The morning brought a surprise to Mr. Reeder. When he arrived at his office he found Miss Gillette already on duty. That in itself was a notable event. She was entertaining in her room a very early caller in Dr. Ingham, and from the solicitude in her tone it almost seemed that she was mothering him. Miss Gillette was one of those uncomfortable people whose maternal instinct was highly developed.
As Mr. Reeder paused at the half opened door, he heard her speaking.
“I shouldn’t worry about it, Dr. Ingham. Reeder will put a stop to any of that sort of nonsense. He is much cleverer than he looks.”
Her maligned employer passed softly into his room and rang the bell.
“I didn’t hear you come in--you scare the life out of me sometimes,” she complained, and added: “Mr. Ingham is here.”
“Dr. Ingham,” said Mr. Reeder reproachfully. “You are--um--a little careless about--um--prefixes.”
“He’s been attacked--somebody tried to break into his house last night,” said Miss Gillette. “Poor soul, he has a terrible face!”
“Let me see it, please,” said J.G.
The clergyman had evidently passed a strenuous night. The bridge of his handsome nose bore a strip of sticking plaster. One eye, at the moment concealed behind a shade, was blue and swollen, and his lower lip was badly cut.
“I’m afraid I look rather ghastly,” he said, as he shook hands with the detective.
The undamaged portion of his face was white and drawn, and when he said that he had had no sleep that night Mr. Reeder was not surprised.
He had gone back to St. Margaret’s on the previous night, and had driven himself from Dover, arriving at his house at ten o’clock.
“Grayne Hall is built on the site of an old castle,” he said. “There was not enough of the original structure to restore, so I had the walls pulled down and erected a modern residence. Naturally it is very isolated, but there is some very excellent timber, and I have made a good garden. I returned before midnight, but I had hardly got to bed before my wife said that she heard a noise below. I went down, unarmed, of course, for I do not own so much as a shot gun. I had reached the hall and was feeling for the light switch, when somebody struck at me. I had a fearful blow on the face, but I managed to find an old battle axe which hung on the wall--luckily for me. With this I defended myself. My wife, who had heard the fracas in the hall, screamed, and I heard one of my assailants say: ‘Run for it, Kennedy!’ Immediately after, the hall door was thrown open, and I saw two, or it may have been three, people run into the garden and vanish.”
“Dear me,” said Mr. Reeder. “One of them said: ‘Run for it, Kennedy!’ You are sure it was that?”
“I could swear that was the name. Afterwards I remembered, or rather my dear wife remembered, that a man named Kennedy had been a member of the Pizarro gang.”
Mr. Reeder was examining the clergyman’s injuries thoughtfully.
“No weapon was used?”
Dr. Ingham smiled painfully.
“That’s a poor consolation!” he said with some acerbity. “No, I rather think that I was struck by a fist that was holding a weapon. In the darkness this rascal must have struck wildly.”
He had not sent for the police. Apparently he had no exalted opinion about the Kentish constabulary, and he admitted a horror of figuring in newspapers. Mr. Reeder could understand this: he also had a horror of publicity.
“Whether these people were plain burglars who were disturbed at their work, or whether revenge for some fancied injury was at the bottom of their dastardly action, I cannot make up my mind. With Mrs. Ingham the Pizarro case is an obsession. She is, by the way, looking forward with great eagerness to meeting you. Now tell me, Mr. Reeder, what am I to do? I will be guided entirely by your advice. To go to the police now seems to be a fairly useless proceeding. I cannot describe the men--except for a second when they were silhouetted in the open doorway, I never saw them. My butler and my gardener made enquiries this morning, but nobody else seems to have seen them. Not even the coastguard who has a cottage quite close.”
Mr. Reeder sat with half-closed eyes, his large hands folded on his lap.
“It is very odd,” he murmured at last. “Kennedy, Casius Kennedy. A bad--um--egg. He inherited it from his mother, a lady with a very--um--unpleasant history.”
He pursed his under lip, his eyes had drooped a little lower.
“It is odd, extremely odd.”
Dr. Ingham drew a long breath.
“What am I to do?” he demanded.
“Ask for police protection,” said Mr. Reeder. “Have an officer sleeping in the house and another stationed on the grounds. I hope to see you on Saturday.”
He rose with startling abruptness and jerked out his hand.
“Till Saturday,” he said, and Dr. Ingham went out, a very dissatisfied man.
Mr. Reeder was no angel that morning. He was in a mood the like of which Miss Gillette could not remember. She discovered this very soon.
