(“The trouble about Reeder,” said Gaylor to the superintendent in the course of a long telephone conversation, “is that you feel he does know something which he shouldn’t know. I’ve never seen him in a case where he hasn’t given me the impression that he was the guilty party--he knew so much about the crime?”
“Humour him,” said the superintendent. “He’ll be in the Public Prosecutor’s Department one of these days. He never was in a case that he didn’t make himself an accessory by pinching half the clues.”)
At five o’clock the detective shook the sleeper awake.
“You’d better go home, old man,” he said. “We’ll leave an officer in charge here.”
Mr. Reeder rose with a groan, splashed some soda-water from a syphon into a glass and drank it.
“I must stay, I’m afraid, unless you have any very great objection.”
“What’s the idea of waiting?” asked Gaylor in surprise.
Mr. Reeder looked from side to side as though he were seeking an answer.
“I have a theory--an absurd one, of course--but I believe the murderers will come back. And honestly I don’t think your policeman would be of much use, unless you were inclined to give the poor fellow the lethal weapon necessary to defend himself.”
Gaylor sat down squarely before him, his large gloved hands on his knees.
“Tell papa,” he said.
Mr. Reeder looked at him pathetically.
“There is nothing to tell, my dear Mr. Gaylor; merely suspicion, bred, as I said, in my peculiarly morbid mind, having perhaps no foundation in fact. Those two cards, for example--that was a stupid piece of bravado. But it has happened before. You remember the Teignmouth case, and the Lavender Hill case, with the man with the slashed chest? I think they must get these ideas out of books,” he said, bending over to stir the embers of the fire. “The craze for that kind of literature must necessarily produce its reaction.”
Gaylor took the cards from his pockets and examined them.
“A bit of tomfoolery,” was his verdict.
Mr. Reeder sighed and shook his head at the fire.
“Murderers as a rule have no sense of humour. They are excitable people, frightened people, but they are never comic people.”
He walked to the door and pulled it open. Snow had ceased to fall. He came back.
“Where is the policeman you propose leaving on duty?” he asked.
“I’ll find one,” said Gaylor. “There are half-a-dozen within call. A whistle will bring one along.”
Mr. Reeder looked at him thoughtfully.
“I don’t think I should. Let us wait until daylight--or perhaps you wish to go? I don’t think anybody would harm you. I rather fancy they would be glad to see the back of you.”
“Harm me?” said Gaylor indignantly, but Reeder took no notice of the interruption.
“My own idea is that I should brew a dish of tea, and possibly fry a few eggs. I am a little hungry.”
Gaylor walked to the door and frowned out into the darkness. He had worked with Reeder before, and was too wise a man to reject the advice summarily. Besides, if Reeder was entering or had entered the Public Prosecutor’s Department, he would occupy a rank equivalent to superintendent.
“I’m all for eggs,” said Gaylor, and bolted the outer door.
The older man disappeared into the kitchen and came back with a kettle, which he placed upon the fire, went out again and returned with a frying-pan.
“Do you ever take your hat off?” asked Gaylor curiously.
Mr. Reeder did not turn his head, but shook the pan gently to ensure an even distribution of the boiling fat.
“Very rarely,” he said. “On Christmas Days sometimes.”
And then Gaylor asked a fatuous question; at least, it sounded fatuous to him, and yet subconsciously he felt that the other might supply an immediate and dramatic answer.
“Who killed Wentford?”
“Two men, possibly three,” said Mr. Reeder instantly; “but I rather think two. Neither was a professional burglar. One at any rate thought more of the killing than of any profit he might have got out of it. Neither found anything worth taking, and even if they had opened the safe they would have discovered nothing of value. The young lady, Miss Margot Lynn, could, I think, have saved them a lot of trouble in their search for treasure--I may be mistaken here, but I rarely fall into error. Miss Margot is----”
He stopped, looked round quickly.
“What is it?” asked Gaylor, but Reeder put his finger to his lips.
He rose, moving across the room to the door which led to the tiny lobby through which he had made his entrance. He stood with one hand on the knob, and Gaylor saw that in the other was a Browning pistol. Slowly he turned the handle. The door was locked from the inside.
In two strides Reeder was at the front door, turned the key and pulled it open. Then, to the inspector’s amazement, he saw his companion take one step and fall sprawling on his face in the snow. He ran to his assistance. Something caught him by the ankle and flung him forward.
Reeder was on his feet and assisted the other to rise.
“A little wire fastened between the door posts,” he explained.
A bright beam shot out from his electric torch as he turned the corner of the house. There was nobody in sight, but the window, which he had fastened, was open, and there were new footprints in the snow leading away into the darkness.
“Well, I’m damned!” said Gaylor.
J.G. Reeder said nothing. He was smiling when he came back into the room, having stopped to break the wire with a kick.
“Do you think somebody was in the lobby?”
“I know somebody was in the lobby,” he said. “Dear me! How foolish of us not to have had a policeman posted outside the door! You notice that a pane of glass has been cut? Our friend must have been listening there.”
“Was there only one?”
“Only one,” said Mr. Reeder gravely. “But was he the one who came that way before--I don’t think so.”
He took the frying-pan from the hearth where he had put it and resumed his frying of eggs, served them on two plates and brewed the tea. It was just as though death had not lurked in that lobby a few minutes before.
“No, they won’t come back; there is no longer a reason for our staying. There were two, but only one came into the house. The roads are very heavy, and they may have a long way to travel, and they would not risk being anywhere near at daybreak. At six o’clock the agricultural labourer of whom the poet Gray wrote so charmingly will be on his way to work, and they won’t risk meeting him either.”
They had a solemn breakfast, Gaylor plying the other with questions, which in the main he did not answer.
“You think that Miss Lynn is in this--in the murder, I mean?”
Reeder shook his head.
“No, no,” he said. “I’m afraid it isn’t as easy as that.”
Daylight had come greyly when, having installed a cold policeman in the house, they plodded down the lane. Reeder’s car had been retrieved in the night, and a more powerful machine, fitted with chain-wheels, was waiting to take them to Beaconsfield. They did not reach that place for two hours, for on their way they came upon a little knot of policemen and farm labourers looking sombrely at the body of Constable Verity. He lay under some bushes a few yards from the road, and he was dead.
“Shot,” said a police officer. “The divisional surgeon has just seen him.”
Stiff and cold, with his booted legs stretched wide, his overcoat turned up and his snow-covered cap drawn over his eyes, was the officer who had ridden out from the station courtyard so unsuspectingly the night before. His horse had already been found; the bloodstains that had puzzled and alarmed the police were now accounted for.
Gaylor and Reeder drove on into Beaconsfield. Gaylor was a depressed and silent man; Mr. Reeder was silent but not depressed.
As they came out into the main road he turned to his companion, and asked:
