—far-fetched? For instance, that man being chained to a log, and the mother agreeing to her son’s death?”
Mr. Reeder rubbed his nose thoughtfully.
“The Bermondsey gang chained Harry Salter to a plank, turned it over and let him down, just opposite Billingsgate Market. I was at the execution of Tod Rowe, and he admitted it on the scaffold. And it was ‘Lee’ Pearson’s mother who poisoned him at Teddington to get his insurance money so that she could marry again. I was at the trial and she took her sentence laughing—now what else was there in that act? Oh, yes, I remember: the proprietor of the sawmill tried to get the young lady to marry him by threatening to send her father to prison. That has been done hundreds of times—only in a worse way. There is really nothing very extravagant about a melodrama except the prices of the seats, and I usually get my tickets free!”
She listened, at first dumbfounded and then with a gurgle of amusement.
“How queer—and yet—well, frankly, I have only met melodrama once in life, and even now I cannot believe it. What happens in the next act?”
Mr. Reeder consulted his programme.
“I rather believe that the young woman in the white dress is captured and removed to the harem of an Eastern potentate,” he said precisely, and this time the girl laughed aloud.
“Have you a parallel for that?” she asked triumphantly, and Mr. Reeder was compelled to admit that he knew no exact parallel, but—
“It is rather a remarkable coincidence,” he said, “a very remarkable coincidence!”
She looked at her programme, wondering if she had overlooked anything so very remarkable.
“There is at this moment, watching me from the front row of the dress circle—I beg you not to turn your head—one who, if he is not a potentate, is undoubtedly Eastern; there are, in fact, two dark-complexioned gentlemen, but only one may be described as important.”
“But why are they watching you?” she asked in surprise.
“Possibly,” said Mr. Reeder solemnly, “because I look so remarkable in evening dress.”
One of the dark-complexioned gentlemen turned to his companion at this moment.
“It is the woman he travels with every day; she lives in the same street, and is doubtless more to him than anybody in the world, Ram. See how she laughs in his face and how the old so-and-so looks at her! When men come to his great age they grow silly about women. This thing can be done tonight. I would sooner die than go back to Bombay without accomplishing my design upon this such-and-such and so-forth.”
Ram, his chauffeur, confederate and fellow jailbird, who was cast in a less heroic mould, and had, moreover, no personal vendetta, suggested in haste that the matter should be thought over.
“I have cogitated every hypothesis to its logical conclusions,” said Ras Lal in English.
“But, master,” said his companion urgently, “would it not be wise to leave this country and make a fortune with the new money which the fat little man can sell to us?”
“Vengeance is mine,” said Ras Lal in English.
He sat through the next act which, as Mr. Reeder had truly said, depicted the luring of an innocent girl into the hateful clutches of a Turkish pasha and, watching the development of the plot, his own scheme underwent revision. He did not wait to see what happened in the third and fourth acts—there were certain preparations to be made.
“I still think that, whilst the story is awfully thrilling, it is awfully impossible,” said Margaret, as they moved slowly through the crowded vestibule. “In real life—in civilised countries, I mean—masked men do not suddenly appear from nowhere with pistols and say ‘Hands up!’—not really, do they, Mr. Reeder?” she coaxed.
Mr. Reeder murmured a reluctant agreement.
“But I have enjoyed it tremendously!” she said with enthusiasm, and looking down into the pink face Mr. Reeder felt a curious sensation which was not entirely pleasure and not wholly pain.
“I am very glad,” he said.
Both the dress-circle and the stalls disgorged into the foyer, and he was looking round for a face he had seen when he arrived. But neither Ras Lal nor his companion in misfortune was visible. Rain was falling dismally, and it was some time before he found a cab.
“Luxury upon luxury,” smiled Margaret, when he took his place by her side. “You may smoke if you wish.”
Mr. Reeder took a paper packet of cigarettes from his waistcoat pocket, selected a limp cylinder, and lit it.
“No plays are quite like life, my dear young lady,” he said, as he carefully pushed the match through the space between the top of the window and the frame. “Melodramas appeal most to me because of their idealism.”
She turned and stared at him.
“Idealism?” she repeated incredulously.
He nodded.
“Have you ever noticed that there is nothing sordid about a melodrama? I once saw a classical drama—Oedipus—and it made me feel sick. In melodrama even the villains are heroic and the inevitable and unvarying moral is ‘Truth crushed to earth will rise again’—isn’t that idealism? And they are wholesome. There are no sex problems; unpleasant things are never shown in an attractive light—you come away uplifted.”
“If you are young enough,” she smiled.
“One should always be young enough to rejoice in the triumph of virtue,” said Mr. Reeder soberly.
They crossed Westminster Bridge and bore left to the New Kent Road. Through the rain-blurred windows J. G. picked up the familiar landmarks and offered a running commentary upon them in the manner of a guide. Margaret had not realised before that history was made in South London.
“There used to be a gibbet here—this ugly-looking goods station was the London terminus of the first railways—Queen Alexandra drove from there when she came to be married—the thoroughfare on the right after we pass the Canal bridge is curiously named Bird-in-Bush Road—”
A big car had drawn level with the cab, and the driver was shouting something to the cabman. Even the suspicious Mr. Reeder suspected no more than an exchange of offensiveness, till the cab suddenly turned into the road he had been speaking about. The car had fallen behind, but now drew abreast.
“Probably the main road is up,” said J. G., and at that moment the cab slowed and stopped.
He was reaching out for the handle when the door was pulled open violently, and in the uncertain light Mr. Reeder saw a broad-shouldered man standing in the road.
“Alight quickly!”
In the man’s hand was a long, black Colt, and his face was covered from chin to forehead by a mask.
“Quickly—and keep your hands erect!”
Mr. Reeder stepped out into the rain and reached to close the door.
“The female also—come, miss!”
“Here—what’s the game—you told me the New Cross Road was blocked.” It was the cabman talking.
“Here is a five—keep your mouth shut.”
The masked man thrust a note at the driver.
“I don’t want your money—”
“You require my bullet in your bosom perchance, my good fellow?” asked Ras Lal sardonically.
Margaret had followed her escort into the road by this time. The car had stopped just behind the cab. With the muzzle of the pistol stuck into his back, Mr. Reeder walked to the open door and entered. The girl followed, and the masked man jumped after them and closed the door. Instantly the interior was flooded with light.
“This is a considerable surprise to a clever and intelligent police detective?”
Their captor sat on the opposite seat, his pistol on his knees. Through the holes of the black mask a pair of brown eyes gleamed malevolently. But Mr. Reeder’s interest was in the girl. The shock had struck the colour from her face, but he observed with thankfulness that her chief emotion was not fear. She was numb with amazement, and was stricken speechless.
The car had circled and was moving swiftly back the way they had come. He felt the rise of the Canal bridge, and then the machine turned abruptly to the right and began the descent of a steep hill. They were running towards Rotherhithe—he had an extraordinary knowledge of London’s topography.
The journey was a short one. He felt the car wheels bump over an uneven roadway for a hundred yards, the body rocking uncomfortably, and then with a jar of brakes the machine stopped suddenly.
They were on a narrow muddy lane. On one side rose the arches of a railway aqueduct, on the other an open space bounded by a high fence. Evidently the driver had pulled up short of their destination, for they had to squelch and slide through the thick mud for another fifty yards before they came to a narrow gateway in the fence. Through this they struck a cinder-path leading to a square building, which Mr. Reeder guessed was a small factory of some kind. Their conductor flashed a lamp on the door, and in weatherworn letters the detective read:
“The Storn-Filton Leather Company.”
“Now!” said the man, as he turned a switch. “Now, my false-swearing and corrupt police official, I have a slight bill to settle with you.”
They were in a dusty lobby, enclosed on three sides by matchboard walls.
“ ‘Account’ is the word you want, Ras Lal,” murmured Mr. Reeder.
For a moment the man was taken aback, and then, snatching the mask from his face:
“I am Ras Lal! And you shall repent it! For you and for your young missus this is indeed a cruel night of anxiety!”
Mr. Reeder did not smile at the quaint English. The gun in the man’s hand spoke all languages without error, and could be as fatal in the hands of an unconscious humorist as if it were handled by the most savage of purists.
And he was worried about the girl: she had not spoken a word since their capture. The colour had come back to her cheeks, and that was a good sign. There was, too, a light in her eyes which Reeder could not associate with fear.
Ras Lal, taking down a long cord that hung on a nail in the wooden partition, hesitated.
“It is not necessary,” he said, with an elaborate shrug of shoulder; “the room is sufficiently reconnoitred—you will be innocuous there.”
Flinging open a door, he motioned them to pass through and mount the bare stairs which faced them. At the top was a landing and a large steel door set in the solid brickwork.
Pulling back the iron bolt, he pushed at the door, and it opened with a squeak. It was a large room, and had evidently been used for the storage of something inflammable, for the walls and floor were of rough-faced concrete and above a dusty desk an inscription was painted, “Danger. Don’t smoke in this store.” There were no windows except one some eighteen inches square, the top of which was near the ceiling. In one corner of the room was a heap of grimy paper files, and on the desk a dozen small wooden boxes, one of which had been opened, for the nail-bristling lid was canted up at an angle.
“Make yourself content for half an hour or probably forty minutes,” said Ras Lal, standing in the doorway with his ostentatious revolver. “At that time I shall come for your female; tomorrow she will be on a ship with me, bound for—ah, who knows where?”
“Shut the door as you go out,” said Mr. J. G. Reeder; “there is an unpleasant draught.”
Mr. Tommy Fenalow came on foot at two o’clock in the morning and, passing down the muddy lane, his electric torch suddenly revealed car marks. Tommy stopped like a man shot. His knees trembled beneath him and his heart entered his throat at the narrowest end. For a while he was undecided whether it would be better to run or walk away. He had no intention of going forward. And then he heard a voice. It was Ras Lal’s assistant, and he nearly swooned with joy. Stumbling forward, he came up to the shivering man.
“Did that fool boss of yours bring the car along here?” he asked in a whisper.
“Yas—Mr. Ras Lal,” said Ram with whom the English language was not a strong point.
“Then he’s a fool!” growled Tommy. “Gosh! he put my heart in my mouth!”
Whilst Ram was getting together sufficient English to explain what had happened, Tommy passed on. He found his client sitting in the lobby, a black cheroot between his teeth, a smile of satisfaction on his dark face.
“Welcome!” he said, as Tommy closed the door. “We have trapped the weasel.”
“Never mind about the weasel,” said the other impatiently. “Did you find the rupees?”
Ras Lal shook his head.
“But I left them in the store—ten thousand notes. I thought you’d have got them and skipped before this,” said Mr. Fenalow anxiously.
“I have something more important in the store—come and see my friend.”
He preceded the bewildered Tommy up the stairs, turned on the landing light and threw open the door.
“Behold—” he said, and said no more.
“Why, it is Mr. Fenalow!” said Mr. J. G.
One hand held a packet of almost lifelike rupee notes; as for the other hand—
“You oughter known he carried a gun, you dam’ black baboon,” hissed Tommy. “An’ to put him in a room where the stuff was, and a telephone!”
He was being driven to the local police station, and for the moment was attached to his companion by links of steel.
“It was a mere jest or a piece of practical joking, as I shall explain to the judge in the morning,” said Ras airily.
Tommy Fenalow’s reply was unprintable.
Three o’clock boomed out from St. John’s Church as Mr. Reeder accompanied an excited girl to the front door of her boardinghouse.
“I can’t tell you how I—I’ve enjoyed tonight,” she said.
Mr. Reeder glanced uneasily at the dark face of the house.
“I hope—er—your friends will not think it remarkable that you should return at such an hour—”
Despite her assurance, he went slowly home with an uneasy feeling that her name had in some way been compromised. And in melodrama, when a heroine’s name is compromised, somebody has to marry her.
That was the disturbing thought that kept Mr. Reeder awake all night.