The Prosecutor looked at him sharply, but Mr. Reeder was never sarcastic. Not obviously so, at any rate.
‘There is another point which I omitted to mention,’ he went on. ‘After their disappearance no further money came for them. It came for Mrs. Marting when she was away on her jaunts, but it ceased when she went away on her final journey.’
‘But twenty-seven-are you sure?’
Mr. Reeder reeled off the list, giving name, address and date of disappearance.
‘What do you think has happened to them?’
Mr, Reeder considered for a moment, staring glumly at the carpet.
‘I should imagine that they were murdered,’ he said, almost cheerfully, and the Prosecutor half rose from his chair.
‘You are in your gayest mood this morning, Mr. Reeder,’ he said sardonically. ‘Why on earth should they be murdered?’
Mr. Reeder did not explain. The interview took place in the late afternoon, and he was anxious to be gone, for he had a tacit appointment to meet a young lady of exceeding charm who at five minutes after five would be waiting on the corner of Westminster Bridge and Thames Embankment for the Lee car.
The sentimental qualities of Mr. Reeder were entirely unknown. There are those who say that his sorrow over those whom fate and ill-fortune brought into his punitive hands was the veriest hypocrisy. There were others who believed that he was genuinely pained to see a fellow-creature sent behind bars through his efforts and evidence.
His housekeeper, who thought he was a woman-hater, told her friends in confidence that he was a complete stranger to the tender emotions which enlighten and glorify humanity. In the ten years which she had sacrificed to his service he had displayed neither emotion nor tenderness except to inquire whether her sciatica was better or to express a wish that she should take a holiday by the sea. She was a woman beyond middle age, but there is no period of life wherein a woman gives up hoping for the best. Though the most perfect of servants in all respects, she secretly despised him, called him, to her intimates, a frump, and suspected him of living apart from an ill-treated wife. This lady was a widow (as she had told him when he first engaged her) and she had seen better-far better-days.
Her visible attitude towards Mr. Reeder was one of respect and awe. She excused the queer character of his callers and his low acquaintances. She forgave him his square-toed shoes and high, flat-crowned hat, and even admired the ready-made Ascot cravat he wore and which was fastened behind the collar with a little buckle, the prongs of which invariably punctured his fingers when he fastened it. But there is a limit to all hero-worship, and when she discovered that Mr. Reeder was in the habit of waiting to escort a young lady to town every day, and frequently found it convenient to escort her home, the limit was reached.
Mrs. Hambleton told her friends-and they agreed-that there was no fool like an old fool, and that marriages between the old and the young invariably end in the divorce court (December v. May and July). She used to leave copies of a favourite Sunday newspaper on his table, where he could not fail to see the flaring headlines:
OLD MAN’S WEDDING ROMANCE WIFE’S PERFIDY BRINGS GREY HAIR IN SORROW TO THE LAW COURTS.
Whether Mr. Reeder perused these human documents she did not know. He never referred to the tragedies of ill-assorted unions, and went on meeting Miss Belman every morning at nine o’clock, and at five-five in the afternoons whenever his business permitted.
He so rarely discussed his own business or introduced the subject that was exercising his mind that it was remarkable he should make even an oblique reference to his work. Possibly he would not have done so if Miss Margaret Belman had not introduced (unwillingly) a leader of conversation which traced indirectly to the disappearances.
They had been talking of holidays: Margaret was going to Cromer for a fortnight.
‘I shall leave on the second. My monthly dividends (doesn’t that sound grand?) are due on the first-’
‘Eh?’
Reeder slued round. Dividends in most companies are paid at half-yearly intervals.
‘Dividends, Miss Margaret?’
She flushed a little at his surprise and then laughed.
‘You didn’t realise that I was a woman of property?’ she bantered him. ‘I receive ten pounds a month-my father left me a little house property when he died. I sold the cottages two years ago for a thousand pounds and found a wonderful investment.’
Mr. Reeder made a rapid calculation.
‘You are drawing something like 12 and a half per cent.,’ he said. ‘That is indeed a wonderful investment. What is the name of the company?’
She hesitated.
‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you that. You see-well, it’s rather secret. It is to do with a South American syndicate that supplies arms to-what do you call them-insurgents! I know it is rather dreadful to make money that way-I mean out of arms and things, but it pays terribly well and I can’t afford to miss the opportunity.’
Reeder frowned.
‘But why is it such a terrible secret?’ he asked. ‘Quite a number of respectable people make money out of armament concerns.’
Again she showed reluctance to explain her meaning.
‘We are pledged-the shareholders, I mean-not to divulge our connection with the company,’ she said. ‘That is one of the agreements I had to sign. And the money comes regularly. I have had nearly £300 of my thousand back in dividends already.’
‘Humph!’ said Mr. Reeder, wise enough not to press his question. There was another day tomorrow.
But the opportunity to which he looked forward on the following morning was denied to him. Somebody played a grim ‘joke’ on him-the kind of joke to which he was accustomed, for there were men who had good reason to hate him, and never a year passed but one or the other sought to repay him for his unkindly attentions.
‘Your name is Reeder, ain’t it?’
Mr. Reeder, tightly grasping his umbrella with both hands, looked over his spectacles at the shabby man who stood at the bottom of the steps. He was on the point of leaving his house in the Brockley Road for his office in Whitehall, and since he was a methodical man and worked to a timetable, he resented in his mild way this interruption which had already cost him fifteen seconds of valuable time.
‘You’re the fellow who shopped Ike Walker, ain’t you?’
Mr. Reeder had indeed ‘shopped’ many men. He was by profession a shopper, which, translated from the argot, means a man who procures the arrest of an evildoer. Ike Walker he knew very well indeed. He was a clever, a too clever, forger of bills of exchange, and was at that precise moment almost permanently employed as orderly in the convict prison at Dartmoor, and might account himself fortunate if he held this easy job for the rest of his twelve years’ sentence.
His interrogator was a little hardfaced man wearing a suit that had evidently been originally intended for somebody of greater girth and more commanding height. His trousers were turned up noticeably; his waistcoat was full of folds and tucks which only an amateur tailor would have dared, and only one superior to the criticism of his fellows would have worn. His hard, bright eyes were fixed on Mr. Reeder, but there was no menace in them so far as the detective could read.
‘Yes, I was instrumental in arresting Ike Walker,’ said Mr. Reeder, almost gently.
The man put his hand in his pocket and brought out a crumpled packet enclosed in green oiled silk. Mr. Reeder unfolded the covering and found a soiled and crumpled envelope.
‘That’s from Ike,’ said the man. ‘He sent it out of stir by a gent who was discharged yesterday.’
Mr.