“What did you tell the doctor?” she asked.
“When I want you, I will ring for you, young lady,” he snapped.
She went out, a little dazed by his mutiny. She heard the key turn in his lock and when she got through to him by telephone, he was most unpleasant.
“I think I will go home, Mr. Reeder,” she said.
“I will send you your wages by post,” said he.
She went out of the office, slamming the door behind her, which (apart from the slam) was exactly what he intended she should do.
The door to the corridor he locked in the same fashion before he rang up Inspector Gaylor.
“I want a couple of men,” he said. “I’m nervous, or, shall I say, apprehensive.”
“I wondered when you’d start getting that way,” said Gaylor. “I’m having young Edelsheim shadowed. Thanks for your letter. Is there any other development?”
Mr. Reeder told him of the doctor’s unpleasant adventure.
“Oh!” said Gaylor, and then after a silence, “That will keep.”
“So I thought,” said Mr. Reeder. “Do you mind if I use your name rather freely to-day?”
“So long as you don’t try to borrow money on it!” said Gaylor, who had a painful sense of humour.
Reeder spent a long time after that searching a trade-telephone directory and ringing up various yachting agencies. He had become suddenly interested in pleasure cruisers. He drew blank for the first nine enquiries, but the tenth rewarded him. It was not difficult to secure the answers he wanted, but when he called a sticky and uncommunicative agent he used the name of Gaylor with great freedom and invariably secured the information he required.
The tenth call needed this incentive, but the result was beyond expectations. Mr. Reeder spent a happy hour with his notes and a nautical almanac. By this time the two Scotland Yard men had arrived, and when soon after lunch a district messenger brought a square and heavy parcel, having the label of a west-end bookseller, they were very useful, for one of them had been for a year in the explosives department at Scotland Yard and had a sensitive ear for the faint ticking that came from within the parcel.
“It’s a time bomb, but it may also have a make and break attachment.”
They watched it sink heavily into a pail of water, and when, after half an hour, the Yard man took it out again, the ticking had ceased.
“They’ve been getting ready for this racket for a long time,” said the detective. “That bomb wasn’t made in a hurry----”
The telephone bell rang at that moment and Mr. Reeder answered it.
“Is that you, Reeder?” It was Gaylor’s voice and he was speaking very quickly. “I’m coming round to pick you up. We’ve found Gelpin.”
“Eh?” said Mr. Reeder.
“Dead--shot through the heart. A ranger found his body in Epping Forest. Be ready.”
The telephone clicked, but Mr. Reeder still stood with the receiver in his hand, a terrifying frown on his face.
“Anything wrong, sir?” asked the detective.
J.G. nodded.
“I’m wrong: if I had the brain of a--um--great man, I should have expected this.”
What “this” was he did not elucidate. A few minutes later he was one of a party of five packed in a police tender and was heading for Epping.
It was nearly dark when the car pulled up by the side of a forest by-road. A ranger led them to the spot where the body lay.
It was that of a man above medium height, and more than ordinarily broad of shoulder.
Though George Gelpin was between fifty and sixty, he had been in life a model of a man. He had been rider to hounds, a keen cricketer, something of an athlete.
“Nothing in his pockets--no identification marks of any kind. If we hadn’t got his photograph and his description--they arrived this morning from Birmingham--we should have had the devil’s job in tracing him.”
One of the group they had found standing about the body was a doctor. He supplied certain data which confirmed Mr. Reeder in his opinion. But the chief confirmation came when he examined the outspread hands of the silent figure.
There was no mark of car wheels, and the bushes behind which the man was found showed no evidence of crushing. It might have been an ordinary case of suicide, and the doctor ventured this opinion.
A revolver had been found near the body. He must have been shot with the muzzle almost touching his coat, for it was burnt.
“We haven’t got the number of the revolver, but we are making enquiries about it. I don’t think they are necessary. It will be a day or two before we can trace it. Did you get that gun?”
One of the waiting detectives took it out of his pocket. It was a small six-chambered Colt.
One of the detectives who had been on guard over the body when they arrived offered a piece of information.
“There is an initial scratched on the back plate of the butt,” he said. “F.S.”
He took the weapon from his pocket and passed it across to Gaylor.
“F.S.,” frowned the inspector. “That’s a pretty common initial.”
“Frank Seafield, for example,” said Mr. Reeder, and Gaylor gaped at him.
“Why should it be Seafield? That’s wildly improbable, Reeder.”
