Edgar Wallace
Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace (1875–1932) was born in Greenwich, the illegitimate son of two actors. From impoverished beginnings, he rose to become a celebrity, the world’s most popular thriller writer. The Four Just Men (1905) was his first book, and he also enjoyed immense success with Sanders of the River, published six years later. Shortly before the end of his life, he became a Hollywood script doctor, and worked on the screenplay of King Kong.
Much of Edgar Wallace’s best work drew on his knowledge and understanding of London and Londoners. The vivacity of his story-telling compensated, by and large, for his slapdash emphasis on quantity of writing rather than quality. This story comes from The Mind of Mr J. G. Reeder, the first in a series featuring a mild-mannered public servant with a talent for solving crime. In 1969, the Reeder stories were brought to television, with Hugh Burden in the lead role.
***
Margaret Belman’s chiefest claim to Mr Reeder’s notice was that she lived in the Brockley Road, some few doors from his own establishment. He did not know her name, being wholly incurious about law-abiding folk, but he was aware that she was pretty, that her complexion was that pink and white which is seldom seen away from a magazine cover. She dressed well, and there was one thing that he noted about her more than any other, it was that she walked and carried herself with a certain grace that was especially pleasing to a man of aesthetic predilections.
He had, on occasions, walked behind her and before her, and had ridden on the same street car with her to Westminster Bridge. She invariably descended at the corner of the Embankment, and was as invariably met by a good-looking young man and walked away with him. The presence of that young man was a source of passive satisfaction to Mr Reeder, for no particular reason, unless it was that he had a tidy mind, and preferred a rose when it had a background of fern and grew uneasy at the sight of a saucerless cup.
It did not occur to him that he was an object of interest and curiosity to Miss Belman.
‘That was Mr Reeder—he has something to do with the police, I think,’ she said.
‘Mr J. G. Reeder?’
Roy Master looked back with interest at the middle-aged man scampering fearfully across the road, his unusual hat on the back of his head, his umbrella over his shoulder like a cavalryman’s sword.
‘Good Lord! I never dreamt he was like that.’
‘Who is he?’ she asked, distracted from her own problem.
‘Reeder? He’s in the Public Prosecutor’s Department, a sort of a detective—there was a case the other week where he gave evidence. He used to be with the Bank of England—’
Suddenly she stopped, and he looked at her in surprise.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.
‘I don’t want you to go any farther, Roy,’ she said. ‘Mr Telfer saw me with you yesterday, and he’s quite unpleasant about it.’
‘Telfer?’ said the young man indignantly. ‘That little worm! What did he say?’
‘Nothing very much,’ she replied, but from her tone he gathered that the ‘nothing very much’ had been a little disturbing.
‘I am leaving Telfers,’ she said unexpectedly. ‘It is a good job, and I shall never get another like it—I mean, so far as the pay is concerned.’
Roy Master did not attempt to conceal his satisfaction.
‘I’m jolly glad,’ he said vigorously. ‘I can’t imagine how you’ve endured that boudoir atmosphere so long. What did he say?’ he asked again, and, before she could answer: ‘Anyway, Telfers are shaky. There are all sorts of queer rumours about them in the City.’
‘But I thought it was a very rich corporation!’ she said in astonishment.
He shook his head.
‘It was—but they have been doing lunatic things—what can you expect when a half-witted weakling like Sidney Telfer is at the head of affairs? They underwrote three concerns last year that no brokerage business would have touched with a barge-pole, and they had to take up the shares. One was a lost treasure company to raise a Spanish galleon that sank three hundred years ago! But what really did happen yesterday morning?’
‘I will tell you tonight,’ she said, and made her hasty adieux.
Mr Sidney Telfer had arrived when she went into a room which, in its luxurious appointments, its soft carpet and dainty etceteras, was not wholly undeserving of Roy Master’s description.
The head of Telfers Consolidated seldom visited his main office on Threadneedle Street. The atmosphere of the place, he said, depressed him; it was all so horrid and sordid and rough. The founder of the firm, his grandfather, had died ten years before Sidney had been born, leaving the business to a son, a chronic invalid, who had died a few weeks after Sidney first saw the light. In the hands of trustees the business had flourished, despite the spasmodic interferences of his eccentric mother, whose peculiarities culminated in a will which relieved him of most of that restraint which is wisely laid upon a boy of sixteen.
