The Investors
There are seven million people in Greater London and each one of those seven millions is in theory and practice equal under the law and commonly precious to the community. So that, if one is wilfully wronged, another must be punished; and if one dies of premeditated violence, his slayer must hang by the neck until he be dead.
It is rather difficult for the sharpest law-eyes to keep tag of seven million people, at least one million of whom never keep still and are generally unattached to any particular domicile. It is equally difficult to place an odd twenty thousand or so who have domiciles but no human association. These include tramps, aged maiden ladies in affluent circumstances, peripatetic members of the criminal classes and other friendless individuals.
Sometimes uneasy inquiries come through to headquarters. Mainly they are most timid and deferential. Mr. X has not seen his neighbour, Mr. Y for a week. No, he doesn’t know Mr. Y. Nobody does. A little old man who had no friends and spent his fine days pottering in a garden overlooked by his more gregarious neighbour. And now Mr. Y potters no more. His milk has not been taken in; his blinds are drawn. Comes a sergeant of police and a constable who breaks a window and climbs through, and Mr. Y is dead somewhere—dead of starvation or a fit or suicide. Should this be the case, all is plain sailing. But suppose the house empty and Mr. Y disappeared. Here the situation becomes difficult and delicate.
Miss Elver went away to Switzerland. She was a middle-aged spinster who had the appearance of being comfortably circumstanced. She went away, locked up her house and never came back. Switzerland looked for her; the myrmidons of Mussolini, that hatefully efficient man, searched North Italy from Domodossola to Montecattini. And the search did not yield a thin-faced maiden lady with a slight squint.
And then Mr. Charles Boyson Middlekirk, an eccentric and overpowering old man who quarrelled with his neighbours about their noisy children, he too went away. He told nobody where he was going. He lived alone with his three cats and was not on speaking terms with anybody else. He did not return to his grimy house.
He too was well off and reputedly a miser. So was Mrs. Athbell Marting, a dour widow who lived with her drudge of a niece. This lady was in the habit of disappearing without any preliminary announcement of her intention. The niece was allowed to order from the local tradesmen just sufficient food to keep body and soul together, and when Mrs. Marling returned (as she invariably did) the bills were settled with a great deal of grumbling on the part of the payer, and that was that. It was believed that Mrs. Marting went to Boulogne or to Paris or even to Brussels. But one day she went out and never came back. Six months later her niece advertised for her, choosing the cheapest papers—having an eye to the day of reckoning.
“Queer sort of thing,” said the Public Prosecutor, who had before him the dossiers of four people (three women and a man) who had so vanished in three months.
He frowned, pressed a bell and Mr. Reeder came in. Mr. Reeder took the chair that was indicated, looked owlishly over his glasses and shook his head as though he understood the reason for his summons and denied his understanding in advance. “What do you make of these disappearances?” asked his chief.
“You cannot make any positive of a negative,” said Mr. Reeder carefully. “London is a large place full of strange, mad people who live such—um—commonplace lives that the wonder is that more of them do not disappear in order to do something different from what they are accustomed to doing.”
“Have you seen these particulars?”
Mr. Reeder nodded.
“I have copies of them,” he said. “Mr. Salter very kindly—”
The Public Prosecutor rubbed his head in perplexity.
“I see nothing in these cases—nothing in common, I mean. Four is a fairly low average for a big city—”
“Twenty-seven in twelve months,” interrupted his detective apologetically.
“Twenty-seven—are you sure?” The great official was astounded.
Mr. Reeder nodded again.
“They were all people with a little money; all were drawing a fairly large income, which was paid to them in banknotes on the first of every month—nineteen of them were, at any rate. I have yet to verify eight—and they were all most reticent as to where their revenues came from. None of them had any personal friends or relatives who were on terms of friendship, except Mrs. Marting. Beyond these points of resemblance there was nothing to connect one with the other.”
The Prosecutor looked at him sharply, but Mr. Reeder was never sarcastic. Not obviously so, at any rate.