However, when they returned to town and Mr. Reeder got into communication with Seafield’s late partner, Gaylor found that the surmise was not so wild. Tommy Anton called at Scotland Yard and saw and identified the weapon.
“That’s Frank’s,” he said immediately. “He always carried a revolver. I used to chaff him about it. He had no reason to, so far as I know, and I rather think that carrying the gun was a bit of swank. He was a little on the theatrical side.”
Joan Ralph had gone back to Bishop’s Stortford. They reached her by telephone. She too had seen the revolver and described it accurately.
“I know Frank carried it, and Daddy used to be very sarcastic about it. Frank used to carry big sums of money about the country, buying second-hand cars, and he said he had to deal with some very tough people. Why do you want to know?”
Mr. Reeder, who had no desire to alarm the young lady, lied gracefully.
“That beats me,” said Gaylor.
Mr. Reeder put down the phone. They were sitting in the inspector’s room at Scotland Yard, where a meal had been brought to them from a neighbouring restaurant.
“It doesn’t beat me, possibly because I am over sanguine,” said Mr. Reeder, “possibly because my peculiar mentality leads me astray.”
“But suppose it is suicide--” began Gaylor, and stopped.
“You were thinking that it is quite usual that a suicide tries to remove all marks of his identification?” said Mr. Reeder. “That is perfectly true. Will you tell me this: why is the suit he was wearing so old and stained and shabby, and why was he wearing slippers?”
“Boots,” Gaylor broke in. “Elastic-sided boots.”
“Slippers,” insisted Mr. Reeder. “And why was there no mud on them? And why was the front of him wet and the back on which he lay almost dry? It rained all last night and he could not have walked through the forest without getting soaked to the skin?”
Gaylor pinched his long upper lip, looked moodily at the remains of his dinner.
“Tennant tells me that they tried to bomb you this afternoon. It’s the Pizarro gang, of course. Kennedy?”
“His very self,” said Mr. Reeder, flippantly and ungrammatically. “And I should not be surprised if almost anything happened. I told my housekeeper to go home to her mother. Most housekeepers have mothers to go home to. I shall stay in town to-night.”
“Where?” asked Gaylor curiously.
“That’s my secret,” said Mr. Reeder gravely.
They went out of the Yard together, when Gaylor had an idea:
“If you want to get out of the way, I should go down to St. Margaret’s Bay. I think you will be safe there.”
“An excellent idea,” said Mr. Reeder. “A very excellent idea, but unfortunately the doctor is still in town.”
He went to his office, accompanied by one of the two detectives who had been appointed to watch over him. The other was still in Miss Gillette’s room--Mr. Reeder suspected that he was asleep, for it was some time before he opened the door to him.
“There is a wire for you,” he said, and handed it to Mr. Reeder. It was from Dr. Ingham. Would he (Mr. Reeder) come down as soon as he could? There had been remarkable developments at Grayne.
The telegram had been despatched from Dover. Mr. Reeder sent his reply over the telephone. He would arrive on the following afternoon at three o’clock. Then, strangely enough, contrary to all his expressed intentions, he went home to his housekeeperless establishment in the Brockley Road and slept alone in his silent home. And more strangely still, he slept most peacefully.
If he had not gone home he would have missed the letter which came by the morning post. It was from Miss Gillette. She was leaving him. Mr. Reeder sighed happily.
“I think I ought to help Mr. Anton,” she wrote. “The Rev. Dr. Ingham has promised to help him start a new business. Dr. Ingham has been most kind and I shall never be sufficiently grateful to you for having been unconsciously instrumental in bringing Mr. Anton into touch with him. He wrote to Tommy before he left London yesterday, suggesting that I might help in creating the new business, and I think you would like to see his postscript so I have torn it off.”
She remained ever his sincerely.
The slip of paper which accompanied the letter was in the doctor’s handwriting.
“P.S. I shall never forgive myself if I have robbed Mr. Reeder of his secretary. He is a man for whom I have the very highest regard.”
“H’m,” said Mr. Reeder, “how very nice… how extraordinarily kind!” He spoke aloud to his coffee machine and his electric toaster, but he was never so loquacious as when he was addressing an inanimate audience.
His housekeeper returned during the morning with the “daily” servants who constituted his household, and she packed his battered suit-case under his personal supervision. Mr. Reeder had one surprising weakness: dress clothes. However antiquated his daily attire might be, his evening suits were cut by the most fashionable of tailors, and he wanted to look his best at Grayne Hall. He went to town before lunch, met Gaylor by appointment at the office, and handed to him the batch of telegrams which had arrived during the morning. Gaylor examined them casually.
