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Title: Terror Keep
Author: Wallace, Richard Horatio Edgar (1875-1932)
Date of first publication: 1927
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1928
   [Scotland Yard Edition]
Date first posted: 8 December 2012
Date last updated: 8 December 2012
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1019

This ebook was produced by Al Haines




  SCOTLAND YARD EDITION




  TERROR
  KEEP


  BY

  EDGAR WALLACE




  DOUBLEDAY, DORAN & COMPANY, INC.
  GARDEN CITY--NEW YORK--1928




  COPYRIGHT, 1926, 1927, BY EDGAR
  WALLACE.  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE
  COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N.Y.



TERROR KEEP




FOREWORD

Rightly speaking, it is improper, not to say illegal, for those sadly
privileged few who go in and out of Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum,
to have pointed out to them any particular character, however notorious
he may have been or to what heights of public interest his infamy had
carried him, before the testifying doctors and a merciful jury
consigned him to this place without hope.  But often had John Flack
been pointed out as he shuffled about the grounds, his hands behind
him, his chin on his breast, a tall, lean old man in an ill-fitting
suit of drab clothing, who spoke to nobody and was spoken to by few.

"That is Flack--THE Flack--the cleverest crook in the world....  Crazy
John Flack ... nine murders..."

In their queer, sane moments, men who were in Broadmoor for isolated
homicides were rather proud of Old John.  The officers who locked him
up at night and watched him as he slept had little to say against him,
because he gave no trouble, and through all the six years of his
incarceration had never once been seized of those frenzies which so
often end in the hospital for some poor innocent devil, and a
rubber-padded cell for the frantic author of misfortune.

He spent most of his time writing and reading, for he was something of
a genius with his pen, and wrote with extraordinary rapidity.  He
filled hundreds of little exercise books with his great treatise on
crime.  The governor humoured him; allowed him to retain the books,
expecting in due course to add them to his already interesting museum.

Once, as a great concession, Old Jack gave him a book to read, and the
governor read and gasped.  It was entitled "Method of robbing a bank
vault when only two guards are employed."  The governor, who had been a
soldier, read and read, stopping now and then to rub his head; for this
document, written in the neat, legible hand of John Flack, was
curiously reminiscent of a divisional order for attack.  No detail was
too small to be noted; every contingency was provided for.  Not only
were the constituents of the drug to be employed to "settle the outer
watchman" given, but there was an explanatory note which may be quoted:


"If this drug is not procurable, I advise that the operator should call
upon a suburban doctor and describe the following symptoms....  The
doctor will then prescribe the drug in a minute quantity.  Six bottles
of this medicine should be procured and the following method adopted to
extract the drug...."


"Have you written much like this, Flack?" asked the wondering officer.

"This?"  John Flack shrugged his lean shoulders.  "I am doing this for
amusement, just to test my memory.  I have already written sixty-three
books on the subject, and those works are beyond improvement.  During
the six years I have been here, I have not been able to think of a
single improvement on my old system."

Was he jesting?  Was this a flight of a disordered mind?  The governor,
used as he was to his patients and their peculiar ways, was not certain.

"You mean you have written an encyclopdia of crime?" he asked
incredulously.  "Where is it to be found?"

Old Flack's thin lips curled in a disdainful smile, but he made no
answer.

Sixty-three hand-written volumes represented the life work of John
Flack.  It was the one achievement upon which he prided himself.

On another occasion, when the governor referred to his extraordinary
literary labours, he said: "I have put a huge fortune in the hands of
any clever man--providing, of course," he mused, "that he is a man of
resolution and the books fall into his hands at a very early date.  In
these days of scientific discovery, what is a novelty to-day is a
commonplace to-morrow."

The governor had his doubts as to the existence of these deplorable
volumes, but very soon after the conversation took place he had to
revise his judgment.  Scotland Yard, which seldom if ever chases
chimeras, sent down one Chief Inspector Simpson, who was a man entirely
without imagination and had been promoted for it.

His interview with Crazy John Flack was a brief one.  "About these
books of yours, Jack," he said.  "It would be terrible if they fell
into wrong hands.  Ravini says you've got a hundred volumes hidden
somewhere."

"Ravini?"  Old John Flack showed his teeth.  "Listen, Simpson!  You
don't think you're going to keep me in this awful place all my life, do
you?  If you do, you've got another guess coming.  I'll skip one of
these odd nights--you can tell the governor if you like--and then
Ravini and I are going to have a little talk."

His voice grew high and shrill.  The old mad glitter that Simpson had
seen before came back to his eyes.

"Do you ever have daydreams, Simpson?  I have three!  I've got a new
method of getting away with a million: that's one, but it's not
important.  Another one is Reeder: you can tell J. G. what I say.  It's
a dream of meeting him alone one nice, dark, foggy night, when the
police can't tell which way the screams are coming.  And the third is
Ravini: George Ravini's got one chance, and that is for him to die
before I get out!"

"You're mad," said Simpson.

"That's what I'm here for," said John Flack truthfully.

This conversation with Simpson and that with the governor were two of
the longest he ever had, all the six years he was in Broadmoor.  Mostly
when he wasn't writing he strolled about the grounds, his chin on his
chest, his hands clasped behind him.  Occasionally, he reached a
certain place near the high wall, and it is said that he threw letters
over, though this is very unlikely.  What is more possible is that he
found a messenger who carried his many and cryptic letters to the outer
world and brought in exchange monosyllabic replies.  He was very
friendly with the officer in charge of his ward, and one early morning
this man was discovered with his throat cut.  The ward door was open,
and John Flack had gone out into the world to realize his daydreams.




CHAPTER I

There were two subjects which irritated the mind of Margaret Belman as
the Southern Express carried her toward Selford Junction and the branch
line train which crawled from the junction to Siltbury.  The first of
these was, not unnaturally, the drastic changes she now contemplated,
the second the effect they already had had upon Mr. J. G. Reeder, that
mild and middle-aged man.

When she had announced that she was seeking a post in the country, he
might at least have shown some evidence of regret; a certain glumness
would have been appropriate, at any rate.  Instead, he had brightened
visibly at the prospect.

"I am afraid I shan't be able to come to London very often," she had
said.

"That is good news," said Mr. Reeder, and added some banality about the
value of periodical changes of air and the beauty of getting near to
nature.

In fact, he had been more cheerful than he had been for a week--which
was rather exasperating.

Margaret Belman's pretty face puckered as she recalled her
disappointment and chagrin.  All thoughts of dropping this application
of hers disappeared.  Not that she imagined for one moment that a
six-hundred-a-year secretaryship was going to drop into her lap for the
mere asking.  She was wholly unsuited to the job; she had had no
experience in hotel work; and the chances of her being accepted were
remote.

As to the Italian who had made so many attempts to make her
acquaintance--he was one of the unpleasant commonplaces so familiar to
a girl who worked for her living that in ordinary circumstances she
would not have given him a second thought.

But that morning he had followed her to the station, and she was
certain that he had heard her tell the girl who came with her that she
was returning by the 6:15.  A policeman would deal effectively with
him--if she cared to risk the publicity.  But a girl, however annoyed,
shrinks from such an ordeal; she must deal with him in her own way.

That was not a happy prospect, and the two matters in combination were
sufficient to spoil what otherwise might have been a very happy or
interesting afternoon.

As to Mr. Reeder--

Margaret Belman frowned.  She was twenty-three, an age when youngish
men are rather tiresome.  On the other hand, men in the region of fifty
are not especially attractive.  She loathed Mr. Reeder's side whiskers;
they made him look rather like a Scottish butler.  Of course, he was a
dear....

Here the train reached the junction and she found herself at the
surprisingly small station of Siltbury before she had quite made up her
mind whether she was in love with Mr. Reeder or merely annoyed with him.

The driver of the station cab stopped his unhappy-looking horse before
the small gateway and pointed with his whip.

"This is the best way in for you, miss," he said.  "Mr. Daver's office
is at the end of the path."

He was a shrewd old man, who had driven many applicants for the post of
secretary at Larmes Keep, and he guessed that this one, the prettiest
of all, did not come as a guest.  In the first place, she brought no
baggage, and then, too, the ticket collector had come running after her
to hand back the return half of her railway ticket, which she had
absent-mindedly surrendered.

"I'd better wait for you, miss?"

"Oh, yes, please," said Margaret Belman hastily as she got down from
the dilapidated victoria.

"You got an appointment?"

The cabman was a local character, and local characters assume
privileges.

"I ast you," he explained carefully, "because lots of young wimmin have
come up to Larmes without appointments and Mr. Daver wouldn't see 'em.
They just cut out the advertisement and come along, but the 'ad' says
_write_.  I suppose I've made a dozen journeys with young wimmin who
ain't got appointments.  I'm telling you for your own good."

The girl smiled.

"You might have warned them before they left the station," she said
with good-humour, "and saved them the cab fare.  Yes, I have an
appointment."

From where she stood by the gate, she had a clear view of Larmes Keep.
It bore no resemblance to a hotel and less to the superior boarding
house that she knew it to be.  That part of the house which had been
the original Keep was easily distinguished, though the gray, straight
walls were masked with ivy that covered also part of the buildings
which had been added in the course of the years.

She looked across a smooth green lawn, on which were set a few wicker
chairs and tables, to a rose garden which, even in autumn, was a blaze
of colour.  Behind this was a belt of pine trees that seemed to run to
the cliff's edge.  She had a glimpse of a gray-blue sea and a blur of
dim smoke from a steamer invisible below the straight horizon.  A
gentle wind carried the fragrance of the pines to her, and she sniffed
ecstatically.

"Isn't it gorgeous!" she breathed.

The cabman said it "wasn't bad" and pointed with his whip again.

"It's that little square place--only built a few years ago.  Mr. Daver
is more of a writing gentleman than a boarding-house gentleman."

She unlatched the oaken gate and walked up the stone path toward the
sanctum of the writing gentleman.  On either side of the crazy pavement
was a deep border of flowers--she might have been passing through a
cottage garden.

There was a long window and a small green door to the annex.  Evidently
she had been seen, for, as her hand went up to the brass bell-push, the
door opened.

It was obviously Mr. Daver himself.  A tall, thin man of fifty, with a
yellow, elflike face and a smile that brought all her sense of humour
into play.  Very badly she wanted to laugh.  The long upper lip
overhung the lower, and except that the face was thin and lined, he had
the appearance of some grotesque and foolish mascot.  The staring,
round brown eyes, the puckered forehead, and a twist of hair that stood
upright on the crown of his head made him more brownie-like than ever.

"Miss Belman?" he asked, with a certain eagerness.

He lisped slightly and had a trick of clasping his hands as if he were
in an agony of apprehension lest his manner should displease.

"Come into my den," he said, and gave such emphasis to the last word
that she nearly laughed again.

The "den" was a very comfortably furnished study, one wall of which was
covered with books.  Closing the door behind her, he pushed up a chair
with a little nervous laugh.

"I'm so very glad you came.  Did you have a comfortable journey?  I'm
sure you did.  And is London hot and stuffy?  I'm afraid it is.  Would
you like a cup of tea?  Of course you would."

He fired question and answer so rapidly that she had no chance of
replying, and he had taken up a telephone and ordered the tea before
she could express a wish on the subject.

"You are young, very young."  He shook his head sadly,
"Twenty-four--no?  Do you use the typewriter?  What a ridiculous
question to ask!"

"It is very kind of you to see me, Mr. Daver," she said, "and I don't
suppose for one moment that I shall suit you, I have had no experience
in hotel management, and I realize, from the salary you offer----"

"Quiet," said Mr. Daver, shaking his head solemnly: "that is what I
require.  There is very little work, but I wished to be relieved even
of that little.  My own labours"--he waved his hand to a pedestal desk
littered with paper--"are colossal.  I need a lady to keep accounts--to
watch my interests.  Somebody I can trust.  I believe in faces, do you?
I see that you do.  And in character shown in handwriting?  You believe
in that also.  I have advertised for three months and have interviewed
thirty-five applicants.  Impossible!  Their voices--terrible!  I judge
people by their voices.  So do you.  On Monday, when you telephoned, I
said to myself, 'The Voice!'"

He was clasping his hands together so tightly that his knuckles showed
whitely, and this time her laughter was almost beyond arrest.

"Although, Mr. Daver, I know nothing of hotel management, I think I
could learn, and I want the position, naturally.  The salary is
terribly generous."

"'Terribly generous,'" repeated the man, in a murmur.  "How curious
those words sound in juxtaposition!"

The door opened and a woman bearing a silver tray came in.  She was
dressed very neatly in black.  The faded eyes scarcely looked at
Margaret as she stood meekly waiting while Mr. Daver spoke.

"My housekeeper.  How kind of you to bring the tea, Mrs. Burton!--Mrs.
Burton, this is the new secretary to the company.  She must have the
best room in the Keep--the Blue Room.  But--ah!"--he pinched his lip
anxiously--"blue may not be your colour?"

Again Margaret laughed.

"Any colour is my colour," she said.  "But I haven't decided----"

"Go with Mrs. Burton; see the house--your office--your room."

He pointed to the door, and before the girl knew what she was doing she
had followed the housekeeper through the door.  A narrow passage
connected the private office of Mr. Daver with the house, and Margaret
was ushered into a large and lofty room which covered the superficial
area of the Keep.

"The banquittin' 'all," said Mrs. Burton in a thin cockney voice
remarkable for its monotony.  "It's used as a lounge.  We've only got
three boarders.  Mr. Daver's very partic'lar.  We get a lot in for the
winter."

"Three boarders isn't a very paying proposition," said the girl.

Mrs. Burton sniffed.

"Mr. Daver don't want it to pay.  It's the company he likes.  He only
turned it into a boardin' 'ouse because he likes to see people come and
go without having to talk to 'em.  It's a nobby."

"A what?" asked the puzzled girl.  "Oh, you mean a hobby?"

"I said a nobby," said Mrs. Burton, in her listless, uncomplaining way.

Beyond the hall was a small and cosy sitting room with French windows
opening on to the lawn.  Outside the windows, three people sat at tea.
One was an elderly clergyman with a strong, hard face.  He was eating
toast and reading a church paper, oblivious of his companion.  The
second member of the party was a pale-faced girl about Margaret's own
age.  In spite of her pallor she was extraordinarily beautiful.  A pair
of big, dark eyes surveyed the visitor for a moment and then returned
to her companion, a military-looking man of forty.

Mrs. Burton waited until they were ascending the broad stairway to the
upper floor before she "introduced" them.  "The clergyman's a Reverend
Dean from South Africa, the young lady's Miss Olga Crewe, the other
gent is Colonel Hothling--they're boarders.--This is your room, miss."

It was indeed a gem of an apartment; the sort of room that Margaret
Belman had dreamed about.  It was exquisitely furnished, and, like all
the other rooms at Larmes Keep (as she discovered later), was provided
with its private bathroom.  The walls were panelled to half their
height; the ceilings heavily beamed.  She guessed that beneath the
parquet was the original stone-flagged floor.

Margaret looked and sighed.  It was going to be very hard to refuse
this post.  Why she should think of refusing it at all she could not
for the life of her understand.

"It's a beautiful room," she said.

Mrs. Burton cast an apathetic eye round the apartment.

"It's old," she said.  "I don't like old houses.  I used to live in
Brixton----"

She stopped abruptly, sniffed in a deprecating way, and jingled the
keys that she carried in her hand.

"You're suited, I suppose?"

"Suited?  You mean, am I taking the appointment?  I don't know yet."

Mrs. Burton looked round vaguely.  The girl had the impression that she
was trying to say something in praise of the place---something that
would prejudice her in favour of accepting the appointment.  Then she
spoke.

"The food's good," she said, and Margaret smiled.

When she came back through the hall she saw the three people she had
seen at tea.  The Colonel was walking by himself; the clergyman and the
pale-faced girl were strolling across the lawn talking to one another.

Mr. Daver was sitting at his desk, his high forehead resting on his
palm, and he was biting the end of a pen as Mrs. Burton closed the door
on them.

"You like the room: naturally.  You will start--when?  Next Monday
week, I think.  What a relief!  You have seen Mrs. Burton."  He wagged
a finger at her roguishly.  "Ah!  Now you know!  It is impossible!  Can
I leave her to meet the duchess and speed the duke?  Can I trust her to
adjust the little quarrels that naturally arise between guests?  You
are right--I can't.  I must have a lady here--I must!  I must!"

He nodded emphatically, his impish brown eyes fixed on hers, the
bulging upper lip grotesquely curved in a delighted grin.

"My work suffers, as you see; constantly to be brought from my studies
to settle such matters as the fixing of a tennis net--intolerable!"

"You write a great deal?" she managed to ask.

She felt she must postpone her decision to the last possible moment.

"A great deal.  On crime.  Ah, you are interested?  I am preparing an
encyclopdia of crime!"

He said this impressively, dramatically.

"On crime?"

He nodded.

"It is one of my hobbies.  I am a rich man and can afford hobbies.
This place is a hobby.  I lose four thousand a year, but I am
satisfied.  I pick and choose my own guests.  If one bores me I tell
him to go--that his room has been taken.  Could I do that if they were
my friends?  No!  They interest me; they fill the house; they give me
company and amusement.  When will you come?"

She hesitated.

"I think----"

"Monday week?  Excellent!"  He shook her hand vigorously.

"You need not be lonely.  If my guests bore you, invite your own
friends.  Let them come as the guests of the house.  Until Monday!"

She was walking down the garden path to the waiting cabman, a little
dazed, more than a little undecided.

"Did you get the place, miss?" asked the friendly cabman.

"I suppose I did," replied Margaret.

She looked back toward Larmes Keep.  The lawns were empty, but near at
hand she had a glimpse of a woman.  Only for a second, and then she
disappeared in a belt of laurel that ran parallel with the boundary
wall of the property.  Evidently there was a rough path through the
bushes, and Mrs. Burton had sought this hiding place.  Her hands
covered her face as she staggered forward blindly, and the faint sound
of her sobs came back to the astonished girl.

"That's the housekeeper--she's a bit mad," said the cabman calmly.




CHAPTER II

George Ravini was not an unpleasant looking man.  From his own point of
view, which was naturally prejudiced, he was extremely attractive, with
his crisp brown hair, his handsome Neapolitan features, his height and
his poise.  And when to his natural advantages were added the best suit
that Savile Row could create, the most spotless of gray hats, and the
malacca sword-stick on which one kid-gloved hand rested as upon the
hilt of a foil, the shiniest of enamelled shoes, and the finest of gray
silk socks, the picture was well framed and embellished.

Greatest embellishment of all were George Ravini's luck rings.  He was
a superstitious man and addicted to charms.  On the little finger of
his right hand were three gold rings, and in each ring three large
diamonds.  The luck stones of Ravini were one of the traditions of
Saffron Hill.

Most of the time he had the half-amused, half-bored smile of a man for
whom life held no mysteries and could offer in experience little that
was new.  And the smile was justified, for George knew most of the
things that were happening in London or likely to happen.

He had worked outward from a one-room house in Saffron Hill, where he
first saw the light; had enlarged the narrow horizons which surrounded
his childhood so that now, in place of the poverty-stricken child who
had shared a bed with his father's performing monkey, he was not only
the possessor of a classy flat in Half Moon Street, but the owner of
the block in which it was situated.  His balance at the Continental
Bank was a generous one; he had securities which brought him an income
beyond his needs, and a larger revenue from the two night clubs and
gambling houses which he controlled, to say nothing of the perquisites
which came his way from a score of other sources.

The word of Ravini was law from Leyton to Clerkenwell; his fiats were
obeyed within a mile radius of Fitzroy Square; and no other gang leader
in London might raise his head without George's permission save at the
risk of waking in the casualty ward of the Middlesex Hospital entirely
surrounded by bandages.

He waited patiently on the broad space of Waterloo Station,
occasionally consulting his gold wrist watch, and surveyed with a
benevolent and proprietorial eye the stream of life that flowed from
the barriers.

The station clock showed a quarter after six.  He glanced at his watch
and scanned the crowd that was debouching from No. 7 platform.  After a
few minutes' scrutiny, he saw the girl, and with a pat to his cravat
and a touch to the brim of his hat which set it tilting, he strolled to
meet her.

Margaret Belman was too intent with her own thoughts to be thinking
about the debonair and youngish man who had so often sought an
introduction by the conventional method of pretending they had met
before.  Indeed, in the excitement of her visit to Larmes Keep, she had
forgotten that this pestiferous gallant existed or was likely to be
waiting for her on her return from the country.

George Ravini stopped and waited for her approach, smiling his
approval.  He liked slim girls of her colouring: girls who dressed
rather severely and wore rather nice stockings and plain little hats.
He raised his hat; the luck stones glittered beautifully.

"Oh!" said Margaret Belman, and stopped, too.

"Good-evening, Miss Belman," said George, flashing his white teeth.
"Quite a coincidence, meeting you again."

As she attempted to walk past him, he fell in by her side.

"I wish I had my car here, I might have driven you home," he said
conversationally.  "I've got a new 20 Rolls--rather a neat little
machine.  I don't use it a great deal--I like to walk from Half Moon
Street."

"Are you walking to Half Moon Street now?" she asked quietly.

But George was a man of experience.

"Your way is my way," he said.

She stopped.

"What is your name?" she asked.

"Smith--Anderton Smith," he answered readily.  "Why do you want to
know?"

"I want to tell the next policeman we meet," she said, and Mr. Ravini,
not unaccustomed to such threats, was amused.

"Don't be a silly little girl," he said.  "I'm doing no harm and you
don't want to get your name in the newspapers.  Besides, I should
merely say that you asked me to walk with you and that we were old
friends."

She looked at him steadily.

"I may meet a friend very soon who will need a lot of convincing," she
said.  "Will you please go away?"

George was pleased to stay, as he explained.

"What a foolish young lady you are!" he began.  "I'm merely offering
you the common courtesies----"

A hand gripped his arm and slowly pulled him round--and this in broad
daylight on Waterloo Station, under the eyes of at least two of his own
tribe.  Mr. Ravini's dark eyes snapped dangerously.

And yet seemingly his assailant was a most inoffensive man.  He was
tall and rather melancholy-looking.  He wore a frock coat buttoned
tightly across his breast and a high, flat-crowned, hard felt hat.  On
his biggish nose a pair of steel-rimmed pince-nez were set at an
awkward angle.  A slither of sandy side whiskers decorated his cheek,
and hooked to his arm was a lightly furled umbrella.  Not that George
examined these details with any care: they were rather familiar to him.
He knew Mr. J. G. Reeder, detective to the Public Prosecutor's office,
and the fight went out of his eyes.

"Why, Mr. Reeder!" he said, with a geniality that almost sounded
sincere.  "This is a pleasant surprise.  Meet my young lady friend Miss
Belman--I was just taking her along----"

"Not to the Flotsam Club for a cup of tea?" murmured Mr. Reeder in a
tone of pain.  "Not to Harraby's Restaurant?  Don't tell me that,
Giorgio!  Dear me!  How interesting either experience would be!"

He beamed upon the scowling Italian.

"At the Flotsam," he went on, "you would have been able to show the
young lady where your friends caught young Lord Fallen for three
thousand pounds only the night before last--so they tell me.  At
Harraby's you might have shown her that interesting little room where
the police come in by the back way whenever you consider it expedient
to betray one of your friends.  She has missed a treat!"

George Ravini's smile did not harmonize with his sudden pallor.

"Now, listen, Mr. Reeder----"

"I'm sorry I can't, Giorgio."  Mr. Reeder shook his head mournfully.
"My time is precious.  Yet, I will spare you one minute to tell you
that Miss Belman is a very particular friend of mine.  If her
experience of to-day is repeated, who knows what might happen, for I
am, as you probably know, a malicious man."  He eyed the Italian
thoughtfully.  "Is it malice, I wonder, which inhibits a most
interesting revelation which I have on the tip of my tongue?  I wonder.
The human mind, Mr. Ravini, is a curious and complex thing.  Well,
well, I must be getting along.  Give my regards to your criminal
associates, and if you find yourself shadowed by a gentleman from
Scotland Yard, bear him no resentment.  He is doing his duty.  And do
not lose sight of my--um--warning about this lady."

"I have said nothing to this young lady that a gentleman shouldn't."

Mr. Reeder peered at Ravini.

"If you have," he said, "you may expect to see me some time this
evening--and I shall not come alone.  In fact"--this in a most
confidential tone--"I shall bring sufficient strong men with me to take
from you the keys of your box in the Fetter Lane Safe Deposit."

That was all he said, and Ravini reeled under the threat.

Before he had quite recovered, Mr. J. G. Reeder and his charge had
disappeared into the throng.




CHAPTER III

"An interesting man," said Mr. Reeder, as the cab crossed Westminster
Bridge.  "He is, in fact, the most interesting man I know at this
particular moment.  It was fate that I should walk into him as I did.
But I wish he wouldn't wear diamond rings!"

He stole a sidelong glance at his companion.

"Well, did you--um--like the place?"

"It is very beautiful," she said; without enthusiasm, "but it is rather
far away from London."

His face fell.

"Have you declined the post?" he asked anxiously.

She half turned in the seat and looked at him.

"Mr. Reeder, I honestly believe you wish to see the back of me!"

To her surprise, Mr. Reeder went very red.

"Why--um--of course I do--I don't, I mean.  But it seems a very good
position, even as a temporary position."  He blinked at her.  "I shall
miss you, I really shall miss you, Miss--um--Margaret.  We have become
such"--here he swallowed something--"good friends, but the--a certain
business is on my mind--I mean, I am rather perturbed."

He looked from one window to the other as though he suspected an
eavesdropper riding on the step of the cab, and then, lowering his
voice:

"I have never discussed with you, my dear Miss--um--Margaret, the
rather unpleasant details of my trade; but there is, or was, a
gentleman named Flack--F-l-a-c-k," he spelt it.  "You remember?" he
asked anxiously, and when she shook her head: "I hoped that you would.
One reads about these things in the public press.  But five years ago
you would have been a child----"

"You're very flattering," she smiled.  "I was, in fact, a grown-up
young lady of eighteen."

"Were you really?" asked Mr. Reeder in a hushed voice.  "You surprise
me!  Well, Mr. Flack was the kind of person one so frequently reads
about in the pages of the sensational novelist--who has not too keen a
regard for the probabilities and facts of life.  A master criminal, the
organizer of--um--a confederation, or, as vulgar people would call it,
gang."

He sighed and closed his eyes, and she thought for one moment he was
praying for the iniquitous criminal.

"A brilliant criminal--it is a terrible thing to confess, but I have
had a reluctant admiration for him.  You see, as I have so often
explained to you, I am cursed with a criminal mind.  But he was mad."

"All criminals are mad: you have explained that so often," she said, a
little tartly, for she was not anxious that the conversation should
drift from her immediate affairs.

"But he was really mad," said Mr. Reeder with great earnestness, and
tapped his forehead deliberately.  "His very madness was his salvation.
He did daring things, but with the cunning of a madman.  He shot down
two policemen in cold blood--he did this at midday in a crowded City
street and got away.  We caught him at last, of course.  People like
that are always caught in this country.  I--um--assisted.  In fact,
I--well, I assisted!  That is why I am thinking of our friend Giorgio;
for it was Mr. Ravini who betrayed him to us for two thousand pounds.
I negotiated the deal, Mr. Ravini being a criminal----"

She stared at him open-mouthed.

"That Italian?  You don't mean that?"

Mr. Reeder nodded.

"Mr. Ravini had dealings with the Flack gang, and by chance learned of
Old John's whereabouts.  We took old John Flack in his sleep."  Mr.
Reeder sighed again.  "He said some very bitter things about me.
People, when they are arrested, frequently exaggerate the shortcomings
of their--er--captors."

"Was he tried?" she asked.

"He was tried," said Mr. Reeder, "on a charge of murder.  But of course
he was mad.  'Guilty but insane' was the verdict, and he was sent to
Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum."

He searched feebly in his pockets, produced a very limp packet of
cigarettes, extracted one, and asked permission to smoke.  She watched
the damp squib of a thing drooping pathetically from his lower lip.
His eyes were staring sombrely through the window at the green of the
park through which they were passing, and he seemed entirely absorbed
in his contemplation of nature.

"But what has that to do with my going into the country?"

Mr. Reeder brought his eyes round to survey her.

"Mr. Flack was a very vindictive man," he said, "a very brilliant
man--I hate confessing this.  And he has--um--a particular grudge
against me, and being what he is, it would not be long before he
discovered that I--er--I--am rather attached to you, Miss--Margaret."

A light dawned on her, and her whole attitude toward him changed as she
gripped his arm.

"You mean, you want me out of London in case something happens?  But
what could happen?  He's in Broadmoor, isn't he?"

Mr. Reeder scratched his chin and looked up at the roof of the cab.

"He escaped a week ago--hum!  He is, I think, in London at this moment."

Margaret Belman gasped.

"Does this Italian--this Ravini man--know?"

"He does not know," said Mr. Reeder carefully, "but I think he will
learn--yes, I think he will learn."

A week later, after Margaret Belman had gone, with some misgivings, to
take up her new appointment, all Mr. Reeder's doubts as to the location
of John Flack were dissipated.

      *      *      *      *      *

There was some slight disagreement between Margaret Belman and Mr.
Reeder, and it happened at lunch on the day she left London.  It
started in fun--not that Mr. Reeder was ever kittenish--by a certain
suggestion she made.  Mr. Reeder demurred.  How she ever summoned the
courage to tell him he was old-fashioned, Margaret never knew--but she
did.

"Of course you could shave them off," she said scornfully.  "It would
make you look ten years younger."

"I don't think, my dear--Miss--um--Margaret, that I wish to look ten
years younger," said Mr. Reeder.

A certain tenseness followed, and she went down to Siltbury feeling a
little uncomfortable.  Yet her heart warmed to him as she realized that
his anxiety to get her out of London was dictated by a desire for her
own safety.  It was not until she was nearing her destination that she
realized that he himself was in no ordinary danger.  She must write and
tell him she was sorry.  She wondered who the Flacks were; the name was
familiar to her, though in the days of their activity she gave little
or no attention to people of their kind.

Mr. Daver, looking more impish than ever, gave her a brief interview on
her arrival.  It was he who took her to her office and very briefly
explained her duties.  They were neither heavy nor complicated, and she
was relieved to discover that she had practically nothing whatever to
do with the management of Larmes Keep.  That was in the efficient hands
of Mrs. Burton.

The staff of the hotel were housed in two cottages about a quarter of a
mile from the Keep, only Mrs. Burton living on the premises.

"This keeps us more select," said Mr. Daver.  "Servants are an
abominable nuisance.  You agree with me?  I thought you would.  If they
are needed in the night, both cottages have telephones, and Grainger,
the porter, has a pass-key to the outer door.  That is an excellent
arrangement--of which you approve?  I am sure you do."

Conversation with Mr. Daver was a little superfluous.  He supplied his
own answers to all questions.

He was leaving the office when she remembered his great study.

"Mr. Daver, do you know anything about the Flacks?"

He frowned.

"Flax?  Let me see, what is flax?"

She spelled the name.

"A friend of mine told me about them the other day," she said.  "I
thought you would know the name.  They are a gang of criminals."