The room, with its stained-glass windows and luxurious furnishing, fitted Mr Telfer perfectly, for he was exquisitely arrayed. He was tall and so painfully thin that the abnormal smallness of his head was not at first apparent. As the girl came into the room he was sniffing delicately at a fine cambric handkerchief, and she thought that he was paler than she had ever seen him—and more repellent.
He followed her movements with a dull stare, and she had placed his letters on his table before he spoke.
‘I say, Miss Belman, you won’t mention a word about what I said to you last night?’
‘Mr Telfer,’ she answered quietly, ‘I am hardly likely to discuss such a matter.’
‘I’d marry you and all that, only…clause in my mother’s will,’ he said disjointedly. ‘That could be got over—in time.’
She stood by the table, her hands resting on the edge.
‘I would not marry you, Mr Telfer, even if there were no clause in your mother’s will; the suggestion that I should run away with you to America—’
‘South America,’ he corrected her gravely. ‘Not the United States; there was never any suggestion of the United States.’
She could have smiled, for she was not as angry with this rather vacant young man as his startling proposition entitled her to be.
‘The point is,’ he went on anxiously, ‘you’ll keep it to yourself? I’ve been worried dreadfully all night. I told you to send me a note saying what you thought of my idea—well, don’t!’
This time she did smile, but before she could answer him he went on, speaking rapidly in a high treble that sometimes rose to a falsetto squeak:
‘You’re a perfectly beautiful girl, and I’m crazy about you, but…there’s a tragedy in my life…really. Perfectly ghastly tragedy. An’ everything’s at sixes an’ sevens. If I’d had any sense I’d have brought in a feller to look after things. I’m beginning to see that now.’
For the second time in twenty-four hours this young man, who had almost been tongue-tied and had never deigned to notice her, had poured forth a torrent of confidences, and in one had, with frantic insistence, set forth a plan which had amazed and shocked her. Abruptly he finished, wiped his weak eyes, and in his normal voice:
‘Get Billingham on the phone; I want him.’
She wondered, as her busy fingers flew over the keys of her typewriter, to what extent his agitation and wild eloquence was due to the rumoured ‘shakiness’ of Telfers Consolidated.
Mr Billingham came, a sober little man, bald and taciturn, and went in his secretive way into his employer’s room. There was no hint in his appearance or his manner that he contemplated a great crime. He was stout to a point of podginess; apart from his habitual frown, his round face, unlined by the years, was marked by an expression of benevolence.
Yet Mr Stephen Billingham, managing director of the Telfer Consolidated Trust, went into the office of the London and Central Bank late that afternoon and, presenting a bearer cheque for one hundred and fifty thousand pounds, which was duly honoured, was driven to the Credit Lilloise. He had telephoned particulars of his errand, and there were waiting for him seventeen packets, each containing a million francs, and a smaller packet of a hundred and forty-six mille notes. The franc stood at 74.55 and he received the eighteen packages in exchange for a cheque on the Credit Lilloise for £80,000 and the 150 thousand-pound notes which he had drawn on the London and Central.
Of Billingham’s movements thenceforth little was known. He was seen by an acquaintance driving through Cheapside in a taxicab which was traced as far as Charing Cross—and there he disappeared. Neither the airways nor the waterways had known him, the police theory being that he had left by an evening train that had carried an excursion party via Havre to Paris.
‘This is the biggest steal we have had in years,’ said the Assistant Director of Public Prosecutions. ‘If you can slip in sideways on the inquiry, Mr Reeder, I should be glad. Don’t step on the toes of the City police—they are quite amiable people where murder is concerned, but a little touchy where money is in question. Go along and see Sidney Telfer.’
Fortunately, the prostrated Sidney was discoverable outside the City area. Mr Reeder went into the outer office and saw a familiar face.
‘Pardon me, I think I know you, young lady,’ he said, and she smiled as she opened the little wooden gate to admit him.
‘You are Mr Reeder—we live in the same road,’ she said, and then quickly: ‘Have you come about Mr Billingham?’