“I know all about these,” he said. “Nine of the seventeen English subscribers to Pizarro’s scheme are missing. I can tell you more--with ’em went the best part of eighty thousand pounds. By-the-way, I am offering no further evidence against Jake Alsby. I’ve got him inside for his own safety, but he will be discharged next week.”
Gaylor came to the station to see him off.
“Have a good time. If the Pizarro crowd chase you to Dover, send me a postcard.”
Inspector Gaylor, as has already been stated, had a perverted sense of humour.
Throughout the journey Mr. Reeder read a book which was entitled The Thousand Funniest After-Dinner Stories. He read them all, the whole thousand, and never smiled once.
He had a trick of moving his lips as he read. The military-looking man who sat opposite him had never seen Mr. Reeder at close quarters before and was silently amused. Once he tried to start a conversation, but Mr. Reeder was not a great conversationalist on a railway journey and the attempted affability faded to silence.
At Dover station, Mr. Reeder got out and his companion followed. Three men lounged up to Mr. Reeder’s fellow-passenger, and with a nod he indicated the detective, who was passing through the barrier.
“That’s your man,” he said, “keep close to him.”
The car which was waiting for Mr. Reeder had scarcely left the station yard, when the four entered a closed limousine and followed.
The drive from Dover to St. Margaret’s Bay was not a comfortable one. Heavy gusts of wind-borne rain drove across the downs. Below, as the car mounted the cliff road, he could see breakers creaming the yellow-green waters of the Straits, and out at sea a little coasting tramp was taking water over her bows in alarming quantities.
Grayne Hall was not in the residential area of St. Margaret’s Bay. It stood aloof in a fold of the downs and within a very short distance of the cliff’s edge. A red brick building, with squat chimneys that were not at all in harmony with the Elizabethan architecture of the house.
“We used to have high twisted chimneys, but the wind blew them down. You’ve no idea what the wind is like here,” explained Dr. Ingham before dinner.
The car passed through a pair of ornamental iron gates and up a broad drive to the portico before the door. The doctor was waiting and with him a tall slight woman, who looked very young until she was seen closer at hand. Even then she might deceive any but the most critical, for her brown hair had a glint of gold in it, and the beauty of her face had not entirely faded.
“Welcome!” Dr. Ingham had a bandage over one eye and his injured nose was still covered with plaster. But he was in a pleasantly jovial mood. Perhaps he was relieved at the sight of his visitor, for he subsequently admitted that he had been expecting a wire from Mr. Reeder, regretting his inability to put in an appearance.
“I want you to persuade Mrs. Ingham that this is not the most forsaken spot on the face of the earth, my dear Reeder. And if you can allay her fears about a repetition of the attack upon me I shall be completely grateful.”
Mrs. Ingham’s red lips curled in a smile. She was, Mr. Reeder discovered, a well-read, knowledgeable woman. As she showed him round the lovely grounds (the spring flowers were a joy to the eye) she gave him every opportunity to study her. He himself said little--she gave him no chance, for she never stopped talking. Her voice was low but monotonous. She had definite views on almost every subject. She told him that she was a graduate of a famous New England university--she was obviously proud of this and repeated the information twice. She was pretty, probably nearer forty than thirty. She had deep dark brown eyes, the most delicate of features, and jet black eyebrows which contrasted attractively with the colour of her hair.
“… I remember the Pizarro case--I had just left college and naturally I was thrilled because he came from our home town. And, Mr. Reeder, I’m sure that all these disappearances have something to do with the Pizarro outfit. I have been racking my brains all day trying to think how my husband has offended them. Maybe he preached against them. I’ve a kind of recollection that he had a threatening letter when we were in Boston soon after we married. Not that my husband would worry about threatening letters.…”
There was much to see in the grounds: here and there a crumbling ruin of a wall to remind the observer of the dead glories of Grayne Castle. One interesting feature Mr. Reeder discovered was a flight of steps leading down the face of the cliff. It was guarded by an iron hand rail and gave the occupants of Grayne Hall a private way to the beach.
“If anybody wants to bathe on pebbles,” said Mrs. Ingham.
The room allotted to Mr. Reeder’s use gave him a beautiful view of the sea and the flower garden before the house. It was furnished with rare taste--he saw in the decorations Mrs. Ingham’s hand. A pleasant retreat, but in many, many ways a dangerous one. He went up to his room after tea and found his dress clothes laid out for him by his host’s valet. Later came the individual to assist Mr. Reeder. A bathroom opened from the bedroom and Mr. Reeder was under the shower when the valet knocked. He came out, to find the man folding the discarded day clothes and hanging them neatly in the wardrobe.