“There is another point which I omitted to mention,” he went on. “After their disappearance no further money came for them. It came for Mrs. Marting when she was away on her jaunts, but it ceased when she went away on her final journey.”
“But twenty-seven—are you sure?”
Mr. Reeder reeled off the list, giving name, address and date of disappearance.
“What do you think has happened to them?”
Mr. Reeder considered for a moment, staring glumly at the carpet.
“I should imagine that they were murdered,” he said, almost cheerfully, and the Prosecutor half rose from his chair.
“You are in your gayest mood this morning, Mr. Reeder,” he said sardonically. “Why on earth should they be murdered?”
Mr. Reeder did not explain. The interview took place in the late afternoon, and he was anxious to be gone, for he had a tacit appointment to meet a young lady of exceeding charm who at five minutes after five would be waiting on the corner of Westminster Bridge and Thames Embankment for the Lee car.
The sentimental qualities of Mr. Reeder were entirely unknown. There are those who say that his sorrow over those whom fate and ill-fortune brought into his punitive hands was the veriest hypocrisy. There were others who believed that he was genuinely pained to see a fellow-creature sent behind bars through his efforts and evidence.
His housekeeper, who thought he was a woman-hater, told her friends in confidence that he was a complete stranger to the tender emotions which enlighten and glorify humanity. In the ten years which she had sacrificed to his service he had displayed neither emotion nor tenderness except to inquire whether her sciatica was better or to express a wish that she should take a holiday by the sea. She was a woman beyond middle age, but there is no period of life wherein a woman gives up hoping for the best. Though the most perfect of servants in all respects, she secretly despised him, called him, to her intimates, a frump, and suspected him of living apart from an ill-treated wife. This lady was a widow (as she had told him when he first engaged her) and she had seen better—far better—days.
Her visible attitude towards Mr. Reeder was one of respect and awe. She excused the queer character of his callers and his low acquaintances. She forgave him his square-toed shoes and high, flat-crowned hat, and even admired the ready-made Ascot cravat he wore and which was fastened behind the collar with a little buckle, the prongs of which invariably punctured his fingers when he fastened it. But there is a limit to all hero-worship, and when she discovered that Mr. Reeder was in the habit of waiting to escort a young lady to town every day, and frequently found it convenient to escort her home, the limit was reached.
Mrs. Hambleton told her friends—and they agreed—that there was no fool like an old fool, and that marriages between the old and the young invariably end in the divorce court (December v. May and July). She used to leave copies of a favourite Sunday newspaper on his table, where he could not fail to see the flaring headlines:
Old Man’s Wedding Romance
Wife’s Perfidy Brings Grey Hair
In Sorrow to the Law Courts.
Whether Mr. Reeder perused these human documents she did not know. He never referred to the tragedies of ill-assorted unions, and went on meeting Miss Belman every morning at nine o’clock, and at five-five in the afternoons whenever his business permitted.
He so rarely discussed his own business or introduced the subject that was exercising his mind that it was remarkable he should make even an oblique reference to his work. Possibly he would not have done so if Miss Margaret Belman had not introduced (unwillingly) a leader of conversation which traced indirectly to the disappearances.
They had been talking of holidays: Margaret was going to Cromer for a fortnight.
“I shall leave on the second. My monthly dividends (doesn’t that sound grand?) are due on the first—”
“Eh?”
Reeder slued round. Dividends in most companies are paid at half-yearly intervals.
“Dividends, Miss Margaret?”
She flushed a little at his surprise and then laughed.
“You didn’t realise that I was a woman of property?” she bantered him. “I receive ten pounds a month—my father left me a little house property when he died. I sold the cottages two years ago for a thousand pounds and found a wonderful investment.”
Mr. Reeder made a rapid calculation.
“You are drawing something like twelve and a half percent,” he said. “That is indeed a wonderful investment. What is the name of the company?”
She hesitated.
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that. You see—well, it’s rather secret. It is to do with a South American syndicate that supplies arms to—what do you call them—insurgents! I know it is rather dreadful to make money that way—I mean out of arms and things, but it pays terribly well and I can’t afford to miss the opportunity.”