‘Yes.’ His voice was hushed, as though he were speaking of a dead friend. ‘I wanted to see Mr Telfer, but perhaps you could give me a little information.’
The only news she had was that Sidney Telfer had been in the office since seven o’clock and was at the moment in such a state of collapse that she had sent for the doctor.
‘I doubt if he is in a condition to see you,’ she said.
‘I will take all responsibility,’ said Mr Reeder soothingly. ‘Is Mr Telfer—er—a friend of yours, Miss—?’
‘Belman is my name.’ He had seen the quick flush that came to her cheek: it could mean one of two things. ‘No, I am an employee, that is all.’
Her tone told him all he wanted to know. Mr J. G. Reeder was something of an authority on office friendships.
‘Bothered you a little, has he?’ he murmured, and she shot a suspicious look at him. What did he know, and what bearing had Mr Telfer’s mad proposal on the present disaster? She was entirely in the dark as to the true state of affairs; it was, she felt, a moment for frankness.
‘Wanted you to run away! Dear me!’ Mr Reeder was shocked. ‘He is married?’
‘Oh, no—he’s not married,’ said the girl shortly. ‘Poor man, I’m sorry for him now. I’m afraid that the loss is a very heavy one—who would suspect Mr Billingham?’
‘Ah! who indeed!’ sighed the lugubrious Reeder, and took off his glasses to wipe them; almost she suspected tears. ‘I think I will go in now—that is the door?’
Sidney jerked up his face and glared at the intruder. He had been sitting with his head on his arms for the greater part of an hour.
‘I say…what do you want?’ he asked feebly. ‘I say…I can’t see anybody…Public Prosecutor’s Department?’ He almost screamed the words. ‘What’s the use of prosecuting him if you don’t get the money back?’
Mr Reeder let him work down before he began to ply his very judicious questions.
‘I don’t know much about it,’ said the despondent young man. ‘I’m only a sort of figurehead. Billingham brought the cheques for me to sign and I signed ’em. I never gave him instructions; he got his orders. I don’t know very much about it. He told me, actually told me, that the business was in a bad way—half a million or something was wanted by next week.…Oh, my God! And then he took the whole of our cash.’
Sidney Telfer sobbed his woe into his sleeve like a child. Mr Reeder waited before he asked a question in his gentlest manner.
‘No, I wasn’t here: I went down to Brighton for the weekend. And the police dug me out of bed at four in the morning. We’re bankrupt. I’ll have to sell my car and resign from my club—one has to resign when one is bankrupt.’
There was little more to learn from the broken man, and Mr Reeder returned to his chief with a report that added nothing to the sum of knowledge. In a week the theft of Mr Billingham passed from scare lines to paragraphs in most of the papers—Billingham had made a perfect getaway.
In the bright lexicon of Mr J. G. Reeder there was no such word as holiday. Even the Public Prosecutor’s office has its slack time, when juniors and sub-officials and even the Director himself can go away on vacation, leaving the office open and a subordinate in charge. But to Mr J. G. Reeder the very idea of wasting time was repugnant, and it was his practice to brighten the dull patches of occupation by finding a seat in a magistrate’s court and listening, absorbed, to cases which bored even the court reporter.
John Smith, charged with being drunk and using insulting language to Police Officer Thomas Brown; Mary Jane Haggitt, charged with obstructing the police in the execution of their duty; Henry Robinson, arraigned for being a suspected person, having in his possession housebreaking tools, to wit, one cold chisel and a screw-driver; Arthur Moses, charged with driving a motor car to the common danger—all these were fascinating figures of romance and legend to the lean man who sat between the Press and railed dock, his square-crowned hat by his side, his umbrella gripped between his knees, and on his melancholy face an expression of startled wonder.
On one raw and foggy morning, Mr Reeder, self-released from his duties, chose the Marylebone Police Court for his recreation. Two drunks, a shop theft and an embezzlement had claimed his rapt attention, when Mrs Jackson was escorted to the dock and a rubicund policeman stepped to the witness stand, and, swearing by his Deity that he would tell the truth and nothing but the truth, related his peculiar story.