The contents of his pockets were placed neatly on the dressing table.
“Thank you,” murmured Mr. Reeder. “I--um--shall not require you any more. I will ring if I do.”
He closed the door on the retiring valet, turned the key and began to dress at his leisure. Mr. Reeder liked the routine of well run country houses and Grayne Hall was extraordinarily well run. He came down to find himself alone in the drawing room. A fine aromatic cedar log burnt on the open grate, above which was a picture which might have been a Rembrandt.
The soft hangings of the room, the austere furnishings, the pastel coloured walls, were very soothing. Dr. Ingham, wearing the evening dress of the laity, came in to rub his hands before the fire.
“I suppose Elsa gave you the full benefit of her theories? There may be something in them. I’ve been trying to think how I might have offended these birds. A sermon maybe. I used to be a powerful preacher--took current events as my text. Come into my study and have a drink. Elsa won’t be down for hours.”
He conducted Mr. Reeder across the panelled hall, through a deeply recessed door into as comfortable a room as the heart of man could desire.
Deep armchairs, a low divan before the fire, walls covered with bookshelves, and a big empire desk were the main features of the room.
“Comfort, comfort, comfort!” said the cleric as he opened a walnut cabinet and took out a silver tray laden with glasses. To these he added a square decanter and a syphon.
“Say when.”
He splashed the soda into the brown whisky and Mr. Reeder sipped daintily.
“Elsa wants me to keep firearms in the house. Now you, as a detective, I suppose would think nothing of that. To me it is an abhorrent practice. I may not be a great preacher, but I am, I hope, a good Christian, and the idea of taking life--ugh!”
Mr. Reeder tried to raise a complimentary shudder, but failed. For his part he believed in taking life. He was old-fashioned enough to regard the gallows as an instrument of the highest social value.
“I presume you carry a gun?”
Mr. Reeder shook his head.
“On occasions that dreadful necessity has been forced upon me,” he said. “I dislike the practice. I have--er--two such weapons, but I have never had to use them. One is at my office and one at my private residence.”
The doctor made a little face.
“You disappoint me, Mr. Reeder. I am not a nervous man, but in view of what happened the other night”--he touched his injured face--“I should have felt a little safer. Hello, sweetness.”
Sweetness wore a perfectly cut gown of deep crimson velvet. Mr. Reeder thought that she looked twenty-four and not a day over, and had he the courage of a lady’s man--a quality he much envied--he would have said as much.
“What were you talking about?” she asked.
“We were talking of guns,” said Mr. Reeder loudly, “um--revolvers.”
She smiled at this.
“And my husband was giving his well-known views on the sanctity of human life,” she said scornfully.
Mr. Reeder smiled.
“Rather I was giving a bit of my mind, my dear madam,” he said.
“My dear,” broke in the host, “all this arose from a question I asked Mr. Reeder: whether he carried weapons. He doesn’t.”
“I expect poor Thomas was terribly disappointed,” said Mrs. Ingham. “When he unpacked your bag he had expected to find it full of pistols and handcuffs.”
She took them back to the drawing room, but either she thought it was a painful subject, or she wanted to postpone the discussion till after dinner, for she made no reference to her husband’s experience.
It was Mr. Reeder who brought up that matter. They were passing through the hall on their way to the dining room--
“Which axe was it you used?” he asked.
The panelled walls were entirely innocent of armour or battle axes.
“We have had them moved,” said Mrs. Ingham. “It occurred to me afterwards that these dreadful people might have used the battle axe instead of my husband.”
They had passed the broad stairs on which the battle between Dr. Ingham and his midnight intruders had been fought, and Mr. Reeder tried to visualize the scene. But there were occasions when his imagination failed, and this was one.
The dining room had been fashioned like an Elizabethan banqueting hall in miniature. There was a big Tudor fireplace, a minstrel gallery, and he noticed with surprise that the floor was of flag-stones.
“That is the original floor of the old castle,” said Mrs. Ingham proudly. “The builders unearthed it whilst they prepared the foundation, and my husband insisted that it should remain. Of course we had it levelled, and in some cases the flags had to be replaced. But it was in a marvellous state of preservation. It used to belong to the De Boisy family----”
Mr. Reeder nodded.
“De Tonsin,” he said gently. “The De Boisys were related by marriage, and only one De Boisy occupied the castle in 1453.”
