Terror Keep/Chapter 15

was not an emotional man. For the first time in his life Inspector Simpson learned that behind the calm and imperturbable demeanour of the Public Prosecutor's chief detective lay an immense capacity for violent language. He fired a question at the officer, and Simpson nodded.

"Yes, the car returned. The driver said that he had orders to go back to London. I thought you had changed your plans. You're staying with this bullion robbery, Reeder?"

Mr. Reeder glared across the desk, and despite his hardihood Inspector Simpson winced.

"Staying with hell!" hissed Reeder.

Simpson was seeing the real and unsuspected J. G. Reeder and was staggered.

"I'm going back to interview that monkey-faced criminologist, and I'm going to introduce him to forms of persuasion which have been forgotten since the Inquisition!"

Before Simpson could reply, Mr. Reeder was out of the door and flying down the stairs.

It was the hour after lunch, and Daver was sitting at his desk, twiddling his thumbs, when the door was pushed open unceremoniously and Mr. Reeder came in. He did not recognise the detective, for a man who in a moment of savage humour slices off his side-whiskers brings about an amazing change in his appearance. And with the banishing of those ornaments, there had been a remarkable transformation in Mr. Reeder's demeanour. Gone were his useless pince-nez which had fascinated a generation of law-breakers; gone the gentle, apologetic voice, the shyly diffident manner.

"I want you, Daver!"

"Mr. Reeder!" gasped the yellow-faced man, and turned a shade paler.

Reeder slammed the door to behind him, pulled up a chair with a crash, and sat down opposite the hotel-proprietor.

"Where is Miss Belman?"

"Miss Belman?"

Astonishment was expressed in every feature. "Good gracious, Mr. Reeder, surely you know? She went up to get your dactyscope—is that the word? I intended asking you to be good enough to let me see this"

"Where—is—Miss—Belman? Spill it, Daver, and save yourself a lot of unhappiness."

"I swear to you, my dear Mr. Reeder"

Reeder leaned across the table and rang the bell.

"Do—do you want anything?" stammered the manager.

"I want to speak to Mrs. Flack—you call her Mrs. Burton, but Mrs. Flack is good enough for me!"

Daver's face was ghastly now. He had become suddenly wizened and old.

"I'm one of the few people who happen to know that John Flack is married," said Reeder; "one of the few who knows he has a daughter. The question is, does John Flack know all that I know?"

He glowered down at the shrinking man.

"Does he know that after he was sent to Broadmoor his sneaking worm of a secretary, his toady and parasite and slave, decided to carry on in the Flack tradition, and use his influence and his knowledge to compel the unfortunate daughter of mad John Flack to marry him?"

A frenzied, almost incoherent voice wailed:

"For God's sake ... don't talk so loud...!"

But Mr. Reeder went on:

"Before Flack went to prison he entrusted to his daughter his famous encyclopædia of crime. She was the only person he trusted; his wife was a weak slave whom he had always despised. Mr. Daver, the secretary, got possession of those books a year after Flack was committed to Broadmoor. He organised his own little gang at Flack's old headquarters, which were nominally bought by you. Ever since you knew John Flack was planning an escape—an escape in which you had to assist him—you've been living in terror that he would discover how you had double-crossed him. Tell me I'm a liar and I'll beat your miserable little head off. Where is Margaret Belman?"

"I don't know," said the man sullenly. "Flack had a car waiting for her—that's all I know."

Something in his tone, something in the shifty slant of his eyes infuriated Reeder. He stretched out a long arm, gripped the man by the collar and jerked him savagely across the desk. As a feat of physical strength it was remarkable; as a piece of propaganda of the frightfulness that was to follow, it had a strange effect upon Daver. He lay limp for a second, and then, with a quick jerk of his collar, he wrenched himself from Reeder's grip and fled from the room, slamming the door behind him. By the time Reeder had kicked an overturned chair from his path, and opened the door, Daver had disappeared.

When Reeder reached the hall, it was empty. He met none of the servants (he learned later that the majority had been discharged that morning, paid a month's wages, and sent to town by the first train). He ran out of the main entrance on to the lawn, but the man he sought was not in sight. The other side of the house drew blank. One of the detectives on duty in the grounds, attracted by Mr. Reeder's hasty exit, came running into the vestibule as he reached the bottom of the stairs.

"Nobody came out, sir," he said, when Reeder explained the object of his search.

"How many men are there in the grounds?" asked Reeder shortly. "Four? Bring them into the house. Lock every door, and bring back a crowbar with you. I am going to do a little investigation that may cost me a lot of money. No sign of Brill?"

"No, sir," said the detective, shaking his head sadly. "Poor old Brill! I'm afraid they've done him. The young lady get to town all right, sir?"

Mr. Reeder scowled at him.

"The young lady—what do you know about her?" he asked sharply.

"I saw her to the car," said Detective Gray.

Reeder gripped him by the coat and led him into the vestibule.

"Now, tell me, and tell me quickly, what sort of car was it?"