‘PC Perryman, No. 9717 L Division,’ he introduced himself conventionally. ‘I was on duty in the Edgeware Road early this morning at 2.30 a.m. when I saw the prisoner carrying a large suitcase. On seeing me she turned round and walked rapidly in the opposite direction. Her movements being suspicious, I followed and, overtaking her, asked her whose property she was carrying. She told me it was her own and that she was going to catch a train. She said that the case contained her clothes. As the case was a valuable one of crocodile leather I asked her to show me the inside. She refused. She also refused to give me her name and address and I asked her to accompany me to the station.’
There followed a detective-sergeant.
‘I saw the prisoner at the station and in her presence opened the case. It contained a considerable quantity of small stone chips—’
‘Stone chips?’ interrupted the incredulous magistrate. ‘You mean small pieces of stone—what kind of stone?’
‘Marble, your worship. She said that she wanted to make a little path in her garden and that she had taken them from the yard of a monumental mason in the Euston Road. She made a frank statement to the effect that she had broken open a gate into the yard and filled the suitcase without the mason’s knowledge.’
The magistrate leant back in his chair and scrutinised the charge sheet with a frown.
‘There is no address against her name,’ he said.
‘She gave an address, but it was false, your worship—she refuses to offer any further information.’
Mr J. G. Reeder had screwed round in his seat and was staring open-mouthed at the prisoner. She was tall, broad-shouldered and stoutly built. The hand that rested on the rail of the dock was twice the size of any woman’s hand he had ever seen. The face was modelled largely, but though there was something in her appearance which was almost repellent, she was handsome in her large way. Deep-set brown eyes, a nose that was large and masterful, a well-shaped mouth and two chins—these in profile were not attractive to one who had his views on beauty in women, but Mr J. G. Reeder, being a fair man, admitted that she was a fine-looking woman. When she spoke it was in a voice as deep as a man’s, sonorous and powerful.
‘I admit it was a fool thing to do. But the idea occurred to me just as I was going to bed and I acted on the impulse of the moment. I could well afford to buy the stone—I had over fifty pounds in my pocketbook when I was arrested.’
‘Is that true?’ and, when the officer answered, the magistrate turned his suspicious eyes to the woman. ‘You are giving us a lot of trouble because you will not tell your name and address. I can understand that you do not wish your friends to know of your stupid theft, but unless you give me the information, I shall be compelled to remand you in custody for a week.’
She was well, if plainly, dressed. On one large finger flashed a diamond which Mr Reeder mentally priced in the region of two hundred pounds. ‘Mrs Jackson’ was shaking her head as he looked.
‘I can’t give you my address,’ she said, and the magistrate nodded curtly.
‘Remanded for inquiry,’ he said, and added, as she walked out of the dock: ‘I should like a report from the prison doctor on the state of her mind.’
Mr J. G. Reeder rose quickly from his chair and followed the woman and the officer in charge of the case through the little door that leads to the cells.
‘Mrs Jackson’ had disappeared by the time he reached the corridor, but the detective-sergeant was stooping over the large and handsome suitcase that he had shown in court and was now laying on a form.
Most of the outdoor men of the CID knew Mr J. G. Reeder, and Sergeant Mills grinned a cheerful welcome.
‘What do you think of that one, Mr Reeder? It is certainly a new line on me! Never heard of a tombstone artist being burgled before.’
He opened the top of the case, and Mr Reeder ran his fingers through the marble chips.
‘The case and the loot weighs over a hundred pounds,’ said the officer. ‘She must have the strength of a navvy to carry it. The poor officer who carried it to the station was hot and melting when he arrived.’
Mr J. G. was inspecting the case. It was a handsome article, the hinges and locks being of oxidised silver. No maker’s name was visible on the inside, or owner’s initials on its glossy lid. The lining had once been of silk, but now hung in shreds and was white with marble dust.
‘Yes,’ said Mr Reeder absently, ‘very interesting—most interesting. Is it permissible to ask whether, when she was searched, any—er—document—?’ The sergeant shook his head. ‘Or unusual possession?’
‘Only these.’
By the side of the case was a pair of large gloves. These also were soiled, and their surfaces cut in a hundred places.
‘These have been used frequently for the same purpose,’ murmured Mr J. G. ‘She evidently makes—er—a collection of marble shavings. Nothing in her pocket-book?’