She was a little taken aback by his knowledge.
“Yes, I have made a study of this place,” Mr. Reeder went on. “I am something of a student of archæology.”
He beamed up and down the room approvingly.
“Dirty work.”
Mrs. Ingham lifted her eyebrows.
“I don’t quite get you?”
“On this floor,” said Mr. Reeder almost jovially, “wicked old barons were slicing off their enemies’ heads and were dropping them into the deepest dungeon beneath the--um.” No, he had never heard of a moat. It could not well be that, could it?
As the footman placed a cup of soup before him, and the tall butler poured him out a glass of wine, Mr. Reeder looked at the glass, held it up to the light.
“That’s good stuff. I can quite imagine,” he said reminiscently, “that dramatic scene when Geoffrey De Boisy induced his old rival to come to dinner. How he must have smiled as his varlets ended--um--the unfortunate gentleman with wine from a poisoned flagon.”
He finished the scrutiny of the wine and put it down untasted.
Mrs. Ingham was amused.
“You have a mediæval mind, Mr. Reeder.”
“A criminal mind,” said that gentleman.
He did not drink throughout the meal, and Dr. Ingham remembered that he had merely sipped his whisky in the study.
“Yes, I am a teetotaller in a sense,” said Mr. Reeder, “but I find life so completely exciting that I require no other stimulant.”
He had observed that the man who had valeted him was also the footman.
He waited till the two servants were at the other end of the room, and then:
“Your man is looking rather ill. Has he also been injured in the fight?”
“Thomas? No, he did not appear on the scene until it was all over,” said Dr. Ingham, in surprise. “Why?”
“I thought I saw a bandage round his throat.”
“I haven’t noticed it,” said the host.
The conversation flagged. The coffee was served on the table, and Mr. Reeder helped himself liberally to sugar. He refused a cigar, and, apologizing for his bad manners, took one of his own cigarettes.
“Matches, Thomas,” said Dr. Ingham, but before the footman could obey, Mr. Reeder had taken a box from his pocket and struck a match.
It was no ordinary match: the light of it blazed blindingly white so that he had to screw up his eyes to avoid the glare. Only for a moment, then it died down, leaving the party blinking.
“What was that?” asked Ingham.
Mr. Reeder stared hopelessly at the box.
“Somebody has been playing a joke on me,” he said. “I am terribly sorry.”
They were very ordinary looking matches. He passed the box across to his host, who struck one, but produced nothing more startling than a mild yellow flame.
“I have never seen anything so extraordinary,” said the beautiful lady who sat on his left. “It was almost like a magnesium flare. We see them sometimes when ships are in distress.”
The incident of the match passed. It was the doctor who led the conversation to the Pizarros and Mrs. Ingham who elaborated her theory. J.G. Reeder sat listening, apparently absorbed.
“I don’t think he was a really bad man,” Mrs. Ingham was saying when he interrupted.
“Pizarro was a blackguard,” said Mr. Reeder. “But he had the kind of nature one would have expected in a half-bred Dago.”
If he saw Mrs. Ingham stiffen, he gave no sign.
“Kennedy, his confederate,” he went on, “was, as I said this afternoon, a man to be pitied. His mother was a moral leper, a woman of no worth, the merest chattel.”
Dr. Ingham’s face had gone white and tense, his eyes glowed like red coals, but J.G. Reeder, sitting there with his hands thrust into his trouser pockets, his cigarette hanging limply from his lower lip, continued as though he had the fullest approval of the company.
“Kennedy was really the brain of the gang, if you can call it a brain, the confidence man with some sort of college education. He married Pizarro’s daughter, who was not a nice young lady. He was, I think, her fourth lover before he married her--if they were married at all…”
“Take that back, you damned liar!”
The woman was on her feet, glowering down at him, her shrill voice almost a scream.
“You liar, you beast!”
“Shut up!”
It was Dr. Ingham’s voice--harsh, commanding. But the injunction came too late. One of Mr. Reeder’s hands had come out from his pocket and it held an automatic of heavy calibre. He came to his feet so quickly that they were unprepared for the manœuvre.
Mr. Reeder pushed the chair behind, and leant back against the wall. Thomas, the footman, had come in running, but stopped now at the sight of the pistol. Mr. Reeder addressed him: “I’m afraid I hurt you Thursday night,” he said, pleasantly. “A pellet from an air pistol can be very painful. I owe you an apology--I intended it to be for your friend.”
He nodded towards the butler.