"Flack!  To be sure--to be sure!  Dear me, how very interesting!  Are
you also a criminologist?  John Flack, George Flack, Augustus
Flack"--he spoke rapidly, ticking them off on his long, tobacco-stained
fingers.  "John Flack is in a criminal lunatic asylum; his two brothers
... Terrible fellows, terrible, terrible fellows!  What a marvellous
institution is our police force!  How wonderful is Scotland Yard!  You
agree with me?  I was sure you would.  Flack!"  He frowned and shook
his head.  "I thought of dealing with the Flacks in a short monograph,
but my data is not complete.  Do you know them?"

She shook her head smilingly.

"No, I haven't that advantage."

"Terrible creatures," said Mr. Daver.  "Amazing creatures.  Who is your
friend, Miss Belman?  I should like to meet him.  Perhaps he could tell
me something more about them."

Margaret received the suggestion with dismay.

"Oh, no, you're not likely to meet him," she said hurriedly, "and I
don't think he would talk even if you met him--perhaps it was
indiscreet of me to mention him at all."

The conversation must have weighed on Mr. Daver's mind, for just as she
was leaving her office that night for her room, a very tired girl, he
knocked at the door, opened it at her invitation, and stood in the
doorway.

"I have been going into the records of the Flacks," he said, "and it is
surprising how little information there is.  I have a newspaper cutting
which says that John Flack is dead.  He was the man who went into
Broadmoor.  Is he dead?"

Margaret shook her head.

"I couldn't tell you," she replied untruthfully.  "I only heard a
casual reference to him."

Mr. Daver scratched his round chin.

"I thought possibly somebody might have told you a few facts which you,
so to speak, a laywoman"--he giggled--"might have regarded as
unimportant, but which I----"

He hesitated expectantly.

"That is all I know, Mr. Daver," said Margaret.

She slept soundly that night; the distant hush-hush of the waves as
they rolled up the long beach of Siltbury Bay lulling her to dreamless
slumber.

Her duties did not begin till after breakfast, which she had in her
office, and the largest part was the checking of the accounts.
Apparently, Mrs. Burton attended to that side of the management, and it
was only at the month's end, when checks were to be drawn, that her
work was likely to be heavy.  In the main, her day was taken up with
correspondence.  There were some one hundred and forty applicants for
her post, who had to be answered; there were, in addition, a number of
letters from persons who desired accommodation at Larmes Keep.  All
these had to be taken to Mr. Daver, and it was remarkable how
fastidious he was.  For example:

"The Reverend John Quinton?  No, no; we have one parson in the house,
that is enough.  Tell him we are very sorry but we are full up.  Mrs.
Bagley wishes to bring her daughter?  Certainly not!  I cannot have
children distracting me with their noise.  You agree?  I see you do.
Who is this woman--'coming for a rest cure'?  That means she's ill.  I
cannot have Larmes Keep turned into a sanitarium.  You may tell them
all that there will be no accommodations until after Christmas.  After
Christmas they can all come--I am going abroad."

The evenings were her own.  She could, if she desired, go into
Siltbury, which boasted two cinemas and a pierrot party, and Mr. Daver
put the hotel car at her disposal for the purpose.

She preferred, however, to wander through the grounds.  The estate was
much larger than she had supposed.  Behind, to the south of the house,
it extended for half a mile, the boundary to the east being represented
by the cliffs, along which a breast-high rubble wall had been built,
and with excellent reason, for here the cliff fell sheer two hundred
feet to the rocks below.  At one place there had been a little
landslide; the wall had been carried away and the gap had been
temporarily filled by a wooden fence.  Some attempt had been made to
create a nine-hole golf course, she saw, as she wandered round, but
evidently Mr. Daver had grown tired of this enterprise, for the greens
were knee-high in waving grasses.

At the southwest corner of the house, and distant about a hundred
yards, was a big clump of rhododendrons, and this she explored,
following a twisting path that led to the heart of the bushes.  Quite
unexpectedly she came upon an old well.  The brickwork about it was in
ruins; the well itself was boarded in.  On the weather-beaten
roof-piece above the windlass was a small wooden notice board,
evidently fixed for the enlightenment of visitors:


"This well was used from 935 to 1794.  It was filled in by the present
owners of the property in May, 1914, 135 cartloads of rock and gravel
being used for the purpose."


It was a pleasant occupation, standing by that ancient well and
picturing the collar serfs and bare-footed peasants who through the
ages had stood where she was standing.  As she came out of the bushes
she saw the pale-faced Olga Crewe.

Margaret had not spoken either to the Colonel or to the clergyman;
either she had avoided them, or they her.  Olga Crewe she had not seen,
and now she would have turned away, but the girl moved across to
intercept her.

"You are the new secretary, aren't you?"

Her voice was musical, rather alluring.  "Custardy" was Margaret's
mental classification.

"Yes, I'm Miss Belman."

The girl nodded.

"My name you know, I suppose?  Are you going to be terribly bored here?"

"I don't think so," smiled Margaret.  "It is a beautiful spot."

The eyes of Olga Crewe surveyed the scene critically.

"I suppose it is--very beautiful, yes, but one gets very tired of
beauty after a few years."

Margaret listened in astonishment.

"Have you been here so long?"

"I've practically lived here since I was a child.  I thought Joe would
have told you that: he's an inveterate old gossip."

"Joe?"  She was puzzled.

"The cab driver, news-gatherer and distributor."

She looked at Larmes Keep and frowned.

"Do you know what they used to call this place, Miss Belman?  The House
of Tears--the Chteau des Larmes."

"Why ever?" asked Margaret.

Olga Crewe shrugged her pretty shoulders.

"Some sort of tradition, I suppose, that goes back to the days of Baron
Augernvert, who built it.  The locals have corrupted the name to Larmes
Keep.  You ought to see the dungeons."

"Are there dungeons?" asked Margaret in surprise, and Olga nodded.  For
the first time she seemed amused.

"If you saw them and the chains and the rings in the walls and the
stone floors worn thin by bare feet, you might guess how its name
arose."

Margaret stared back toward the Keep.  The sun was setting behind it,
and silhouetted as it was against the red light there was something
ominous and sinister in that dark, squat pile.

"How very unpleasant!" she said, and shivered.

Olga Crewe laughed.

"Have you seen the cliffs?" she said, and led the way back to the long
wall, and for a quarter of an hour they stood, their arms resting on
the parapet, looking down into the gloom.

"You ought to get someone to row you round the face of the cliff.  It's
simply honeycombed with caves," she said.  "There's one at the water's
edge that tunnels right under the Keep.  When the tides are unusually
high they are flooded.  I wonder Daver doesn't write a book about it."

There was just the faintest hint of a sneer in her tone, but it did not
escape Margaret's attention.

"That must be the entrance," she said, pointing down to a swirl of
water that seemed to run right up to the face of the cliff.

Olga nodded.

"At high tide you wouldn't notice that," she said, and then, turning
abruptly, she asked the girl if she had seen the bathing pool.

This was an oblong bath, sheltered by high box hedges and lined
throughout with blue tiles; a delightfully inviting plunge.

"Nobody uses it but myself.  Daver would die at the thought of jumping
in."

Whenever she referred to Mr. Daver it was in a scarcely veiled tone of
contempt.  She was not more charitable when she referred to the other
guests.  As they were nearing the house, Olga said, apropos of nothing:

"I shouldn't talk too much to Daver if I were you.  Let him do the
talking: he likes it."

"What do you mean?" asked Margaret quietly, but at that moment Olga
left her side without any word of farewell and went toward the Colonel,
who was standing, a cigar between his teeth, watching their approach.

The House of Tears!

Margaret remembered the title as she was undressing that night, and,
despite her self-possession, shivered a little.




CHAPTER IV

The policeman who stood on the corner where Bennett Street meets Hyde
Lane had the world to himself.  It was nearing three o'clock on a
chilly morning of early fall.  The good and bad of Mayfair slept--all,
apparently, except Mr. J. G. Reeder, Friend of the Law and Terror of
Criminals.  Police Officer Dyer saw the yellow light behind the
casemented window and smiled benevolently.

The night was so still that when he heard a key turn in a lock, he
looked over his shoulder, thinking the noise was from the house
immediately behind him.  But the door did not move.  Instead he saw a
woman appear on the top doorstep five houses away.

"Officer!"

The voice was low, cultured, very urgent.  He moved more quickly toward
her than policemen usually move.

"Anything wrong, miss?"

Her face, he noticed in his worldly way, was "made up"; the cheeks
heavily rouged, the lips a startling red for one who was afraid.  He
supposed her to be pretty in normal circumstances, but was doubtful as
to her age.  She wore a long black dressing gown, fastened up to her
chin.  Also he saw that the hand that gripped the railing which flanked
the steps glittered in the lights of the street lamps.

"I don't know--quite.  I am--alone in the--house and I--thought I
heard--something."

Three words to a breath.  Obviously she was terrified.

"Haven't you any servants in the house?"

The constable was surprised, a little shocked.

"No.  I only came back from Paris at midnight--we took the house
furnished--I think the servants I engaged mistook the date of my
return.  I am Mrs. Granville Fornese."

In a dim way he remembered the name.  It had that value of familiarity
which makes even the most assured hesitate to deny acquaintance.  It
sounded grand, too--the name of a Somebody.  And Bennett Street was a
place where Somebodies live.

The officer peered into the dark hall.

"If you would put the light on, madam, I will look round."

She shook her head; he almost felt the shiver of her.

"The lights aren't working.  That is what frightened me.  They were
quite all right when I went to bed at one o'clock.  Something woke
me--I don't know what--and I switched on the lamp by the side of my
bed, but there was no light.  I keep a little portable battery lamp in
my bag.  I found this and turned it on."

She stopped, set her teeth in a mirthless smile.  Police Officer Dyer
saw the dark eyes were staringly wide.

"I saw--I don't know what it was--just a patch of black, like somebody
crouching by the wall.  Then it disappeared.  And the door of my room
was wide open.  I closed and locked it when I went to bed."

The officer pushed open the door wider, sent a white beam of light
along the passage.  There was a small hall table against the wall,
where a telephone instrument stood.  Striding into the hall, he took up
the instrument and lifted the hook: the 'phone was dead.

"Does this----"

So far he got with the question, and then stopped.  From somewhere
above him he heard a fault but sustained creak--the sound of a foot
resting on a faulty floor board.  Mrs. Fornese was still standing in
the open doorway, and he went back to her.

"Have you a key to this door?" he asked, and she shook her head.

He felt along the inner surface of the lock and found a stop-catch,
pushed it up.

"I'll have to 'phone from somewhere.  You'd better----"

What had she best do?  He was a plain police constable and was
confronted with a delicate situation.

"Is there anywhere you could go--friends?"

"No."  There was no indecision in that word.  And then: "Doesn't Mr.
Reeder live opposite?  Somebody told me----"

In the house opposite a light showed.  Mr. Dyer surveyed the lighted
window dubiously.  It stood for the elegant apartment of one who held a
post superior to chief constables.  No. 7 Bennett Street had been at a
recent period converted into flats, and into one of these Mr. Reeder
had moved from his suburban home.  Why he should take a flat in that
exclusive and interesting neighbourhood, nobody knew.  He was credited
by criminals with being fabulously rich; he was undoubtedly a snug man.

The constable hesitated, searched his pocket for the smallest coin of
the realm, and, leaving the lady on the doorstep, crossed the road and
tossed a ha'penny to the window.  A second later the casement window
was pushed open.

"Excuse me, Mr. Reeder, could I see you for a second?"

The head and shoulders disappeared, and in a very short time Mr. Reeder
appeared in the doorway.  He was so fully dressed that he might have
been expecting the summons.  The frock coat was tightly buttoned, on
the back of his head his flat-topped felt hat, on his nose the
pince-nez through which he never looked were askew.

"Anything wrong, constable?" he asked gently.

"Could I use your 'phone?  There is a lady over there--Mrs.
Fornese--alone--heard somebody in the house.  I heard it, too----"

He heard a short scream--a crash--and jumped round.  The door of No. 4
was closed.  Mrs. Fornese had disappeared.

In six strides Mr. Reeder had crossed the road and was at the door.
Stooping, he pressed in the flap of the letter box and listened.  No
noise but the ticking of a clock--a faint sighing sound.

"Hum!" said Mr. Reeder, scratching his long nose thoughtfully.
"Hum--would you be so kind as to tell me all about this--um--happening?"

The police constable repeated the story, more coherently.

"You fastened the spring lock so that it would not move?  A wise
precaution."

Mr. Reeder frowned.  Without another word he crossed the street and
disappeared into his flat.  There was a small drawer at the back of his
writing desk.  This he unlocked and, taking out a leather hold-all,
unrolled this and selecting three curious steel instruments that were
not unlike small hooks, fitted one into a wooden handle and returned to
the constable.

"This, I fear, is--I will not say 'unlawful,' for a gentleman of my
position is incapable of an unlawful act--shall I say 'unusual'?"

All the time he talked in his soft, apologetic way, he was working at
the lock, turning the instrument first one way and then the other.
Presently, with a click, the lock turned and Mr. Reeder pushed open the
door.

"I think I had better borrow your lamp--thank you."

He took the electric lamp from the constable's hand and flung a white
circle of light into the hall.  There was no sign of life.  He cast the
beam up the stairs, and, stooping his head, listened.  There came to
his ear no sound, and noiselessly he stepped farther into the hall.

The passage continued beyond the foot of the stairs, and at the end was
a door which apparently gave to the domestic quarters of the house.  To
the policeman's surprise, it was the door which Mr. Reeder examined.
He turned the handle, but the door did not move, and, stooping, he
squinted at the keyhole.

"There was somebody--upstairs," began the policeman with respectful
hesitation.

"There was somebody upstairs," repeated Mr. Reeder absently.  "You
heard a creaky board, I think."

He came slowly back to the foot of the stairs and looked up.  Then he
cast his lamp along the floor of the hall.

"No sawdust," he said, speaking to himself, "so it can't be _that_."

"Shall I go up, sir?" said the policeman, and his foot was on the lower
tread when Mr. Reeder, displaying unexpected strength in so
weary-looking a man, pushed him back.

"I think not, constable," he said firmly.  "If the lady is upstairs she
will have heard our voices.  But the lady is not upstairs."

"Do you think she's in the kitchen, sir?" asked the puzzled policeman.

Mr. Reeder shook his head sadly.

"Alas! how few modern women spend their time in a kitchen!" he said,
and made an impatient clucking noise, but whether this was a protest
against the falling off of woman's domestic qualities, or whether he
"tchk'd" for some other reason, it was difficult to say, for he was a
very preoccupied man.

He swung the lamp back to the door.

"I thought so," he said, with a note of relief in his voice.  "There
are two walking sticks in the hall stand.  Will you get one of them,
constable?"

Wondering, the officer obeyed, and came back, handing a long
cherry-wood stick with a crooked handle to Mr. Reeder, who examined it
in the light of his lamp.

"Dust-covered and left by the previous owner.  The spike in place of
the ferrule shows that it was purchased in Switzerland.  Probably you
are not interested in detective stories and have never read of the
gentleman whose method I am plagiarizing?"

"No, sir," said the mystified officer.

Mr. Reeder examined the stick again.

"It is a thousand pities that it is not a fishing rod," he said.  "Will
you stay here, and don't move."

And then he began to crawl up the stairs on his knees, waving his stick
in front of him in the most eccentric manner.  He held it up, lifting
the full length of his arm, and as he crawled upward he struck at
imaginary obstacles.  Higher and higher he went, silhouetted against
the reflected light of the lamp he carried, and Police Constable Dyer
watched him open-mouthed.

"Don't you think I'd better----"

He got as far as this when the thing happened.  There was an explosion
that deafened him; the air was suddenly filled with flying clouds of
smoke and dust; he heard the crackle of wood and the pungent scent of
something burning.  Dazed and stupefied, he stood stock still, gaping
up at Mr. Reeder, who was sitting on a stair, picking little splinters
of wood from his coat.

"I think you may come up in perfect safety," said Mr. Reeder, with
great calmness.

"What--what was it?" asked the officer.

The enemy of criminals was dusting his hat tenderly, though this the
officer could not see.

"You may come up."

Police Constable Dyer ran up the stairs and followed the other along
the broad landing till he stopped and focussed in the light of his lamp
a queer-looking and obviously home-made spring gun, the muzzle of which
was trained through the banisters so that it covered the stairs up
which he had ascended.

"There was," said Mr. Reeder carefully, "a piece of black thread
stretched across the stairs, so that any person who bulged or broke
that thread was certain to fire the gun."

"But--but the lady?"

Mr. Reeder coughed.

"I do not think she is in the house," he said, ever so gently.  "I
rather imagine that she went through the back.  There is a back
entrance to the mews, is there not?  And that by this time she is a
long way from the house.  I sympathize with her--this little incident
has occurred too late for the morning newspapers and she will have to
wait for the sporting editions before she learns that I am still alive."

The police officer drew a long breath.

"I think I'd better report this, sir."

"I think you had," sighed Mr. Reeder.  "And will you ring up Inspector
Simpson and tell him that, if he comes this way, I should like to see
him?"

Again the policeman hesitated.

"Don't you think we'd better search the house?  They may have done away
with this woman."

Mr. Reeder shook his head.

"They have not done away with any woman," he said decisively.  "The
only thing they have done away with is one of Mr. Simpson's pet
theories."

"But, Mr. Reeder, why did this lady come to the door?"

Mr. Reeder patted him benignantly on the arm, as a mother might pat a
child who asks a foolish question.

"The lady had been standing at the door for half an hour," he said
gently; "on and off for half an hour, constable, hoping against hope,
one imagines, that she would attract my attention.  But I was looking
at her from a room that was not--er--illuminated.  I did not show
myself because I--er--have a very keen desire to live!"

On this baffling note Mr. Reeder went into his house.




CHAPTER V

Mr. Reeder sat at his ease, wearing a pair of grotesquely painted
velvet slippers, a cigarette hanging from his lips, and explained to
the detective inspector who had called in the early hours of the
morning his reason for adopting a certain conclusion.

"I do not imagine for one moment that it was my friend Ravini.  He is
less subtle, in addition to which he has little or no intelligence.
You will find that this coup has been planned for months, though it has
only been put into execution to-day.  No. 4 Bennett Street is the
property of an old gentleman who spends most of his time in Italy.  He
has been in the habit of letting the house furnished for years; in
fact, it was only vacated a month ago."

"You think, then," said the puzzled Simpson, "That the people, whoever
they were, rented the house----"

Mr. Reeder shook his head.

"Even that I doubt," he said.  "They have probably an order in view,
and in some way got rid of the caretaker.  They knew I would be at home
last night, because I am always at home--um--on most nights since----"
Mr. Reeder coughed in his embarrassment.  "A young friend of mine has
recently left London--I do not like going out alone."

And to Simpson's horror, a pinkish flush suffused the sober countenance
of Mr. Reeder.

"A few weeks ago," he went on, with a pitiable attempt at airiness, "I
used to dine out, attend a concert or one of those exquisite melodramas
which have such an appeal to me."

"Whom do you suspect?" interrupted Simpson, who had not been called
from his bed in the middle of the night to discuss the virtue of
melodrama.  "The Gregorys or the Donovans?"  He named two groups that
had excellent reason to be annoyed with Mr. Reeder and his methods.

J. G. Reeder shook his head.

"Neither," he said.  "I think--indeed I am sure--that we must go back
to ancient history for the cause."

Simpson opened his eyes.

"Not Flack?" he asked incredulously.  "He's hiding--he wouldn't start
anything so soon."

Mr. Reeder nodded.

"John Flack.  Who else could have planned such a thing?  The art of it!
And, Mr. Simpson"--he leaned over and tapped the inspector on the
breast--"there has not been a big robbery in London since Flack went to
Broadmoor.  You'll get the biggest of all in a week!  The coup of
coups!  His mad brain is planning it now!"

"He's finished," said Simpson with a frown.

Mr. Reeder smiled wanly.

"We shall see.  This little affair of to-night is a sighting shot--a
mere nothing.  But I am rather glad I am not--er--dining out in these
days.  On the other hand, our friend Giorgio Ravini is a notorious
diner-out.  Would you mind calling up Vine Street police station and
finding out whether they have any casualties to report?"

Vine Street, which knew the movements of so many people, replied
instantly that Mr. Giorgio Ravini was out of town; it was believed he
was in Paris.

"Dear me!" said Mr. Reeder, in his feeble, aimless way.  "How very wise
of Giorgio--and how much wiser it will be if he stays there!"

Inspector Simpson rose and shook himself.  He was a stout, hearty man
who had that habit.

"I'll get down to the Yard and report this," he said.  "It may not have
been Flack, after all.  He's a gang leader and he'd be useless without
his crowd, and they are scattered.  Most of them are in the Argentine."

"Ha-ha!" said Mr. Reeder, without any evidence of joy.

"What the devil are you laughing about?"

The other was instantly apologetic.

"It was what I would describe as a sceptical laugh.  The Argentine!  Do
criminals really go to the Argentine except in those excellent works of
fiction which one reads on trains?  A tradition, Mr. Simpson, dating
back to the ancient times when there was no extradition treaty between
the two countries.  Scattered, yes.  I look forward to the day when I
shall gather them all together under one roof.  It will be a very
pleasant morning for me, Mr. Simpson, when I can walk along the
gallery, looking through the little peep-holes and watch them sewing
mail bags--I know of no more sedative occupation than a little
needlework!  In the meantime, watch your banks--Old John is seventy
years of age and has no time to waste.  History will be made in the
City of London before many days are past!  I wonder where in Paris I
could find Ravini?"

George Ravini was not the type of man whose happiness depended upon the
good opinion which others held of him.  Otherwise, he might well have
spent his life in abject misery.  As for Mr. Reeder--he discussed that
interesting police official over a glass of wine and a good cigar in
his Half Moon Street flat.

It was a showy, even a flashy, little mnage, for Mr. Ravini's motto
was everything of the best and as much of it as possible, and his
drawing room was rather like an over-ornamented French clock--all gilt
and enamel where it was not silk and damask.

To his subordinate, one Lew Steyne, Mr. Ravini revealed his mind.

"If that old so-and-so knew half he pretends to know, I'd be taking the
first train to Bordighera," he said.  "But Reeder's a bluff.  He's
clever up to a point, but you can say that about almost any bogey you
ever met."

"You could show _him_ a few points," said the sycophantic Lew, and Mr.
Ravini smiled and stroked his trim moustache.

"I wouldn't be surprised if the old nut is crazy about that girl.  May
and December--can you beat it!"

"What's she like?" asked Lew.  "I never got a proper look at her face."

Mr. Ravini kissed the tips of his fingers ecstatically and threw the
caress to the painted ceiling.

"Anyway, he can't frighten me, Lew.  You know what I am.  If I want
anything I go after it, and I keep going after it till I get it!  I've
never seen anybody like her.  Quite the lady and everything, and what
she can see in an old such-and-such like Reeder licks me!"

"Women are funny," mused Lew.  "You wouldn't think that a typist would
chuck a man like you----"

"She hasn't chucked me," said Mr. Ravini curtly.  "I'm simply not
acquainted with her, that's all.  But I'm going to be.  Where's this
place?"

"Siltbury," said Lew.

He took a piece of paper from his waistcoat pocket, unfolded it, and
read the pencilled words.

"Larmes Keep, Siltbury--it's on the Southern.  I trailed her when she
left London with her boxes.  Old Reeder came down to see her off, and
looked about as happy as a wet cat."

"A boarding house," mused Ravini.  "That's a queer sort of job."

"She's secretary," reported Lew.  (He had conveyed this information at
least four times, but Mr. Lew Steyne was one of those curious people
who like to treat old facts as new sensations.)

"It's a posh place, too," said Lew.  "Not like the ordinary boarding
house--only swells go there.  They charge twenty guineas a week for a
room, and you're lucky if you get in."

Ravini thought on this, fondling his chin.

"This is a free country," he said.  "What's to stop me staying
at--what's the name of the place?  Larmes Keep?  I've never taken 'No'
from a woman in my life.  Half the time they don't mean it.  Anyway,
she's got to give me a room if I've the money to pay for it."

"Suppose she writes to Reeder?" suggested Lew.

"Let her write!"  Ravini's tone was defiant, whatever might be the
state of his mind.

"What'll he have on me?  It's no crime to pay your rent at a boarding
house, is it?"

"Try her with one of your luck rings," grinned Lew.

Ravini looked at them admiringly.

"I couldn't get 'em off," he said, "and I'd never dream of parting with
my luck that way.  She'll be easy as soon as she knows me--don't you
worry."

By a curious coincidence, as he was turning out of Half Moon Street the
next morning, he met the one man in the world he did not wish to see.
Fortunately, Lew had taken his suitcase on to the station, and there
was nothing in Mr. Ravini's appearance to suggest that he was setting
forth on an affair of gallantry.

Mr. Reeder looked at the man's diamonds glittering in the daylight.
They seemed to exercise a peculiar fascination on the detective.

"The luck still holds, Giorgio," he said, and Georgio smiled
complacently.  "And whither do you go on this beautiful September
morning?  To bank your nefarious gains, or to get a quick visa to your
passport?"

"Strolling round," said Ravini airily.  "Just taking a little
constitutional."  And then, with a spice of mischief: "What's happened
to that busy you were putting on to tail me up?  I haven't seen him."

Mr. Reeder looked past him to the distance.

"He has never been far from you, Giorgio," he said gently.  "He
followed you from the Flotsam last night to that peculiar little party
you attended in Maida Vale, and he followed you home at 2:15 A.M."

Giorgio's jaw dropped.

"You don't mean he's----"  He looked round.  The only person visible
was a benevolent-looking man who might have been a doctor, from his
frock coat and top hat.

"That's not him?" frowned Ravini.

"'He,'" corrected Mr. Reeder.  "Your English is not yet perfect."

Ravini did not leave London immediately.  It was two o'clock before he
had shaken off the watcher, and five minutes later he was on the
Southern Express.  The same old cabman who had brought Margaret Belman
to Larmes Keep carried him up the long, winding hill road through the
broad gates to the front of the house, and deposited him under the
portico.  An elderly porter, in a smart, well-fitting uniform, came out
to greet the stranger.

"Mr.----"

"Ravini," said that gentleman.  "I haven't booked a room."

The porter shook his head.

"I'm afraid we have no accommodation," he said.  "Mr. Daver makes it a
rule not to take guests unless they've booked their rooms in advance.
I will see the secretary."

Ravini followed him into the spacious hall and sat down on one of the
beautiful chairs.  This, he decided, was something outside the usual
run of boarding houses.  It was luxurious even for a hotel.  No other
guests were visible.  Presently he heard a step on the flagged floor
and rose to meet the eyes of Margaret Belman.  Though they were
unfriendly, she betrayed no sign of recognition.  He might have been
the veriest stranger.

"The proprietor makes it a rule not to accept guests without previous
correspondence," she said.  "In those circumstances, I am afraid we
cannot offer you accommodation."

"I've already written to the proprietor," said Ravini, never at a loss
for a glib lie.  "Go along, young lady, be a sport and see what you can
do for me."

Margaret hesitated.  Her own inclination was to order his suitcase to
be put in the waiting cab; but she was part of the organization of the
place, and she could not let her private prejudices interfere with her
duties.

"Will you wait?" she said, and went in search of Mr. Daver.

That great criminologist was immersed in a large book and looked up
over his horn-rimmed spectacles.

"Ravini?  A foreign gentleman?  Of course he is.  A stranger within our
gate, as you would say.  It is very irregular, but in the
circumstances--yes, I think so."

"He isn't the type of man you ought to have here, Mr. Daver," she said
firmly.  "A friend of mine who knows these people says he is a member
of the criminal classes."

Mr. Daver's ludicrous eyebrows rose.

"The criminal classes!  What an extraordinary opportunity to study, as
it were, at first hand!  You agree?  I knew you would!  Let him stay.
If he bores me, I will send him away."

Margaret went back, a little disappointed, feeling rather foolish, if
the truth be told.  She found Ravini waiting, caressing his moustache,
a little less assured than he had been when she had left him.

"Mr. Daver says you may stay.  I will send the housekeeper to you," she
said, and went in search of Mrs. Burton and gave that doleful woman the
necessary instructions.

She was angry with herself that she had not been more explicit in
dealing with Mr. Daver.  She might have told him that if Ravini stayed
she would leave.  She might even have explained the reason why she did
not wish the Italian to remain in the house.  She was in the fortunate
position, however, that she had not to see the guests unless they
expressed a wish to interview her, and Ravini was too wise to pursue
his advantage.

That night, when she went to her room, she sat down and wrote a long
letter to Mr. Reeder, but thought better of it and tore it up.  She
could not run to J. G. Reeder every time she was annoyed.  He had a
sufficiency of trouble, she decided, and here she was right.  Even as
she wrote, Mr. Reeder was examining with great interest the spring gun
which had been devised for his destruction.




CHAPTER VI

To do Ravini justice, he made no attempt to approach the girl, though
she had seen him at a distance.  The second day after his arrival, he
had passed her on the lawn with no more than a nod and a smile, and
indeed he seemed to have found another diversion, if not another
objective, for he was scarcely away from Olga Crewe's side.  Margaret
saw them in the evening, leaning over the cliff wall, and George Ravini
seemed remarkably pleased with himself.  He was exhibiting his famous
luck stones to Olga.  Margaret saw her examine the rings and evidently
made some remark upon them which sent Ravini into fits of laughter.

It was on the third day of his stay that he spoke to Margaret.  They
met in the big hall, and she would have passed on, but he stood in her
way.

"I hope we're not going to be bad friends, Miss Belman," he said.  "I'm
not giving you any trouble, and I'm ready to apologize for the past.
Could a gentleman be fairer than that?"

"I don't think you've anything to apologize for, Mr. Ravini," she said,
a little relieved by his tone, and more inclined to be civil.  "Now
that you have so obviously found another interest in life, are you
enjoying your stay?"

"It's perfectly marvellous," he said conventionally, for he was a man
who loved superlatives.  "And say, Miss Belman, who is this young lady
staying here, Miss Olga Crewe?"

"She's a guest: I know nothing about her."

"What a peach!" he said enthusiastically, and Margaret was amused.

"And a lady, every inch of her," he went on.  "I must say I'm putty in
the hands of real ladies!  There's something about 'em that's different
to shop girls and typists and people of that kind.  Not that you're a
typist," he went on hastily.  "I regard you as a lady, too.  Every inch
of one.  I'm thinking about sending for my Rolls to take her for a
drive round the country.  You're not jealous?"

Anger and amusement struggled for expression, but Margaret's sense of
humour won, and she laughed long and silently all the way to her office.

Soon after this Mr. Ravini disappeared.  So also did Olga.  Margaret
saw them coming into the hall about eleven, and the girl looked paler
than usual and sweeping past her without a word, ran up the stairs.
Margaret surveyed the young man curiously.  His face was flushed, his
eyes of an unusual brightness.

"I'm going up to town to-morrow," he said.  "Early train--you needn't
'phone for a cab.  I can walk down the hill."

He was almost incoherent.

"You're tired of Larmes Keep?"

"Eh?  Tired?  No, I'm not!  This is the place for me!"

He smoothed back his dark hair and she saw his hand trembling so much
that the luck stones flickered and flashed like fire.  She waited until
he had disappeared, and then she went upstairs and knocked at Olga's
door.  The girl's room was next to hers.

"Who's that?" asked a voice sharply.

"Miss Belman."

The key turned, the door opened.  Only one light was burning in the
room, so that her face was in shadow.