‘Only the banknotes: they have the stamp of the Central Bank on their backs. We should be able to trace ’em easily.’
Mr Reeder returned to his office and, locking the door, produced a worn pack of cards from a drawer and played patience—which was his method of thinking intensively. Late in the afternoon his telephone bell rang, and he recognised the voice of Sergeant Mills.
‘Can I come along and see you? Yes, it is about the banknotes.’
Ten minutes later the sergeant presented himself.
‘The notes were issued three months ago to Mr Telfer,’ said the officer without preliminary, ‘and they were given by him to his housekeeper, Mrs Welford.’
‘Oh, indeed?’ said Mr Reeder softly, and added, after reflection: ‘Dear me!’
He pulled hard at his lip.
‘And is ‘Mrs Jackson’ that lady?’ he asked.
‘Yes. Telfer—poor little devil—nearly went mad when I told him she was under remand—dashed up to Holloway in a taxi to identify her. The magistrate has granted bail, and she’ll be bound over tomorrow. Telfer was bleating like a child—said she was mad. Gosh! that fellow is scared of her—when I took him into the waiting-room at Holloway Prison she gave him one look and he wilted. By the way, we have had a hint about Billingham that may interest you. Do you know that he and Telfer’s secretary were very good friends?’
‘Really?’ Mr Reeder was indeed interested. ‘Very good friends? Well, well!’
‘The Yard has put Miss Belman under general observation: there may be nothing to it, but in cases like Billingham’s it is very often a matter of cherchez la femme!’
Mr Reeder had given his lip a rest and was now gently massaging his nose.
‘Dear me!’ he said. ‘That is a French expression, is it not?’
He was not in court when the marble stealer was sternly admonished by the magistrate and discharged. All that interested Mr J. G. Reeder was to learn that the woman had paid the mason and had carried away her marble chips in triumph to the pretty little detached residence in the Outer Circle of Regent’s Park. He had spent the morning at Somerset House, examining copies of wills and the like; his afternoon he gave up to the tracing of Mrs Rebecca Alamby Mary Welford.
She was the relict of Professor John Welford of the University of Edinburgh, and had been left a widow after two years of marriage. She had then entered the service of Mrs Telfer, the mother of Sidney, and had sole charge of the boy from his fourth year. When Mrs Telfer died she had made the woman sole guardian of her youthful charge. So that Rebecca Welford had been by turns nurse and guardian, and was now in control of the young man’s establishment.
The house occupied Mr Reeder’s attention to a considerable degree. It was a red-brick modern dwelling consisting of two floors and having a frontage on the Circle and a side road. Behind and beside the house was a large garden which, at this season of the year, was bare of flowers. They were probably in snug quarters for the winter, for there was a long greenhouse behind the garden.
He was leaning over the wooden palings, eyeing the grounds through the screen of box hedge that overlapped the fence with a melancholy stare, when he saw a door open and the big woman come out. She was bare-armed and wore an apron. In one hand she carried a dust box, which she emptied into a concealed ashbin, in the other was a long broom.
Mr Reeder moved swiftly out of sight. Presently the door slammed and he peeped again. There was no evidence of a marble path. All the walks were of rolled gravel.
He went to a neighbouring telephone booth, and called his office.
‘I may be away all day,’ he said.
There was no sign of Mr Sidney Telfer, though the detective knew that he was in the house.
Telfer’s Trust was in the hands of the liquidators, and the first meeting of creditors had been called. Sidney had, by all accounts, been confined to his bed, and from that safe refuge had written a note to his secretary asking that ‘all papers relating to my private affairs’ should be burnt. He had scrawled a postscript: ‘Can I possibly see you on business before I go?’ The word ‘go’ had been scratched out and ‘retire’ substituted. Mr Reeder had seen that letter—indeed, all correspondence between Sidney and the office came to him by arrangement with the liquidators. And that was partly why Mr J. G. Reeder was so interested in 904, The Circle.
It was dusk when a big car drew up at the gate of the house. Before the driver could descend from his seat, the door of 904 opened, and Sidney Telfer almost ran out. He carried a suitcase in each hand, and Mr Reeder recognised that nearest him as the grip in which the housekeeper had carried the stolen marble.
Reaching over, the chauffeur opened the door of the machine and, flinging in the bags, Sidney followed hastily. The door closed, and the car went out of sight round the curve of the Circle.
Mr Reeder crossed the road and took up a position very near the front gate, waiting.
Dusk came and the veil of a Regent’s Park fog. The house was in darkness, no flash of light except a faint glimmer that burnt in the hall, no sound. The woman was still there—Mrs Sidney Telfer, nurse, companion, guardian and wife. Mrs Sidney Telfer, the hidden director of Telfers Consolidated, a masterful woman who, not content with marrying a weakling twenty years her junior, had applied her masterful but ill-equipped mind to the domination of a business she did not understand, and which she was destined to plunge into ruin. Mr Reeder had made good use of his time at the Records Office: a copy of the marriage certificate was almost as easy to secure as a copy of the will.
He glanced round anxiously. The fog was clearing, which was exactly what he did not wish it to do, for he had certain acts to perform which required as thick a cloaking as possible.
And then a surprising thing happened. A cab came slowly along the road and stopped at the gate.
‘I think this is the place, miss,’ said the cabman, and a girl stepped down to the pavement.
It was Miss Margaret Belman.
Reeder waited until she had paid the fare and the cab had gone, and then, as she walked towards the gate, he stepped from the shadow.
‘Oh!—Mr Reeder, how you frightened me!’ she gasped. ‘I am going to see Mr Telfer—he is dangerously ill—no, it was his housekeeper who wrote asking me to come at seven.’
‘Did she now! Well, I will ring the bell for you.’
She told him that that was unnecessary—she had the key which had come with the note.
‘She is alone in the house with Mr Telfer, who refuses to allow a trained nurse near him,’ said Margaret, ‘and—’
‘Will you be good enough to lower your voice, young lady?’ urged Mr Reeder in an impressive whisper. ‘Forgive the impertinence, but if our friend is ill—’
She was at first startled by his urgency.
‘He couldn’t hear me,’ she said, but spoke in a lower tone.
‘He may—sick people are very sensitive to the human voice. Tell me, how did this letter come?’
‘From Mr Telfer? By district messenger an hour ago.’
Nobody had been to the house or left it—except Sidney. And Sidney, in his blind fear, would carry out any instructions which his wife gave to him.
‘And did it contain a passage like this?’ Mr Reeder considered a moment. ‘“Bring this letter with you”?’
‘No,’ said the girl in surprise, ‘but Mrs Welford telephoned just before the letter arrived and told me to wait for it. And she asked me to bring the letter with me because she didn’t wish Mr Telfer’s private correspondence to be left lying around. But why do you ask me this, Mr Reeder—is anything wrong?’
He did not answer immediately. Pushing open the gate, he walked noiselessly along the grass plot that ran parallel with the path.
‘Open the door, I will come in with you,’ he whispered and, when she hesitated: ‘Do as I tell you, please.’
The hand that put the key into the lock trembled, but at last the key turned and the door swung open. A small nightlight burnt on the table of the wide panelled hall. On the left, near the foot of the stairs, only the lower steps of which were visible, Reeder saw a narrow door which stood open, and, taking a step forward, saw that it was a tiny telephone-room.
And then a voice spoke from the upper landing, a deep, booming voice that he knew.
‘Is that Miss Belman?’
Margaret, her heart beating faster, went to the foot of the stairs and looked up.
‘Yes, Mrs Welford.’
‘You brought the letter with you?’
‘Yes.’
Mr Reeder crept along the wall until he could have touched the girl.
‘Good,’ said the deep voice. ‘Will you call the doctor—Circle 743—and tell him that Mr Telfer has had a relapse—you will find the booth in the hall: shut the door behind you, the bell worries him.’
Margaret looked at the detective and he nodded.
The woman upstairs wished to gain time for something—what?
The girl passed him: he heard the thud of the padded door close, and there was a click that made him spin round. The first thing he noticed was that there was no handle to the door, the second that the keyhole was covered by a steel disc, which he discovered later was felt lined. He heard the girl speaking faintly, and put his ear to the keyhole.
‘The instrument is disconnected—I can’t open the door.’