Reeder frowned.
“But why is it such a terrible secret?” he asked. “Quite a number of respectable people make money out of armament concerns.”
Again she showed reluctance to explain her meaning.
“We are pledged—the shareholders, I mean—not to divulge our connection with the company,” she said. “That is one of the agreements I had to sign. And the money comes regularly. I have had nearly £300 of my thousand back in dividends already.”
“Humph!” said Mr. Reeder, wise enough not to press his question. There was another day tomorrow.
But the opportunity to which he looked forward on the following morning was denied to him. Somebody played a grim “joke” on him—the kind of joke to which he was accustomed, for there were men who had good reason to hate him, and never a year passed but one or the other sought to repay him for his unkindly attentions.
“Your name is Reeder, ain’t it?”
Mr. Reeder, tightly grasping his umbrella with both hands, looked over his spectacles at the shabby man who stood at the bottom of the steps. He was on the point of leaving his house in the Brockley Road for his office in Whitehall, and since he was a methodical man and worked to a timetable, he resented in his mild way this interruption which had already cost him fifteen seconds of valuable time.
“You’re the fellow who shopped Ike Walker, ain’t you?”
Mr. Reeder had indeed “shopped” many men. He was by profession a shopper, which, translated from the argot, means a man who procures the arrest of an evildoer. Ike Walker he knew very well indeed. He was a clever, a too clever, forger of bills of exchange, and was at that precise moment almost permanently employed as orderly in the convict prison at Dartmoor, and might account himself fortunate if he held this easy job for the rest of his twelve years’ sentence.
His interrogator was a little hard-faced man wearing a suit that had evidently been originally intended for somebody of greater girth and more commanding height. His trousers were turned up noticeably; his waistcoat was full of folds and tucks which only an amateur tailor would have dared, and only one superior to the criticism of his fellows would have worn. His hard, bright eyes were fixed on Mr. Reeder, but there was no menace in them so far as the detective could read.
“Yes, I was instrumental in arresting Ike Walker,” said Mr. Reeder, almost gently.
The man put his hand in his pocket and brought out a crumpled packet enclosed in green oiled silk. Mr. Reeder unfolded the covering and found a soiled and crumpled envelope.
“That’s from Ike,” said the man. “He sent it out of stir by a gent who was discharged yesterday.”
Mr. Reeder was not shocked by this revelation. He knew that prison rules were made to be broken, and that worse things have happened in the best regulated jails than this item of a smuggled letter. He opened the envelope, keeping his eyes on the man’s face, took out the crumpled sheet and read the five or six lines of writing.
Dear Reeder—
Here is a bit of a riddle for you.
What other people have got, you can have. I haven’t got it, but it is coming to you. It’s red-hot when you get it, but you’re cold when it goes away.
Mr. Reeder looked up and their eyes met. “Your friend is a little mad, one thinks?” he asked politely.
“He ain’t a friend of mine. A gent asked me to bring it,” said the messenger.
“On the contrary,” said Mr. Reeder pleasantly, “he gave it to you in Dartmoor Prison yesterday. Your name is Mills; you have eight convictions for burglary, and will have your ninth before the year is out. You were released two days ago—I saw you reporting at Scotland Yard.”
The man was for the moment alarmed and in two minds to bolt. Mr. Reeder glanced along Brockley Road, saw a slim figure, that was standing at the corner, cross to a waiting tramcar, and, seeing his opportunity vanish, readjusted his timetable.
“Come inside, Mr. Mills.”
“I don’t want to come inside,” said Mr. Mills, now thoroughly agitated. “He asked me to give this to you and I’ve give it. There’s nothing else—”
Mr. Reeder crooked his finger.
“Come, birdie!” he said, with great amiability. “And please don’t annoy me! I am quite capable of sending you back to your friend Mr. Walker. I am really a most unpleasant man if am upset.”