"Do you want anything?" she asked.

"May I come in?" asked Margaret.  "There's something I wish to say to
you."

Olga hesitated.  Then:

"Come in," she said.  "I've been snivelling.  I hope you don't mind."

Her eyes were red, the stains of tears were still on her face.

"This damned place depresses me awfully," she excused herself as she
dabbed her cheeks with a handkerchief.  "What do you want to see me
about?"

"Mr. Ravini.  I suppose you know he is a--crook?"

Olga stared at her and her eyes went hard.

"I don't know that I am particularly interested in Mr. Ravini," she
said slowly.  "Why do you come to tell me this?"

Margaret was in a dilemma.

"I don't know--I thought you were getting rather friendly with him--it
was very impertinent of me."

"I think it was," said Olga Crewe coldly, and the rebuff was such that
Margaret's face went scarlet.

She was angry with herself when she went into her own room that night,
and anger is a bad bedmate, and the most wakeful of all human emotions.
She tossed from side to side in her bed, tried to forget there were
such persons as Olga Crewe and George Ravini, tried every device she
could think of to induce sleep, and was almost successful when----

She sat up in bed.  Fingers were scrabbling on the panel of her door;
not exactly scratching or tapping.  She switched on the light, and,
getting out of bed, walked to the door and listened.  Somebody was
there.  The handle turned in her hand.

"Who's there?" she asked.

"Let me in, let me in!"

It was a frantic whisper, but she recognized the voice--Ravini!

"I can't let you in.  Go away, please, or I'll telephone----"

She heard a sound, a curious muffled sound--sobbing--a man!  And then
the voice ceased.  Her heart racing madly, she stood by the door, her
ear to the panel, listening, but no other sound came.

She spent the rest of the night sitting up in bed, a quilt about her
shoulders, listening, listening----

Day broke grayly; the sun came up.  She lay down and fell asleep.  It
was the maid bringing tea that woke her, and, getting out of bed, she
opened the door.

"A nice morning, miss," said the fresh-faced country girl brightly.

Margaret nodded.  As soon as the girl was gone she opened the door
again to examine more closely the thing she had seen.  It was a
triangular patch of stuff that had been torn and caught in one of the
splinters of the old oaken door.  She took it off carefully and laid it
in the palm of her hand.  A jagged triangle of pink silk.  She put it
on her dressing table wonderingly.  There must be an end to this.  If
Ravini was not leaving that morning, or Mr. Daver would not ask him to
go, she would leave for London that night.

As she left her room, she met the housemaid.

"That man in No. 7 has gone, miss," the woman reported, "but he's left
his pajamas behind."

"Gone already?"

"Must have gone last night, miss.  His bed hasn't been slept in."

Margaret followed her along the passage to Ravini's room.  His bag was
gone, but on the pillow, neatly folded, was a suit of pink silk
pajamas, and, bending over, she saw that the front of the coat was
torn.  A little triangular patch of pink silk had been ripped out!




CHAPTER VII

When a nimble old man dropped from a high wall at midnight and,
stopping only to wipe the blood from his hands--for he had come upon a
guard patrolling the grounds in his flight--and walked briskly toward
London, peering into every side lane for the small car that had been
left for him, he brought a new complication into many lives, and for
three people at least marked the date of their passing in the Book of
Fate.

Police Headquarters were not slow to employ the press to advertise
their wants.  But the escape from Broadmoor of a homicidal maniac is
something which is not to be rushed immediately into print.  Not once
but many times had the help of the public been enlisted in a vain
endeavour to bring Old John Flack to justice.  His description had been
circulated, his haunts had been watched, without there being any
successful issue to the search.

There was a conference at Scotland Yard, which Mr. Reeder attended; and
they were five very serious men who gathered round the superintendent's
desk, and mainly the talk was of bullion and of "noses," by which
inelegant term is meant the inevitable police informer.

Crazy John "fell" eventually through the treachery of an outside
helper.  Ravini, the most valuable of gang leaders, had been employed
to "cover" a robbery at the Leadenhall Bank.  Bullion was John Flack's
specialty; it was not without its interest for Mr. Ravini.

The theft had been successful.  One Sunday morning two cars drove out
of the courtyard of the Leadenhall Bank.  By the side of the driver of
each car sat a man in the uniform of the Metropolitan Police; inside
each car was another officer.  A City policeman saw the cars depart,
but accepted the presence of the uniformed men and did not challenge
the drivers.  It was not an unusual event; transfers of gold or stocks
on Sunday morning had been witnessed before, but usually the City
authorities had been notified.  He called Old Jewry station on the
telephone to report the occurrence, but by this time John Flack was
well away.

It was Ravini, cheated, as he thought, of his fair share of the
plunder, who betrayed the old man; the gold was never recovered.

England had been ransacked to find John Flack's headquarters, but
without success.  There was not a hotel or boarding-house keeper who
had not received his portrait, or one who recognized him in any guise.

The exhaustive inquiries which followed his arrest did little to
increase the knowledge of the police.  Flack's lodgings were found--a
furnished room in Bloomsbury which he had occupied at rare intervals
for years.  But here were discovered no documents which gave the
slightest clue to the real headquarters of the gang.  Probably they had
none.  They were chosen and discarded as opportunity arose or emergency
dictated, though it was clear that the old man had something in the
nature of a general staff to assist him.

"Anyway," said Big Bill Gordon, chief of the Big Five, "he'll not start
anything in the way of a bullion steal.  His mind will be fully
occupied with ways and means of getting out of the country."

It was Mr. Reeder's head that shook.

"The nature of criminals may change, but their vanities persist," he
said, in his precise, grandiloquent way.  "Mr. Flack prides himself not
upon his murders but upon his robberies, and he will signify his return
to freedom in the usual manner."

"His gang is scattered----" began Simpson.

J. G. Reeder silenced him with a sad, sweet smile.

"There is plenty of evidence, Mr. Simpson, that the gang has coagulated
again.  It is--um--an ugly word, but I can think of no better.  Mr.
Flack's escape from the--er--public institution where he was confined
shows evidence of good team work.  The rope, the knife with which he
killed the unfortunate warder, the kit of tools, the almost certainty
that there was a car waiting to take him away, are all symptomatic of
gang work.  And what has Mr. Flack----"

"I wish to God you wouldn't call him 'Mr.' Flack!" said Big Bill
explosively.

J. G. Reeder blinked.

"I have an ineradicable respect for age," he said in a hushed voice,
"but a greater respect for the dead.  I am hoping to increase my
respect for Mr. Flack in the course of the next month."

"If it's gang work," interrupted Simpson, "who are with him?  The old
crowd is either jailed or out of the country.  I know what you're
thinking about, Mr. Reeder: you've got your mind on what happened last
night.  I've been thinking it over, and it's quite likely that the man
trap wasn't fixed by Flack at all, but by one of the other crowd.  Do
you know Donovan's out of Dartmoor?  He has no reason for loving you."

Mr. Reeder raised his hand in protest.

"On the contrary, Joe Donovan, when I saw him in the early hours this
morning, was a very affable and penitent man who deeply regretted the
unkind things he said of me as he left the Old Bailey dock.  He lives
at Kilburn and spent last evening at a local cinema with his wife and
daughter.  No, it wasn't Donovan.  He is not a brainy man.  Only John
Flack, with his dramatic sense, could have staged that little comedy
which was so nearly a tragedy."

"You were nearly killed, they tell me, Reeder?" said Big Bill.

Mr. Reeder shook his head.

"I was not thinking of that particular tragedy.  It was in my mind
before I went up the stairs to force the door into the kitchen.  If I
had done that, I think I should have shot Mr. Flack, and there would
have been an end of all our speculations and troubles."

Mr. Simpson was examining some papers that were on the table before him.

"If Flack's going after bullion, he's got very little chance.  The only
big movement is that of a hundred and twenty thousand sovereigns for
Australia which goes by way of Tilbury to-morrow morning or the next
day from the Bank of England, and it is impossible that Flack could
organize a steal at such short notice."

Mr. Reeder was suddenly alert and interested.

"A hundred and twenty thousand sovereigns," he murmured, rubbing his
chin irritably.  "Ten tons.  It goes by train?"

"By lorry, with ten armed men--one per ton," said Simpson humorously.
"I don't think you need worry about that."

Mr. J. G. Reeder's lips were pursed as though he were whistling, but no
sound issued.  Presently he spoke.

"Flack was originally a chemist," he said slowly.  "I don't suppose
there is a better criminal chemist in England than Mr. Flack."

"Why do you say that?" asked Simpson with a frown.

Mr. Reeder shrugged his shoulders.

"I have a sixth sense," he said, almost apologetically, "and invariably
I associate some peculiar quality with every man and woman
who--um--passes under review.  For example, Mr. Simpson, when I think
of you, I have an instinctive, shadowy thought of a prize ring where I
first had the pleasure of seeing you."  (Simpson, who had been an
amateur welterweight, grinned appreciatively.)  "And my mind never
rests upon Mr. Flack except in the surroundings of a laboratory with
test tubes and all the paraphernalia of experimental chemistry.  As for
the little affair last night, I was not unprepared for it, but I
suspected a trap--literally a--um--trap.  Some evilly disposed person
once tried the very same trick upon me; cut away the landing so that I
should fall upon very unpleasant sharp spikes.  I looked for sawdust
the moment I went into the house, and when that was not present I
guessed the gun."

"But how did you know there was anything?" asked Big Bill curiously.

Mr. Reeder smiled.

"I have a criminal mind," he said.

He went back to his flat in Bennett Street, his mind equally divided
between Margaret Belman, safe in Sussex, and the ability of one normal
lorry to carry a hundred and twenty thousand sovereigns.  Such little
details interested Mr. Reeder.  Almost the first thing he did when he
reached his flat was to call up a haulage contractor to discover
whether such trucks were in use.  For somehow he knew that, if the
Flack gang were after this shipment to Australia, it was necessary that
the gold should be carried in one vehicle.  Why he should think this,
not even Mr. Reeder knew.  But he had, as he said, a criminal mind.

That afternoon he addressed himself to a novel and not unpleasing task.
It was a letter, the first letter he had written to Margaret Belman,
and in its way it was a curiosity.

It began:


"MY DEAR MISS MARGARET:

"I trust you will not be annoyed that I should write to you; but
certain incidents which disfigured perhaps our parting, and which may
cause you (I say this knowing your kind heart) a little unhappiness,
induce this letter----"


Mr. Reeder paused here to discover a method by which he could convey
his regret at not seeing her without offering an embarrassing
revelation of his more secret thoughts.  At five o'clock when his
servant brought in his tea, he was still sitting before the unfinished
letter.  Mr. Reeder took up the cup, carried it to his writing table,
and stared at it as though for inspiration.

And then he saw on the surface of the steaming cup a thread-like
formation of froth which had a curious metallic look.  He dipped his
forefinger delicately in the froth and put his finger to his tongue.

"Hum!" said Mr. Reeder, and rang the bell.

His man came instantly.

"Is there anything you want, sir?"  He bent his head respectfully, and
for a long time Mr. Reeder did not answer.

"The milk, of course!" he said.

"The milk, sir?" said the puzzled servant.  "The milk's fresh, sir; it
came this afternoon."

"You did not take it from the milkman, naturally.  It was in a bottle
outside the door."

The man nodded.

"Yes, sir."

"Good!" said Mr. Reeder, almost cheerfully.  "In the future will you
arrange to receive the milk from the milkman's own hands?  You have not
drunk any yourself, I see?"

"No, sir.  I have had my tea, but I don't take milk with it, sir," said
the servant, and Mr. Reeder favoured him with one of his rare smiles.

"That, Peters," he said, "is why you are alive and well.  Bring the
rest of the milk to me, and a new cup of tea.  I also will dispense
with the lacteal fluid."

"Don't you like milk, sir?" said the bewildered man.

"I like milk," replied Mr. Reeder gently, "but I prefer it without
strychnine.  I think, Peters, we're going to have a very interesting
week.  Have you any dependants?"

"I have an old mother, sir," said the mystified man.

"Are you insured?" asked Mr. Reeder, and Peters nodded dumbly.

"You have the advantage of me," said J. G. Reeder.  "Yes, I think we
are going to have an interesting week."

And his prediction was fully justified.




CHAPTER VIII

London heard the news of John Flack's escape and grew fearful or
indignant according to its several temperaments.  A homicidal planner
of great and spectacular thefts was in its midst.  It was not very
pleasant hearing for law-abiding citizens.  And the news was more than
a week old.  Why had Scotland Yard not taken the public into its
confidence?  Why suppress this news of such vital interest?  Who was
responsible for the suppression of this important information?
Headlines asked these questions in the more sensational sheets.  The
news of the Bennett Street outrage was public property.  To his
enormous embarrassment Mr. Reeder found himself an object of public
interest.

Mr. Reeder used to sit alone at his desk at the Public Prosecutor's
office and for hours on end do little more than twiddle his thumbs and
gaze disconsolately at the virgin white of his blotting pad.

In what private daydreams he indulged, whether they concerned fabulous
fortunes and their disposition, or whether they centred about a very
pretty pink-and-white young lady, or whether indeed he thought at all
and his mind was not a complete blank, those who interrupted his
reveries and had the satisfaction of seeing him start guiltily had no
means of knowing.

At this particular moment his mind was, in truth, completely occupied
by his newest as well as his oldest enemy.

There were three members of the Flack gang originally--John, George,
and Augustus.  They had begun operations in the days when it was
considered scientific and a little wonderful to burn out the lock of a
safe.  Augustus Flack was killed by the night watchman of Carrs Bank in
Lombard Street during an attempt to rob the gold vault; George Flack,
the youngest of the three, was sent to penal servitude for ten years as
a result of a robbery in Bond Street, and died there; and only John,
the mad master mind of the family, escaped detection and arrest.

It was he who brought into the organization one O. Sweizer, the
Swiss-American bank robber; he who recruited Adolphe Victoire; and they
brought others to the good work.  For this was Crazy John's peculiar
asset--that he could attract to himself, almost at a minute's notice,
the best brains of the underworld.  Though the rest of the Flacks were
either dead or jailed, the organization was stronger than ever, and
stronger because lurking somewhere in the background was this kinky
brain.

Thus matters stood when Mr. J. G. Reeder came into the case--being
brought into the matter not so much because the London police had
failed, but because the Public Prosecutor recognized that the breaking
up of the Flacks was going to be a lengthy business, occupying one
man's complete attention.

Cutting the tentacles of the organization was an easy matter,
comparatively.

Mr. Reeder took O. Sweizer, that stocky Swiss-American, when he and a
man unknown were engaged in removing a safe from the Bedford Street
Post Office one Sunday morning.  Sweizer was ready for fight, but Mr.
Reeder grabbed him just a little too quickly.

"Let up!" gasped Sweizer in French.  "You're choking me, Reeder."

Mr. Reeder turned him onto his face and handcuffed him behind; then he
went to the assistance of his admirable colleagues who were taking the
other two men.

Victoire was arrested one night at the Charlton, where he was dining
with Denver May.  He gave no trouble, because the police took him on a
purely fictitious charge and one which he knew he could easily disprove.

"My dear Mr. Reeder," said he in his elegant, languid way, "you are
making quite an absurd mistake, but I will humour you.  I can prove
that when the pearls were taken from Hertford Street I was in Nice."

This was on the way to the station.

They put him in the dock and searched him, discovering certain lethal
weapons handily disposed about his person, but he was only amused.  He
was less amused when he was charged with smashing the Bank of Lena, the
attempted murder of a night watchman, and one or two other little
matters which need not be particularized.

They got him into a cell, and as he was carried, struggling and raving
like a lunatic, Mr. Reeder offered him a piece of advice which he
rejected with considerable violence.

"Say you were in Nice at the time," he said gently.

Then one day the police pulled in a man in Somers Town, on the very
prosaic charge of beating his wife in public.  When they searched him,
they found a torn scrap of a letter which was sent at once to Mr.
Reeder.  It read:


"Any night about eleven in Whitehall Avenue.  Reeder is a man of medium
height, elderly-looking, sandy-grayish hair and side whiskers rather
thick, always carries an umbrella.  Recommend you to wear rubber boots
and take a length of iron to him.  You can easily find out who he is
and what he looks like.  Take your time ... fifty on acc ... der when
the job is finished...."


This was the first hint Mr. Reeder had that he was especially unpopular
with the mysterious John Flack.

The day Crazy John Flack was sent down to Broadmoor had been a day of
mild satisfaction for Mr. Reeder.  He was not exactly happy or even
relieved about it.  He had the comfort of an accountant who had signed
a satisfactory balance sheet, or the builder who was surveying his
finished work.  There were other balance sheets to be signed, other
buildings to be erected--they differed only in their shapes and
quantities.

One thing was certain, that on what other project Flack's mind was
fixed, he was devoting a considerable amount of thought to J. G.
Reeder--whether in reprisal for events that had passed or as a
precautionary measure to check his activities in the future, the
detective could only guess; but he was a good guesser.

The telephone bell, set in a remote corner of the room, rang sharply.
Mr. Reeder took up the instrument with a pained expression.  The
operator of the office exchange told him that there was a call from
Horsham.  He pulled a writing pad toward him and waited.  And then a
voice spoke, and hardly was the first word uttered than he knew his
man, for J. G. Reeder never forgot voices.

"That you, Reeder?  Know who I am?"

The same thin, tense voice that had babbled threats from the dock of
Old Bailey, the same little chuckling laugh that punctured every second.

Mr. Reeder touched a bell and began to write rapidly on his pad.

"Know who I am?--I'll bet you do!  Thought you'd got rid of me, didn't
you, but you haven't!  Listen, Reeder, you can tell the Yard I'm
busy--I'm going to give them the shock of their lives.  Mad, am I?
I'll show you whether I'm mad or not.  And I'll get you, Reeder----"

A messenger came in.  Mr. Reeder tore off the slip and handed it to him
with an urgent gesture.  The man read and bolted from the room.

"Is that Mr. Flack?" asked Reeder softly.

"Is it Mr. Flack, you old hypocrite!  Have you got the parcel?  I
wondered if you had.  What do you think of it?"

"The parcel?" asked Reeder, more gently than ever, and before the man
could reply: "You will get into serious trouble for trying to hoax the
Public Prosecutor's office, my friend," said Mr. Reeder reproachfully.
"You are not Crazy John Flack--I know his voice.  Mr. Flack spoke with
a curious cockney accent which is not easy to imitate, and Mr. Flack at
this moment is in the hands of the police."

He counted on the effect of this provocative speech, and he had made no
mistake.

"You lie!" screamed the voice.  "You know I'm Flack--Crazy John,
eh?--Crazy Old John Flack--mad, am I?  You'll learn!--You put me in
that hell upon earth, and I'm going to serve you worse than I treated
that damned Dago----"

The voice ceased abruptly.  There was a click as the receiver was put
down.

Reeder listened expectantly, but no other call came through.  Then he
rang the bell again and the messenger returned.

"Yes, sir, I got through straight away to the Horsham police station.
The inspector is sending three men in a car to the post office."

Mr. Reeder gazed at the ceiling.

"Then I fear he has sent them too late," he said.  "The venerable
bandit will have gone."

A quarter of an hour later came confirmation of his prediction.  The
police had arrived at the post office, but the bird had flown.  The
clerk did not remember anybody old or wild-looking booking a call; he
thought that the message had not come from the post office itself,
which was also the telephone exchange, but from an outlying call box.

Mr. Reeder went in to report to the Public Prosecutor, but neither he
nor his assistant was in the Office.  He rang up Scotland Yard and
passed on his information to Simpson.

"I respectfully suggest that you should get into touch with the French
police and locate Ravini.  He may not be in Paris at all."

"Where do you think he is?" asked Simpson.

"That," replied Mr. Reeder in a hushed voice, "is a question which has
never been definitely settled in my mind.  I should not like to say
that he was in heaven, because I cannot imagine Giorgio Ravini with his
luck stones----

"Do you mean that he's dead?" asked Simpson quickly.

"It is very likely; in fact, it is extremely likely."

There was a long silence at the other end of the telephone.

"Have you had the parcel?"

"That I am awaiting with the greatest interest," said Mr. Reeder, and
went back to his office to twiddle his thumbs and stare at his white
blotting pad.

The parcel came at three o'clock that afternoon, when Mr. Reeder had
returned from his frugal lunch, which he invariably took at a large and
popular tea shop in Whitehall.  It was a very small parcel, about three
inches square; it was registered and had been posted in London.  He
weighed it carefully, shook it and listened, but the lightness of the
package precluded any possibility of there being concealed behind the
paper wrapping anything that bore a resemblance to an infernal machine.
He cut the paper tape that fastened it, took off the paper, and there
was revealed a small cardboard box such as jewellers use.  Removing the
lid, he found a small pad of cotton-wool, and in the midst of this
three gold rings, each with three brilliant diamonds.  He put them on
his blotting pad and gazed at them for a long time.

They were George Ravini's luck stones, and for ten minutes Mr. Reeder
sat in a profound reverie, for he knew that George Ravini was dead, and
it did not need the card which accompanied the rings to know who was
responsible for the drastic and gruesome ending to Mr. Ravini's life.
The sprawling "J.F." on the little card was in Mr. Flack's writing, and
the three words, "Your turn next," were instructive, even if they were
not, as they were intended to be, terrifying.

Half an hour later Mr. Reeder met Inspector Simpson by appointment at
Scotland Yard.  Simpson examined the rings curiously and pointed out a
small, dark-brown speck at the edge of one of the luck stones.

"I don't doubt that Ravini is dead," he said.  "The first thing to
discover is where he went when he said he was going to Paris."

This task presented fewer difficulties than Simpson had imagined.  He
remembered one Lew Steyne and his association with the Italian, and a
telephone call put through to the City police located Lew in five
minutes.

"Bring him along in a taxi," said Simpson, and, as he hung up the
receiver: "The question is, what is Crazy John's coup--murder on a
large scale, or just picturesque robbery?"

"I think the latter," said Mr. Reeder thoughtfully.  "Murder, with Mr.
Flack, is a mere incident to the--er--more important business of
money-making."

He pinched his lip thoughtfully.

"Forgive me if I seem to repeat myself, but I would again remind you
that Mr. Flack's specialty is bullion, if I remember aright," he said.
"Didn't he smash the strong room of the _Megantic_ ... bullion, hum!"
He scratched his chin and looked up over his glasses at Simpson.

The inspector shook his head.

"I only wish Crazy John was crazy enough to try to get out of the
country by steamer--he won't.  And the Leadenhall Bank stunt couldn't
be repeated to-day.  No, there's no chance of a bullion steal."

Mr. Reeder looked unconvinced.

"Would you ring up the Bank of England and find out if the money has
gone to Tilbury?" he pleaded.

Simpson pulled the instrument toward him, gave a number and, after five
minutes' groping through various departments, reached an exclusive
personage.  Mr. Reeder sat, with his hands clasped about the handle of
his umbrella, a pained expression on his face, his eyes closed, and
seemingly oblivious of the conversation.  Presently Simpson hung up the
receiver.

"The consignment should have gone this morning, but the sailing of the
_Olanic_ has been delayed by a stevedore strike--it goes to-morrow
morning," he reported.  "The gold is taken on a lorry to Tilbury with a
guard.  At Tilbury it is put into the _Olanic's_ strong room, which is
the newest and safest of its kind.  I don't suppose that John will
begin operations there."

"Why not?"  J. G. Reeder's voice was almost bland; his face was screwed
into its nearest approach to a smile.  "On the contrary, as I have said
before, that is the very consignment I should expect Mr. Flack to go
after."

"I pray that you're a true prophet," said Simpson grimly.  "I could
wish for nothing better."

They were still talking of Flack and his passion for ready gold when
Mr. Lew Steyne arrived in the charge of a local detective.  No crook,
however hardened, can step into the gloomy approaches of Scotland Yard
without experiencing some uneasiness, and Lew's attempt to display his
indifference was rather pathetic.

"What's the idea, Mr. Simpson?" he asked, in a grieved tone.  "I've
done nothing."

He scowled at Reeder, who was known to him, and whom he regarded, very
rightly, as being responsible for his appearance at this most hated
spot.

Simpson put a question, and Mr. Lew Steyne shrugged his shoulders.

"I ask you, Mr. Simpson, am I Ravini's keeper?  I know nothing about
the Italian crowd, and Ravini's scarcely an acquaintance."

Mr. Reeder shook his head.

"You spent two hours with him last Thursday evening," he said, and Lew
was a little taken aback.

"I had a little bit of business with him, I admit," he said.  "Over a
house I'm trying to rent----"

His shifty eyes had become suddenly steadfast; he was looking
open-mouthed at the three rings that lay on the table.  Reeder saw him
frown, and then:

"What are those?" asked Lew huskily.  "They're not Giorgio's luck
stones?"

Simpson nodded and pushed the little square of white paper on which
they lay toward the visitor.

"Do you know them?" he asked.

Lew picked up one of the rings and turned it round in his hand.

"What's the idea?" he asked suspiciously.  "Ravini told me himself he
could never get these off."

And then, as the significance of their presence dawned upon him, he
gasped.

"What's happened to him?" he asked quickly.  "Is he----"

"I fear," said Mr. Reeder soberly, "that Giorgio Ravini is no longer
with us."

"Dead?"  Lew almost shrieked the word.  His yellow face went a chalky
white.  "Where--who did it?"

"That is exactly what we want to know," said Simpson.  "Now, Lew,
you've got to spill it.  Where is Ravini?  He said he was going to
Paris, I know, but, actually, where did he go?"

The thief's eyes strayed to Mr. Reeder.

"He was after that bird, that's all I know," he said sullenly.

"Which bird?" asked Simpson, but Mr. Reeder had no need to have its
identity explained.

"He was after--Miss Belman?"

Lew nodded.

"Yes, a girl he knew--she went down into the country to take a job as
hotel manager or something.  I saw her go, as a matter of fact.  Ravini
wanted to get better acquainted, so he went down to stay at the hotel."

Even as he spoke, Mr. Reeder had reached for the telephone, and had
given the peculiar code word which is equivalent to a command for a
clear line.

A high-pitched voice answered him.

"I am Mr. Daver, the proprietor....  Miss Belman?  I'm afraid she is
out just now.  She will be back in a few minutes.  Who is it speaking?"

Mr. Reeder replied diplomatically.  He was anxious to get into touch
with George Ravini, and for two minutes he allowed the voluble Mr.
Daver to air a grievance.

"Yes, he went in the early morning, without paying his bill..."

"I will come down and pay it," said Mr. Reeder.




CHAPTER IX

"The point is," said Mr. Daver, "the only point--I think you will agree
with me here--that really has any interest for us is that Mr. Ravini
left without paying his bill.  This was the point I emphasized to a
friend of his who called me on the telephone this morning.  That is to
me the supreme mystery of his disappearance--he left without paying his
bill!"

He leaned back in his chair and beamed at the girl in the manner of one
who had expounded an unanswerable problem.  With his finger-tips
together, he had an appearance which was oddly reminiscent.

"The fact that he left behind a pair of pajamas which are practically
valueless merely demonstrates that he left in a hurry.  You agree with
me?  I am sure you do.  Why he should leave in a hurry is naturally
beyond my understanding.  You say he was a crook; possibly he received
information that he had been detected."

"He had no telephone calls and no letters while he was here," insisted
Margaret.

Mr. Daver shook his head.

"That proves nothing.  Such a man would have associates.  I am sorry he
has gone.  I hoped to have an opportunity of studying his type.  And,
by the way, I have discovered something about Flack--the famous John
Flack--did you know that he had escaped from the lunatic asylum?  I
gather from your alarm that you didn't.  I am an observer, Miss B.
Years of study of this fascinating subject have produced in me a sixth
sense--the sense of observation, which is atrophied in ordinary
individuals."

He took a long envelope from his drawer and pulled out a small bundle
of press cuttings.  These he sorted on his table, and presently
unfolded a newspaper portrait of an elderly man and laid it before her.

"Flack," he said briefly.

She was surprised at the age of the man: the thin face, the grizzled
moustache and beard, the deep-set intelligent eyes suggested almost
anything rather than that confirmed and dangerous criminal.

"My press-cutting agency supplied these," he said.  "And here is
another portrait which may interest you, and in a sense the arrival of
this photograph is a coincidence.  I am sure you will agree with me
when I tell you why.  It is a picture of a man called Reeder."

Mr. Daver did not look up, or he would have seen the red come to the
girl's face.

"A clever old gentleman attached to the Public Prosecutor's Department."

"He is not very old," said Margaret coldly.

"He looks old," said Mr. Daver, and Margaret had to agree that the
newspaper portrait was not a very flattering one.

"This is the gentleman who was instrumental in arresting Flack, and the
coincidence--now what do you imagine the coincidence is?"

She shook her head.

"He's coming here this day!"

Margaret Belman's mouth opened in amazement.

"I had a wire from him this afternoon saying he was coming to-night,
and asking if I could accommodate him.  But for my interest in this
case, I should not have known his name or had the slightest idea of his
identity.  In all probability, I should have refused him a room."

He looked up suddenly.

"You say he is not so old.  Do you know him?  I see that you do.  That
is even a more remarkable coincidence.  I am looking forward with the
utmost delight to discussing with him my pet subject.  It will be an
intellectual treat."

"I don't think Mr. Reeder discusses crime," she said.  "He is rather
reticent on the subject."

"We shall see," said Mr. Daver, and from his manner she guessed that
he, at any rate, had no doubt that the man from the Public Prosecutor's
office would respond instantly to a sympathetic audience.

Mr. Reeder came just before seven, and to her surprise he had abandoned
his frock coat and curious hat and was almost jauntily attired in gray
flannels.  He brought with him two very solid and heavy-looking steamer
trunks.

The meeting was not without its moment of embarrassment.

"I trust you will not think, Miss--um--Margaret, that I am being
indiscreet.  But the truth is, I--um--am in need of a holiday."

He never looked less in need of a holiday; compared with the Reeder she
knew, this man was most unmistakably alert.

"Will you come to my office?" she said, a little unsteadily.

When they reached her office, Mr. Reeder opened the door reverently.
She had a feeling that he was holding his breath, and she was seized
with an almost uncontrollable desire to laugh.  Instead, she preceded
him into her sanctum.  When the door closed:

"I was an awful pig to you, Mr. Reeder," she began rapidly.  "I ought
to have written--the whole thing was so absurd--the quarrel, I mean."

"The disagreement," murmured Mr. Reeder.  "I am old-fashioned, I admit,
but an old man----"

"Forty-eight isn't old," she scoffed.  "And why shouldn't you wear side
whiskers?  It was unpardonable of me--feminine curiosity: I wanted to
see how you looked."

Mr. Reeder raised his hand.  His voice was almost gay.

"The fault was entirely mine, Miss Margaret.  I am old-fashioned.  You
do not think--er--it is indecorous, my paying a visit to Larmes Keep?"

He looked round at the door and lowered his voice.

"When did Mr. Ravini leave?" he asked.

She looked at him, amazed.

"Did you come down about that?"

He nodded slowly.

"I heard he was here.  Somebody told me.  When did he go?"

Very briefly she told him the story of her night's experience, and he
listened, his face growing longer and longer, until she had finished.

"Before that, can you remember what happened?  Did you see him the
night before he left?"

She knit her forehead and tried to remember.

