Red Aces (12 page)

“You mean that I am to proceed?” he asked gravely.

Another woman would have wilted under the reproof; there was something very wiltless about Miss Gillette. She just closed her eyes wearily.

“Let’s go,” she said, and it was Mr Reeder who was reproved.

“This is a report on the Wimburg Case,” he said, and began his hesitant dictation.

As he grew into his subject, he spoke with greater and greater rapidity. Never once did Miss Gillette interrupt with a question, to gain time for her lagging pencil. There was a ceaseless snap as the pages of her notebook turned.

“That is all,” he said breathlessly. “I trust that I did not go too fast for you?”

“I hardly noticed that you were moving,” she said, wetted her fingers and flicked back the pages. “You used the word ‘unsubstantial’ three times: once you meant ‘inadequate’ and once ‘unreal’. I would suggest that we alter those.”

Mr Reeder moved uncomfortably in his chair.

“Are you sure?” he asked feebly.

She was always sure, because she was always right.

It was not true to say that Mr Reeder had ever engaged a secretary. It was Miss Gillette who engaged him. By one of those odd coincidences which are unacceptable to the lovers of fiction but which occur in everyday life, she arrived at Mr Reeder’s office on the day and at the hour he was expecting a temporary typist from an agency. For some reason the agency lady did not arrive, or, if she did, was interviewed by Miss Gillette, who, fulfilling the practice of the young queen bee, destroyed her rival – in the nicest possible sense. And when Mr Reeder, having concluded the work for which he had engaged her, would have dismissed her with a ten-shilling note, shyly tendered and brazenly accepted, he learned that she was a fixture. He lay awake for an hour on the following Friday night, debating with himself whether he should deduct the ten shillings from her salary.

“Are there any appointments?” he asked.

There was none. Mr Reeder knew there was none before he asked. It was at this point that his daily embarrassment was invariably overcome.

“Nothing in the papers, I suppose?”

“Nothing except the Pimlico murder case. The funny thing is that the man who was killed–”

“Nothing funny about – um – that, my dear young lady,” murmured Mr Reeder. “Funny? Dear, dear!”

“When I said ‘funny’, I didn’t mean ‘amusing’ but ‘odd’,” she said. “And if you are getting back for ‘unsubstantial’, you will be pleased to know that you have got. He was Vladimir Litnoff – you remember, the man who was drunk and said that he had a brooch.”

Mr Reeder nodded calmly. Apparently Litnoff’s death was not startling news.

“It is my – um – mind, my dear young friend. I see evil things where other people see innocent things. And yet, in the question of human relationships, I take the kindliest and most charitable views. H’m! The young man who was with you at the Regal Cinema, for example–”

“Was the young man I’m going to marry when we earn enough to support one another,” she said promptly. “But how the devil did you see us?”

“S’sh!” said Mr Reeder, shocked. “Strong – um – language is – um – most…”

She was looking at him frowningly.

“Sit down,” she said, and Mr Reeder, who knew little of the rights of secretaries, but was quite sure that ordering their employers to sit down in their own offices was outside the table of privileges, sat down.

“I like you, John or Jonas or whatever the ‘J’ stands for,” she said, with outrageous coolness. “I didn’t realize that you were a detective when I came to you. I’ve worked for successions of tired businessmen, who bucked up sufficiently towards evening to ask me out to supper, but never a detective. And you’re different from all the men I’ve ever met. You’ve never tried to hold my hand–”

“I should hope not!” said Mr Reeder, going very red. “I’m old enough to be your father!”

“There isn’t such an age,” she said. And then, very seriously: “Would you speak to Tommy Anton if I brought him here?”

“Tommy – you mean your – um–”

“My ‘um’ – that describes him,” she nodded. “He’s a wonderful fellow – terribly awkward and shy, and he’ll probably make a bad impression, as you do, but he’s a really nice man.”

Now Mr Reeder had been many things, but he had never acted
in loco parentis
, and the prospect was a trifle terrifying.

“You wish me to ask him – er – what his intentions are?”

She smiled at this, and she had a dazzling and beautiful smile.

“My dear, I know what his intentions are, all right. You don’t meet a man day after day for over a year without finding out something about his private ideas. No – it is something else.”

Mr Reeder waited.

“If you were an ordinary employer,” she went on, “you’d take me by the scruff of my neck and fire me.” Mr Reeder disclaimed such a ferocious quality with a feeble shake of his head. “But you’re not.”

She got up and walked to the window and looked out. What was she going to say? A most ghastly thought occurred to Mr Reeder, one that made a cold shiver down his spine. But it was not that, for she turned suddenly.

“Tommy has been robbed of twenty-three thousand pounds,” she said.

He stared at her owlishly.

“Robbed?” She nodded. “When?”

“More than a year ago – before I met him. That is not why he is selling motor-cars on commission. He tries to sell them, but he isn’t very successful. His partner robbed him. They had a motor-car business. Tommy and this man Seafield were at Oxford together, and when they came down they started a motor-car agency. Tommy went to Germany to negotiate for an agency. When he came back Seafield had gone. He did not even leave a note – he just drew the money from the bank and went away.”

She saw a new light in Mr Reeder’s eyes and could not but marvel that what to him was so small a matter should be of such immediate interest.

“And no message with his wife?… Unmarried, eh? H’m! He lived…”

“At an hotel – he was a bachelor. No, he didn’t tell anybody there – just said he was going away for a day or two.”

“Left his clothes behind and did not even pay his bill,” murmured Mr Reeder.

Miss Gillette was surprised.

“You know all about it, then?”

“My queer mind,” he said simply.

There was a tap at the outer door.

“You had better see who that is,” said Mr Reeder.

She went to the door and opened it. Standing on the mat outside was a clergyman, wearing a long black overcoat which reached to his heels. He looked at her dubiously.