“It was very stupid of you, Dr. Ingham, to allow your two men to come to London, and it led to very unpleasant consequences. I saw the dead man to-day. Rather a powerful looking fellow named Gelpin. The knuckles of his hand were bruised. I presume that, in an unguarded moment, you went too near to him without your body-guard.”
He reached one of the long windows, and with a quick movement of his hand he drew the curtain aside. The window was open. The military looking man who had accompanied him from London climbed through. Then followed the three who had followed Mr. Reeder to the house. Dr. Ingham stood paralysed to inaction.
Suddenly he turned and darted towards the small door in a corner of the room. Mr. Reeder’s pistol exploded and the panel of the door split noisily. Ingham stood stock still--a pitiable, panic-stricken thing, and he came staggering back.
“It wasn’t my idea, Reeder,” he said. “I will tell you everything. I can prove I had nothing to do with it. They are all safe, all of them.”
Stooping, almost beneath his feet he turned back the heavy carpet, and Reeder saw a large stone flag in which was inserted a heavy metal ring.
“They are all alive… every one of them. I shot Gelpin in self defence. He would have killed me if I hadn’t killed him.”
“And Litnoff?” asked Mr. Reeder, almost good humouredly.
Dr. Ingham was silent.
Mr. Reeder wrote in his case book:
Dr. Ingham’s real name was Casius Kennedy. He was born in England, convicted at the age of seventeen for obtaining money under false pretences. He afterwards became a reformed character and addressed many revival meetings, and he was known as a boy preacher. He was again convicted on a charge of obtaining money by a trick, sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment, and on his discharge emigrated to America, where he fell in with Pizarro and assisted him in most of his swindles.
He was very useful to Pizarro, gaining, as he did, the confidence of victims by his appeals in various pulpits. He either acquired, or assumed, the title of doctor of divinity.
After the biggest of the Pizarro swindles he escaped to California and in some way, which is not known, acquired a very considerable fortune, most of which he lost in speculation subsequent to his arrival in England.
In his statement to me he was emphatic on this one point: that after he had built Grayne Hall on the foundations of the old castle, and he discovered the commodious dungeons which, I can testify, were in a remarkable state of preservation beneath the house, he had no intention of making illicit use of them until his heavy losses compelled him to look around for a method of replenishing his exchequer.
Five years ago he met a Russian actor named Litnoff, a drunkard who was on the point of being arrested for debt, and who was afraid that he might be deported to his own country, where he was wanted by the Tcheka for a number of political offences.
Kennedy and his wife, with the approval and assistance of Litnoff, evolved a scheme whereby big money could be made. Litnoff took a small flat in London mansions, which was cheaply furnished, and it was here that the swindle was worked. Very carefully and with all his old cleverness, Kennedy got into touch with the likely victims, and naturally he chose the credulous people who would subscribe money to the Pizarro Syndicate. One by one the “doctor” made their acquaintance. He studied their habits, their methods of life, found out at what hotels they stayed when they were in London, their hobbies and their weaknesses. In some cases it took three months to establish confidence, and when this was done, Kennedy mentioned casually the story of the dying Russian who had escaped from Petrograd with a chest full of jewellery looted from the palaces of the nobility.
Mr. Ralph’s statement may be taken as typical of them all:
“I met Dr. Ingham, or Kennedy, after some correspondence. He was very charming and obviously well-to-do. He was staying at the best hotel in London, and I dined with him twice--on one occasion with his wife.
“He told me he was engaged in voluntary mission work, in the course of which he had attended a dying Russian, who put up a most extraordinary proposition, namely: that he should buy a small farm in Switzerland, the property of Litnoff, on which he had buried half a million pounds’ worth of jewellery. The story, though seemingly far-fetched, could be confirmed. His brother was living on the farm. Both men had been chased and watched until life had become unendurable.
“‘There is something in this story,’ said the clergyman. ‘This fellow, Litnoff, has in his possession a piece of jewellery which must be worth at least a thousand pounds. He keeps it under his pillow.’
“I was intrigued by the story. It appealed to my romantic fancy, and when the doctor asked me if I would like to see the man, I agreed to meet him one night, promising not to mention to a soul the Russian’s secret.
“Dr. Ingham called for me at midnight. We drove to a place in Bloomsbury and I was admitted to a very poorly furnished flat. In one of the rooms was a very sick-looking man, who spoke with difficulty in broken English. He told me of all the espionage to which he and his brother were subjected. He was in fear of his life, he said. He dared not offer the jewels for fear that the agents of the Russian government traced him. The scheme he had seemed, from my point of view, to be beyond risk to myself. It was that I should go out to Montreux, see his brother, inspect the jewels and buy the farm, the purchase money to include the contents of the chest. If I was not satisfied, or if I thought there was any trick, I needn’t pay my money until I was sure that the deal was genuine.