"Yes," she said suddenly, "he was in the grounds, walking with Miss
Crewe.  He came in rather late----"

"With Miss Crewe?" asked Reeder quickly.  "Miss Crewe?  Was that the
rather interesting young lady I saw playing croquet with a clergyman as
I came across the lawn?"

She looked at him in surprise.

"Did you come across the lawn?  I thought you drove up to the front of
the house."

"I descended from the vehicle at the top of the hill," Mr. Reeder
hastily explained.  "At my age, a little exercise is vitally necessary.
The approaches to the Keep are charming.  A young lady, rather pale,
with dark eyes ... hum!"

He was looking at her searchingly, his head a little on one side.

"So she and Ravini went out.  Were they acquainted?"

She shook her head.

"I don't think Ravini had met her until he came here."

She went on to tell him of Ravini's agitation, and of how she had found
Olga Crewe in tears.

"Weeping--ah!"  Mr. Reeder fondled his nose.  "You have seen her since?"

And when the girl shook her head:

"She got up late the next morning--had a headache possibly?" he asked
eagerly, and her eyes opened in astonishment.

"Why, yes.  How did you know?"

But Mr. Reeder was not in an informative mood.

"The number of your room is----?"

"No. 4.  Miss Crewe's is No. 5."

Reeder nodded.

"And Ravini was in No. 7--that is two doors away."  Then, suddenly:
"Where have you put me?"

She hesitated.

"In No. 7.  Those were Mr. Daver's orders.  It is one of the best rooms
in the house.  I warn you, Mr. Reeder, the proprietor is a
criminologist and is most anxious to discuss his hobby."

"Delighted," murmured Mr. Reeder, but he was thinking of something
else.  "Could I see Mr. Daver?"

The quarter-of-an-hour gong had already sounded, and she took him along
to the office in the annex.  Mr. Daver's desk was surprisingly tidy.
He was surveying an account book through large horn-rimmed spectacles
and looked up inquiringly as she came in.

"This is Mr. Reeder," she said, and withdrew.

For a second they looked at one another, the detective and the
Puck-faced little proprietor; and then, with a magnificent wave of his
hand, Mr. Daver invited his visitor to a seat.

"This is a very proud moment for me, Mr. Reeder," he said, and bent
himself double in a profound bow.  "As a humble student of those great
authorities whose works, I have no doubt, are familiar to you, I am
honoured at this privilege of meeting one whom I may describe as a
modern Lombroso.  You agree with me?  I was certain you would."

Mr. Reeder looked up at the ceiling.

"Lombroso?" he repeated slowly.  "An--um--Italian gentleman, I think?
The name is almost familiar."

Margaret Belman had not quite closed the door, and Mr. Daver rose and
shut it; returned to his chair with an outflung hand and seated himself.

"I am glad you have come.  In fact, Mr. Reeder, you have relieved my
mind of a great uneasiness.  Ever since yesterday morning I have been
wondering whether I ought not to call up Scotland Yard, that splendid
institution, and ask them to dispatch an officer to clear up this
strange and possibly revolting mystery."

He paused impressively.

"I refer to the disappearance of Mr. George Ravini, a guest of Larmes
Keep, who left this house at a quarter to five yesterday morning and
was seen making his way into Siltbury."

"By whom?" asked Mr. Reeder.

"By an inhabitant of Siltbury, whose name for the moment I forget.
Indeed, I never knew.  I met him quite by chance walking down into the
town."

He leaned forward over his desk and stared owlishly into Mr. Reeder's
eyes.

"You have come about Ravini, have you not?  Do not answer me: I see
that you have!  Naturally, one did not expect you to carry, so to
speak, your heart on your sleeve.  Am I right?  I think I am."

Mr. Reeder did not confirm this conclusion.  He seemed strangely
unwilling to speak, and in ordinary circumstances Mr. Daver would not
have resented this diffidence.

"Very naturally I do not wish a scandal to attach to this house," he
said, "and I may rely upon your discretion.  The only matter which
touches me is that Ravini left without paying his bill: a small and
unimportant aspect of what may possibly be a momentous case.  You see
my point of view?  I am certain that you do."

He paused, and now Mr. Reeder spoke.

"At a quarter to five," he said thoughtfully, as though speaking to
himself, "it was scarcely light, was it?"

"The dawn was possibly breaking o'er the sea," said Mr. Daver
poetically.

"Going to Siltbury?  Carrying his bag?"

Mr. Daver nodded.

"May I see his room?"

Daver came to his feet with a flourish.

"That is a request I expected, and it is a reasonable request.  Will
you follow me?"

Mr. Reeder followed him through the great hall, which was occupied
solely by a military-looking gentleman, who cast a quick sidelong
glance at him as he passed.  Mr. Daver was leading the way to the wide
stairs when Mr. Reeder stopped and pointed.

"How very interesting!" he said.

The most unlikely things interested Mr. Reeder.  On this occasion the
point of interest was a large safe--larger than any safe he had seen in
a private establishment.  It was six feet in height and half that in
width, and it was fitted under the first flight of stairs.

"What is it?" asked Mr. Daver, and turned back, His face screwed up
into a smile when he saw the object of the detective's attention.

"Ah!  My safe!  I have many rare and valuable documents which I keep
here.  It is a French model, you will observe--too large for my modest
establishment, you will say?  I agree.  Sometimes, however, we have
very rich people staying here--jewels and the like--it would take a
very clever burglar to open that, and yet I, with a little key----"

He drew a chain from his pocket and fitted one of the keys at the end
into a thin keyhole, turned a handle, and the heavy door swung open.

Mr. Reeder peeped in curiously.  On the two steel shelves at the back
of the safe were three small tin boxes--otherwise, the safe was empty.
The doors were of an extraordinary thickness, and their inner face
smooth except for a slab of steel the object of which apparently was to
back and strengthen the lock.  All this he saw at once, but he saw
something else.  The white enamelled floor of the safe was brighter in
hue than the walls.  Only a man of Mr. Reeder's powers of observation
would have noticed this fact.  And the steel slab at the back of the
lock?  Mr. Reeder knew quite a lot about safes.

"A treasure house--it almost makes me feel rich," chuckled Mr. Daver as
he locked the door and led the way up the stairs.  "The psychology of
it will appeal to you, Mr. Reeder!"

At the head of the stairs they came to a broad corridor; Daver,
stopping before the door of No. 7, inserted a key.

"This is also your room," he explained.  "I had a feeling, which
amounted almost to a certainty, that your visit was not wholly
unconnected with this curious disappearance of Mr. Ravini, who left
without paying his bill."  He chuckled a little and apologized.
"Excuse me for my insistence upon this point, but it touches me rather
nearly."

Mr. Reeder followed his host into the big room.  It was panelled from
ceiling to floor and furnished with a luxury which surprised him.  The
articles of furniture were few, but there was not one which a
connoisseur would not have noted with admiration.  The four-poster bed
was Jacobean; the square of carpet was genuine Teheran; a tallboy and
dressing table with a settee before it were also of the Jacobean period.

"That was his bed, where the pajamas were found."

Mr. Daver pointed dramatically.  But Mr. Reeder was looking at the
casement windows, one of which was open.

He leaned out and looked down, and immediately began to take in the
view.  He could see Siltbury lying in the shadow of the downs, its
lights just then beginning to twinkle; but the view of the Siltbury
road was shut out by a belt of firs.  To the left he had a glimpse of
the hill road up which his cab had climbed.

Mr. Reeder came out from the room and cast his eyes up and down the
corridor.

"This is a very beautiful house you have, Mr. Daver," he said.

"You like it?  I was sure you would!" said Mr. Daver enthusiastically.
"Yes, it is a delightful property.  To you it may seem a sacrilege that
I should use it as a boarding house, but perhaps our dear young friend
Miss Belman has explained that it is a hobby of mine.  I hate
loneliness; I dislike intensely the exertion of making friends.  My
position is unique; I can pick and choose my guests."

Mr. Reeder was looking aimlessly toward the head of the stairs.

"Did you ever have a guest named Holden?" he asked.

Mr. Daver shook his head.

"Or a guest named Willington?  Two friends of mine who may have come
here about eight years ago?"

"No," said Mr. Daver promptly.  "I never forget names.  You may inspect
our guest list for the past twelve years at any time you wish.  Would
they be likely to come for any reason"--Mr. Daver was amusingly
embarrassed--"in other names than their own?  No, I see they wouldn't."

As he was speaking, a door at the far end of the corridor opened and
closed instantly.  Mr. Reeder, who missed nothing, caught one glimpse
of a figure before the door shut.

"Whose room is that?" he asked.

Mr. Daver was genuinely embarrassed this time.

"That," he said, with a nervous little cough, "is my suite.  You saw
Mrs. Burton, my housekeeper--a quiet, rather sad soul who has had a
great deal of trouble in her life."

"Life," said Mr. Reeder tritely, "is full of trouble," and Mr. Daver
agreed with a sorrowful shake of his head.

Now the eyesight of J. G. Reeder was peculiarly good, and though he had
not as yet met the housekeeper, he was quite certain that the rather
beautiful face he had glimpsed for a moment did not belong to any sad
woman who had seen a lot of trouble.  As he dressed leisurely for
dinner, he wondered why Miss Olga Crewe had been so anxious that she
should not be seen coming from the proprietor's suite.  A natural and
proper modesty, no doubt; and modesty was the quality in woman of which
Mr. Reeder most heartily approved.

He was struggling with his tie when Daver, who seemed to have
constituted himself a sort of personal attendant, knocked at the door
and asked permission to come in.  He was a little breathless and
carried a number of press cuttings in his hand.

"You were talking about two gentlemen, Mr. Willington and Mr. Holden,"
he said.  "The names seemed rather familiar.  I had the irritating
sense of knowing them without knowing them, if you understand, dear Mr.
Reeder?  And then I recalled the circumstances."  He flourished the
press cuttings.  "I saw their names here."

Mr. Reeder, staring at his reflection in the glass, adjusted his tie
nicely.

"Here?" he repeated mechanically, and looking round, accepted the
printed slips which his host thrust upon him.

"I am, as you probably know, Mr. Reeder, a humble disciple of Lombroso
and of those other great criminologists who have elevated the study of
abnormality to a science.  It was Miss Belman who quite unconsciously
directed my thoughts to the Flack organization, and during the past day
or two I have been getting a number of particulars concerning those
miscreants.  The names of Holden and Willington occur.  They were two
detectives who went out in search of Flack and never returned.  I
remember their disappearance very well, now the matter is recalled to
my mind.  There was also a third gentleman who disappeared."

Mr. Reeder nodded.

"Ah, you remember?" said Mr. Daver triumphantly.  "Naturally you would.
A lawyer named Biggerthorpe, who was called from his office one day on
some excuse, and was never seen again.  May I add"--he smiled
good-humouredly--"that Mr. Biggerthorpe has never stayed here?  Why
should you imagine he had, Mr. Reeder?"

"I never did."  Mr. Reeder gave blandness for blandness.
"Biggerthorpe?  I had forgotten him.  He would have been an important
witness against Flack if he'd ever been caught--hum!"

And then:

"You are a student of criminal practices, Mr. Daver?"

"A humble one," said Mr. Daver, and his humility was manifest in his
attitude.

And then he suddenly dropped his voice to a hoarse whisper.

"Shall I tell you something, Mr. Reeder?"

"You may tell me," said Mr. Reeder, as he buttoned his waistcoat,
"anything that pleases you.  I am in the mood for stories.  In this
delightful atmosphere, amidst these beautiful surroundings, I should
prefer--um--fairy stories--or shall we say ghost stories?  Is Larmes
Keep haunted, Mr. Daver?  Ghosts are my specialty.  I have probably
seen and arrested more ghosts than any other living representative of
the law.  Sometime I intend writing a monumental work on the subject.
'Ghosts I Have Seen, or a Guide to the Spirit World,' in sixty-three
volumes.  You were about to say----?"

"I was about to say," said Mr. Daver, and his voice was curiously
strained, "that in my opinion Flack himself once stayed here.  I have
not mentioned this fact to Miss Belman, but I am convinced in my mind
that I am not in error.  Seven years ago"--he was very impressive--"a
gray-bearded, rather thin-faced man came here at ten o'clock at night
and asked for a lodging.  He had plenty of money, but this did not
influence me.  Ordinarily I should have asked him to make the usual
application, but it was late, a bitterly cold and snowy night, and I
hadn't the heart to turn one of his age away from my door."

"How long did he stay?" asked Mr. Reeder.  "And why do you think he was
Flack?"

"Because"--Daver's voice had sunk until it was an eerie moan--"he left
just as Ravini left--early one morning, without paying his bill, and
left his pajamas behind him!"

Very slowly Mr. Reeder turned his head and surveyed the host.

"That comes into the category of humorous stories, and I am too hungry
to laugh," he said calmly.  "What time do we dine?"

The gong sounded at that moment.

Margaret Belman usually dined at a table apart from the other guests.
She went red and felt more than a little awkward when Mr. Reeder came
across to her table, dragging a chair with him, and ordered another
place to be set.  The other three guests dined at separate tables.

"An unsociable lot of people," said Mr. Reeder as he shook out his
napkin and glanced round the room.

"What do you think of Mr. Daver?"

J. G. Reeder smiled gently.

"He is a very amusing person," he said, and she laughed, but grew
serious immediately.

"Have you found out anything about Ravini?"

Mr. Reeder shook his head.

"I had a talk with the hall porter; he seems a very honest and
straightforward fellow.  He told me that when he came down the morning
after Ravini disappeared, the front door had been unbolted and
unlocked.  An observant fellow.  Who is Mrs. Burton?" he asked abruptly.

"The housekeeper."  Margaret smiled and shook her head.  "She is rather
a miserable lady who spends quite a lot of time hinting at the good
times she should be having instead of being 'buried alive'--those are
her words--at Siltbury."

Mr. Reeder put down his knife and fork.

"Dear me!" he said mildly.  "Is she a lady who has seen better days?"

Margaret laughed softly.

"I should have thought she had never had such a time as she is having
now," she said.  "She's rather common and terribly illiterate.  Her
accounts that come up to me are fearful and wonderful things!  But,
seriously, I think she must have been in good circumstances.  The first
night I was here I went into her room to ask about an account.  I did
not understand--of course it was a waste of time, for books are
mysteries to her--and she was sitting at a table admiring her hands."

"Hands?" he said.

She nodded.

"They were covered with the most beautiful rings you could possibly
imagine," said Margaret, and was satisfied with the impression she
made, for Mr. Reeder dropped knife and fork to his plate with a crash.

"Rings----?"

"Huge diamonds and emeralds.  They took my breath away.  The moment she
saw me, she put her hands behind her, and the next morning she
explained that they were presents given to her by a theatrical lady who
had stayed here and that they had no value."

"Props, in fact," said Mr. Reeder.

"What is a prop?" she asked curiously, and Mr. Reeder waggled his head,
and she had learnt that when he waggled his head in that fashion he was
advertising his high spirits and good-humour.

After dinner he sent a waitress to find Mr. Daver, and when that
gentleman arrived, Mr. Reeder had to tell him that he had a lot of work
to do and request the loan of blotting pad and a special writing table
for his room.  Margaret wondered why he had not asked her, but she
supposed that it was because he did not know that such things came into
her province.

"You're a great writer, Mr. Reeder--he-he!"  Daver was convulsed at his
own little joke.  "So am I!  I am never happy without a pen in my hand.
Tell me, as a matter of interest, do you do your best work in the
morning or in the evening?  Personally, it is a question that I have
never decided to my own satisfaction."

"I shall now write steadily till two o'clock," said Mr. Reeder,
glancing at his watch.  "That is a habit of years.  From nine to two
are my writing hours, after which I smoke a cigarette, drink a glass of
milk--would you be good enough to see that I have a glass of milk put
in my room at once?--and from two I sleep steadily till nine."

Margaret Belman was an interested and somewhat startled audience of
this personal confession.  It was unusual in Mr. Reeder to speak of
himself, unthinkable that he should discuss his work.  In all her life
she had not met an individual who was more reticent about his private
affairs.  Perhaps the holiday spirit was on him, she thought.  He was
certainly younger-looking that evening than she had ever known him.

She went out to find Mrs. Burton and convey the wishes of the guest.
The woman accepted the order with a sniff.

"Milk?  He looks the kind of person who drinks milk.  He's nothing to
be afraid of!"

"Why should he be afraid?" asked Margaret sharply, but the reproach was
lost upon Mrs. Burton.

"Nobody likes detectives nosing about a place--do they, Miss Belman?
And he's not my idea of a detective."

"Who told you he was a detective?"

Mrs. Burton looked at her for a second from under her heavy lids, and
then jerked her head in the direction of Daver's office.

"He did," she said.  "Detectives!  And me sitting here, slaving from
morning till night, when I might be doing the grand in Paris or one of
them places, with servants to wait on me instead of me waiting on
people.  It's sickening!"

Twice since she had been at Larmes Keep, Margaret had witnessed these
little outbursts of fretfulness and irritation.  She had an idea that
the faded woman would like some excuse to make her a confidante, but
the excuse was neither found nor sought.  Margaret had nothing in
common with this rather dull and terribly ordinary lady, and they could
find no mutual interest which would lead to the breakdown of the
barriers.  Mrs. Burton was a weakling; tears were never far from her
eyes or voice, nor the sense of her mysterious grievances against the
world far from her mind.

"They treat me like dirt," she went on, her voice trembling with her
feeble anger, "and she treats me worst of all.  I asked her to come and
have a cup of tea and a chat in my room the other day, and what do you
think she said?"

"Whom are you talking about?" asked Margaret curiously.  It did not
occur to her that the "she" in question might be Olga Crewe.  It would
have required a very powerful effort of imagination to picture the cold
and worldly Olga talking commonplaces with Mrs. Burton over a friendly
cup of tea; yet it was of Olga that the woman spoke.  But at the very
suggestion that she was being questioned, her thin lips closed tight.

"Nobody in particular.--Milk, did you say?  I'll take it up to him
myself."

Mr. Reeder was struggling into a dressing jacket when she brought the
milk to him.  One of the servants had already placed pen, ink, and
stationery on the table, and there were two fat manuscript books
visible to any caller, and anticipating eloquently Mr. Reeder's
literary activities.

He took the tray from the woman's hand and put it on the table.

"You have a nice house, Mrs. Burton," he said encouragingly.  "A
beautiful house.  Have you been here long?"

"A few years," she answered.

She made as if to go, but lingered at the door.  Mr. Reeder recognized
the symptoms.  Discreet she might be, a gossip she undoubtedly was,
aching for human converse with any who could advance a programme of
those trivialities which made up her conversational life.

"No, sir, we never get many visitors here.  Mr. Daver likes to pick and
choose."

"And very wise of Mr. Daver.  By the way, which is his room?"

She walked through the doorway and pointed along the corridor.

"Oh, yes, I remember, he told me.  A charming situation.  I saw you
coming out this evening."

"You have made a mistake--I never go into his room," said the woman
sharply.  "You may have seen--"  She stopped, and added--"somebody
else.  Are you going to work late, sir?"

Mr. Reeder repeated in detail his plans for the evening.

"I should be glad if you would tell Mr. Daver that I do not wish to be
interrupted.  I am a very slow thinker, and the slightest disturbance
to my train of thought is fatal to my--er--power of composition," he
said, as he closed the door upon her, and, waiting until she had time
to get down the stairs, locked it and pushed home the one bolt.

He drew the heavy curtains across the open windows, pushed the writing
table against the curtains so that they could not blow back, and,
opening the two exercise books, so placed them that they formed a shade
that prevented the light from falling upon the bed.  This done, he
changed quickly into a lounge suit, and, lying on the bed, pulled the
coverlet over him and was asleep in five minutes.

Margaret Belman had it in her mind to send up to his room after eleven,
before she herself retired, to discover whether there was anything he
wanted, but fortunately she changed her mind--fortunately, because Mr.
Reeder had planned to snatch five solid hours' sleep before he began
his unofficial inspection of the house, or alternatively before the
period arrived when it would be necessary that he should be wide-awake.

      *      *      *      *      *

At two o'clock to the second he woke and sat up on the edge of the bed,
blinking at the light.  Opening one of his trunks, he took out a small
wooden box from which he drew a spirit stove and the paraphernalia of
tea-making.  He lit the little lamp, and while the tiny tin kettle was
boiling, he went to the bathroom, undressed, and lowered his shivering
body into a cold bath.  He returned fully dressed to find the kettle
boiling.

Mr. Reeder was a very methodical man; he was, moreover, a careful man.
All his life he had had a suspicion of milk.  He used to wander round
the suburban streets in the early hours of the morning, watch the cans
hanging on the knockers, the bottles deposited in corners of doorsteps,
and ruminate upon the enormous possibilities for wholesale murder that
this light-hearted custom of milk delivery presented to the criminally
minded.  He had calculated that a nimble homicide, working on
systematic lines, could decimate London in a month.

He drank his tea without milk, munched a biscuit, and then,
methodically clearing away the spirit stove and kettle, he took from
his grip a pair of thick-soled felt slippers and drew them on his feet.
In his trunk he found a short length of stiff rubber, which, in the
hands of a skillful man, was as deadly a weapon as a knife.  This he
put in the inside pocket of his jacket.  He put his hand into the trunk
again and brought out something that looked like a thin rubber sponge
bag, except that it was fitted with two squares of mica and a small
metal nozzle.  He hesitated about this, turning it over and over in his
hand, and eventually this went back into the trunk.  The stubby
Browning pistol, which was his next find, Mr. Reeder regarded with
disfavour, for the value of firearms, except in the most desperate
circumstances, had always seemed to him to be problematical.

The last thing to be extracted was a hollow bamboo, which contained
another, and was in truth the fishing rod for which he had once
expressed a desire.  At the end of the thinner one was a spring loop,
and after he had screwed the two lengths together, he fitted upon this
loop a small electric hand lamp and carefully threaded the thin wires
through the eyelets of the rod, connecting them up with a tiny switch
at the handle, near where the average fisherman has his grip.  He
tested the switch, found it satisfactory, and when this was done he
gave a final look round the room before extinguishing the table lamp.

In the broad light of day he would have presented a somewhat comic
figure, sitting cross-legged on his bed, his long fishing rod reaching
out to the middle of the room and resting on the footboard; but at the
moment Mr. J. G. Reeder had no sense of the ridiculous, and, moreover,
there were no witnesses.

From time to time he swayed the rod left and right, like an angler
making a fresh cast.  He was very wide-awake, his ears tuned to
differentiate between the normal noises of the night--the rustle of
trees, the soft purr of the wind--and the sounds which could only come
from human activity.

He sat for more than half an hour, his fishing rod moving to and fro,
and then he was suddenly conscious of a cold draught blowing from the
door.  He had heard no sound--not so much as the clink of a lock; but
he knew that the door was wide open.

Noiselessly he drew in the rod till it was clear of the posts of the
bed, brought it round toward the door, paying out until it was a couple
of yards from where he sat--with one foot on the floor now, ready to
leap or drop, as events dictated.

The end of the rod met with no obstruction.  Reeder held his
breath--listening.  The corridor outside was heavily carpeted..  He
expected no sound of footsteps.  But people must breathe, thought Mr.
Reeder, and it is difficult to breathe noiselessly in a silent corridor
in the dead of night.  Conscious that he himself was a little too
silent for a supposedly sleeping man, he emitted a lifelike snore and
gurgle which might be expected from a middle-aged man in the first
stages of slumber.

Something touched the end of the rod, pushing it aside.  Mr. Reeder
turned the switch and a blinding ray of light leapt from the lamp and
focussed in a circle on the opposite wall of the corridor.

The door was open, but there was nothing human in sight.

And then, despite his wonderful nerve, his flesh began to go goosey,
and a cold sensation tingled up his spine.  Somebody was
there--hiding--waiting for the man who carried the lamp, as they
thought, to emerge.

Reaching out at a full arm's length, he thrust the end of the rod
through the doorway into the corridor.

_Swish!_

Something struck the rod and snapped it.  The lamp fell on the floor,
lens uppermost, and flooded the ceiling of the corridor.  In an instant
Reeder was off the bed, moving swiftly, till he came to the cover
afforded by the wide-open door.  Through the crack he had a limited
view of what might happen outside.

There was a deadly silence.  In the hall downstairs a clock ticked
solemnly, whirred, and struck the quarter to three.  But there was no
movement; nothing came within the range of the upturned lamp, until----

He had just a momentary flash of vision.  The thin white face; the
hairy lips parted in a grin; wild dirty white hair, and a bald crown; a
short bristle of white beard; a claw-like hand reaching for the lamp----

Pistol or rubber?  Mr. Reeder elected the rubber.  As the hand closed
over the lamp, he left the cover of the room and struck.  He heard a
snarl like that of a wild beast; then the lamp was extinguished as the
apparition staggered back, snapping the thin wire.

The corridor was in darkness.  He struck again and missed; the violence
of the stroke was such that he overbalanced and fell on one knee, and
the truncheon flew from his grasp.  He threw out his hand, gripped an
arm, and with a quick jerk brought his capture into the room and
switched on the light.

A round, soft hand, covered with a silken sleeve----

As the lights leapt to life, he found himself looking into the pale
face of Olga Crewe!




CHAPTER X

For a moment they stared at one another, she fearfully, he amazed.
Olga Crewe!

Then he became conscious that he was still gripping her arm, and let it
drop.  The arm fascinated Mr. Reeder--he scarcely looked at anything
else.

"I am very sorry," said Mr. Reeder.  "Where did you come from?"

Her lips were quivering; she tried to speak, but no words came.  Then
she mastered her momentary paralysis and began to speak, slowly,
laboriously:

"I--heard--a noise--in--the--corridor--and--came--out.  A
noise--I--was--frightened."

She was rubbing her arm mechanically; he saw a red welt where his hand
had gripped.  The wonder was that he had not broken her arm.

"Is--anything--wrong?"

Every word was created and articulated painfully.  She seemed to be
considering its formation before her tongue gave it sound.

"Where is the light switch in the hall?" asked Mr. Reeder.  This was a
more practical matter--he lost interest in her arm.

"Opposite my room."

"Turn it on," he said, and she obeyed meekly.

Only when the corridor was illuminated did he step out of his room, and
even then in some doubt, if the Browning in his hand meant anything.

"Is anything wrong?" she asked again.  By now she had taken command of
herself.  A little colour had come to her white face, but the live eyes
were still beholding terrible visions.

"Did you see anything in the passage?" he answered.

She shook her head slowly.

"No, I saw nothing--nothing.  I heard a noise and I came out."

She was lying--he did not trouble to doubt this.  She had had time to
pull on her slippers and find the flimsy wrap she wore, and the fight
had not lasted more than two seconds.  Moreover, he had not heard her
door open; therefore it had been open all the time, and she had been
spectator or audience of all that had happened.

He went down the corridor, retrieved his rubber truncheon, and came
back to her.  She was half standing, half leaning against the door
post, rubbing her arm.  She was staring past him so intently that he
looked round, though there was nothing to be seen.

"You hurt me," she said simply.

"Did I?  I'm sorry."

The mark on the white flesh had gone blue, and Mr. Reeder was naturally
a sympathetic man.  Yet, if the truth be told, there was nothing of
sorrow in his mind at that moment.  Regret, yes.  But the regret had
nothing to do with her hurt.

"I think you'd better go to your bed, young lady.  My nightmare is
ended.  I hope yours will end as quickly, though I shall be surprised
if it does.  Mine is for the moment; yours, unless I am greatly
mistaken, is for life!"

Her dark, inscrutable eyes did not leave his face as she spoke.

"I think it must have been a nightmare," she said.  "It will last all
my life?  I think it will!"

With a nod she turned away, and presently he heard her door close and
the lock fasten.

Mr. Reeder went back to the far side of his bed, pulled up a chair and
sat down.  He did not attempt to close the door.  Whilst his room was
in darkness, and the corridor lighted, he did not expect a repetition
of his bad and substantial dream.

The rubber truncheon was a mistake, he admitted regretfully.  He wished
he had not such a repugnance to a noisier weapon.  He laid the pistol
on the cover of the bed within reach of his hand.  If the bad dream
came again----

Voices!

The murmur of a whispered colloquy and a fierce, hissing whisper that
dominated the others.  Not in the corridor, but in the hall below.  He
tiptoed to the door and listened.

Somebody laughed under his breath, a strange, blood-curdling little
laugh; then he heard a key turn and a door open, and a voice demand:

"Who is there?"

It was Margaret.  Her room faced the head of the stairs, he remembered.
Slipping the pistol into his pocket, he ran round the end of the bed
and into the corridor.  She was standing by the banisters, looking down
into the dark.  The whispered voices had ceased.  She saw him out of
the corner of her eye and turned with a start.

"What is wrong, Mr. Reeder?  Who put the corridor light on?  I heard
somebody speaking in the vestibule."

"It was only I."

His smile would in ordinary circumstances have been very reassuring,
but now she was frightened, childishly frightened.  She had an insane
desire to cling to him and weep.

"Something has been happening here," she said.  "I've been lying in bed
listening and haven't had the courage to get up.  I'm horribly scared,
Mr. Reeder."

He beckoned her to him, and as she came, wondering, he slipped past her
and took her place at the banisters.  She saw him lean over and the
light from a hand lamp sweep the space below.

"There's nobody there," he said airily.

She was whiter than he had ever seen her.

"There _was_ somebody there," she insisted.  "I heard footsteps on the
tiled paving after you put on your flash lamp."

"Probably Mrs. Burton," he suggested.  "I thought I heard her voice."

And now arrived a newcomer on the scene.  Mr. Daver had appeared at the
end of the corridor.  He wore a flowered silk dressing gown buttoned up
to his chin.

"Whatever is the matter, Miss Belman?" he asked.  "Don't tell me that
he tried to get into _your_ window!  I'm afraid you're going to tell me
that!  I hope you're not, but I'm afraid you will!  Dear me, what an
unpleasant thing to happen!"

"What has happened?" asked Mr. Reeder.

"I don't know, but I have an uncomfortable feeling that somebody has
been trying to break into this house," said Mr. Daver.

He was genuinely agitated; the girl could almost hear his teeth chatter.

"I heard somebody trying the catch of my window and looked out, and
I'll swear I saw--something!  What a dreadful thing to happen!  I have
half a mind to telephone for the police."

"An excellent idea," murmured Mr. Reeder, suddenly his old deferential
and agreeable self.  "You were asleep, I suppose, when you heard the
noise?"

Mr. Daver hesitated.

"Not exactly asleep," he said.  "Between sleeping and waking.  I was
very restless to-night for some reason."

He put up his hand to his throat, his dressing gown had gaped for a
second.  He was not quite quick enough.

"You were probably restless," said Mr. Reeder softly, "because you
omitted to take off your collar and tie.  I know of nothing more
disturbing."

Mr. Daver made a characteristic grimace.

"I dressed myself rather hurriedly----" he began.

"Better to undress yourself hurriedly," chided Mr. Reeder, almost
playfully.  "People who go to bed in stiff white collars occasionally
choke themselves to death.  And there is sorrow in the home of the
cheated hangman.  Your burglar probably saved your life."

Daver made as though to speak, suddenly retreated, and slammed the door.

Margaret was looking at Mr. Reeder apprehensively.

"What is the mystery--was there a burglar?  Oh, please tell me the
truth!  I shall get hysterical if you don't!"