The messenger followed meekly, wiped his boots with great vigour on the mat and tiptoed up the carpeted stairs to the big study where Mr. Reeder did most of his thinking.
“Sit down, Mills.”
With his own hands Mr. Reeder placed a chair for his uncomfortable visitor, and then, pulling another up to his big writing table, he spread the letter before him, adjusted his glasses, read, his lips moving, and then leaned back in his chair.
“I give it up,” he said. “Read me this riddle.”
“I don’t know what’s in the letter—” began the man.
“Read me this riddle.”
As he handed the letter across the table, the man betrayed himself, for he rose and pushed back his chair with a startled, horrified expression that told Mr. Reeder quite a lot. He laid the letter down on his desk, took a large tumbler from the sideboard, inverted it and covered the scrawled paper. Then:
“Wait,” he said, “and don’t move till I come back.”
And there was an unaccustomed venom in his tone that made the visitor shudder.
Reeder passed out of the room to the bathroom, pulled up his sleeves with a quick jerk of his arm and, turning the faucet, let hot water run over his hands before he reached for a small bottle on a shelf, poured a liberal portion into the water and let his hands soak. This done, for three minutes he scrubbed his fingers with a nailbrush, dried them, and, removing his coat and waistcoat carefully, hung them over the edge of the bath. He went back to his uncomfortable guest in his shirtsleeves.
“Our friend Walker is employed in the hospital?” he stated rather than asked. “What have you had there—scarlet fever or something worse?”
He glanced down at the letter under the glass.
“Scarlet fever, of course,” he said, “and the letter has been systematically infected. Walker is almost clever.”
The wood of a fire was laid in the grate. He carried the letter and the blotting-paper to the hearth, lit the kindling and thrust paper and letter into the flames.
“Almost clever,” he said musingly. “Of course, he is one of the orderlies in the hospital. It was scarlet fever, I think you said?”
The gaping man nodded.
“Of a virulent type, of course. How very fascinating!”
He thrust his hands in his pockets and looked down benevolently at the wretched emissary of the vengeful Walker.
“You may go now, Mills,” he said gently. “I rather think that you are infected. That ridiculous piece of oiled silk is quite inadequate—which means ‘quite useless’—as a protection against wandering germs. You will have scarlet fever in three days, and will probably be dead at the end of the week. I will send you a wreath.”
He opened the door, pointed to the stairway and the man slunk out.
Mr. Reeder watched him through the window, saw him cross the street and disappear round the corner into the Lewisham High Road, and then, going up to his bedroom, he put on a newer frock-coat and waistcoat, drew on his hands a pair of fabric gloves and went forth to his labours.
He did not expect to meet Mr. Mills again, never dreaming that the gentleman from Dartmoor was planning a “bust” which would bring them again into contact. For Mr. Reeder the incident was closed.
That day news of another disappearance had come through from police headquarters, and Mr. Reeder was waiting at ten minutes before five at the rendezvous for the girl who, he instinctively knew, could give him a thread of the clue. He was determined that this time his inquiries should bear fruit; but it was not until they had reached the end of Brockley Road, and he was walking slowly up towards the girl’s boardinghouse, that she gave him a hint.
“Why are you so persistent, Mr. Reeder?” she asked, a little impatiently. “Do you wish to invest money? Because, if you do, I’m sorry I can’t help you. That is another agreement we made, that we would not introduce new shareholders.”
Mr. Reeder stopped, took off his hat and rubbed the back of his head (his housekeeper, watching him from an upper window, was perfectly certain he was proposing and had been rejected).
“I am going to tell you something, Miss Belman, and I hope—er—that I shall not alarm you.”
And very briefly he told the story of the disappearances and the queer coincidence which marked every case—the receipt of a dividend on the first of every month. As he proceeded, the colour left the girl’s face.
“You are serious, of course?” she said, serious enough herself. “You wouldn’t tell me that unless—. The company is the Mexico City Investment Syndicate. They have offices in Portugal Street.”
“How did you come to hear of them?” asked Mr. Reeder.