“He showed me a diamond clasp, bid me to take it away with me and have it valued.
“This conversation took a very long time: he spoke with great difficulty, sometimes we had to wait for ten minutes whilst he recovered his breath. I took the clasp with me and had it valued, returning it to Dr. Ingham the same night.
“It was he who suggested that my safest plan was to carry no money at all, but buy a letter of credit. He was most anxious, he said, that I should take no risk.
“I was much impressed by the seeming genuineness of the scheme and by the fact that the risk was apparently negligible. He asked me to respect the Russian’s urgent plea that I should not speak a word to a soul either about my intentions or my plans. I bought the letter of credit, and it was arranged that I should travel to Dr. Ingham’s house by car, spend the night there and go on by the mid-day boat to Calais and Switzerland.
“I arrived at Grayne Hall at about six o’clock in the evening, and I was impressed by the luxury of the place. I hadn’t the slightest suspicion that anything was wrong.
“At half past seven I joined Dr. Ingham and his wife at dinner. I didn’t drink anything until the port came round, but after that I have no recollection of what happened until I woke and found myself in a small stone chamber. There was a candle fixed to a stone niche, with half a dozen other candles and a box of matches to supply the light, the only light I saw until I was rescued. There was an iron bed, a patch of carpet on the floor, and a washing set, but no other furniture. Twice in the twenty-four hours the two men, who are known as Thomas and Leonard, and whom I remember having seen wearing the livery of servants, took me out for exercise up and down a long stone corridor which ran the length of the house. I did not see any other prisoner, but I knew they were there because I had heard one shouting. My letter of credit had been taken from me. I only saw the man Kennedy once, when he came down and asked me to write a letter on the notepaper of a foreign hotel, addressed to my daughter, and telling her I was well and that she was not to worry about me.”
It was clear that the success of the scheme depended upon the discretion of Litnoff. The man was a drunkard, but so long as he gave no hint as to where his money came from, there was no danger to the gang. It was when he began to talk about the diamond clasp that the Kennedys decided that, for their own safety, they must silence him. They knew the game was up and made preparations for a getaway, but to the end they hoped they might avoid this. I discovered by enquiry that a small yacht had been chartered provisionally a week before their arrest. It was at the time in Dover Harbour, and if their plans were carried out, they were leaving a few days after my arrival at Grayne Hall.
A new complication arose when Kennedy went down to carry food to the prisoners on the night of Gelpin’s death. The two servants were away in London. They had been commissioned to stop Edelsheim from seeing me. It is possible that Kennedy over-rated his strength, or placed too much reliance upon the revolver which he carried--one which he had taken from another prisoner--Frank Seafield.
Kennedy states that Gelpin, who was a very strong man, attacked him without provocation, but as to this we shall never know the truth; but he was killed in the corridor, because the other prisoners heard the shot.
In the early hours of the morning the two servants returned, and the body was driven straight away to London and deposited in Epping forest.
I cannot exactly state when my own suspicions concerning Dr. Ingham were aroused. I rather think it was on the occasion of his first visit to me. His obvious anxiety to anticipate the arrival of Joan Ralph, Alsby’s statement, my talk with the chemist, and Edelsheim’s narrative all pointed to one conclusion: obviously here was a confidence trick on a large scale, and, after I had seen the survey map of the district in which Grayne Hall is situated, and made a few enquiries about the old castle, the possibility that this was a case of wholesale kidnapping became a certainty.
I had to be sure that “Dr. Ingham” was Kennedy, and on the last occasion we met in my office, I was compelled, I regret to say, to slander his mother. Though he was livid with rage, he kept control of himself, but he showed me enough to satisfy me that my suspicions were correct.
I tried the same trick at Grayne Hall, but I only did it after lighting a magnesium match, which was a signal agreed upon between myself and the police who, I knew, were outside the house, that it was time for them to make a move.
Underneath he wrote:
Casius Kennedy, convicted of murder at the C.C.C. Executed at Pentonville Prison. (Elford--executioner.)
Elsa Kennedy, convicted at C.C.C. Life.
Thomas J. Pentafard, convicted at C.C.C. Criminal conspiracy and accessory to murder. Life.
Leonard Polenski, convicted at C.C.C. Criminal conspiracy and accessory to murder. Life.
