He stopped suddenly. The sound of a shot thundered through the house, and in another second the Inspector was racing up the stairs two at a time and had burst into the suite which Carlin occupied.
A glimpse of the prostrate figure told them they were too late. The Inspector bent over the dead man.
‘That has saved the country the cost of a murder trial,’ he said.
‘I think not,’ said Mr. Reeder gently, and explained his reasons.
Half an hour later, as Mr. Lassard walked out of his office, a detective tapped him on the shoulder.
‘Your name is Eiter,’ he said, ‘and I want you for murder.’
‘It was a very simple case really, sir,’ explained Mr. Reeder to his chief. ‘Eiter, of course, was known to me personally, but I remembered especially that he could not spell the word “able,” and I recognised this peculiarity in our friend the moment I saw the letter which he wrote to his patron asking for the money. It was Eiter himself who drew the five thousand pounds; of that I am convinced. The man is, and always has been, an inveterate gambler, and I did not have to make many inquiries before I discovered that he was owing a large sum of money and that one bookmaker had threatened to bring him before Tattersall’s Committee unless he paid. That would have meant the end of Mr. Lassard, the philanthropic custodian of children. Which, by the way, was always Eiter’s role. He ran bogus charitable societies-it is extraordinarily easy to find dupes who are willing to subscribe for philanthropic objects. Many years ago, when I was a young man, I was instrumental in getting him seven years. I’d lost sight of him since then until I saw the letter he sent to Lord Sellington. Unfortunately for him, one line ran: “I shall be glad if you are abel to let my messenger have the money”-and he spelt “able” in the Eiter way. I called on him and made sure. And then I wrote to his lordship, who apparently did not open the letter till late that night.
‘Eiter had called on him earlier in the evening and had had a long talk with him. I only surmise that Lord Sellington had expressed a doubt as to whether he ought to leave his nephew penniless, scoundrel though he was; and Eiter was terrified that his scheme for getting possession of the old man’s money was in danger of failing. Moreover, my appearance in the case had scared him. He decided to kill Lord Sellington that night, took aconitine with him to the house and introduced it into the medicine, a bottle of which always stood on Sellington’s desk. Whether the old man destroyed the will which disinherited his nephew before he discovered he had been poisoned, or whether he did it after, we shall never know. When I had satisfied myself that Lassard was Eiter, I sent a letter by special messenger to Stratford Place-’
‘That was the letter delivered by special messenger?’
Mr. Reeder nodded.
‘It is possible that Sellington was already under the influence of the drug when he burnt the will, and burnt too the four bills which Carlin had forged and which the old man had held over his head as a threat. Carlin may have known his uncle was dead; he certainly recognised the Inspector when he stepped out of the cab, and, thinking he was to be arrested for forgery, shot himself.’
Mr. Reeder pursed his lips and his melancholy face grew longer.
‘I wish I had never known Mrs. Carlin-my acquaintance with her introduces that element of coincidence which is permissible in stories but is so distressing in actual life. It shakes one’s confidence in the logic of things.’
Chapter 8
The Investors
There are seven million people in Greater London and each one of those seven millions is in theory and practice equal under the law and commonly precious to the community. So that, if one is wilfully wronged, another must be punished; and if one dies of premeditated violence, his slayer must hang by the neck until he be dead.
It is rather difficult for the sharpest law-eyes to keep tag of seven million people, at least one million of whom never keep still and are generally unattached to any particular domicile. It is equally difficult to place an odd twenty thousand or so who have domiciles but no human association. These include tramps, aged maiden ladies in affluent circumstances, peripatetic members of the criminal classes and other friendless individuals.
Sometimes uneasy inquiries come through to headquarters. Mainly they are most timid and deferential. Mr. X. has not seen his neighbour, Mr. Y. for a week. No, he doesn’t know Mr. Y. Nobody does. A little old man who had no friends and spent his fine days pottering in a garden overlooked by his more gregarious neighbour. And now Mr. Y. potters no more. His milk has not been taken in; his blinds are drawn. Comes a sergeant of police and a constable who breaks a window and climbs through, and Mr. Y. is dead somewhere-dead of starvation or a fit or suicide. Should this be the case, all is plain sailing. But suppose the house empty and Mr. Y. disappeared. Here the situation becomes difficult and delicate.
Miss Elver went away to Switzerland. She was a middle-aged spinster who had the appearance of being comfortably circumstanced. She went away, locked up her house and never came back. Switzerland looked for her; the myrmidons of Mussolini, that hatefully efficient man, searched North Italy from Domodossola to Montecattini. And the search did not yield a thin-faced maiden lady with a slight squint.
And then Mr. Charles Boyson Middlekirk, an eccentric and overpowering old man who quarrelled with his neighbours about their noisy children, he too went away. He told nobody where he was going. He lived alone with his three cats and was not on speaking terms with anybody else. He did not return to his grimy house.
He too was well off and reputedly a miser. So was Mrs. Athbell Marting, a dour widow who lived with her drudge of a niece. This lady was in the habit of disappearing without any preliminary announcement of her intention. The niece was allowed to order from the local tradesmen just sufficient food to keep body and soul together, and when Mrs. Marling returned (as she invariably did) the bills were settled with a great deal of grumbling on the part of the payer, and that was that. It was believed that Mrs. Marting went to Boulogne or to Paris or even to Brussels. But one day she went out and never came back. Six months later her niece advertised for her, choosing the cheapest papers-having an eye to the day of reckoning.
‘Queer sort of thing,’ said the Public Prosecutor, who had before him the dossiers of four people (three women and a man) who had so vanished in three months.
He frowned, pressed a bell and Mr. Reeder came in. Mr. Reeder took the chair that was indicated, looked owlishly over his glasses and shook his head as though he understood the reason for his summons and denied his understanding in advance. ‘What do you make of these disappearances?’ asked his chief.
‘You cannot make any positive of a negative,’ said Mr. Reeder carefully. ‘London is a large place full of strange, mad people who live such-um-commonplace lives that the wonder is that more of them do not disappear in order to do something different from what they are accustomed to doing.’
‘Have you seen these particulars?’
Mr. Reeder nodded.
‘I have copies of them,’ he said. ‘Mr. Salter very kindly-’
The Public Prosecutor rubbed his head in perplexity.
‘I see nothing in these cases-nothing in common, I mean. Four is a fairly low average for a big city-’
‘Twenty-seven in twelve months,’ interrupted his detective apologetically.
‘Twenty-seven-are you sure?’ The great official was astounded.
Mr. Reeder nodded again.
‘They were all people with a little money; all were drawing a fairly large income, which was paid to them in banknotes on the first of every month-nineteen of them were, at any rate. I have yet to verify eight-and they were all most reticent as to where their revenues came