Without a second’s hesitation, he flew up the stairs, umbrella in hand, and as he reached the landing he heard a door close with a crash. Instantly he located the sound. It came from a room on the left immediately over the hall. The door was locked.
‘Open this door,’ he commanded, and there came to him the sound of a deep laugh.
Mr Reeder tugged at the stout handle of his umbrella. There was a flicker of steel as he dropped the lower end, and in his hand appeared six inches of knife blade.
The first stab at the panel sliced through the thin wood as though it were paper. In a second there was a jagged gap through which the black muzzle of an automatic was thrust.
‘Put down that jug or I will blow your features into comparative chaos!’ said Mr Reeder pedantically.
The room was brightly lit, and he could see plainly. Mrs Welford stood by the side of a big square funnel, the narrow end of which ran into the floor. In her hand was a huge enamelled iron jug, and ranged about her were six others. In one corner of the room was a wide circular tank, and beyond, at half its height, depended a large copper pipe.
The woman’s face turned to him was blank, expressionless.
‘He wanted to run away with her,’ she said simply, ‘and after all I have done for him!’
‘Open the door.’
Mrs Welford set down the jug and ran her huge hand across her forehead.
‘Sidney is my own darling,’ she said. ‘I’ve nursed him, and taught him, and there was a million—all in gold—in the ship. But they robbed him.’
She was talking of one of the ill-fated enterprises of Telfers Consolidated Trust—that sunken treasure ship to recover which the money of the company had been poured out like water. And she was mad. He had guessed the weakness of this domineering woman from the first.
‘Open the door; we will talk it over. I’m perfectly sure that the treasure ship scheme was a sound one.’
‘Are you?’ she asked eagerly, and the next minute the door was open and Mr J. G. Reeder was in that room of death.
‘First of all, let me have the key of the telephone-room—you are quite wrong about that young lady: she is my wife.’
The woman stared at him blankly.
‘Your wife?’ A slow smile transfigured the face. ‘Why—I was silly. Here is the key.’
He persuaded her to come downstairs with him, and when the frightened girl was released, he whispered a few words to her, and she flew out of the house.
‘Shall we go into the drawing-room?’ he asked, and Mrs Welford led the way.
‘And now will you tell me how you knew—about the jugs?’ he asked gently.
She was sitting on the edge of a sofa, her hands clasped on her knees, her deep-set eyes staring at the carpet.
‘John—that was my first husband—told me. He was a professor of chemistry and natural science, and also about the electric furnace. It is so easy to make if you have power—we use nothing but electricity in this house for heating and everything. And then I saw my poor darling being ruined through me, and I found how much money there was in the bank, and I told Billingham to draw it and bring it to me without Sidney knowing. He came here in the evening. I sent Sidney away—to Brighton, I think. I did everything—put the new lock on the telephone box and fixed the shaft from the roof to the little room—it was easy to disperse everything with all the doors open and an electric fan working on the floor—’
She was telling him about the improvised furnace in the greenhouse when the police arrived with the divisional surgeon, and she went away with them, weeping because there would be nobody to press Sidney’s ties or put out his shirts.
Mr Reeder took the inspector up to the little room and showed him its contents.
‘This funnel leads to the telephone box—’ he began.
‘But the jugs are empty,’ interrupted the officer.
Mr J. G. Reeder struck a match and, waiting until it burnt freely, lowered it into the jug. Half an inch lower than the rim the light went out.
‘Carbon monoxide,’ he said, ‘which is made by steeping marble chips in hydrochloric acid—you will find the mixture in the tank. The gas is colourless and odourless—and heavy. You can pour it out of a jug like water. She could have bought the marble, but was afraid of arousing suspicion. Billingham was killed that way. She got him to go to the telephone box, probably closed the door on him herself, and then killed him painlessly.’
‘What did she do with the body?’ asked the horrified officer.
‘Come out into the hothouse,’ said Mr Reeder, ‘and pray do not expect to see horrors: an electric furnace will dissolve a diamond to its original elements.’
***
Mr Reeder went home that night in a state of mental perturbation, and for an hour paced the floor of his large study in Brockley Road.
Over and over in his mind he turned one vital problem: did he owe an apology to Margaret Belman for saying that she was his wife?