"I don't know, Mr. Reeder," said the man in surprise. "An ordinary kind of car, except that the windows were shuttered, but I thought that was your idea."

"What sort of body had it?"

The man described the machine as accurately as possible; he had only made a superficial inspection. He thought, however, it was an all-weather body. The news was no more than Reeder had expected—neither added to nor diminished his anxiety. When Gray had returned with his three companions and the doors had been locked, Mr. Reeder, from the landing above, called them to the first floor. A very thorough search had already been made by the police that morning; but, so far, Daver's room had escaped anything but superficial attention. It was situated at the far end of the corridor, and was locked when the search-party arrived. It took less than two minutes to force an entrance. Mr. Daver's suite consisted of a sitting-room, a bedroom, and a handsomely-fitted bathroom. There were a number of books in the former, a small Empire table on which were neatly arranged a pile of accounts, but there was nothing in the way of documents to reveal his relationship with the Flack gang.

The bedroom was beautifully furnished. Here again, from Reeder's point of view, the search was unsatisfactory.

The suite formed one of the angles of the old Keep, and Reeder was leaving the room when his eyes, roving back for a last look around, were arrested by the curious position of a brown leather divan in one corner of the room. He went back and tried to pull it away from the wall, but apparently it was a fixture. He kicked at the draped side and it gave forth a hollow wooden sound.

"What has he got in that divan?" he asked.

After considerable search Gray found a hidden bolt, and, throwing this back, the top of the divan came up like the lid of a box. It was empty.

"The rum thing about this house, sir," said Gray as they went downstairs together, "is that one always seems on the point of making an important discovery and it always turns out to be a dud."

Reeder did not reply; he was too preoccupied with his growing distress. After a while, he spoke.

"There are many queer things about this house" he began.

And then there came a sound which froze the marrow of his bones. It was a shrill shriek; the scream of a human soul in agony.

"Help! ... Help, Reeder!"

It came from the direction of the room he had left, and he recognised Daver's voice.

"Oh, God...!"

The sound of a door slamming. Reeder took the stairs three at a time, the detectives following him. Daver's door he had left ajar, but in the short time he had been downstairs it had been shut and bolted.

"The crowbar, quick!"

Gray had left it below and, flying down, returned in a few seconds.

No sound came from the room. Pushing the claw of the crowbar between architrave and door at the point where he had seen the bolt, Reeder levered it back, and the door flew open with a crash. One step into the apartment, and then he stood stock still, glaring at the bed, unable to believe his eyes.

On the silken counterpane, sprawled in an indescribable attitude, his round, sightless eyes staring at the ceiling, was Daver. Mr. Reeder knew that he was dead before he saw the terrible wound or the brown-hilted knife that stuck out from his side.

Reeder listened at the heartbeat—felt the pulse of the warm wrist, but it was a waste of time, as he knew. He made a quick search of the clothing. There was an inside pocket in the waistcoat, and here he found a thick pad of banknotes.

"All thousands," said Mr. Reeder, "and ninety-five of them. What's in that packet?"

It was a little cardboard folder and contained a steamship ticket from Southampton to New York, made out in the name of "Sturgeon," and in the coat pocket Reeder found a passport which was stamped by the American Consul and bore the same name.

"He was ready to jump—but he delayed it too long," he said. "Poor devil!"

"How did he get here, sir?" asked Gray. "They couldn't have carried him"

"He was alive enough when we heard him," said Reeder curtly. "He was being killed when we heard him shriek. There is a way into this room we haven't discovered yet. What's that?"

It was the sound of a muffled thud, as if a heavy door had been closed. It seemed to come from somewhere in the room. Reeder took the crowbar from the detective's hand and attacked the panel behind the settee. Beneath was solid wall. He ripped down another strip, with no more enlightening result. Again he opened the divan. Its bottom was made of a thin layer of oak. This, too, was ripped off; beneath this again was the stone floor.

"Strip it," said Reeder, and when this was done he stepped inside the divan and seesawed gingerly from one end to the other.

"There's nothing here," he said. "Go downstairs and 'phone Mr. Simpson. Tell him what has happened."

When the man had gone, he resumed his examination of the body. Daver had carried, attached to one of the buttons of his trousers, a long gold chain. This was gone: he found it broken off close to the link, and the button itself hanging by a thread. It was while he was making his examination that his hand touched a bulky package in the dead man's hip pocket. It was a worn leather case, filled with scraps of memoranda, mostly undecipherable. They were written in a formless hand, generally with pencil, and the writing was large and irregular, while the paper used for these messages was of every variety. One was a scrawled chemical formula; another was a brief note which ran:


 * "House opposite Reeder to let. Engage or get key. Communicate usual place."

Some of these notes were understandable, some beyond Mr. Reeder's comprehension. But he came at last to a scrap which swept the colour from his cheeks. It was written in the same hand on the margin of a newspaper and was crumpled into a ball:


 * "Belman fell over cliff 6 miles west Larme. Send men to get body before police discover."

Mr. J. G. Reeder read and the room spun round.