“I had a letter from their manager, Mr. de Silvo. He told me that a friend had mentioned my name, and gave full particulars of the investment.”
“Have you that letter?”
She shook her head.
“No; I was particularly asked to bring it with me when I went to see them. Although, in point of fact, I never did see them,” smiled the girl. “I wrote to their lawyers—will you wait? I have their letter.”
Mr. Reeder waited at the gate whilst the girl went into the house and returned presently with a small portfolio, from which she took a quarto sheet. It was headed with the name of a legal firm, Bracher & Bracher, and was the usual formal type of letter one expects from a lawyer.
“Dear Madam,” it ran, “Re—Mexico City Investment Syndicate: We act as lawyers to this syndicate, and so far as we know it is a reputable concern. We feel that it is only due to us that we should say that we do not advise investments in any concern which offers such large profits, for usually there is a corresponding risk. We know, however, that this syndicate has paid twelve and a half percent and sometimes as much as twenty percent, and we have had no complaints about them. We cannot, of course, as lawyers, guarantee the financial soundness of any of our clients, and can only repeat that, in so far as we have been able to ascertain, the syndicate conducts a genuine business and enjoys a very sound financial backing.
“You say you never saw de Silvo?”
She shook her head.
“No; I saw Mr. Bracher, but when I went to the office of the syndicate, which is in the same building, I found only a clerk in attendance. Mr. de Silvo had been called out of town. I had to leave the letter because the lower portion was an application for shares in the syndicate. The capital could be withdrawn at three days’ notice, and I must say that this last clause decided me; and when I had a letter from Mr. de Silvo accepting my investment, I sent him the money.”
Mr. Reeder nodded.
“And you’ve received your dividends regularly ever since?” he said.
“Every month,” said the girl triumphantly. “And really I think you’re wrong in connecting the company with these disappearances.”
Mr. Reeder did not reply. That afternoon he made it his business to call at 179, Portugal Street. It was a two-story building of an old-fashioned type. A wide flagged hall led into the building; a set of old-fashioned stairs ran up to the “top floor,” which was occupied by a China merchant; and from the hall led three doors. That on the left bore the legend “Bracher & Bracher, Solicitors,” and immediately facing was the office of the Mexican Syndicate. At the far end of the passage was a door which exhibited the name “John Baston,” but as to Mr. Baston’s business there was no indication.
Mr. Reeder knocked gently at the door of the syndicate and a voice bade him come in. A young man, wearing glasses, was sitting at a typewriting table, a pair of dictaphone receivers in his ears, and he was typing rapidly.
“No, sir, Mr. de Silvo is not in. He only comes in about twice a week,” said the clerk. “Will you give me your name?”
“It is not important,” said Reeder gently, and went out, closing the door behind him.
He was more fortunate in his call upon Bracher & Bracher, for Mr. Joseph Bracher was in his office: a tall, florid gentleman who wore a large rose in his buttonhole. The firm of Bracher & Bracher was evidently a prosperous one, for there were half a dozen clerks in the outer office, and Mr. Bracher’s private sanctum, with its big partner desk, was a model of shabby comfort.
“Sit down, Mr. Reeder,” said the lawyer, glancing at the card.
In a few words Mr. Reeder stated his business, and Mr. Bracher smiled.
“It is fortunate you came today,” he said. “If it were tomorrow we should not be able to give you any information. The truth is, we have had to ask Mr. de Silvo to find other lawyers. No, no, there is nothing wrong, except that they constantly refer their clients to us, and we feel that we are becoming in the nature of sponsors for their clients, and that, of course, is very undesirable.”
“Have you a record of the people who have written to you from time to time asking your advice?”
Mr. Bracher shook his head.
“It is a curious thing to confess, but we haven’t,” he said; “and that is one of the reasons why we have decided to give up this client. Three weeks ago, the letter-book in which we kept copies of all letters sent to people who applied for a reference most unaccountably disappeared. It was put in the safe overnight, and in the morning, although there was no sign of tampering with the lock, it had vanished. The circumstances were so mysterious, and my brother and I were so deeply concerned, that we applied to the syndicate to give us a list of their clients, and that request was never complied with.”