"The truth," said Mr. Reeder, his eyes twinkling, "is very nearly what
that curious man told you--there was somebody in the house, somebody
who had no right to be here, but I think he has gone, and you can go to
bed without the slightest anxiety."

She looked at him oddly.

"Are you going to bed, too?"

"In a very few moments," said Mr. Reeder cheerfully.

She held out her hand with an impulsive gesture.  He took it in both of
his.

"You are my idea of a guardian angel," she smiled, though she was near
to tears.

"I've never heard," said Mr. Reeder, "of guardian angels with side
whiskers."

It was a mean advantage to take of her, yet he was ridiculously pleased
as he repeated his little _jeu d'esprit_ to himself in the seclusion of
his room.




CHAPTER XI

Mr. Reeder closed the door, put on the lights, and set himself to
unravel the inexplicable mystery of its opening.  Before he went to bed
he had shot home the bolt, had turned the key in the lock, and the key
was still on the inside.  It struck him, as he turned it, that he had
never heard a lock that moved so silently or a bolt that slipped so
easily into its groove.  Both lock and bolt had been recently oiled.
He began a scrutiny of the inside face of the door, and provided a
simple solution to the somewhat baffling incident of its opening.

The door consisted of eight panels, carved in small lozenge-shaped
ornaments.  The panel immediately above the lock moved slightly when he
pressed it, but it was a long time before he found the tiny spring
which held it in place.  When that was found, the panel opened like a
miniature door.  He could thrust his hand through the aperture and
slide back the bolt with the greatest ease.

There was nothing very unusual or sinister about this.  He knew that
many hotels and boarding houses had methods by which a door could be
unlocked from the outside--a very necessary precaution in certain
eventualities.  Mr. Reeder wondered whether he would find a similar
safety panel on the door of Margaret Belman's room.

By the time he had completed his inspection, it was daylight, and,
pulling back the curtains, he drew a chair to the window and made a
survey of as much of the grounds as lay within his line of vision.

There were two or three matters which were puzzling him.  If Larmes
Keep was the headquarters of the Flack gang, in what manner and for
what reason had Olga Crewe been brought into the confederation?  He
judged her age at twenty-four; she had been a constant visitor, if not
a resident, at Larmes Keep for at least ten years, and he knew enough
of the ways of the underworld to realize that they did not employ
children.  Also she had been to a public school of some kind, and that
would have absorbed at least four of the ten years.  Mr. Reeder shook
his head in doubt.

Nothing would happen now until dark, he decided, and, stretching
himself upon the bed, he pulled the coverlet over him and slept till a
tapping at the door announced the coming of the housemaid with his
morning tea.  She was a round-faced woman, just past her first youth,
with a disagreeable cockney accent and the brusque and familiar manner
of one who was an indispensable part of the establishment.  Mr. Reeder
remembered that the girl had waited on him at dinner.

"Why, sir, you haven't undressed!" she said.

"I seldom undress," said Mr. Reeder, sitting up and taking the tea from
her.  "It is such a waste of time.  For no sooner are your clothes off
than it is necessary to put them on again."

She looked at him hard, but he did not smile.

"You're a detective, ain't you?  Everybody at the cottage knows that
you are.  What have you come down about?"

Now Mr. Reeder could afford to smile cryptically.  There was a
suppressed anxiety in the girl's voice.

"It is not for me, my dear young lady, to disclose your employer's
business."

"He brought you down?  Well, he's got a nerve!"

Mr. Reeder put his finger to his lips.

"About the candlesticks?"

He nodded.

"He still thinks somebody in the house took them?"

Her face was very red, her eyes snapped angrily.  Here was exposed one
of the minor scandals of the hotel.

It was not an uninteresting sidelight.  For if ever guilt was written
on a woman's face it was on hers.  What these candlesticks were and how
they disappeared, Mr. Reeder could guess.  Petty larceny runs in
well-defined channels.

"Well, you can tell him from me----" she began shrilly, and he raised a
solemn hand.

"Keep the matter to yourself--regard me as your friend," he begged.

He was in his lighter moments a most mischievous man, a weakness that
few suspected in Mr. J. G. Reeder.  Moreover, he wanted badly some
inside information about the household, and he had an idea that this
infuriated girl who flounced out and slammed the door behind her would
supply him with that information.  In his most optimistic moments he
could not dream that in her raw hands she held the secret of Larmes
Keep.

As soon as he came down, Mr. Reeder decided to go to Daver's office; he
was curious to learn the true story of the missing candlesticks.  The
sound of an angry voice reached him, and as his hand was raised to
knock at the door, it was opened by somebody who was holding the handle
on the inside, and he heard a woman's angry voice.

"You've treated me shabbily: that's all I can say to you, Mr. Daver!
I've been working for you five years and I've never said a word about
your business to anybody!  And now you bring a detective down to spy on
me!  I won't be treated as if I was a thief or something!  If you think
that's behaving fair and square, after all I've done for you, and
minding my own business....  Yes, I know I've been well paid, but I
could get just as much money somewhere else.  I've got my pride, Mr.
Daver, the same as you have, and I think you've been very underhand,
the way you've treated me.  I'll go to-night, don't you worry!"

The door was flung open and a red-faced girl of twenty-five flounced
out and dashed past the eavesdropper, scarcely noticing him in her
fury.  The door shut behind her; evidently Mr. Daver was in as bad a
temper as the girl--a fortunate circumstance, as it proved, and Mr.
Reeder decided it might be inadvisable to advertise that he had
overheard the whole or part of the conversation.

When he strolled out into the sunlit grounds, of all the people who had
been disturbed during the night he was the brightest and showed the
least sign of fatigue.  He met the Rev. Mr. Dean and the Colonel, who
was carrying a golf bag, and they bade him a gruff good-morning.  The
Colonel, he thought, was a little haggard; Mr. Dean gave him a scowl as
he passed.

Walking up and down the lawn, he examined the front of the house with a
critical eye.  The lines of the Keep were very definite: harsh and
angular; not even the Tudor windows, which at some remote period had
been introduced to its stony face, could disguise its ancient grimness.

Turning an angle of the house, he reached the strip of lawn that faced
his own window.  Behind the lawn was a mass of rhododendron bushes,
which might serve a useful purpose, but which in certain circumstances
might also be a danger point.

Immediately beneath his window was an angle of the drawing room, a
circumstance that gave him cause for satisfaction.  Mr. Reeder's
experience favoured a bedroom that was above a public apartment.

He went back on his tracks and came to the other end of the lawn.
Those three windows, brightly curtained, were evidently Mr. Daver's
private suite.  Beneath them, the wall was black, the actual stone
being obscured by a thick growth of ivy.  He wondered what this
lightless and doorless space contained.

As he returned to the front of the house he saw Margaret Belman.  She
was standing in front of the doorway, shading her eyes from the sun,
evidently searching her limited landscape for somebody.  Seeing him,
she came quickly to meet him.

"Oh, there you are!" she said, with a sigh of relief.  "I wondered what
had happened to you--you didn't come down to breakfast."

She looked a little peaked, he thought.  Evidently she had not rounded
off the night as agreeably as he.

"I haven't slept since I saw you," she said, answering his unspoken
question.  "What happened, Mr. Reeder?  Did somebody really try to get
into the house--a burglar?"

"I think somebody tried, and I think succeeded," said Mr. Reeder
carefully.  "Burglaries happen even in--um--hotels, Miss--um--Margaret.
Has Mr. Daver notified the police?"

She shook her head.

"I don't know.  He has been telephoning all the morning--I went to his
room just now and it was locked, but I heard his voice.  And, Mr.
Reeder, you didn't tell me the terrible thing that happened the night I
left London.  I saw it in the newspaper this morning."

"Terrible thing?"

J. G. Reeder was puzzled.  Almost he had forgotten the adventure of the
spring gun.

"Oh, you mean the little joke?"

"Joke!" she said, shocked.

"Criminals have a perverted sense of humour," said Mr. Reeder airily.
"The whole thing was--um--an elaborate jest designed to frighten me.
One expects such things.  They are the examination papers which are set
to test one's intelligence from time to time."

"But who did it?" she asked.

Mr. Reeder's gaze wandered absently over the placid countryside.  She
had a feeling that it bored him even to recall so trivial an incident
in a busy life.

"Our young friend," he said suddenly, and, following the direction of
his eyes, she saw Olga Crewe.

She was wearing a dark gray knitted suit and a big black hat that
shaded her face, and there was nothing of embarrassment in the half
smile with which she greeted her fellow guest.

"Good-morning, Mr. Reeder.  I think we have met before this morning."
She rubbed her arm good-humouredly.

Mr. Reeder was all apologies.

"I don't even know now what happened," she said, and Margaret Belman
learned for the first time what had happened before she had made her
appearance.

"I never thought you were so strong--look!"  Olga Crewe pulled back her
sleeve and showed a big blue-black patch on her forearm, cutting short
his expression of remorse with a little laugh.

"Have you shown Mr. Reeder all the attractions of the estate?" she
asked, a hint of sarcasm in her tone.  "I almost expected to find you
at the bathing pool this morning."

"I didn't even know there was a bathing pool," said Mr. Reeder.  "In
fact, after my terrible scare last night, this--um--beautiful house has
assumed so sinister an aspect that I expect to bathe in nothing less
dramatic than blood!"

She was not amused.  He saw her eyes close quickly and she shivered a
little.

"How gruesome you are!  Come along, Miss Belman."

Inwardly Margaret resented the tone, which was almost a command, but
she walked by their side.  Clear of the house, Olga stopped and pointed.

"You must see the well.  Are you interested in old things?" asked Olga,
as she led the way to the shrubbery.

"I am more interested in new things, especially new experiences," said
Mr. Reeder, quite gaily.  "And new people fascinate me!"

Again that quick, frightened smile of hers.

"Then you should be having the time of your life, Mr. Reeder," she
said, "for you're meeting people here whom you've never met before."

He screwed up his forehead in a frown.

"Yes, there are two people in this house I have never met before," he
said, and she looked round at him quickly.

"Only two?  You've never met me before!"

"I've seen you," said Mr. Reeder, "but I have never met you."

By this time they had arrived at the well, and he read the inscription
slowly before he tested the board that covered the top of the well with
his foot.

"It has been closed for years," said the girl.  "I shouldn't touch it,"
she added hastily, as Reeder stooped and, catching the edge of the
board, swung it back trap fashion, leaving an oblong cavity.

The trap did not squeak or creak as he turned it back; the hinges were
oiled; there was no accumulation of dust between the two doors.  Going
on to his hands and knees, he looked down into the darkness.

"How many loads of rubble and rock were used to fill up this well?" he
asked.

Margaret read from the little notice board.

"Hum!" said Mr. Reeder, groped in his pockets, took out a two-shilling
piece, poised the silver coin carefully and let it drop.

For a long, long time he listened, and then a faint metallic tinkle
came up to him.

"Nine seconds!"  He looked up into Olga's face.  "Deduct from the
velocity of a falling object the speed at which sound travels, and tell
me how deep this hole is."

He got to his feet, dusted the knees of his trousers, and carefully
dropped the trap into position.

"Rock there may be," he said, "but there is no water.  I must work out
the number of loads requisite to fill this well entirely--it will be an
interesting morning's occupation for one who in his youth was something
of a mathematical genius."

Olga Crewe led the way back to the shrubbery in silence.  When they
came to the open: "I think you had better show Mr. Reeder the rest of
the establishment," she said.  "I'm rather tired."  And with a nod, she
turned away and walked toward the house.

Mr. Reeder gazed after her with something like admiration in his eyes.

"The rouge would, of course, make a tremendous difference," he said,
half speaking to himself, "but it is very difficult to disguise
voices--even the best of actors fail in this respect."

Margaret stared at him.

"Are you talking to me?"

"To myself," said Mr. Reeder humbly.  "It is a bad habit of mine,
peculiar to my age, I fear."

"But Miss Crewe never uses rouge."

"Who does--in the country?" asked Mr. Reeder, and pointed with his
walking stick to the wall along the cliff.  "Where does that lead?
What is on the other side?"

"Sudden death," said Margaret, and laughed.

For a quarter of an hour they stood leaning on the parapet of the low
wall, looking down at the strip of beach below.  The small channel that
led to the cave interested him.  He asked her how deep it was.  She
thought that it was quite shallow, a conclusion with which he did not
agree.

"Underground caves sound romantic, and that channel is deeper than
most.  I think I must explore the cave.  How does one get down?"

He looked left and right.  The beach was enclosed in a deep little bay,
circled on one side by sheer cliff, on the other by a high reef of rock
that ran far out to sea.  Mr. Reeder pointed to the horizon.

"Sixty miles from here is France."

He had a disconcerting habit of going off at a tangent.

"I think I will do a little exploring this afternoon.  The walk should
freshen me."

They were returning to the house when he remembered the bathing pool
and asked to see it.

"I wonder Mr. Daver doesn't let it run dry," Margaret said.  "It is an
awful expense.  I was going through the municipality's account
yesterday, and they charge a fabulous sum for pumping up fresh water."

"How long has it been built?"

"That is the surprising thing," she said.  "It was made twelve years
ago, when private swimming pools were things unheard of in this
country."

The pool was oblong in shape; one end of it was tiled and obviously
artificially created.  The farther end, however, had for its sides and
bottom natural rock.  A great dome-shaped mass served as a diving
platform.  Mr. Reeder walked all round, gazing into the limpid water.
It was deepest at the rocky end, and here he stayed longest, and his
inspection was most thorough.  There seemed a space--how deep he could
not tell--at the bottom of the bath, where the rock overhung.

"Very interesting," said Mr. Reeder at last.  "I think I will go back
to the house and get my bathing suit.  Happily I brought one."

"I didn't know you were a swimmer," smiled the girl.

"I am the merest tyro in most things," said Mr. Reeder modestly.

He went up to his room, undressed and slipped into a bathing suit, over
which he put his overcoat.  Olga Crewe and Mr. Daver had gone down to
Siltbury.  To his satisfaction, he saw the hotel car descending the
hill road cautiously in a cloud of dust.

When Mr. Reeder threw off his coat to make the plunge there was
something comically ferocious in his appearance, for about his waist he
had fastened a belt to which was fastened in a sheath a long-bladed
hunting knife, and in addition there dangled a water-proof bag in which
he had placed one of the many little hand lamps that he invariably
carried about with him.  He made the most human preparations: put his
toes into the cold water, and shivered ecstatically before he made his
plunge.  Losing no time in preliminaries, he swam along the bottom to
the slit in the rock which he had seen.

It was about two feet high and eight feet in length, and into this he
pulled his way, gripping the roof to aid his progress.  The roof ended
abruptly; he found nothing but water above him, and he allowed himself
to come to the surface, catching hold of a projecting ledge to keep
himself afloat whilst he detached the waterproof bag from his belt,
and, planting it upon the shelf, took out his flashlamp.

He was in a natural stone chamber, with a broad, vaulted roof.  He was,
in fact, inside the dome-shaped rock that formed one end of the pool.
At the farthermost corner of the chamber was an opening about four feet
in height and two feet in width.  A rock passage that led downward, he
saw.  He followed this for about fifty yards and noted that, although
nature had hewn or worn this queer corridor at some remote
age--possibly it had been an underground waterway before some gigantic
upheaval of nature had raised the land above water level--the passage
owed something of its practicability to human agency.  At one place
there were marks of a chisel; at another, unmistakable signs of
blasting.  Mr. Reeder retraced his steps and came back to the water.
He fastened and resealed his lamp, and, drawing a long breath, dived to
the bottom and wormed his way through the aperture to the bath and to
open air.  He came to the surface to gaze into the horror-stricken face
of Margaret Belman.

"Oh, Mr. Reeder!" she gasped.  "You--you frightened me!  I heard you
jump in, but when I came here and found the bath empty I thought I must
have been mistaken.  Where have you been?  You couldn't stay under
water all that time."

"Will you hand me my overcoat?" said Mr. Reeder modestly, and when he
had hastily buttoned this about his person: "I have been to see that
the County Council's requirements are fully satisfied," he said
solemnly.

She listened, dazed.

"In all theatres, as you probably know, my dear Miss--um--Margaret, it
is essential that there should be certain exits in case of necessity.
I have already inspected two this morning, but I rather imagine that
the most important of all has so far escaped my observation.  What a
man!  Surely madness is akin to genius!"


He lunched alone, and apparently no man was less interested in his
fellow guests than Mr. J. G. Reeder.  The two golfers had returned and
were eating at the same table.  Miss Crewe, who came in late and
favoured him with a smile, sat at a little table facing him.

"She is uneasy," said Mr. Reeder to himself.  "That is the second time
she has dropped her fork.  Presently she will get up, sit with her back
to me--I wonder on what excuse?"

Apparently no excuse was necessary.  The girl called a waitress toward
her and had her glass and tableware shifted to the other side of the
table.  Mr. Reeder was rather pleased with himself.

Daver minced into the dining room as Mr. Reeder was peeling an apple.

"Good-morning, Mr. Reeder.  Have you got over your nightmare?  I see
that you have!  A man of iron nerve.  I admire that tremendously.
Personally, I am the most dreadful coward, and the very hint of a
burglar makes me shiver.  You wouldn't believe it, but I had a quarrel
with a servant this morning and she left me shaking!  You are not
affected that way?  I see that you are not!  Miss Belman tells me that
you tried our swimming pool this morning.  You enjoyed it?  I am sure
you did!"

"Won't you sit down and have coffee?" asked Mr. Reeder politely, but
Daver declined the invitation with a flourish and a bow.

"No, no, I have my work.  I cannot tell you how grateful I am to Miss
Belman for putting me on the track of the most fascinating character of
modern times.  What a man!" said Mr. Daver, unconsciously repeating J.
G. Reeder's tribute.  "I've been trying to trace his early career--no,
no, I'll stand: I must run away in a minute or two.  Is anything known
about his early life?  Was he married?"

Mr. Reeder nodded.  He had not the slightest idea that John Flack was
married, but it seemed a moment to assert the universality of his
knowledge.  He was quite unprepared for the effect upon Daver.  The jaw
of the yellow-faced man dropped.

"Married?" he squeaked.  "Who told you he was married?  Where was he
married?"

"That is a matter," said Mr. Reeder gravely, "which I cannot discuss."

"Married!"  Daver rubbed his little round head irritably, but did not
pursue the subject.  He made some inane reference to the weather and
bustled out of the room.

Mr. Reeder settled himself in what he called the banqueting hall with
an illustrated paper, awaiting an opportunity which he knew must
present itself sooner or later.

The servants he had passed under review.  Girls were employed to wait
at table, and these lived in a small cottage on the Siltbury side of
the estate.  The manservants, including the hall porter, seemed above
suspicion.  The porter was an old army man with a row of medals across
his uniform jacket; his assistant was a chinless youth recruited from
Siltbury.  He apparently was the only member of the staff that did not
live in one of the cottages.  In the main, the women servants were an
unpromising lot.  The infuriated waitress was his only hope, although
as likely as not she would talk of nothing but her grievances.

From where he sat he had a view of the lawn.  At three o'clock the
Colonel and the Rev. Mr. Dean and Olga Crewe passed out of the main
gate, evidently bound for Siltbury.  He rang the bell and, to his
satisfaction, the aggrieved waitress came and took his order for tea.

"This is a nice place," said Mr. Reeder conversationally.

The girl's "Yes, sir" was snappy.

"I suppose," mused Mr. Reeder, looking out of the window, "that this is
the sort of situation that a lot of girls would give their heads to get
and break their hearts to lose?"

Evidently she did not agree.

"The upstairs work isn't so bad," she said, "and there's not much to do
in the dining room.  But it's too slow for me.  I was at a big hotel
before I came here.  I'm going to a better job--and the sooner the
better."

She admitted that the money was good, but she had a longing for that
imponderable quantity which she described as "life."  She also
expressed a preference for man guests.

"Miss Crewe--so called--gives more trouble than all the rest of the
people put together," she said.  "I can't make her out.  First she
wants one room, then she wants another.  Why she can't stay with her
husband, I don't know."

"With her----?"  Mr. Reeder looked at her in pained surprise.  "Perhaps
they don't get on well together?"

"They used to get on all right.  If they weren't married, I could
understand all the mystery they're making--pretending they're not, him
in his room and she in hers, and meeting like strangers.  When all that
kind of deceit is going on, things are bound to get lost," she added
inconsequently.

"How long has this been--er--going on?" asked Mr. Reeder.

"Only the last week or so," said the girl viciously.  "I know they're
married, because I've seen her marriage certificate--they've been
married six years.  She keeps it in her dressing case."

She looked at him with sudden suspicion.

"I oughtn't to have told you that.  I don't want to make trouble for
anybody, and I bear them no malice, though they've treated me worse'n a
dog," she said.  "Nobody else in the house but me knows.  I was her
maid for two years.  But if people don't treat me right, I don't treat
them right."

"Married six years?  Dear me!" said Mr. Reeder.

And then he suddenly turned his head and faced her.

"Would you like fifty pounds?" he asked.  "That is the immense sum I
will give you for just one little peep at that marriage certificate."

The girl went red.

"You're trying to catch me," she said, hesitated, and then: "I don't
want to get her into trouble."

"I am a detective," said Mr. Reeder, "but I am working on behalf of the
Chief Registrar, and we have a doubt as to whether that marriage was
legal.  I could, of course, search the young lady's room and find the
certificate for myself, but if you would care to help me, and fifty
pounds has any attraction for you----"

She paused irresolutely and said she would see.  Half an hour later she
came into the hall with the news that she had been unsuccessful in her
search.  She had found the envelope in which the certificate had been
kept, but the document itself was gone.

Mr. Reeder did not ask the name of the bridegroom, nor was he
mentioned, for he was pretty certain that he knew that fortunate man.
He put the question, and the girl answered as he had expected.

"There is one thing I would like to ask you: do you remember the name
of the girl's father?"

"John Crewe, merchant," she said promptly.  "The mother's name was
Hannah.  He made me swear on the Bible I'd never tell a soul that I
knew they were married."

"Does anybody else know?  You said 'nobody,' I think?"

The girl hesitated.

"Yes, Mrs. Burton knows.  She knows everything."

"Thank you," said Mr. Reeder, and, opening his pocketbook, took out two
five-pound notes.  "What was the husband's profession--do you remember
that?"

The woman's lips curled.

"Secretary.  Why call himself secretary, I don't know, and him an
independent gentleman!"

"Thank you," said Mr. Reeder again.

He telephoned to Siltbury for a taxicab.

"Are you going out?" asked Margaret, finding him waiting under the
portico.

"I am buying a few presents for friends in London," said Mr. Reeder
glibly; "a butter dish or two, suitably inscribed, would, I feel sure,
be very acceptable."

The taxi did not take him to Siltbury.  Instead, he followed a road
which ran parallel with the sea coast, and which eventually landed him
in an impossible sandy track, from which the ancient taxi was
extricated with some difficulty.

"I told you this led nowhere, sir," said the aggrieved driver.

"Then we have evidently reached our destination," replied Mr. Reeder,
applying his weight to push the machine to a more solid foundation.

Siltbury was not greatly favoured by London visitors, the driver told
him on the way back.  The town had a pebbly beach and people preferred
sand.

"There are some wonderful beaches about here," said the driver, "but
you can't reach 'em."

They had taken the left-hand road, which would bring them eventually to
the town, and had been driving for a quarter of an hour when Mr.
Reeder, who sat by the driver, pointed to a large scar in the face of
the downs on his right.

"Siltbury Quarries," explained the cabman.  "They're not worked now;
there are too many holes."

"Holes?"

"The downs are like a sponge," said the man.  "You could lose yourself
in the caves.  Old Mr. Kimpon used to work the quarries many years ago,
and it broke him.  There's a big cave there you can drive a coach and
four into!  About twenty years ago, three fellows went in to explore
the caves and never came out again."

"Who owns the quarry now?"

Mr. Reeder wasn't very interested, but when his mind was occupied with
a pressing problem he had a trick of flogging along a conversation with
appropriate questions, and if he was oblivious of the answers they
produced, the sound of the human voice had a sedative effect.

"Mr. Daver owns it now.  He bought it after the people were lost in the
caves, and had the entrance boarded up.  You'll see it in a minute."

They were climbing a gentle slope.  As they came to the crest, he
pointed down a tidy-looking roadway to where, about two hundred yards
distant, Reeder saw an oblong gap in the white face of the quarry.
Across this, and falling the cavity except for an irregular space at
the top, was a heavy wooden gate.

"You can't see it from here," said the driver, "but the top hole is
blocked with barbed wire."

"Is that a gate or a hoarding he has fixed across?"

"A gate, sir.  Mr. Daver owns all the land from here to the sea.  He
used to farm about a hundred acres of the downs, but it's very poor
land.  In those days he kept his wagons inside the cave."

"When did he give up farming?" asked Mr. Reeder, interested.

"About six years ago," was the reply, and it was exactly the reply Mr.
Reeder had expected.  "I used to see a lot of Mr. Daver before then,"
said the driver.  "In the old times I had a horse cab, and I was always
driving him about.  He used to work like a slave--on the farm in the
morning, down in the town buying things in the afternoon.  He was more
like a servant than a master.  He used to meet all the trains when
visitors arrived--and they had a lot of visitors in those days, more
than they have now.  Sometimes he went up to London to bring them down.
He always went to meet Miss Crewe when the young lady was at school."

"Do you know Miss Crewe?"

Apparently the driver had seen her frequently, but his acquaintance was
very limited.

Reeder got down from the cab and climbed the barred gate on to the
private roadway.  The soil was chalky and the road had the appearance
of having been recently overhauled.  He mentioned this fact to the
cabman and learned that Mr. Daver kept two old men constantly at work
making up the road, though why he should do so he had no idea.

"Where would you like to go now, sir?"

"To a quiet place where I can telephone," said Mr. Reeder.

These were the facts that he carried with him, and vital facts they
were.  During the past six years, the life of Mr. Daver had undergone a
considerable change.  From being a harassed man of affairs, "more like
a servant than a master," he had become a gentleman of leisure.  The
mystery of the Keep was a mystery no longer.  He got Inspector Simpson
on the telephone and conveyed to him the gist of his discovery.

"By the way," said Simpson at the finish, "the gold hasn't been sent to
Australia yet.  There has been trouble at the docks.  You don't
seriously anticipate a Flack 'operation,' do you?"

Mr. Reeder, who had forgotten all about the gold convoy, made a
cautious and noncommittal reply.

By the time he returned to Larmes Keep, the other guests had returned.
The hall porter said they were expecting a "party" on the morrow, but
as he had volunteered that information on the previous evening Mr.
Reeder did not take it very seriously.  He gathered that the man spoke
in good faith, without any wish to deceive, but he saw no signs of
unusual activity; nor, indeed, was there accommodation at the Keep for
more than a few more visitors.

He looked around for the aggrieved servant and missed her.  A discreet
inquiry revealed the fact that she had left that afternoon.

Mr. Reeder went to his room, locked the door, and busied himself in the
examination of two great scrapbooks which he had brought down with him.
They were the official records of Flack and his gang.  Perhaps "gang"
was hardly a proper description, for he seemed to use and change his
associates as a theatrical manager uses and changes his cast.  The
police knew close on a score of men who from time to time had assisted
John Flack in his nefarious transactions.  Some had gone to prison, and
had spent the hours of their recovered liberty in a vain endeavour to
restablish touch with so generous a paymaster.  Some, known to be in
his employ, had vanished, and were generally supposed to be living in
luxury abroad.

Reeder went through the book, which was full of essential facts, and
jotted down the amounts which this strange man had acquired in the
course of twenty years' depredations.  The total was a staggering one.
Flack had worked feverishly, and though he had paid well he had spent
little.  Somewhere in England was an enormous reserve.  And that
somewhere, Mr. Reeder guessed, was very close to his hand.

For what had John Flack worked?  To what end was this accumulation of
money?  Was the sheer greed of the miser behind his thefts?  Was he
working aimlessly, as a madman works, toward some visionary objective?

Flack's greed was proverbial.  Nothing satisfied him.  The robbery of
the Leadenhall Bank had been followed a week later by an attack upon
the London Trust Syndicate, carried out, the police discovered, by an
entirely new confederation, gathered within a few days of the robbery
and yet so perfectly rehearsed that the plan was carried through
without a hitch.

Mr. Reeder locked away his books and went downstairs in search of
Margaret Belman.  The crisis was very near at hand, and it was
necessary for his peace of mind that the girl should leave Larmes Keep
without delay.

He was halfway down the stairs when he met Daver coming up, and at that
moment he received an inspiration.

"You are the very gentleman I wished to meet," he said, "I wonder if
you would do me a great favour?"

Daver's careworn face wreathed in smiles.

"My dear Mr. Reeder," he said enthusiastically, "do you a favour?
Command me!"

"I have been thinking about last night and my extraordinary
experience," said Mr. Reeder.

"You mean the burglar?" interrupted the other quickly.

"The burglar," agreed Mr. Reeder.  "He was an alarming person, and I am
not disposed to let the matter rest where it is.  Fortunately for me, I
have found a finger print on the panel of my door."

He saw Daver's face change.

"When I say I have found a finger print, I have found something which
has the appearance of a finger print, and I can only be sure if I
examine it by means of a dactyloscope.  Unfortunately, I did not
imagine that I should have need for such an instrument, and I am
wondering if you could send somebody to London to bring it down for me?"

"With all the pleasure in life," said Daver, though his tone lacked
heartiness.  "One of the men----"

"I was thinking of Miss Belman," interrupted J. G. Reeder, "who is a
friend of mine and would, moreover, take the greatest possible care of
that delicate mechanism."

Daver was silent for a moment, turning this over in his mind.

"Would it not be better if a man--and the last train down----"

"She could come down by car; I can arrange that."

Mr. Reeder fumbled his chin.

"Perhaps it would be better if I brought down a couple of men from the
Yard."

"No, no," said Daver quickly.  "You can send Miss Belman.  I haven't
the slightest objection.  I will tell her."

Mr. Reeder looked at his watch.

"The next train is at eight thirty-five, and that is the last train, I
think.  The young lady will be able to get her dinner before she
starts."

It was he who brought the news to the astonished Margaret Belman.

"Of course I'll go up to town; but don't you think somebody else could
get this instrument for you, Mr. Reeder?  Couldn't you have it sent
down----"

She saw the look in his eyes and stopped.

"What is it?" she asked, in a lower voice.

"Will you do this for--um--me, Miss--um--Margaret?" said Mr. Reeder,
almost humbly.

He went to the lounge and scribbled a note, while Margaret telephoned
for the cab.  It was growing dark when the closed landau drew up before
the hotel and J. G. Reeder, who accompanied her, opened the door.

"There's a man inside," he said, dropping his voice to a whisper.
"Please don't scream: he's an officer of police and he's going with you
to London."

"But--but----" she stammered.

"And you'll stay in London to-night," said Mr. Reeder.  "I will join
you in the morning--I hope."




CHAPTER XII

Mr. Reeder was in his room, laying out his moderate toilet requirements
on the dressing table, and meditating upon the waste of time involved
in conforming to fashion--for he had dressed for dinner--when there
came a tap at the door.  He paused, a well-worn hairbrush in his hand,
and looked around.

"Come in," he said, and added: "if you please."

The little head of Mr. Daver appeared around the opening of the door,
anxiety and apology in every line of his peculiar face.