Mr. Reeder sought inspiration in the ceiling.
“Who is John Baston?” he asked, and the lawyer laughed.
“There again I am ignorant. I believe he is a very wealthy financier, but, so far as I know, he only comes to his office for three months in the year, and I have never seen him.”
Mr. Reeder offered him his flabby hand and walked back along Portugal Street, his chin on his breast, his hands behind him dragging his umbrella, so that he bore a ludicrous resemblance to some strange tailed animal.
That night he waited again for the girl, but she did not appear, and although he remained at the rendezvous until half-past five he did not see her. This was not very unusual, for sometimes she had to work late, and he went home without any feeling of apprehension. He finished his own frugal dinner and then walked across to the boardinghouse. Miss Belman had not arrived, the landlady told him, and he returned to his study and telephoned first to the office where she was employed and then to the private address of her employer.
“She left at half-past four,” was the surprising news. “Somebody telephoned to her and she asked me if she might go early.”
“Oh!” said Mr. Reeder blankly.
He did not go to bed that night, but sat up in a small room at Scotland Yard, reading the brief reports which came in from the various divisions. And with the morning came the sickening realisation that Margaret Belman’s name must be added to those who had disappeared in such extraordinary circumstances.
He dozed in the big Windsor chair. At eight o’clock he returned to his own house and shaved and bathed, and when the Public Prosecutor arrived at his office he found Mr. Reeder waiting for him in the corridor. It was a changed Mr. Reeder, and the change was not due entirely to lack of sleep. His voice was sharper; he had lost some of that atmosphere of apology which usually enveloped him.
In a few words he told of Margaret Belman’s disappearance.
“Do you connect de Silvo with this?” asked his chief.
“Yes, I think I do,” said the other quietly, and then: “There is only one hope, and it is a very slender one—a very slender one indeed!”
He did not tell the Public Prosecutor in what that hope consisted, but walked down to the offices of the Mexican Syndicate.
Mr. de Silvo was not in. He would have been very much surprised if he had been. He crossed the hallway to see the lawyer, and this time he found Mr. Ernest Bracher present with his brother.
When Reeder spoke to the point, it was very much to the point.
“I am leaving a police officer in Portugal Street to arrest de Silvo the moment he puts in an appearance. I feel that you, as his lawyers, should know this,” he said.
“But why on earth—?” began Mr. Bracher, in a tone of astonishment.
“I don’t know what charge I shall bring against him, but it will certainly be a very serious one,” said Reeder. “For the moment I have not confided to Scotland Yard the basis for my suspicions, but your client has got to tell a very plausible story and produce indisputable proof of his innocence to have any hope of escape.”
“I am quite in the dark,” said the lawyer, mystified. “What has he been doing? Is his syndicate a fraud?”
“I know nothing more fraudulent,” said the other shortly. “Tomorrow I intend obtaining the necessary authority to search his papers and to search the room and papers of Mr. John Baston. I have an idea that I shall find something in that room of considerable interest to me.”
It was eight o’clock that night before he left Scotland Yard, and he was turning towards the familiar corner, when he saw a car come from Westminster Bridge towards Scotland Yard. Somebody leaned out of the window and signalled him, and the car turned. It was a two-seater coupe and the driver was Mr. Joseph Bracher.
“We’ve found de Silvo,” he said breathlessly as he brought the car to a standstill at the kerb and jumped out.
He was very agitated and his face was pale. Mr. Reeder could have sworn that his teeth were chattering.
“There’s something wrong—very badly wrong,” he went on. “My brother has been trying to get the truth from him—my God! if he has done these terrible things I shall never forgive myself.”
“Where is he?” asked Mr. Reeder.
“He came just before dinner to our house at Dulwich. My brother and I are bachelors and we live there alone now, and he has been to dinner before. My brother questioned him and he made certain admissions which are almost incredible. The man must be mad.”