"Am I interrupting you?" he asked.  "I am terribly sorry to bother you
at all, but Miss Belman being away, you quite understand?  I'm sure you
do."

Mr. Reeder was courtesy itself.

"Come in, come in, sir," he said.  "I was merely preparing for the
night.  I am a very tired man, and the sea air----"

He saw the face of the proprietor fall.

"Then, Mr. Reeder, I have come upon a useless errand.  The truth
is"--he slipped inside the door, closed it carefully behind him as
though he had an important statement to make which he did not wish to
be overheard--"my three guests are anxious to play bridge, and they
deputed me to ask if you would care to join them?"

"With pleasure," said Mr. Reeder graciously.  "I am an indifferent
player, but if they will bear with me, I shall be down in a few
minutes."

Mr. Daver withdrew, babbling his gratitude and apologies.

The door was hardly closed upon him before Mr. Reeder crossed the room
and locked it.  Stooping, he opened one of the trunks, took out a long,
flexible rope ladder, and dropped it through the open window into the
darkness below, fastening one end to the leg of the four-poster.
Leaning out of the window, he said something in a low voice, and braced
himself against the bed to support the weight of the man who came
nimbly up the ladder into the room.  This done, he replaced the rope
ladder in his trunk, locked it, and, walking to a corner of the room,
pulled at one of the solid panels.  It hinged open and revealed the
deep cupboard which Mr. Daver had shown him.

"That is as good a place as any, Brill," he said.  "I'm sorry I must
leave you for two hours, but I have an idea that nobody will disturb
you there.  I am leaving the lamp burning, which will give you enough
light."

"Very good, sir," said the man from Scotland Yard, and took up his post.

Five minutes later, Mr. Reeder locked the door of his room and went
downstairs to the waiting party.

They were in the big hall, a very silent and preoccupied trio, until
his arrival galvanized them into something that might pass for light
conversation.  There was indeed a fourth present when he came in: a
sallow-faced woman in black, who melted out of the hall at his
approach, and he guessed her to be the melancholy Mrs. Burton.  The two
men rose at his approach, and after the usual self-deprecatory exchange
which preceded the cutting for partners, Mr. Reeder found himself
sitting opposite the military looking Colonel Hothling.  On his left
was the pale girl; on his right, the hard-faced Rev. Mr. Dean.

"What do we play for?" growled the Colonel, caressing his moustache,
his steely blue eyes fixed on Mr. Reeder.

"A modest stake, I hope," begged that gentleman.  "I am such an
indifferent player."

"I suggest sixpence a hundred," said the clergyman.  "It is as much as
a poor parson can afford."

"Or a poor pensioner either," grumbled the Colonel, and sixpence a
hundred was agreed.

They played two games in comparative silence.  Reeder was sensitive of
a strained atmosphere but did nothing to relieve it.  His partner was
surprisingly nervous for one who, as he remarked casually, had spent
his life in military service.

"A wonderful life," said Mr. Reeder in his affable way.

Once or twice he detected the girl's hand, as she held the cards,
tremble never so slightly.  Only the clergyman remained still and
unmoved, and incidentally played without error.

It was after an atrocious revoke on the part of his partner, a revoke
which gave his opponents the game and rubber, that Mr. Reeder pushed
back his chair.

"What a strange world this is!" he remarked sententiously.  "How like a
game of cards!"

Those who were best acquainted with Mr. Reeder knew that he was most
dangerous when he was most philosophical.  The three people who sat
about the table heard only a boring commonplace, in keeping with their
conception of this somewhat dull-looking man.

"There are some people," mused Mr. Reeder, looking up at the lofty
ceiling, "who are never happy unless they have all the aces.  I, on the
contrary, am most cheerful when I have in my hand all the knaves."

"You play a very good game, Mr. Reeder."

It was the girl who spoke, and her voice was husky, her tone hesitant,
as though she was forcing herself to speak.

"I play one or two games rather well," said Mr. Reeder.  "Partly, I
think, because I have such an extraordinary memory--I never forget
knaves."

There was a silence.  This time the reference was too direct to be
mistaken.

"There used to be in my younger days," Mr. Reeder went on, addressing
nobody in particular, "a knave of hearts, who eventually became a knave
of clubs, and drifted down into heaven knows what other welters of
knavery!  In plain words, he started his professional--um--life as a
bigamist, continued his interesting and romantic career as a tout for
gambling hells, and was concerned in a bank robbery in Denver.  I have
not seen him for years, but he is colloquially known to his associates
as 'the Colonel': a military looking gentleman with a pleasing
appearance and a glib tongue."

He was not looking at the Colonel as he spoke, so he did not see the
man's face go pale.

"I have not met him since he grew a moustache, but I could recognize
him anywhere by the peculiar colour of his eyes and by the fact that he
has a scar at the back of his head, a souvenir of some unfortunate
fracas in which he became engaged.  They tell me that he became an
expert user of knives--I gather he sojourned a while in Latin
America--a knave of clubs and a knave of hearts--hum!"

The Colonel sat rigid, not a muscle of his face moving.

"One supposes," Mr. Reeder continued, looking at the girl thoughtfully,
"that he has by this time acquired a competence which enables him to
stay at the very best hotels without any fear of police supervision."

Her dark eyes were fixed unwaveringly on his.  The full lips were
closed, the jaws set.

"How very interesting you are, Mr. Reeder!" she drawled at last.  "Mr.
Daver tells me you are associated with the police force?"

"Remotely, only remotely," said Mr. Reeder.

"Are you acquainted with any other knaves, Mr. Reeder?"

It was the cool voice of the clergyman, and Mr. Reeder beamed around at
him.

"With the knave of diamonds," he said softly.  "What a singularly
appropriate name for one who spent five years in the profitable pursuit
of illicit diamond-buying in South Africa, and five unprofitable years
on the breakwater in Capetown, becoming, as one might say, a knave of
spades from the continual use of that necessary and agricultural
implement, and a knave of pickaxes, too, one supposes.  He was flogged,
if I remember rightly, for an outrageous assault upon a warder, and on
his release from prison was implicated in a robbery in Johannesburg.  I
am relying on my memory, and I cannot recall at the moment whether he
reached Pretoria Central--which is the colloquial name for the
Transvaal prison--or whether he escaped.  I seem to remember that he
was concerned in a banknote case which I once had in hand.  Now, what
was his name?"

He looked thoughtfully at the clergyman.  "Gregory Dones!  That is
it--Mr. Gregory Dones!  It is beginning to come back to me now.  He had
an angel tattooed on his left forearm, a piece of decoration which one
would have imagined sufficient to keep him to the narrow paths of
virtue, and even to bring him eventually within the fold of the church."

The Rev. Mr. Dean got up from the table, put his hand in his pocket and
took out some money.

"You lost the rubber, but I think you win on points," he said.  "What
do I owe you, Mr. Reeder?"

"What you can never pay me," said Mr. Reeder, shaking his head.
"Believe me, Gregory, your score and mine will never be wholly settled
to your satisfaction!"

With a shrug of his shoulders and a smile, the hard-faced clergyman
strolled away.  Mr. Reeder watched him out of the corner of his eye and
saw him disappear toward the vestibule.

"Are all your knaves masculine?" asked Olga Crewe.

Reeder nodded gravely.

"I hope so, Miss Crewe."

Her challenging eyes met his.

"In other words, you don't know me?" she said bluntly.  And then, with
sudden vehemence: "I wish to God you did!  I wish you did!"

Turning abruptly, she almost ran from the hall.

Mr. Reeder stood where she had left him, his eyes roving left and
right.  In the shadowy entrance of the hall, made all the more obscure
by the heavy dark curtains which covered it, he saw a dim figure
standing.  Only for a second, and then it disappeared.  The woman
Burton, he thought.

It was time to go to his room.  He had taken only two steps from the
table when all the lights in the hall went out.  In such moments as
these Mr. Reeder was a very nimble man.  He spun round and made for the
nearest wall, and stood waiting, his back to the panelling.  And then
he heard the plaintive voice of Mr. Daver.

"Who on earth has put the lights out?  Where are you, Mr. Reeder?"

"Here!" said Mr. Reeder, in a loud voice, and dropped instantly to the
ground.  Only in time; he heard a whistle, a thud, and something struck
the panel above his head.

Mr. Reeder emitted a deep groan and crawled rapidly and noiselessly
across the floor.

Again came Daver's voice.

"What on earth was that?  Has anything happened, Mr. Reeder?"

The detective made no reply.  Nearer and nearer he was crawling toward
where Daver stood.  And then, as unexpectedly as they had been
extinguished, the lights went on.  Daver was standing in front of the
curtained doorway, and on the proprietor's face was a look of blank
dismay, as Mr. Reeder rose at his feet.

Daver shrank back, his big white teeth set in a fearful grin, his round
eyes wide open.  He tried to speak and his mouth opened and closed, but
no sound issued.  From Reeder his eyes strayed to the panelled
wall--but Reeder had already seen the knife buried in the wood.

"Let me think," he said gently.  "Was that the Colonel or the highly
intelligent representative of the Church?"

He went across to the wall and with an effort pulled out the knife.  It
was long and broad.

"A murderous weapon," said Mr. Reeder.

Daver found his voice.

"A murderous weapon," he echoed hollowly.  "Was it--thrown at you, Mr.
Reeder?  How very terrible!"

Mr. Reeder was gazing at him sombrely.

"Your idea?" he asked, but by now Mr. Daver was incapable of replying.

Reeder left the shaken proprietor lying limply in one of the big
armchairs and walked up the carpeted stairs to the corridor.  And if
against his black coat the automatic was not visible, it was
nevertheless there.

He stopped before his door, unlocked it, and threw it wide open.  The
lamp by the side of the bed was still burning.  Mr. Reeder switched on
the wall light, peeped through the crack between the door and the wall
before he ventured inside.

He shut the door, locked it, and walked over to the cupboard.

"You may come out, Brill," he said.  "I presume nobody has been here?"

There was no answer, and he pulled open the cupboard door quickly.

It was empty!

"Well, well," said Mr. Reeder, and that meant that matters were
everything but well.

There was no sign of a struggle; nothing in the world to suggest that
Detective Brill had not walked out of his own free will and made his
exit by the window, which was still open.

Mr. Reeder tiptoed back to the light-switch and turned it; stretched
across the bed and extinguished the lamp; and then he sidled cautiously
to the window and peeped round the stone framing.  It was a very dark
night, and he could distinguish no object below.

Events were moving only a little faster than he had anticipated; for
this, however, he was responsible.  He had forced the hands of the
Flack confederation, and they were extremely able hands.

He was unlocking the trunk when he heard a faint sound of steel against
steel.  Somebody was fitting a key into the lock, and he waited, his
automatic covering the door.  Nothing further happened, and he went
forward to investigate.  His flash-lamp showed him what had happened.
Somebody outside had inserted a key, turned it and left it in the lock,
so that it was impossible for the door to be unlocked from the inside.

"I am rather glad," said Mr. Reeder, speaking his thoughts aloud, "that
Miss--um--Margaret is on her way to London!"

He pursued his lips reflectively.  Would he be glad if he also was at
this moment en route for London?  Mr. Reeder was not very certain about
this.

On one point he was satisfied--the Flacks were going to give him a very
small margin of time, and that margin must be used to the best
advantage.

So far as he could tell, the trunks had not been opened.  He pulled out
the rope-ladder, groped down to the bottom, and presently withdrew his
hand, holding a long white cardboard cylinder.  Crawling under the
window, he put up his hand and fixed an end of the cylinder in one of
the china flower-pots that stood on the broad window-sill and which he
had moved to allow the ingress of Brill.  When this had been done to
his satisfaction, he struck a match and, reaching up, set fire to a
little touch-paper at the cylinder's free end.  He brought his hand
down just in time; something whizzed into the room and struck the
panelling of the opposite wall with an angry smack.  There was no sound
of explosion.  Whoever fired was using an air pistol.  Again and again,
in rapid succession, came the pellets, but by now the cylinder was
burning and spluttering, and in another instant the grounds were
brilliantly illuminated as the flare burst into a dazzling red flame
that, he knew, could be seen for miles.

He heard a scampering of feet below, but dared not look out.  By the
time the first tender load of detectives had come flying up the drive,
the grounds were deserted.

With the exception of the servants, there were only two persons at
Larmes Keep when the police began their search.  Mr. Daver and the
faded Mrs. Burton alone remained.  "Colonel Hothling" and "the Rev. Mr.
Dean" had disappeared as though they had been whisked from the face of
the earth.

Big Bill Gordon interviewed the proprietor.

"This is Flack's headquarters, and you know it.  You'll be well advised
to spill everything and save your own skin."

"But I don't know the man; I've never seen him!" wailed Mr. Daver.
"This is the most terrible thing that has happened to me in my life!
Can you make me responsible for the character of my guests?  You're a
reasonable man?  I see you are!  If these people are friends of Flack,
I have never heard of them in that connection.  You may search my house
from cellar to garret, and if you find anything that in the least
incriminates me, take me off to prison.  I ask that as a favour.  Is
that the statement of an honest man?  I see you are convinced!"

Neither he nor Mrs. Burton nor any of the servants who were questioned
in the early hours of the morning could afford the slightest clue to
the identity of the visitors.  Miss Crewe had been in the habit of
coming every year and of staying four and sometimes five months.
Hothling was a newcomer, as also was the parson.  Inquiries made by
telephone of the chief of the Siltbury police confirmed Mr. Daver's
statement that he had been the proprietor of Larmes Keep for
twenty-five years, and that his past was blameless.  He himself
produced his title deeds.  A search of his papers, made at his
invitation, and of the three tin boxes in the safe, produced nothing
but support for his protestations of innocence.

Big Bill interviewed Mr. Reeder in the hall over a cup of coffee at
three o'clock in the morning.

"There's no doubt at all that these people were members of the Flack
crowd, probably engaged in advance against his escape, and how they got
away the Lord knows!  I have had six men on duty on the road since
dark, and neither the woman nor the two men passed me."

"Did you see Brill?" asked Mr. Reeder, suddenly remembering the absent
detective.

"Brill?" said the other in astonishment.  "He's with you, isn't he?
You told me to have him under your window----"

In a few words Mr. Reeder explained the situation, and together they
went up to No. 7.  There was nothing in the cupboard to afford the
slightest clue to Brill's whereabout.  The panels were sounded, but
there was no evidence of secret doors--a romantic possibility which Mr.
Reeder had not excluded, for this was the type of house where he might
expect to find them.

Two men were sent to search the grounds for the missing detective, and
Reeder and the police chief went back to finish their coffee.

"Your theory has turned out accurate so far, but there is nothing to
connect Daver."

"Daver's in it," said Mr. Reeder.  "He was not the knife-thrower; his
job was to locate me on behalf of the Colonel.  But Daver brought Miss
Belman down here in preparation for Flack's escape."

Big Bill nodded.

"She was to be hostage for your good behaviour."  He scratched his head
irritably.  "That's like one of Crazy John's schemes.  But why did he
try to shoot you up?  Why wasn't he satisfied with her being at Larmes
Keep?"

Mr. Reeder had no immediate explanation.  He was dealing with a madman,
a person of whims.  Consistency was not to be expected from Mr. Flack.

He passed his fingers through his scanty hair.

"It is all rather puzzling and inexplicable," he said.  "I think I'll
go to bed."

He was dreaming sleeplessly, under the watchful eye of a Scotland Yard
detective, when Big Bill came bursting into the room.

"Get up, Reeder!" he said roughly.

Mr. Reeder sat up in bed, instantly awake.

"What is wrong?" he asked.

"Wrong!  That gold lorry left the Bank of England this morning at five
o'clock on its way to Tilbury and hasn't been heard from since!"




CHAPTER XIII

At the last moment the bank authorities had changed their minds, and
overnight had sent 53,000 worth of gold for conveyance to the ship.
They had borrowed for the purpose an army lorry from Woolwich, a
service which is sometimes claimed by the national banking institution.

The lorry had been accompanied by eight detectives, the military driver
also being armed.  Tilbury was reached at half-past eleven o'clock at
night, and the lorry, a high-powered Lassavar, had returned to London
at two o'clock in the morning.  It had been again loaded in the bank
courtyard under the eyes of the officer, sergeant, and two men of the
guard that is on duty on the bank premises from sunset to sunrise.  A
new detachment of picked men from Scotland Yard, each carrying an
automatic pistol, loaded the lorry for its second journey, the amount
of gold this time being 73,000 worth.  After the boxes had been put
into the van, they had climbed up, and the lorry had driven away from
the bank.  Each of the eight men guarding this treasure was passed
under review by a high officer of Scotland Yard who knew every one
personally.  The lorry was seen in Commercial Road by a detective
inspector of the division, and its progress was noted also by a police
cyclist patrol who was on duty at the junction of Ripple and Barking
roads.

The main Tilbury road runs within a few hundred yards of the village of
Rainham, and it was at this point, only a few miles distant from
Tilbury, that the lorry disappeared.  Two motor-cyclist policemen, who
had gone out to meet the gold convoy and who had received a telephone
message from the Ripple road to say that it had passed, grew uneasy and
telephoned to Tilbury.

It was an airless morning, with occasional banks of mist lying in the
hollows, and part of the road, especially near the river, was covered
with patches of white fog, which dispersed about eight o'clock in the
morning under a southeasterly wind.  The mist had almost disappeared
when the search party from Tilbury pursued their investigations and
came upon evidence of the tragedy which the morning was to reveal.
This was an old Ford motor car that had evidently run from the read,
miraculously missed a telegraph pole, and ditched itself.  The machine
had not overturned; there were no visible marks of injury; yet the man
who sat at the wheel was stone dead when he was found.  An immediate
medical examination failed to discover an injury of any kind to the
man, who was a small farmer of Rainham, and on the face of it it looked
as though he had died of a heart attack whilst on his way to town.

Just beyond the place where he was found, the road dips steeply between
high banks.  It is known as Coles Hollow, and at its deepest part the
cutting is crossed by a single-track bridge, which connects two
portions of the farm through which the road runs.  The dead farmer and
his car had been removed when Reeder and Inspector Simpson of Scotland
Yard, who had been put in charge of the case, arrived on the spot.  No
news of any kind had been received of the lorry; but the local police,
who had been following its tracks, had made two discoveries.
Apparently, in going through the cutting, the lorry had run almost
head-on into the wall of the bank on the right, for there was a deep
scoop in the clayey soil which the impact had hollowed out.

"It almost appears," said Simpson, "that the lorry swerved here to
avoid the farmer's car.  There are his wheel tracks, and you notice
they were wobbling from side to side.  Probably the man was already
dying."

"Have you traced the lorry tracks from here?" asked Reeder.

Simpson nodded and called a sergeant of the Essex Constabulary, who had
charted the tracks.

"They seem to have turned up north toward Becontree," he said.  "As a
matter of fact, a policeman at Becontree said he saw a large lorry come
out of the mist and pass him, but that had a tilt on it and was going
toward London.  It was an army lorry, too, and was driven by a soldier."

Mr. Reeder had lit a cigarette and was holding the flaming match in his
hand, staring at it solemnly.

"Dear me!" he said, and dropped the match and noticed that its flame
was soon extinguished.

And then he began what seemed to be a foolish search of the ground,
striking match after match.

"Isn't there light enough for you, Mr. Reeder?" asked Simpson irritably.

The detective straightened his back and smiled.  Only for a second was
he amused, and then his long face went longer than ever.

"Poor fellow!" he said softly.  "Poor fellow!"

"Whom are you talking about?" demanded Simpson, but Mr. Reeder did not
reply.  Instead, he pointed up to the bridge in the centre of which was
an old and rusted water wagon, the type which certain English
municipalities still use.  He climbed up to the bank and examined the
iron tank, opened the hatches and groped inside, lighting matches to
aid his examination.

"Is it empty?" asked Simpson.

"I am afraid it is," said Mr. Reeder, and inspected the worn hose
leading from its iron spindles.  He descended the cutting more
melancholy than ever.

"Have you thought how easy it is to disguise an ordinary army lorry?"
he asked.  "A tilt, I think the sergeant said, and on its way to
London."

"Do you think that was the gold van?"

Mr. Reeder nodded.

"I'm certain," he said.

"Where was it attacked?"

Mr. Reeder pointed to the mark of the wheels on the side of the road.

"There," he said simply, and Simpson growled impatiently.

"Stuff!  Nobody heard a shot fired, and you don't think our people
would go down without a fight, do you?  They could have held their own
against five times their number, and no crowd has been seen on this
road!"

Mr. Reeder nodded.

"Nevertheless, this is where the convoy was attacked and overcome," he
said.  "I think you ought to look for the lorry with the tilt, and get
on to your Becontree man and get a closer description of the machine he
saw."

In a quarter of an hour the police car brought them to the little Essex
village, and the policeman who had seen the wagon was interviewed.  It
happened a few minutes before he went off duty, he said.  There was a
thick mist at the time, and he heard the rumble of the lorry wheels
before it came into sight.  He described it as a typical army wagon.
So far as he could tell it was gray, and had a black tilt with "W.D."
and a broad arrow painted on the side, "W.D." standing for War
Department, the broad arrow being the sign of the Government.  He saw
one soldier driving and another sitting by his side.  The back of the
tilt was laced up and he could not see into the interior.  The soldier,
as he passed, had waved his hand in greeting, and the policeman had
thought no more about the matter, until the robbery of the gold convoy
was reported.

"Yes, sir," he said, in answer to Reeder's inquiry, "I think it was
loaded.  It went very heavily on the road.  We often get these lorries
coming up from Shoeburyness."

Simpson had put through a telephone inquiry to the Barking police, who
had seen the military wagon.  But army convoys were no unusual sight in
the region of the docks.  Either that or one similar was seen entering
the Blackwall Tunnel, but the Greenwich police, on the south side of
the river, had failed to identify it, and from there on all trace of
the lorry was lost.

"We're probably chasing a shadow anyway," said Simpson.  "If your
theory is right, Reeder--but it can't be right!  They couldn't have
caught these men of ours so unprepared that somebody didn't shoot, and
there's no sign of shooting."

"There was no shooting," said Mr. Reeder, shaking his head.

"Then where are the men?" asked Simpson.

"Dead," said Mr. Reeder quietly.

It was Scotland Yard, in the presence of an incredulous and horrified
commissioner, that Mr. J. G. Reeder reconstructed the crime.

"Flack is a chemist; I think I impressed it upon you.  Did you notice,
Simpson, on the bridge across the cutting an old water cart?  I think
you have since learned that it does not belong to the farmer who owns
the land, and that he has never seen it before.  It may be possible to
discover where that was purchased.  In all probability you will find
that it was bought a few days ago at the sale of some municipal stores.
I noticed in the _Times_ there was an advertisement of such a sale.  Do
you realize how easy it would be not only to store under pressure, but
to make, in that tank, large quantities of a deadly gas, one important
element of which is carbon monoxide?  Suppose this, or, as it may
prove, a more deadly gas, has been so stored, do you realize how simple
a matter it would be on a still, breathless morning to throw a big hose
over the bridge and fill the hollow with the gas?  That is, I am sure,
what happened.  Whatever else was used, there is still carbon monoxide
in the cutting, for when I dropped a match it was immediately
extinguished, and every match I struck near the ground went out.  If
the car had run right through and climbed the other slope of the
cutting, the driver and the men inside the lorry might have escaped
death.  As it was, rendered momentarily unconscious, the driver turned
his wheel and ran into the bank, stopping the lorry.  They were
probably dead before Flack and his associate, whoever it was, jumped
down, wearing gas masks, lifted the driver back into the lorry and
drove on."

"And the farmer----" began the commissioner.

"His death probably occurred some time after the lorry had passed.  He
also descended into that death hollow, but the speed at which his car
was going carried him up nearer the cutting, though he must have been
dead by the time he got out."

He rose and stretched himself wearily.

"Now I think I will go and interview Miss Belman and set her mind at
rest," he said.  "Did you send her to the hotel, as I asked you, Mr.
Simpson?"

Simpson stared at him in blank astonishment.

"Miss Belman?" he said.  "I haven't seen Miss Belman!"




CHAPTER XIV

Her head in a whirl, Margaret Belman had stepped into the cab that was
waiting at the door of Larmes Keep.  The door was immediately slammed
behind her and the cab moved off.  She saw her companion; he had shrunk
into a corner of the landau, and greeted her with a little embarrassed
grin.  He did not speak until the cab was some distance from the house.

"My name's Gray," he said.  "Mr. Reeder hadn't a chance to introduce
me.  Sergeant Gray, C.I.D."

"Mr. Gray, what does all this mean--this instrument I am to get?"

Gray coughed.  He knew nothing about the instrument, he explained, but
his instructions were to put her into a car that would be waiting at
the foot of the hill road.

"Mr. Reeder wants you to go up by car.  You didn't see Brill anywhere,
did you?"

"Brill?" she frowned.  "Who is Brill?"

He explained that there had been two officers inside the grounds,
himself and the man he had mentioned.

"But what is happening?  Is there anything wrong at Larmes Keep?" she
asked.

She had no need to ask the question.  That look in J. G. Reeder's eyes
had told her that something indeed was very wrong.

"I don't know, miss," said Gray diplomatically.  "All I know is that
the Chief Inspector is down here with a dozen men and that looks like
business.  I suppose Mr. Reeder wanted to get you out of it."

She didn't "suppose," she knew, and her heart beat a little quicker.

What was the mystery of Larmes Keep?  Had all this to do with the
disappearance of Ravini?  She tried hard to think calmly and logically,
but her thoughts were out of control.

The landau stopped at the foot of the hill, and Gray jumped out.  A
little ahead of him she saw the tail light of a car drawn up by the
side of the roadway.

"You've got the letter, miss?  The car will take you straight to
Scotland Yard, and Mr. Simpson will look after you."

He followed her to the car and held open the door for her, and stood in
the roadway watching till the tail light disappeared round a bend of
the road.

It was a big, cosy landaulette, and Margaret made herself comfortable
in the corner, pulled the rug over her knees, and settled down to the
two hours' journey.  The air was a little close; she tried
unsuccessfully to pull down one of the windows, then tried the other.
Not only was there no glass to the windows, but the shutters were
immovable.  Something scratched her knuckle.  She felt along the frame
of the window--screws, recently inserted.  It was a splinter of the raw
wood which had cut her.

With growing uneasiness she felt for the inside handle of the door, but
there was none.  A search of the second door revealed a like state of
affairs.

Her movements must have attracted the attention of the driver, for the
glass panel was pushed back and a harsh voice greeted her.

"You can sit down and keep quiet!  This isn't Reeder's car; I've sent
it home."

The voice went into a chuckle that made her blood run cold.

"You're coming with me--to see life.  Reeder's going to weep tears of
blood.  You know me, eh?  Reeder knows me.  I wanted to get him
to-night.  But you'll do, my dear."

Suddenly the glass panel was shut to.  He turned off the main road and
was following a secondary, his object being, she guessed, to avoid the
big towns and villages en route.  She put out her hand and felt the
wall of the car.  It was an all-weather body with a leather back.  If
she had a knife she might cut----

She gasped as a thought struck her, and, reaching up, felt the metal
fastening that kept the leather hood attached.  Exerting all her
strength, she thrust back the flat hook and, bracing her feet against
the front of the machine, pulled at the leather hood.  A rush of cold
air came in as the hood began slowly to collapse.  The closed car was
now an open car.  She could afford to lose no time.  The car was making
thirty miles an hour, but she must take the risk of injury.  Scrambling
over the back of the hood, she gripped tight at the edge, and let
herself drop into the roadway.

Although she turned a complete somersault, she escaped injury in some
miraculous fashion, and, coming to her feet, cold with fear and
trembling in every limb, she looked round for a way of escape.  The
hedge on her left was high and unpenetrable.  On her right was a low
wooden fence, and over this she climbed, as she heard the squeak of
brakes and saw the car come to a standstill.

Even as she fled, she was puzzled to know what kind of land she was on.
It was not cultivated; it was more like common land, for there was
springy down beneath her feet, and clumps of gorse bushes sent out
their spiny fingers to clutch at her dress as she flew past.  She
thought she heard the man hailing her, but fled on in the darkness.

Somewhere near at hand was the sea.  She could smell the fragrance of
it.  Once when she stopped to take breath she could hear the distant
thunder of the waves as they rolled up some unseen beach.  She
listened, almost deafened by the beating of her own heart.

"Where are you?  Come back, you fool----"

The voice was near at hand.  Not a dozen yards away she saw a black
figure moving, and had all she could do to stifle the scream that rose
in her throat.  She crouched down behind a bush and waited, and then to
her horror she saw a beam of light spring from the darkness.  Her
pursuer had an electric lamp and was fanning it across the ground.

Detection was inevitable, and, springing to her feet, she ran, doubling
from side to side in the hope of outwitting him.  Now she found the
ground sloping under her feet, and that gave her additional speed.  She
had need of it, for he saw her against the skyline, and came on after
her, a babbling, shrieking fury of a man.  And now capture seemed
inevitable.  She made one wild leap to escape his outstretched hands,
and her feet suddenly trod on nothing.  Before she could recover, she
was falling, falling.  She struck a bush, and the shock and pain of the
impact almost made her faint.  She was falling down a steep slope, and
her wild hands clutched tree and sand and grass, and then just as she
had given up all hope, she found herself rolling over and over on a
level plateau, and came to rest with one leg hanging over a sheer drop
of two hundred feet.  Happily, it was dark.

Margaret Belman did not realize how near to death she had been till the
dawn came up.

Below her was the sea and a stretch of yellow sand.  She was looking
into a little bay that held no sign of habitation so far as she could
see.  This was not astonishing, for the beach was only approachable
from the water.  Somewhere on the other side of the northern bluff, she
guessed, was Siltbury.  Beneath her a sheer fall over the chalky face
of the cliff; above her, a terribly steep slope, which might be
negotiated, she thought hopefully.

She had lost one shoe in her fall, and after a little search found
this, so near to the edge of the cliff that she grew dizzy as she
stooped to pick it up.

The plateau was about fifty yards long and was in the shape of a half
moon, and almost entirely covered with gorse bushes.  The fact that she
found dozens of birds' nests was sufficient proof that this spot was
not visited even by the most daring of cliff climbers.  She understood
now the significance of the low rail on the side of the road, which
evidently followed the sea coast westward for some miles.  How far was
she from Larmes Keep?  she wondered--until the absurdity of considering
such a matter occurred to her.  How near was she to starvation and
death was a more present problem.

Her task was to escape from the plateau.  There was a chance that she
might be observed from the sea, but it was a remote one.  The few
pleasure boats that went out from Siltbury did not go westward; the
fishing fleet invariably tacked south.  Lying face downward, she looked
over the edge in the vain hope that she would find an easy descent, but
none was visible.  She was hungry, but, though she searched the nests,
there were no eggs to be found.

There was nothing to be done but to make a complete exploration of the
plateau.  Westward it yielded nothing, but on the eastern side she
discovered a scrub-covered slope which apparently led to yet another
plateau, not so broad as the one she was on.

To slide down was an easy matter; to check herself so that she did not
go beyond the plateau offered greater difficulty.  With infinite
labour, she broke off two stout branches of a thick furze bush, and
using these as a skier uses his stick to check her progress, she began
to slide down, feet first.  She could move slowly enough when the face
of the declivity was composed of sand or loam, or when there were
friendly bushes to hold, but there were broad stretches of weatherworn
rock to slide across, and on these the stick made no impression and her
velocity increased at an alarming rate.

And then, to her horror, she discovered that she was not keeping
direction; that, try as she would, she was slipping to the left of the
plateau, and though she strove desperately to move farther to the
right, she made no progress.

The bushes that littered the upper slope were more infrequent here.
There was indication of a recent landslide, which might continue down
to the sea level or might end abruptly and disastrously over the edge
of some steep cliff.  Slipping, sometimes on her back, sometimes
sideways, sometimes on her face, she felt her momentum increase with
every yard she covered.  The ends of the furze sticks were frayed to
feathery splinters, and already the desired plateau was above her.
Turning her head, she saw the white face of it dropping to the unseen
deeps.

Now she knew the worst.  The slope twisted round a huge rock and
dropped at an acute angle into the sea.  Almost before she could
realize the danger ahead, she was slipping faster and faster through
the loam and sand, the centre of a new landslide she had created.
Boulders of a terrifying size accompanied her--she escaped being
crushed under one by a hair's breadth.

And then without warning she was shot into the air as from a catapult.
She had a swift vision of tumbling green below, and in another second
the water had closed over her and she was striking out with all her
strength....

It seemed almost an eternity before she came to the surface.
Fortunately, she was a good swimmer, and, looking round, she saw that
the yellow beach was less than fifty yards away.  But it was fifty
yards against a falling tide, and she was utterly exhausted when she
dragged herself ashore and fell on the sand.

She ached from head to foot; her hands and limbs were lacerated.  She
felt that her body was one huge bruise.  As she lay recovering her
breath she heard one comforting sound, the splash of falling water.
Half-way down the cliff face was a spring, and, staggering across the
beach, she drank eagerly from her cupped hands.  She was parched; her
throat was so dry that she could hardly articulate.  Hunger she might
bear, but thirst was unendurable.  She might remain alive for days,
supposing she were not discovered before that time.

There was now no need for her to make a long reconnaissance of the
beach; the way of escape lay open to her.  A water-hollowed tunnel led
through the bluff and showed her yet another beach beyond.  Siltbury
was not in sight.  She had no idea how far she was from that desirable
habitation of human beings, and did not trouble to think.  After she
had satisfied her thirst, she took off her shoes and stockings and made
for the tunnel.

The second bay was larger and the beach longer.  There were, she found,
small masses of rocks jutting far into the sea that had to be
negotiated with bare feet.  The beach was longer than she had thought,
and, so far as she could see, there was no outlet, nor did the cliff
diminish in height.  She had expected to find a cliff path, and this
hope was strengthened when she discovered the rotting hull of a boat
drawn high and dry on the beach.

It was, she judged, about eight o'clock in the morning.  She had
started wet through, but the warm sun dried her rags--as rags they
were.  She had all the sensations of a shipwrecked mariner on a desert
island, and after a while the loneliness and absence of all kinds of
human society began to get on her nerves.

Before she reached the end of the beach she saw that the only way into
the next bay was by swimming to where the rocky barrier was low enough
to be climbed.  She could with great comfort to herself have discarded
what remained of her clothes, but beyond these rocks might lie
civilization; so, tying her wet shoes and stockings together, she made
fast her shoes, and, knotting the stockings about her waist, waded into
the sea and swam steadily, looking for a likely place to land.  This
she found--a step-shaped pyramid of rocks that looked easier to
negotiate than in fact they were.  By dint of hard climbing, she came
to the summit.

The beach here was shorter; the cliff considerably higher.  Across the
shoulder of rock running to the sea she saw the white houses of
Siltbury, and the sight gave her courage.  Descending from the rocky
ridge was even more difficult than climbing, and she was grateful when
at last she sat upon a flat ledge and dangled her bruised feet in the
water.

Swimming back to the land taxed her strength to the full.  It was
nearly an hour before her feet touched firm sand and she staggered up
the beach.  Here she rested until the pangs of hunger drove her toward
the last visible obstacle.

There was one which was not visible.  After a quarter of an hour's
walk, she found her way barred by a deep sea river which ran under the
overhung cliff.  She had seen this place before--where was it?  And
then she remembered, with an exclamation.

This was the cave that Olga had told her about, the cave that ran under
Larmes Keep.  Shading her eyes, she looked up.  Yes, there was the
little landslide part of the wall that had been carried away projected
from a heap of rubble on the cliff side.

Suddenly Margaret saw something which made her breath come faster.  On
the edge of the deep channel which the water had cut in the sand was
the print of a boot, a large, square-toed boot with a rubber heel.  It
had been recently made.  She looked farther along the channel and saw
another--it led to the mouth of the cave.  On either side of the rugged
entrance was a billow of firm sand left by the retreating waters, and
again she saw the footprint.  A visitor to the cave, perhaps, she
thought.  Presently he would come out and she would explain her plight,
though her appearance left little need for explanation.

She waited, but there was no sign of the man.  Stooping, she tried to
peer into its dark depths.  Perhaps, if she were inside out of the
light, she could see better.  She walked gingerly along the sand ledge,
but as yet her eyes, unaccustomed to the darkness, revealed nothing.

She took another step, passed into the entrance of the cave; and then,
from somewhere behind, a bare arm was flung round her shoulder, a big
hand closed over her mouth.  In terror, she struggled madly, but the
man held her in a grip of iron.  Then her senses left her and she sank
limply into his arms.




CHAPTER XV

Mr. Reeder 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 recognize 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 dactyloscope--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
encyclopdia 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 organized 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 recognized
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 leaned down and listened for a heartbeat--felt the still 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 indecipherable.  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.




CHAPTER XVI

When Margaret Belman recovered consciousness, she was in the open air,
lying in a little recess, effectively hidden from the mouth of the
cave.  A man in a torn shirt and ragged trousers was standing by her
side, looking down at her.  As she opened her eyes she saw him put his
finger to his mouth, as though to signal silence.  His hair was
unkempt; streaks of dried blood zigzagged down his face, and the hair
above, she saw, was matted.  Yet there was a certain kindliness in his
disfigured face which reassured her, as he knelt down and, making a
funnel of his hands, whispered:

"Be quiet!  I'm sorry to have frightened you, but I was scared you'd
shout if you saw me.  I suppose I look pretty awful."

His grin was very reassuring.

"Who are you?" she answered in the same tone.

"My name's Brill, C.I.D."

"How did you get here?" she asked.

"I'd like to be able to tell you," he answered grimly.  "You're Miss
Belman, aren't you?"

She nodded.  He lifted his head, listening, and, flattening himself
against the rock, craned out slowly and peeped round the edge of his
hiding place.  He did not move for about five minutes, and by this time
she had risen to her feet.  Her knees were dreadfully shaky; she felt
physically sick; her mouth was dry and parched.

Apparently satisfied, he crept back to her side.

"I was left on duty in Reeder's room.  I thought I heard him calling
from the window--you can't distinguish voices when they whisper--asking
me to come out quick as he wanted me.  I'd hardly dropped to the ground
before--gosh!"  He touched his head gingerly and winced.  "That's all I
remember till I woke up and found myself drowning.  I've been in the
cave all the morning--naturally."

"Why naturally?" she whispered.

"Because the beach is covered with water at high tide and the cave's
the only place.  It is a little too densely populated for me just now."

She stared at him in amazement.

"Populated?  What do you mean?"

"Whisper!" he warned her, for she had raised her voice.

Again he listened.

"I'd like to know how they get down--Daver and that old devil."

She felt herself going white.

"You mean--Flack?"

He nodded.

"Flack's only been here about an hour, and how he got down, God knows.
I suppose our fellows are patrolling the house?"

"The police?" she asked in astonishment.

"Flack's headquarters--didn't you know it?  I suppose you wouldn't.  I
thought Reeder--I mean Mr. Reeder--told you everything."

He was rather a talkative young man, more than a little exuberant at
finding himself alive, and with good reason.

"I've been dodging in and out the cave all the morning.  They've got a
sentry on duty up there"--he nodded toward Siltbury.  "It's a
marvellous organization.  They held up a gold convoy this morning and
got away with it--I heard the old man telling his daughter.  The
strange thing is that, though he wasn't there to superintend the steal,
his plan worked out like clockwork.  It's a curious thing, any crook
will work for old Flack.  He's employed the cleverest people in the
business, and Ravini is the only man that ever sold him."

"Do you know what has happened to Mr. Ravini?" she asked, and he shook
his head.

"He's dead, I expect.  There are a lot of things in the cave that I
haven't seen, and some that I have.  They've got a petrol boat inside
as big as a church--the boat I mean----  Hush!"

Again he shrank against the cliff.  Voices were coming nearer and
nearer.  Perhaps it was the peculiar acoustics of the cave which gave
him the illusion that the speakers were standing almost at their elbow.
Brill recognized the thin, harsh voice of the old man and grinned
again, but it was not a pleasant smile to see.

"There's something wrong, something damnably wrong.  What is it, Olga?"

"Nothing, Father."

Margaret recognized the voice of Olga Crewe.

"You have been very good and very patient, my love, and I would not
have planned to come out, but I wanted to see you settled in life.  I
am very ambitious for you, Olga."

A pause, and then:

"Yes, Father."

Olga Crewe's voice was a little dispirited, but apparently the old man
did not notice this.

"You are to have the finest husband in the land, my dear.  You shall
have a house that any princess would envy.  It shall be of white marble
with golden cupolas--you shall be the richest woman in the land, Olga.
I have planned this for you.  Night after night as I lay in bed in that
dreadful place I said to myself: 'I must go out and settle Olga's
future.'  That is why I came out--only for that reason.  All my life I
have worked for you."

"Mother says---" began the girl.

"Pah!"  Old John Flack almost spat the word.  "An unimaginative
commoner with the soul of a housekeeper!  She has looked after you
well?  Good.  All the better for her.  I would never have forgiven her
if she had neglected you.  And Daver?  He has been respectful?  He has
given you all the money you wanted?"

"Yes, Father."

Margaret thought she detected a catch in the girl's voice.

"Daver is a good servant.  I will make his fortune.  The scum of the
gutter--but faithful.  I told him to be your watchdog.  I am pleased
with him.  Be patient a little while longer.  I am going to see all my
dreams come true."

The voice of the madman was tender, so transfigured by love and pride
that it seemed to be a different man who was speaking.  Then his voice
changed again.

"The Colonel will be back to-night.  He is a trustworthy man--Gregory
also.  They shall be paid like ambassadors.  You must bear with me a
little while longer, Olga.  All these unpleasant matters will be
cleared up.  Reeder we shall dispose of.  To-morrow at high tide we
leave..."

The sound of the voices receded until they became an indistinguishable
murmur.  Brill looked round at the girl and smiled again.

"Can you beat him?" he whispered admiringly.  "Crazy as a barn coot!
But he has the cleverest brain in London--even Reeder says that.  God!
I'd give ten years' salary and all my chance of promotion for a gun!"

"What shall we do?" she asked after a long silence.

"Stay here till the tide turns, then we'll have to take our chance in
the cave.  We'd be smashed to pieces if we waited on the beach."

"There's no way up the cliff?"

He shook his head.

"There's a way out through the cave if we can only find it," he said.
"One way?  A dozen!  I tell you that this cliff is like a honeycomb.
One of these days it will collapse like froth on a glass of beer!  I
heard Daver say so, and the mad fellow agreed.  Mad?  I wish I had his
brain!  He's going to dispose of Reeder, is he?  The cemeteries are
full of people who've tried to dispose of Reeder!"




CHAPTER XVII

It seemed an eternity before the tide turned and began slowly to make
its noisy way up the beach.  Most of the time Margaret was alone in the
little recess, for Brill made periodical reconnaissances into the mouth
of the cave.  She would have accompanied him, but he explained the
difficulties she would find.

"It is quite dark until the tide comes in, and then we get the
reflected light from the water and you can see your way about quite
easily."

"Is there anybody there?"

He nodded.

"Two chaps who are tinkering about with a boat.  She's high and dry at
present on the bed of the channel, but she floats out quite easily."

The first whirl of water was around them when he came out from the cave
and beckoned her.

"Keep close to the wall," he whispered, "and hold fast to my sleeve."

She obeyed and followed him, and they slipped round to the left,
following a fairly level path.  Before they had come into the cave, he
had warned her that under no circumstances must she speak, not even
whisper, except through hollowed hands placed against his ear.  The
acoustics of the cave were such that the slightest sound was magnified.

They went a long way to the left, and she thought that they were
following a passage; it was not until later that she discovered the
huge dimensions of this water-hollowed cavern.  After a while, he
reached back and touched her right hand, as a signal that he was
turning to the right.

Whilst they were waiting on the beach, he had drawn a rough plan in the
sand, and assured her that the ledge on which they now walked offered
no obstacle.  He pressed her hand to warn her he was stopping, and,
bending down, he groped at the rocky wall where he had left his shoes.
Up and up they went; she began to see dimly now, though the cave
remained in darkness and she was unable with any accuracy to pick out
distant objects.  His arm came back and she found herself guided into a
deep niche, and he patted her shoulder to tell her she could sit down.

They had to wait another hour before a thin sheet of water showed at
the mouth of the cave, and then, as if by magic, the interior was
illuminated by a ghostly green light.  The height of it was impossible
to tell from where she sat, because just above them was a low and
jagged roof.  The farther side of the cave was distant some fifty
yards, and here the rocky wall seemed to run straight down from the
roof to the sandy bottom.  It was under this that she saw the motor
boat, a long gray craft, entirely devoid of any superstructure.  It lay
heeled over on its side, and she saw a figure walk along the canted
deck and disappear down a hatchway.  The farther the water came into
the cave, the brighter grew the light.  He circled his two hands about
her ear and whispered:

"Shall we stay here or try to find a way out?" and she replied in like
fashion:

"Let us try."

He nodded, and silently led the way.  It was no longer necessary for
her to hold on to him.  The path they were following had undoubtedly
been shaped by human hands.  Every dozen yards was a rough-hewn block
of stone put across the path step fashion.  They were ascending, and
now had the advantage of being screened by the cave from people on the
boat, for on their right rose a jagged screen of rock.

They had not progressed a hundred yards before screen and wall joined,
and beyond this point progress seemed impossible.  The passage was in
darkness.  Apparently Brill had explored the way, for, taking the girl
by the arm, he moved to the right, feeling along the uneven wall.  The
path beneath was more difficult, and the rocky floor made walking a
pain.  She was near to exhaustion when she saw, ahead of her, an
irregular patch of gray light.  Apparently this curious gallery led
back to the far end of the cave, but before they reached the opening,
Brill signalled her to halt.

"You'd better sit down," he whispered.  "We can put on our shoes."

The stockings that she had knotted about her waist were still wet, and
her shoes two soggy masses, but she was glad to have some protection
for her feet.  Whilst she was putting them on, Brill crept forward to
the opening and took observation.

The water which had now flooded the cave was some fifty feet below him,
and a few paces would bring them to a broad ledge of rock which formed
a natural landing for a flight of steps leading down from the misty
darkness of the roof to water level.  The steps were cut in the side of
the bare rock; they were about two feet in breadth and were unprotected
even by a makeshift handrail.  It would be, he saw, a nerve-racking
business for the girl to attempt the climb, and he was not even sure
that it would be worth the attempt.  That they led to one of the many
exits from the cave, he knew, because he had seen people climbing up
and down those steps and disappearing in the darkness at the top.
Possibly the stairs broadened nearer the roof, but even so it was a
very severe test for a half-starved girl who he guessed was on the
verge of hysteria; he was not quite certain that he himself would not
be attacked by vertigo if he made the attempt.

There was a space behind the steps that brought him to the edge of the
rock, part of the floor of the cave, and it was this way that he
intended to guide Margaret.  There was no sound; far away to his right
the men on the launch were apparently absorbed in their work.
Returning, he told the girl his plan, and she accompanied him to the
foot of the steps.  At the sight of that terrifying stairway, she
shuddered.

"I couldn't possibly climb those," she whispered as he pointed upward
into the gloom.

"I have an idea there is a sort of balcony running the width of the
cave, and it was from there I was thrown," he said.  "I have reason to
know that there is a fairly deep pool at the foot of it.  When the tide
is up, the water reaches the back wall--that is where I found myself
when I came to my senses."

"Is there any other way from the cave?" she asked.

He shook his head.

"I'm blessed if I know.  I've only had a very hasty look round, but
there seems to be a sort of tunnel at the far end.  It's worth while
exploring--nobody is about, and we are too far from the boat for them
to see us."

They waited for a while, listening, and then, Brill walking ahead, they
passed the foot of the stairs and followed a stony path which, to the
girl's relief, broadened as they progressed.

Margaret Belman never forgot that nightmare walk, with the towering
rock face on her left, the straight drop to the floor of the cave on
her right hand.

They had now reached the limit of the rocky chamber, and found
themselves confronted with the choice of four openings.  There was one
immediately facing them; another--and this was also accessible--about
forty feet to the right; and two others which apparently could not be
reached.

Leaving Margaret, Brill groped his way into the nearest.  He was gone
half an hour before he returned with a story of failure.

"The whole cliff is absolutely bored with rock passages," he said.  "I
gave it up because it is impossible to go far without a light."

The second opening promised better.  The floor was even and it had this
advantage, that it ran straight in line with the mouth of the cave, and
there was light for a considerable distance.  She followed him along
this passage.

"It is worth trying," he said, and she nodded her agreement.

They had not gone far before he discovered something which he had
overlooked on his first trip.  At regular intervals there were niches
in the wall.  He had noticed these but had failed to observe their
extraordinary regularity.  The majority were blocked with loose stone,
but he found one that had not been so guarded and felt his way round
the wall.  It was a square, cell-like chamber, so exactly proportioned
that it must have been created by the hand of man.  He came back to
announce his intention of exploring the next of the closed cells.

"These walls haven't been built up for nothing," he told her, and there
was a note of suppressed excitement in his voice.

The farther they progressed, the poorer and more inadequate was the
light.  They had to feel their way along the wall until the next recess
was reached.  Flat slabs of rock, laid one on the other, had been piled
up in the entrance, and the work of removing the top layers was a
painful one.  Margaret could not help him.  She sat with her back to
the wall and fell into the uneasy sleep of exhaustion.  She had almost
ceased to be hungry, though her throat was parched with a maddening
thirst.  She woke heavily and found Brill shaking her shoulder.

"I've been inside."  His voice was quavering with excitement.  "Hold
out your hands, both together!"

She obeyed mechanically and felt something cold drop into her palm,
and, drooping her head, drank.  The sting of wine took her breath away.

"Champagne," he whispered.  "Don't drink too much or you'll get tight!"

She sipped again.  Never had wine tasted so delicious.

"It's a storehouse; boxes of food, I think, and hundreds of bottles of
wine.  Hold your hand."

He poured out another portion of wine; most of it escaped through her
fingers, but she drank eagerly the few drops that remained.

"Wait here."

She was very much awake now; she peered into the darkness toward the
place where he had disappeared.  Ten minutes, a quarter of an hour
passed, and then, to her joy, there appeared from behind the stony
barrier, revealing in silhouette the hole through which Brill had
crawled, a white and steady light.  She heard the creak and crash of a
box being opened, saw the bulk of the detective as he appeared in the
hole, and in a second he was by her side.

"Biscuits," he said.  "Luckily the box was labelled."

"What was the light?" she asked, as she seized the crackers eagerly.

"A small battery lantern; I knocked it over as I was groping.  The
place is simply stocked with grub!  Here's a drink for you."

He handed her a flat, round tin, guided her finger to the hole he had
punched.

"Preserved milk--German, and good stuff," he said.

She drank thirstily, not taking her lips from the tin until it was
empty.

"This seems to be the ship's store," he said, "but the great blessing
is the lamp.  I'm going in to see if I can find a box of refills; there
isn't a great deal of juice left in the battery."

His search occupied a considerable time, and then she saw the light go
out and her heart sank, until it flashed up again, this time more
brilliant than ever.  He scrambled out and dropped down the rugged wall
and pushed something heavy into her hand.

"A spare lamp," he said.  "There are half a dozen there and enough
refills to last us a month."

He struck the stone wall with something that clanged.

"A case opener," he explained, "and a useful weapon.  I wonder which of
these storehouses holds the guns?"

The exploration of the passage could now be made in comparative
comfort.  There was need of the lamps, for a few yards farther on the
tunnel turned abruptly to the right and the floor became more
irregular.  Brill turned on his light and showed the way.  Now the
passage turned to the left, and he pointed out how smooth were the
walls.

"Water action," he said.  "There must have been a subterranean river
here at one time."

Twisting and turning, the gallery led now up, now down, now taking
almost a hairpin turn, now sweeping round in an almost perfect curve,
but leading apparently nowhere.

Brill was walking ahead, the beam of his lamp sweeping along the
ground, when she saw him stop suddenly.  Stooping, he picked something
from the ground.

"How the dickens did this get here?"

On the palm of his hand lay a bright silver florin, a little battered
at the edge, but unmistakably a two-shilling piece.

"Somebody has been here----" he began and then she uttered a cry.

"Oh!" gasped Margaret.  "That was Mr. Reeder's!"

She told him of the incident at the well; how J. G. Reeder had dropped
the coin to test the distance.  Brill put the light of his lamp on the
ceiling; it was solid rock.  And then he sent the rays moving along,
and presently the lamp focussed on a large round opening.

"Here is the well that never was a well," he said grimly and, flashing
the light upward, looked open-mouthed at the steel rungs fitted every
few inches in the side of the well.

"A ladder," he said slowly.  "What do you know about that?"

He reached up, standing on tiptoe, but the nearest rung was at least a
yard beyond his hand, and he looked round for some loose stones which
he could pile up and from the top of which he could reach the lowest
bar of the ladder.  But none was in sight, except a few splinters of
stone which were valueless for his purpose.  And then he remembered the
case-opener; it had a hook at the end.  Holding this above his head, he
leapt.  The first time he missed; the second time the hook caught the
steel rung and the handle slipped from his grip, leaving the
case-opener dangling.  He rubbed his hands on the dusty floor and
sprang again.  This time he caught and held, and with a superhuman
effort pulled himself up until his hand gripped the lower rung.
Another struggle, and he had drawn himself up hand over hand till his
feet rested on the bar.

"Do you think if I pulled you up you have strength to climb?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"I'm afraid not.  Go up alone; I will wait here."

"Keep clear of the bottom," he warned her.  "I may not fall, but as
likely as not I shall dislodge a few chunks of rock in my progress."

The warning was well justified, she found.  There was a continuous
shower of stone and earth as he progressed.  From time to time, he
stopped to rest.  Once he shouted down something which she could not
distinguish.  It was probably a warning, for a few seconds later a mass
of rock as large as a man's head crashed down and smashed on the floor,
sending fragments flying in all directions.

Peeping up from time to time, she could see the glimmer of his lamp
growing fainter; and now, left alone, she began to grow nervous, and
for company switched on her light.  She had hardly done so when she
heard a sound which brought her heart to her mouth.  It was the sound
of footsteps; somebody was walking along the passage toward her.

She turned the switch of the lamp and listened.  The old man's voice!
Only his, and none other.  He was talking to himself, a babble of
growling sound that was becoming more and more distinct.  And then, far
away, she saw the glow of a reflected light, for the passage swept
around at this point and he would not be visible until he was upon her.

Slipping off her shoes, she sped along in the darkness, tumbling and
sliding on the uneven pathway.  After a while panic left her and she
stopped and looked back.  The light was no longer visible; there was
neither sound nor sign of him; and, plucking up courage, after a few
minutes she retraced her steps.  She dared not put on the light, and
must guess where the well opening was.  In the darkness she passed it
and she was soon a considerable distance beyond the place where Brill
had left her.

Where had Flack gone?  There were no side passages.  She was standing
by one of the recesses, her hand resting on the improvised stone
screen, when to her horror she felt it moving away from her, and had
just time to shrink back when she saw a crack of light appear on the
opposite wall and broaden until there was outlined the shape of a
doorway.

"... To-night, my dear, to-night ... I'm going up to see Daver.  Daver
is worrying me....  You are sure nothing has happened that might shake
my confidence in him?"

"Nothing, Father.  What could have happened?"

It was Olga Crewe's voice.  She said something else which Margaret
could not hear, and then she heard the chuckling laugh of the old man.

"Reeder?  He's busy in London!  But he'll be back to-night...."

Again a question which Margaret could not catch.

"The body hasn't been found.  I didn't want to hurt the girl, but she
was useful ... my best card....  I could have caught Reeder with
her--had it all arranged."

Another question.

"I suppose so.  The tide is very high.  Anyway, I saw her fall...."

Margaret knew they were talking about her, but this interested her less
than the possibility of discovery.  She walked backward, step by step,
hoping and praying that she would find a niche into which she could
shrink.  Presently she found what she wanted.

Flack had come out into the passage and was standing talking back into
the room.

"All right, I'll leave the door open....  Imagination.  There's plenty
of air.  The well supplies that.  I'll be back this evening."

She dared not look, but after a while his footsteps became fainter.
The door was still open, and she saw a shadow growing larger on the
opposite wall as Olga approached the entrance.  Presently she heard a
sigh; the shadow became small again and finally disappeared.  Margaret
crept forward, hardly daring to breathe, until she came up behind the
open door.

It was, she guessed, made of stout oak, and the surface had been so
cunningly camouflaged with splinters of rock that it differed in no
respect from the walled recess into which Brill had broken.

Curiosity is dominant in the most rational of individuals, and, despite
her terrible danger, Margaret was curious to see the inside of that
rocky home of the Flacks.  With the utmost caution she peeped round.
She was surprised at the size of the room and a little disappointed in
its furnishing.  She had pictured rich rugs and gorgeous furniture, the
walls perhaps covered with silken hangings.  Instead, she saw a plain
deal table on which stood a lamp, a strip of threadbare carpet, two
basket chairs and a camp bed.  Olga was standing by the table, looking
down at a newspaper; her back was toward the girl, and Margaret had
time to make a more prolonged scrutiny.

Near the table were three or four suitcases, packed and strapped as
though in preparation for a journey.  A fur coat lay across the bed,
and that was the only evidence of luxury in this grim apartment.  There
was a second person in the room.  Margaret distinguished in the shadow
the drooping figure of a woman--Mrs. Burton.

She took a step forward to see better, her feet slipped upon the smooth
surface of the rock and she fell forward against the door, half closing
it.

"Who is there?  Is that you, Father?"

Margaret's heart nearly stopped beating, and for a moment she stood
paralyzed, incapable of movement.  Then, as Olga's footsteps sounded,
she turned and fled along the passage, gripping tight her lantern.
Olga's voice challenged her, but on and on she ran.  The corridor was
growing lighter, and with a gasp of horror she realized that, in the
confusion of the moment, she had taken the wrong direction and she was
running toward the great cave, possibly into the old madman's hands.

She heard the quick patter of footsteps behind her and flew on.  And
now she was in the almost bright light of the huge cavern.  There was
nobody in sight, and she followed the twisting ledge that ran under the
wall of rock until she came to the foot of the long stairs.  And then
she heard a shout.  Somebody on the boat had seen her.  As she stood
motionless with fear, mad John Flack appeared.  He was coming toward
her through the passage by which she and Brill had reached the interior
of the cave.  For a second he stared at her as though she were some
ghastly apparition of his mad dreams, and then with a roar he leaped
toward her.

She hesitated no longer.  In a second, she was flying up that awful
staircase, death on her right hand, but a more hideous fate behind.
Higher and higher up those unrailed stairs--she dared not look, she
dared not think; she could only keep looking steadfastly upward into
the misty gloom where this interminable Jacob's ladder ended on some
solid floor.  Not for a fortune would she have looked behind, or
vertigo would have seized her.  Her breath was coming in long sobs; her
heart beat as though it would burst.  She dared pause for an
infinitesimal time to recover breath before she continued her flight.
He was an old man; she could outdistance him.  But he was a madman, a
thing of terrible and abnormal energy.  Panic was leaving her; it
exhausted too much of her strength.  Upward and upward she climbed,
until she was in gloom, and then, when it seemed that she could get no
farther, she reached the head of the stairs.  A broad, flat space, with
a rocky roof which, for some reason, had been straightened with
concrete pillars.  There were dozens of these pillars ... once she had
taken a fortnight's holiday in Spain; there was a cathedral in Cordoba
of which this broad vault reminded her ... all sense of direction was
lost now.  She came with terrifying suddenness to a blank wall; ran
along it until she came to a narrow opening where there were five steps
and here she stopped to turn on her light.  Facing her was a steel door
with a great iron handle, and the steel door was ajar.

She pulled it toward her, ran through, pulled the door behind her; it
fastened with a click.  It had something attached to its inner side, a
steel projection--as she shut the door a box fell with a crash.  There
was yet another door before her, and this was immovable.  She was in a
tiny white box of a room, three feet wide, little more in depth.  She
had no time to continue her observations.  Someone was fumbling with
the handle of the door through which she had come.  She gripped in
desperation at the iron shelf and felt it slide a little to the right.
Though she did not know this, the back part of the shelf acted as a
bolt.  Again she heard the fumbling at the handle and the click of a
key turning, but the steel door remained immovable, and Margaret Belman
sank in a heap to the ground.




CHAPTER XVIII

J. G. Reeder came downstairs, and those who saw his face realized that
it was not the tragedy he had almost witnessed which had made him so
white and drawn.

He found Gray in Daver's office, waiting for his call to London.  It
came through as Reeder entered the room, and he took the instrument
from his subordinate's hand.  He dismissed the death of Daver in a few
words, and went on:

"I want all the local policemen we can muster, Simpson, though I think
it would be better if we could get soldiers.  There's a garrison town
five miles from here; the beaches have to be searched, and I want these
caves explored.  There is another thing: I think it would be advisable
to get a destroyer or something to patrol the waters before Siltbury.
I'm pretty sure that Flack has a motor boat--there's channel deep
enough to take it, and apparently there is a cave that stretches right
under the cliff....  Miss Belman?  I don't know.  That is what I want
to find out."

Simpson told him that the lorry carrying the gold had been seen at
Sevenoaks, and it required a real effort on Mr. Reeder's part to bring
his mind to such a triviality.

"I think soldiers will be best.  I'd like a strong party posted near
the quarry.  There's another cave there where Daver used to keep his
wagons.  I have an idea you might pick up the money to-night.  That,"
he added, a little bitterly, "will induce the authorities to use the
military!"

After the ambulance had come and the pitiable wreck of Daver had been
removed, he returned to the man's suite with a party of masons he had
brought up from Siltbury.  Throwing open the lid of the divan, he
pointed to the stone floor.

"That flag works on a pivot," he said, "but I think it is fastened with
a bolt or a bar underneath.  Break it down."

A quarter of an hour was sufficient to shatter the stone flooring, and
then, as he had expected, he found a narrow flight of stairs leading to
a square stone room which remained very much as it had been for six
hundred years.  A dusty, bare apartment which yielded its secret.
There was a small open door and a very narrow passage, along which a
stout man would walk with some difficulty, and which led to behind the
panelling of Daver's private office.  Mr. Reeder realized that anybody
concealed here could hear every word that was spoken.  And now he
understood Daver's frantic plea that he should lower his voice when he
spoke of the marriage.  Crazy Jack had learned the secret of his
daughter's degradation.  From that moment Daver's death was inevitable.