“What did he say?”
“I can’t tell you. Ernest is detaining him until you come.”
Mr. Reeder stepped into the car and in a few minutes they were flying across Westminster Bridge towards Camberwell. Lane House, an old-fashioned Georgian residence, lay at the end of a countrified road which was, he found, a cul de sac. The house stood in grounds of considerable size, he noted as they passed up the drive and stopped before the porch. Mr. Bracher alighted and opened the door, and Reeder passed into a cosily furnished hall. One door was ajar.
“Is that Mr. Reeder?” He recognised the voice of Ernest Bracher, and walked into the room.
The younger Mr. Bracher was standing with his back to the empty fireplace; there was nobody else in the room.
“De Silvo’s gone upstairs to lie down,” explained the lawyer. “This is a dreadful business, Mr. Reeder.”
He held out his hand and Reeder crossed the room to take it. As he put his foot on the square Persian rug before the fireplace, he realised his danger and tried to spring back, but his balance was lost. He felt himself falling through the cavity which the carpet hid, lashed out and caught for a moment the edge of the trap, but as the lawyer came round and raised his foot to stamp upon the clutching fingers, Reeder released his hold and dropped.
The shock of the fall took away his breath, and for a second he sprawled, half lying, half sitting, on the floor of the cellar into which he had fallen. Looking up, he saw the older of the two leaning over. The square aperture was diminishing in size. There was evidently a sliding panel which covered the hole in normal times.
“We’ll deal with you later, Reeder,” said Joseph Bracher with a smile. “We’ve had quite a lot of clever people here—”
Something cracked in the cellar. The bullet seared the lawyer’s cheek, smashed a glass chandelier to fragments, and he stepped back with a yell of fear. In another second the trap was closed and Reeder was alone in a small brick-lined cellar. Not entirely alone, for the automatic pistol he held in his hand was a very pleasant companion in that moment of crisis.
From his hip pocket he took a flat electric hand-lamp, switched on the current and surveyed his prison. The walls and floor were damp; that was the first thing he noticed. In one corner was a small flight of brick steps leading to a locked steel door, and then:
“Mr. Reeder.”
He spun round and turned his lamp upon the speaker. It was Margaret Belman, who had risen from a heap of sacks where she had been sleeping.
“I’m afraid I’ve got you into very bad trouble,” she said, and he marvelled at her calm.
“How long have you been here?”
“Since last night,” she answered. “Mr. Bracher telephoned me to see him and he picked me up in his car. They kept me in the other room until tonight, but an hour ago they brought me here.”
“Which is the other room?”
She pointed to the steel door. She offered no further details of her capture, and it was not a moment to discuss their misfortune. Reeder went up the steps and tried the door; it was fastened from the other side, and opened inward, he discovered. There was no sign of a keyhole. He asked her where the door led and she told him that it was to an underground kitchen and coal-cellar. She had hoped to escape, because only a barred window stood between her and freedom in the “little room” where she was kept.
“But the window was very thick,” she said, “and of course I could do nothing with the bars.”
Reeder made another inspection of the cellar, then sent the light of his lamp up at the ceiling. He saw nothing there except a steel pulley fastened to a beam that crossed the entire width of the cellar.
“Now what on earth is he going to do?” he asked thoughtfully, and as though his enemies had heard the question and were determined to leave him in no doubt as to their plans, there came the sound of gurgling water, and in a second he was ankle-deep.
He put the light on to the place whence the water was coming. There were three circular holes in the wall, from each of which was gushing a solid stream.
“What is it?” she asked in a terrified whisper.
“Get on to the steps and stay there,” he ordered peremptorily, and made investigation to see if it was possible to staunch the flow. He saw at a glance that this was impossible. And now the mystery of the disappearances was a mystery no longer.
The water came up with incredible rapidity, first to his knees, then to his thighs, and he joined her on the steps.
There was no possible escape for them. He guessed the water would come up only so far as would make it impossible for them to reach the beam across the roof or the pulley, the dreadful purpose of which he could guess. The dead must be got out of this charnel house in some way or other. Strong swimmer as he was, he knew that in the hours ahead it would be impossible to keep afloat.
He slipped off his coat and vest and unbuttoned his collar.
“You had better take off your skirt,” he said, in a matter-of-fact tone. “Can you swim?”
“Yes,” she answered in a low voice.
He did not ask her the real question which was in his mind: for how long could she swim?
There was a long silence; the water crept higher; and then: “Are you very much afraid?” he asked, and took her hand in his.
“No, I don’t think I am,” she said. “It is wonderful having you with me—why are they doing this?”
He said nothing, but carried the soft hand to his lips and kissed it.
The water was now reaching the top step. Reeder stood with his back to the iron door, waiting. And then he felt something touch the door from the other side. There was a faint click, as though a bolt had been slipped back. He put her gently aside and held his palms to the door. There was no doubt now: somebody was fumbling on the other side. He went down a step and presently he felt the door yield and come towards him, and there was a momentary gleam of light. In another second he had wrenched the door open and sprung through.
“Hands up!”
Whoever it was had dropped his lamp, and now Mr. Reeder focused the light of his own torch and nearly dropped.
For the man in the passage was Mills, the ex-convict who had brought the tainted letter from Dartmoor!
“All right, guv’nor, it’s a cop,” growled the man.
And then the whole explanation flashed upon the detective. In an instant he had gripped the girl by the hand and dragged her through the narrow passage, into which the water was now steadily overrunning.
“Which way did you get in, Mills?” he demanded authoritatively.
“Through the window.”
“Show me—quick!”
The convict led the way to what was evidently the window through which the girl had looked with such longing. The bars had been removed; the window sash itself lifted from its rusty hinges; and in another second the three were standing on the grass, with the stars twinkling above them.
“Mills,” said Mr. Reeder, and his voice shook, “you came here to ‘bust’ this house.”
“That’s right,” growled Mills. “I tell you it’s a cop. I’m not going to give you any trouble.”
“Skip!” hissed Mr. Reeder. “And skip quick! Now, young lady, we’ll go for a little walk.”
A few seconds later a patrolling constable was smitten dumb by the apparition of a middle-aged man in shirt and trousers, and a lady who was inadequately attired in a silk petticoat.
“The Mexican company was Bracher & Bracher,” explained Reeder to his chief. “There was no John Baston. His room was a passageway by which the Brachers could get from one room to the other. The clerk in the Mexican Syndicate’s office was, of course, blind; I spotted that the moment I saw him. There are any number of blind typists employed in the City of London. A blind clerk was necessary if the identity of de Silvo with the Brachers was to be kept a secret.
“Bracher & Bracher had been going badly for years. It will probably be found that they have made away with clients’ money; and they hit upon this scheme of inducing foolish investors to put money into their syndicate on the promise of large dividends. Their victims were well chosen, and Joseph—who was the brains of the organisation—conducted the most rigorous investigation to make sure that these unfortunate people had no intimate friends. If they had any suspicion about an applicant, Brachers would write a letter deprecating the idea of an investment and suggesting that the too-shrewd dupe should find another and a safer method than the Mexican syndicate afforded.
“After they had paid one or two years’ dividends the wretched investor was lured to the house at Dulwich and there scientifically killed. You will probably find an unofficial cemetery in their grounds. So far as I can make out, they have stolen over a hundred and twenty thousand pounds in the past two years by this method.”
“It is incredible,” said the Prosecutor, “incredible!”
Mr. Reeder shrugged.
“Is there anything more incredible than the Burke and Hare murders? There are Burkes and Hares in every branch of society and in every period of history.”
“Why did they delay their execution of Miss Belman?”
Mr. Reeder coughed.
“They wanted to make a clean sweep, but did not wish to kill her until they had me in their hands. I rather suspect”—he coughed again—“that they thought I had an especial interest in the young lady.”
“And have you?” asked the Public Prosecutor.
Mr. Reeder did not reply.