How had the madman escaped?  That required very little explanation.  At
some remote period, Larmes Keep had evidently been used as a show
place.  He found an ancient wooden inscription fixed to the wall, which
told the curious that this was the torture chamber of the old Counts of
Larme; it added the useful information that the dungeons were
immediately beneath and approached through a stone trap.  This the
detectives found, and Mr. Reeder had his first view of the vaulted
dungeons of Larmes Keep.

It was neither an impressive nor a thrilling exploration.  All that was
obvious was that there were three routes by which the murderer could
escape, and that all three ways led back to the house, one exit being
between the kitchen and the vestibule.

"There is another way out," said Reeder shortly, "and we haven't found
it yet."

His nerves were on edge.  He roamed from room to room, turning out
boxes, breaking open cupboards, emptying trunks.  One find he made: it
was the marriage certificate, and it was concealed in the lining of
Olga Crewe's dressing case.

At seven o'clock, the first detachment of troops arrived by motor van.
The local police had already reported that they had found no trace of
Margaret Belman.  They pointed out that the tide was falling when the
girl left Larmes Keep, and that, unless she was lying on some invisible
ledge, she must have reached the beach in safety.  There was a very
faint hope that she was alive.  How faint J. G. Reeder would not admit.

A local cook had been brought in to prepare dinner for the detective,
but Reeder contented himself with a cup of strong coffee--food, he
felt, would have choked him.

He had posted a detachment in the quarry and, returning to the house,
was sitting in the big hall, pondering the events of the day, when Gray
came flying into the room.

"Brill!" he gasped.

J. G. Reeder sprang to his feet with a bound.

"Brill?" he repeated huskily.  "Where is Brill?"

There was no need for Gray to point.  A dishevelled and grimy figure,
supported by a detective, staggered through the doorway.

"Where have you come from?" asked Reeder.

The man could not speak for a second.  He pointed to the ground, and
then, hoarsely:

"From the bottom of the well....  Miss Belman is down there now!"

Brill was in a state of collapse, and not until he had had a stiff dose
of brandy was he able to articulate a coherent story.  Reeder led a
party to the shrubbery and the windlass was tested.

"It won't bear even the weight of a woman, and there's not sufficient
rope," said Gray, who made the test.

One of the officers remembered that, in searching the kitchen, he had
found two window-cleaners' belts, stout straps with a safety hook
attached.  He went in search of these while Mr. Reeder stripped his
coat and vest.

"There's a gap of four feet halfway down," warned Brill.  "The stone
came away when I put my foot on it, and I nearly fell."

Reeder, his lamp swung around his neck, peered down into the hole.

"It's strange I didn't see this ladder when I saw the well before," he
said, and then remembered that he had only opened one half of the
hinged trap.

Gray, who was also equipped with a belt, descended first, as he was the
lighter of the two.  By this time half a company of soldiers were on
the scene, and by the greatest of good fortune the unit that had been
turned out to assist the police was a company of the Royal Engineers.
While one party went in search of ropes, the other began to extemporize
a hauling gear.

The two men worked their way down without a word.  The lamps were
fairly useless, for they could not show them the next rung, and after a
while they began to move more cautiously.  Gray found the gap and
called a halt while he bridged it.  The next rung was none too secure,
Mr. Reader thought, as he lowered his weight upon it, but they passed
the danger zone with no other mishap than that which was caused by big
pebbles dropping on Reeder's head.

It seemed as though they would never reach the bottom, and the strain
was already telling upon the older man when Gray whispered:

"This is the bottom, I think," and sent the light of his lamp downward.
Immediately afterward, he dropped to the rocky floor of the passage,
Mr. Reeder following.

"Margaret!" he called in a whisper.

There was no reply.  He threw the light first one way and then the
other, but Margaret was not in sight, and his heart sank.

"You go farther along the passage," he whispered to Gray.  "I'll take
the other direction."

With the light of his lamp on the ground, he half walked, half ran
along the twisting gallery.  Ahead of him he heard the sound of a
movement not easily identified, and he stopped to extinguish the light.
Moving cautiously forward, he turned an angle of the passage and saw at
the far end indication of light.  Sitting down, he looked along, and
after a while he thought he saw a figure moving against this artificial
skyline.  Mr. Reeder crept forward, and this time he was not relying
upon a rubber truncheon.  He thumbed down the safety catch of his
Browning and drew nearer and nearer to the figure.  Most unexpectedly
it spoke.

"Olga, where has your father gone?"

It was Mrs. Burton, and Reeder showed his teeth in an unamused grin.

He did not hear the reply; it came from some recessed place, and the
sound was muffled.

"Have they found that girl?"

Mr. Reeder listened breathlessly, craning his neck forward.  The "No"
was very distinct.

Then Olga said something that he could not hear, and Mrs. Burton's
voice took on her old whine of complaint.

"What's the use of hanging about?  That's the way you've always treated
me.  Nobody would think I was your mother.  I wonder I'm not dead, the
trouble I've had.  I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't murder me some
day, you mark my words!"

There came an impatient protest from the hidden girl.

"If you're sick of it, what about me?" said Mrs. Burton shrilly.
"Where's Daver?  It's funny your father hasn't said anything about
Daver.  Do you think he's got into trouble?"

"Oh, damn Daver!"

Olga's voice was distinct now.  The passion and weariness in it would
have made Mr. Reeder sorry for her in any other circumstances.  He was
too busy being sorry for Margaret Belman to worry about this fateful
young woman.

She did not know, at any rate, that she was a widow.  Mr. Reeder
derived a certain amount of gruesome satisfaction from the superiority
of his intelligence.

"Where is he now?  Your father, I mean?"

A pause, as she listened to a reply which was not intelligible to Mr.
Reeder.

"On the boat?  He'll never get across.  I hate ships, but a tiny little
boat like that----  Why couldn't he let us go, when we got him out?  I
begged and prayed him to--we might have been in Venice or somewhere by
now, doing the grand."

The girl interrupted her angrily, and then Mrs. Burton apparently
melted into the wall.

There was no sound of a closing door, but Mr. Reeder guessed what had
happened.  He came forward stealthily till he saw the bar of light on
the opposite wall, and, reaching the door, listened.  The voices were
clear enough now; clearer because Mrs. Burton did most of the talking.

"Do you think your father knows?"  She sounded rather anxious.  "About
Daver, I mean?  You can keep that dark, can't you?  He'd kill me if he
knew.  He's got such high ideas about you--princes and dukes and such
rubbish!  If he hadn't been mad, he'd have cleared out of this game
years ago, as I told him, but he'd never take much notice of me."

"Has anybody ever taken any notice of you?" asked the girl wearily.  "I
wanted the old man to let you go.  I knew you would be useless in a
crisis."

Mr. Reeder heard the sound of a sob.  Mrs. Burton cried rather easily.

"He's only stopping to get Reeder," she whimpered.  "What a fool trick!
That silly old man!  Why, I could have got him myself if I was wicked
enough!"

From farther along the corridor came the sound of a quick step.

"There's your father," said Mrs. Burton, and Reeder pulled back the
jacket of his Browning, sacrificing the cartridge that was already in
the chamber in order that there should be no mistake.

The footsteps stopped abruptly, and at the same time came a booming
voice from the far end of the passage.  It was asking a question.
Evidently Flack turned back; his footsteps died away.  Mr. Reeder
decided that this was not his lucky day.

Lying full length on the ground, he could see John Flack clearly.  A
pressure of his finger, and the problem of this evil man would be
settled eternally.  It was a fond idea.  Mr. Reeder's finger closed
around the trigger, but all his instincts were against killing hi cold
blood.

Somebody was coming from the other direction--Gray, he guessed.  He
must go back and warn him.  Coming to his feet, he went gingerly along
the passage.  The thing he feared happened.  Gray must have seen him,
for he called out in stentorian tones:

"There's nothing at the other end of the passage, Mr. Reeder----"

"Hush, you fool!" snarled Reeder, but he guessed that the mischief was
done.

He turned round, stooped again and looked.  Old John Flack was standing
at the entrance of the tunnel, his head bent.  Somebody else had heard
the detective's voice.  With a squeak of fear, Mrs. Burton had bolted
into the passage, followed by her daughter--an excursion which
effectively prevented the use of the pistol, for the women completely
masked the man whose destruction J. G. Reeder had privately sworn.

By the time he came to the end of the passage overlooking the great
cave, the two women and Flack had disappeared.

Mr. Reeder's eyesight was of the keenest.  He immediately located the
boat, which was now floating on an even keel, and presently saw the
three fugitives.  They had descended to the water's edge by a
continuance of the long stairway which led to the roof and were making
for the rocky platform which served as a pier for the craft.

Something smacked against the rock above his head.  There was a shower
of stone and dust, and the echoes of the explosion which followed were
deafening.

"Firing from the boat," said Mr. Reeder calmly.  "You had better lie
down, Gray--I should hate to see so noisy a man as you reduced to
compulsory silence."

"I'm very sorry, Mr. Reeder," said the penitent detective.  "I had no
idea----'

"Ideas!" said Mr. Reeder accurately.

_Smack--smack!_

One bullet struck to the left of him, the other passed exactly between
him and Gray.  He was lying down now, with a small projection of rock
for cover.

Was Margaret on the boat?  Even as the thought occurred to him, he
remembered Mrs. Burton's inquiry.  As he saw another flash from the
deck of the launch, he threw forward his hand.  There was a double
explosion which reverberated back from the arched roof, and although he
could not see the effect of his shots, he was satisfied that the
bullets fell on the launch.

It was pushing off from the side.  The three Flacks were aboard.  And
now he heard the crackle and crash of her engine as her nose swung
round to face the cave opening.  And then into his eyes from the
darkening sea outside the cave flashed a bright light that illuminated
the rocky shelf on which he lay and threw the motor boat into relief.

The destroyer!

"Thank God for that!" said Mr. Reeder fervently.

Those on the motor launch had seen the vessel and guessed its portent.
The launch swung round until its nose pointed to where the two
detectives lay, and from her deck came a roar louder than ever.  So
terrible was the noise in that confined space that for a second Mr.
Reeder was too dazed even to realize that he was lying half buried in a
heap of debris, until Gray pulled him back to the passage.

"They're using a gun--a quick-firer!" he gasped.

Mr. Reeder did not reply.  He was gazing fascinated, at something that
was happening in the middle of the cave, where the water was leaping at
irregular intervals from some mysterious cause.

Then he realized what was taking place.  Great rocks, disturbed by the
concussion, were falling from the roof.  He saw the motor boat heel
over to the right, swing round again, and head for the open.  It was
less than a dozen yards from the cave entrance when, with a sound that
was indescribable, so terrific, so terrifying that J. G. Reeder was
rooted to the spot, the entrance to the cave disappeared!




CHAPTER XIX

In an instant the air was filled with choking dust.  Roar followed roar
as the rocks continued to fall.

"The mouth of the cave has collapsed!" roared Reeder in the other's
ear.  "And the subsidence hasn't finished."

His first instinct was to fly along the passage to safety, but
somewhere in that awful void were two women.  He switched on his light
and crept gingerly back to the bench whence he had seen the
catastrophe.  But the rays of the lamp could not penetrate into the fog
of dust for more than a few yards.

Crawling forward to the edge of the platform, he strove to pierce the
darkness.  All about him, above, below, on either side, a terrible
cracking and groaning was going on, as though the earth itself was in
mortal pain.  Rocks, large and small, were falling from the roof; he
heard the splash of them as they struck the water.  One fell on the
edge of the platform with a terrific din and bounced into the pit below.

"For God's sake, don't stay here, Mr. Reeder.  You will be killed."

It was Gray shouting at him, but J. G. Reeder was already feeling his
way toward the steps which led down to where the boat had been moored,
and to which he guessed it would drift.  He had to hold the lamp almost
at his feet.  Breathing had become a pain.  His face was covered with
powder; his eyes smarted excruciatingly; dust was in his mouth, his
nose; but still he went on--and was rewarded.

Out of the dust mist came groping the ghostly figure of a woman.  It
was Olga Crewe.

He gripped her by the arm as she swayed, and pushed her against the
rocky wall.

"Where is your mother?" he shouted.

She shook her head and said something; he lowered his ear to her mouth.

"... boat ... great rock ... killed."

"Your mother?"

She nodded.  Gripping her by the arm, he half led, half dragged her up
the stairs.  He found Gray waiting at the top.  As easily as though she
were a child, Mr. Reeder caught her up in his arms and staggered the
distance that separated them from the mouth of the passage.

The pandemonium of splintering rock and crashing boulder was
continuous.  The air was thicker than ever.  Gray's lamp went out, and
Mr. Reeder's was almost useless.  It seemed a thousand years before
they pushed into the mouth of the tunnel.  The air was filled with dust
even here, but as they progressed it grew clearer, more breathable.

"Let me down--I can walk," said the husky voice of Olga Crewe, and
Reeder lowered her gently to her feet.

She was very weak, but she could walk with the assistance that the two
men afforded.  They stopped at the entrance of the living room.  Mr.
Reeder wanted the lamp--wanted more the water which she suggested would
be found in that apartment.

A cold draught of spring water worked wonders on the girl too.

"I don't know what happened," she said, "but when the cave opening fell
in, I think we drifted toward the stage--we always called that place
the stage.  I was so frightened that I jumped immediately to safety,
and I'd hardly reached the rock when I heard a most awful crash.  I
think a portion of the wall must have fallen on to the boat.  I
screamed, but hardly heard myself in the noise.  This is punishment!
This is punishment!  I knew it would come!  I knew it!  I knew it!"

She covered her grimy face with her hands, and her shoulders shook in
the excess of her sorrow and grief.

"There's no sense in crying."  Mr. Reeder's voice was sharp and stern.
"Where is Miss Belman?"

She shook her head.

"Where did she go?"

"Up the stairway--Father said she escaped.  Haven't you seen her?" she
asked, raising her tearful face as she began slowly to realize the
drift of his question.

He shook his head, his narrowed eyes surveying her steadily.

"Tell me the truth, Olga Flack.  Did Margaret Belman escape, or did
your father----?"

She was shaking her head before he had completed his sentence, and
then, with a little moan, she drooped and would have fallen had not
Gray supported her.

"We had better leave the questioning till later."

Mr. Reeder seized the lamp from the table and went out into the tunnel.
He had hardly passed the door before there was a crash, and the
infernal noises which had come from the cave were suddenly muffled.  He
looked backward, but could see nothing.  He guessed what had happened.

"There is a general subsidence going on in this mass of earth," he
said.  "We shall be lucky if we get away."

He ran ahead to the opening of the well, and a glad sight met his eyes.
On the floor lay a coil of new rope, to which was attached a body belt.
He did not see the thin wire which came down from the mouth of the
well, but presently he detected a tiny telephone receiver that the
engineers had lowered.  This he picked up, and his hail was immediately
answered.

"Are you all right?  Up here it feels as if there's an earthquake
somewhere."

Gray was fastening the belt about the girl's waist, and after it was
firmly buckled:

"You mustn't faint--do you understand, Miss Crewe?  They will haul you
up gently, but you must keep away from the side of the well."

She nodded, and Reeder gave the signal.  The rope grew taut, and
presently the girl was drawn up out of sight.

"Up you go," said Reeder.

Gray hesitated.

"What about you, sir?"

For answer Mr. Reeder pointed to the lowest rung, and, stooping,
gripped the leg of the detective and, displaying an unsuspected
strength, lifted him bodily so that he was able to grip the lower rung.

"Fix your belt to the rod, hold fast to the nearest rung, and I will
climb up over you," said Mr. Reeder.

Never an acrobat moved with greater nimbleness than this man who so
loved to pose as an ancient.  There was need for hurry.  The very iron
to which he was clinging trembled and vibrated in his grasp.  The fall
of stone down the well was continuous and constituted a very real
danger.  Some of the rungs, displaced by the earth tremors, came away
in their grasp.  They were less than halfway up when the air was filled
with a sighing and a hissing that brought Reeder's heart to his mouth.

Holding on to a rung of the ladder, he put out his hand.  The opposite
wall, which should have been well beyond his reach, was at less than
arm's length away!

The well was bulging under unexpected and tremendous stresses.

"Why have you stopped?" asked Gray anxiously.

"To scratch my head," snarled Reeder.  "Hurry!"

They climbed another forty or fifty feet, when from below came a rumble
and a crash that set the whole well shivering.

They could see starlight now, and distant objects, which might be
heads, that overhung the mouth of the well.

"Hurry!" breathed J. G. Reeder, and moved as rapidly as his younger
companion.

_Boom!_

The sound of a great gun, followed by a thunderous rumbling, surged up
the well.

J. G. Reeder set his teeth.  Please God, Margaret Belman had escaped
from that hell--or was mercifully dead!

Nearer and nearer to the mouth they climbed, and every step they took
was accompanied by some new and awful noise from behind them.  Gray's
breath was coming in gasps.

"I can't go any farther!" croaked the detective.  "My strength has
gone!"

"Go on, you miserable----" yelled Reeder, and whether it was the shock
of hearing such violent language from so mild a man, or the discovery
that he was within a few feet of safety, Gray took hold of himself,
climbed a few more rungs, and then felt hands grip his arm and drag him
to safety.

Mr. Reeder staggered out into the night air and blinked at the ring of
men who stood in the light of a naphtha flare.

Was it his imagination, or was the ground swaying beneath his feet?

"Nobody else to come up, Mr. Reeder?"

The officer in charge of the engineers asked the question, and Reeder
shook his head.

"Then all you fellows clear!" said the officer sharply.  "Move toward
the house and take the road to Siltbury--the cliff is collapsing in
sections."

The flare was put out, and the soldiers, abandoning their apparatus,
broke into a steady run toward Larmes Keep.

"Where is the girl--Miss Crewe?" asked Reeder, suddenly remembering her.

"They've taken her to the house," said Big Bill Gordon, who had made a
mysterious appearance from nowhere.  "And, Reeder, we have captured the
gold convoy!  The two men in charge were a fellow who calls himself
Hothling and another named Dean--I think you know their real names.
Caught them just as the lorry was driving into the quarry cave.  This
means a big thing for you----"

"To h---- with you and your big things!" stormed Reeder, in a fury.
"What big things do I want, my man, but the big thing I have lost?"

Very wisely, Big Bill Gordon made no attempt to argue the matter.

They found the banqueting hall crowded with policemen, detectives, and
soldiers.  The girl had been taken into Daver's office, and here he
found her in the hands of the three women servants who had been
commandeered to run the establishment while the police were in
occupation.  The dust had been washed from her face, and she was
conscious, but still in the half-stupefied condition in which Reeder
had found her.

She stared at him for a long time as though she did not recognize him
and was striving to recall that portion of her past in which he had
figured.  When she spoke, it was to ask a question.

"There is no news of--Father?"

"None," said Reeder, almost brutally.  "I think it will be better for
you, young lady, if he is dead."

She nodded.

"He is dead," she said with conviction.  And then, rousing herself, she
struggled to a sitting position and looked at the servants.  Mr. Reeder
interpreted that glance and sent the women away.

"I don't know what you are going to do with me," she said, "but I
suppose I am to be arrested.  I should be arrested, for I have known
all that was happening, and I tried to lure you to your death."

"In Bennett Street, of course," said Mr. Reeder.  "I recognized you the
moment I saw you here--you were the lady with the rouged face."

She nodded and continued:

"Before you take me away, I wish you would let me have some papers that
are in the safe," she said.  "They have no value to anybody but myself."

He was curious enough to ask her what they were.

"They were letters--in the big, flat box that is locked.  Even Daver
did not dare open that.  You see, Mr. Reeder"--her breath came more
quickly--"before I met my--husband, I had a little romance--the sort of
romance that a young girl has when she is innocent enough to dream and
has enough faith in God to hope.  Is my husband arrested?" she asked
suddenly.

Mr. Reeder was silent for a moment.  Sooner or later, she must know the
truth, and he had an idea that this awful truth would not cause her
very much distress.

"Your husband is dead," he said.

Her eyes opened wider.

"Did my father---"

"Your father killed him--I suppose so.  I am afraid I was the cause.
Coming back to find Margaret Belman, I told Daver all that I knew about
your marriage.  Your father must have been hiding behind the panelling
and heard."

"I see," she said simply.  "Of course it was Father who killed him--I
knew that would happen as soon as he learned the truth.  Would you
think I was heartless if I said I am glad?  I don't think I am really
glad--I'm just relieved.  Will you get the box for me?"

She put her hand down her blouse and pulled out a gold chain at the end
of which were two keys.

"The first of these is the key of the safe.  If you want to see
the--the letters, I will show them to you, but I would rather not."

At that moment he heard hurrying footsteps in the passage outside; the
door was pulled open and a young officer of engineers appeared.

"Excuse me, sir," he said, "but Captain Merriman thinks we ought to
abandon this house.  I've got out all the servants, and we're rushing
them down to Siltbury."

Reeder stooped down and drew the girl to her feet.

"Take this lady with you," he said, and, to Olga: "I will get your box,
and I may not--I am not quite sure--ask you to open it for me."

He waited till the officer had gone, and added:

"Just now I am feeling rather--tender toward young lovers.  That is a
concession which an old lover may make to youth."

His voice had grown husky.  There was something in his face that
brought the tears to her eyes.

"Was it--not Margaret Belman?" she asked in a hushed voice, and she
knew before he answered that she had guessed well.

Tragedy dignified this strange-looking man, so far past youth, yet
holding the germ of youth in his heart.  His hand fell gently on her
shoulder.

"Go, my dear," he said.  "I will do what I can for you--perhaps I can
save you a great deal of unhappiness."

He waited until she had gone, then strolled into the deserted lounge.
What an eternity had passed since he had sat there, munching his toast
and drinking his cup of tea, with an illustrated newspaper on his knees!

The place in the half gloom seemed full of ancient ghosts.  The House
of Tears!  These walls had held sorrows more poignant, more hopeless
than his.

He went to the panelled wall and rubbed his finger down the little scar
in the wood that a thrown knife had made and smiled at the comparative
triviality of that offence.

He had reason to remember the circumstances without the dramatic
reminder which nature gave.  Suddenly the floor beneath him swayed, and
the two lights went out.  He guessed that the earth tremors were
responsible for the snapping of wires, and he hurried into the
vestibule and had passed from the house when he remembered Olga Crewe's
request.

The lantern was still hanging about his neck.  He switched it on and
went back to the safe and inserted the key.  As he did so, the house
swayed backward and forward like a drunken man.  The smashing of glass,
the crash of overturned wardrobes startled him so that he almost fled
with his mission unperformed.  He even hesitated; but a promise was a
promise to J. G. Reeder.  He put the key in again, turned the lock, and
pulled open one of the great doors--and Margaret Belman fell into his
arms!




CHAPTER XX

He stood, holding the half-swooning girl, peering into the face he
could only see by the reflected light of his lantern, and then suddenly
the safe fell back from him without warning, leaping a gaping cavern.

He lifted her in his arms, ran across the vestibule into the open air.
Somebody shouted his name in the distance, and he ran blindly toward
the voice.  Once he stumbled over a great crack that had appeared in
the earth, but managed to recover himself, though he was forced to
release his grip of the girl.

She was alive--breathing--her breath fanned his cheek and gave him new
strength.

The sound of falling walls behind him; immense, hideous roarings and
groanings; thunder of sliding chalk and rock and earth--he heard only
the breathing of his burden, felt only the faint beating of her heart
against his breast.

"Here you are!"

Somebody lifted Margaret Belman from his arms.  A big soldier pushed
him into a wagon, where he sprawled at full length, breathless, more
dead than alive, by the side of the woman he loved; and then, with a
whirr of wheels, the ambulance sped down the hillside toward safety.
Behind him, in the darkness, the House of Tears shivered and crackled,
and the work of ancient masons vanished piecemeal, tumbling over new
cliffs, to be everlastingly engulfed and hidden from the sight of man.

Dawn came and showed, to an interested party that had travelled by road
and train to the scene of the great landslide, one gray wall, standing
starkly on the edge of a precipice.  A portion of the wrecked floor
still adhered to the ruins, and on that floor the bloodstained bed
where Old Man Flack had laid his murdered servant.

The story that Olga Flack told the police, which appears in the
official records of the place, was not exactly the same as the story
she told to Mr. Reeder that afternoon when, at his invitation, she came
to the flat in Bennett Street.  Mr. Reeder, minus his glasses and his
general air of respectability which his vanished side whiskers had so
enhanced, was at some disadvantage.

"Yes, I think Ravini was killed," she said, "but you are wrong in
supposing that I brought him to my room at the request of my father.
Ravini was a very quick-witted man and recognized me.  He came to
Larmes Keep because he"--she hesitated--"well, he was rather fond of
Miss Belman.  He told me this, and I was rather amused.  At that time I
did not know his name, although my husband did, and I certainly did not
connect him with my father's arrest.  He revealed his identity, and I
suppose there was something in my attitude, or something I said, which
recalled the schoolgirl he had met years before.  The moment he
recognized me as John Flack's daughter, he also recognized Larmes Keep
as my father's headquarters.

"He began to ask me questions: whether I knew where the Flack million,
as he called it, was hidden.  And of course I was horrified, for I knew
why Daver had allowed him to come.

"My father had recently escaped from Broadmoor, and I was worried sick
for fear he knew the trick that Daver had played.  I wasn't normal, I
suppose, and I came near to betraying my father, for I told Ravini of
his escape.  Ravini did not take this as I had expected; he rather
overrated his own power, and was very confident.  Of course, he did not
know that Father was practically in the house, that he came up from the
cave every night----"

"The real entrance to the cave was through the safe in the vestibule?"
said Mr. Reeder.  "That was an ingenious idea.  I must confess that the
safe was the last place in the world I should have considered."

"My father had it put there twenty years ago," she said.  "There always
was an entrance from the centre of the Keep to the caves below, many of
which were used as prisons or as burying places by the ancient owners
of Larmes."

"Why did Ravini go to your room?" asked Mr. Reeder.  "You will excuse
the--um--indelicacy of the question, but I want----"

She nodded.

"It was a last desperate effort on my part to scare Ravini from the
house.  You mustn't forget that I was watched all the time; Daver or my
mother were never far from me, and I dared not let them know, and
through them my father, that Ravini was being warned.  He had decided
to stay on--until I made my request for an interview and told him that
I wanted him to leave by the first train in the morning after he
learned what I had to tell him."

"And what had you to tell him?" asked Mr. Reeder.

She did not answer immediately, and he repeated the question.

"That my father had decided to kill him."

Mr. Reeder's eyes almost closed.

"Are you telling me the truth, Olga?" he asked gently, and she went red
and white.

"I am not a good liar, am I?"  Her tone was almost defiant.  "Now I'll
tell you.  I met Ravini when I was little more than a child.  He meant
... a tremendous lot to me, but I don't think I meant very much to him.
He used to come down to see me in the country where I was at school----"

"He's dead?"

She could only nod her head.  Her lips were quivering.

"That is the truth," she said at last.  "The horror of it was that he
did not recognize me when he came to Larmes Keep.  I had passed
completely from his mind until I revealed myself in the garden that
night."

"Is he dead?" asked Mr. Reeder for the second time.

"Yes," she said.  "They struck him down outside my room--I don't know
what they did with him.  They put him through the safe, I think."  She
shuddered.

J. G. Reeder patted her hand.

"You have your memories, my child," he said to the weeping girl, "and
your letters."

It occurred to him after Olga had gone that Ravini must have written
rather interesting letters.




CHAPTER XXI

Miss Margaret Belman decided to take a holiday in the only pleasure
resort that seemed worth while or endurable.  She conveyed this
intention to Mr. Reeder by letter.


"There are only two places in the world where I can feel happy and safe
[she wrote].  One place is London and the other New York, where a
policeman is to be found at every street corner, and all the amusements
of a country life are to be had in an intensified form.  So, if you
please, can you spare the time to come with me to the theatres I have
written down on the back of this sheet, to the National Gallery, the
British Museum, the Tower of London (no, on consideration I do not
think I should like to include the Tower of London: it is too medival
and ghostly), to Kensington Gardens, and similar centres of hectic
gaiety.  Seriously, dear J. G. (the familiarity will make you wince,
but I have cast all shame outside), I want to be one of a large, sane
mass--I am tired of being an isolated, hysterical woman."


There was much more in the same strain.  Mr. Reeder took his engagement
book and ran a blue pencil through all his appointments before he
wrote, with some labour, a letter which, because of its caution and its
somewhat pompous terminology, sent Margaret Belman into fits of silent
laughter.

She had not mentioned Richmond Park, and with good reason, one might
suppose, for Richmond Park in the late autumn, when chilly winds
abound, and the deer have gone into winter quarters--if deer ever go
into winter quarters--is picturesque without being comfortable, and
only a pleasure to the sthetic eyes of those whose bodies are suitably
clothed in woollen underwear.

Yet, one drab afternoon, Mr. Reeder chartered a taxicab, sat solemnly
by the side of Miss Margaret Belman, as the cab bumped and jerked down
Clarence Lane, possibly the worst road in England, before it turned
through the iron gates of the park.

They came at last to a stretch of grass land and bush, a place in early
summer of flowering rhododendrons, and here Mr. Reeder stopped the cab
and they both descended and walked aimlessly through a little wood.
The ground sloped down to a little carpeted hollow.  Mr. Reeder, with a
glance of suspicion and some reference to rheumatism, seated himself by
Miss Belman's side.

"But why Richmond Park?" asked Margaret.

Mr. Reeder coughed.

"I have--um--a romantic interest in Richmond Park," he said.  "I
remember the first arrest I ever made----"

"Don't be gruesome," she warned him.  "There's nothing romantic about
an arrest.  Talk of something pretty."

"Let us, then, talk of you," said Mr. Reeder daringly; "and it is
exactly because I want to talk of you, my dear
Miss--um--Margaret--Margaret that I have asked you to come here."

He took her hand with great gentleness as though he were handling a
rare _objet d'art_, and played with her fingers awkwardly.

"The truth is, my dear----"

"Don't say 'Miss,'" she begged.

"My dear Margaret"--this with an effort--"I have decided that life is
too--um--short to delay any longer a step which I have very carefully
considered--in fact"--here he floundered hopelessly into a succession
of "um's" which were only relieved by occasional "er's."

He tried again.

"A man of my age and peculiar temperament should perhaps be considering
matters more serious--in fact, you may consider it very absurd of me,
but the truth is----"

Whatever the truth was could not be easily translated into words.

"The truth is," she said quietly, "that you think you're in love with
somebody?"

First Mr. Reeder nodded, then he shook his head with equal vigour.

"I don't think--it has gone beyond the stage of hypothesis.  I am no
longer young--I am in fact a confirmed--no, not a confirmed,
but--er----"

"You're a confirmed bachelor," she helped him out.

"Not confirmed," he insisted firmly.

She half turned and faced him, her hands on his shoulders, looking into
his eyes.

"My dear," she said, "you think of being married and you want somebody
to marry you.  But you feel that you are too old to blight her young
life."

He nodded dumbly.

"Is it my young life, my dear?  Because, if it is----"

"It is."  J. G. Reeder's voice was very husky.

And for the first time in his life Mr. J. G. Reeder, who had had so
many experiences, mainly unpleasant, felt the soft lips of a woman
against his.

"Dear me!" said Mr. Reeder breathlessly, a few seconds later.  "That
was rather nice."




THE END






[End of Terror Keep, by Edgar Wallace]