“Is this Mr Reeder’s office – the detective?” he asked.

She nodded, regarding the unexpected visitor with interest. He was a man of fifty, with greying hair. A mild, rather pallid man, who seemed to be ill at ease, for the fingers that gripped his umbrella, which he held about its middle as though he were all ready to signal a cab, clasped and unclasped in his agitation.

He looked at Mr Reeder helplessly. Mr Reeder, for his part, twiddled his thumbs and gazed at the visitor solemnly. It almost seemed that he was smitten dumb by the uniform of his visitor’s rectitude.

“Won’t you sit down, please?” There was something of the churchwarden in Mr Reeder’s benevolent gesture.

“The matter I wish to speak about – well, I hardly know how to begin,” said the clergyman.

Here Mr Reeder could not help him. It was on his tongue to offer the conventional suggestion that the best way to begin any story was to tell the unvarnished truth. Somehow this hardly seemed a delicate thing to say to a man of the cloth, so he said nothing.

“It concerns a man named Ralph – the merest acquaintance of mine…hardly that. I had corresponded with him on certain matters pertaining to the higher criticism. But I can hardly remember what points he raised or how I dealt with them. I never keep correspondence, not because I am unbusinesslike, but because letters have a trick of accumulating, and a filing system is a tyranny to which I will never submit.”

Mr Reeder’s heart could have warmed to this frank man. He loathed old letters and filing was an abominable occupation.

“This morning I had a call from Mr Ralph’s daughter. She lives with her father at Bishop’s Stortford in Essex. Apparently she came upon my name written on an envelope which she found in a wastepaper basket in her father’s office – he had a small office in Lower Regent Street, where he attended to whatever business he had.”

“What was his business?” asked Mr Reeder.

“Actually he had none. He was a retired provision merchant who had made a fortune in the City. He may have had, and probably has, one or two minor interests to occupy his spare time. He came up to town last Thursday – curiously enough, I had a telephone call from him at my hotel when I was out. Since that day he has not been seen.”

“Dear me!” said Mr Reeder. “What a coincidence!”

Dr Ingham looked a painful enquiry.

“That you should have thought of me,” said Mr Reeder. “It is very odd that people who lose people always come to me. And the young lady – she told you all this?”

Dr Ingham nodded.

“Yes. She is naturally worried. It appears that she had a friend, a young man, who did exactly the same thing. Just walked out of his hotel and disappeared. There may be explanations, but it is very difficult to tell a young lady–”

“Very,” Mr Reeder coughed discreetly, and said “very” again. “She suggested that you should come to me?”

The clergyman nodded. He appeared to be embarrassed by the nature of his mission.

“To be exact, she wished to come herself – I thought it was a friendly thing to interview you on her behalf. I am not a poor man, Mr Reeder; I am, in fact, rather a rich man, and I feel that I should render whatever assistance is possible to this poor young lady. My dear wife would, I am sure, heartily endorse my action – I have been married twenty-three years, and I have never found myself in disagreement with the partner of my joys and sorrows. You, as a married man–”

“Single,” said Mr Reeder, not without a certain amount of satisfaction. “Alas! Yes, I am – um – single.”

He looked at his new client glumly.

“The young lady is staying–”

“In town, yes,” nodded the other. “At Haymarket Central Hotel. You will take this case?”

Mr Reeder pulled at his nose and fingered his close-clipped side-whiskers. He settled his glasses on his nose and took them off again.

“Which case?” he asked.

Dr Ingham was pained.

“The case I have outlined.” He groped beneath his clerical coat and produced a card. “I have written Mr Lance Ralph’s office address on the back of my card–”

J G took the card and read its written inscription; turned it over and read the printed inscription. This gentleman was a doctor of divinity, and lived at Grayne Hall, near St Margaret’s Bay, in the County of Kent.

“There isn’t a case,” said Mr Reeder with the tenderness of one who is breaking bad news. “People are entitled to – um – disappear. Quite a number of people, my dear Dr Ingham, refuse to exercise that right, I am sorry to say. They disappear to Brighton, to Paris, but re-appear at later intervals. It is a common phenomenon.”

The cleric looked at him anxiously, and passed his umbrella from one hand to the other.

“Perhaps I haven’t told you everything that should have been told,” he said. “Miss Ralph had a fiancé – a young man in a prosperous business, as she tells me, who also vanished, leaving his partner–”

“You are referring to Mr Seafield?” But to his surprise, and perhaps to his annoyance, the clergyman showed no sign of amazement.

“Joan has a great friend in your office. Am I right in surmising it is the young lady who opened the door to me? This is how your name came up. We were discussing whether she should go to the police, when she mentioned your name. I thought you were the least unpleasant alternative, if you don’t mind that description.”

Mr Reeder bowed graciously. He did not mind.

There followed an uncomfortable lacuna of silence, which neither of the men seemed inclined to fill. Mr Reeder ushered the visitor to the door and went back to his desk, and for five minutes scribbled aimlessly on his blotting pad. He had a weakness for making grotesque drawings, and was putting an extra long nose upon the elongated head of one of his fanciful sketches when Miss Gillette came in unannounced.

“Well, what do you think of that?” she asked.

Mr Reeder stared at her.

“What do I think of what, Miss Gillette?” he demanded.

“Poor Joan, and she is such a darling. We have kept our friendship all through the Seafield business–”

“But how did you know about it?”

Mr Reeder was very seldom bewildered, but he was frankly bewildered now.

“I was listening at the door,” said Miss Gillette shamelessly. “Well, not exactly listening, but I left my door open and he talks very loudly; parsons get that way, don’t they?”

J G Reeder’s face wore an expression that was only comparable to that of a wounded fawn.

“It is very – um – wrong to listen,” he began, but she dismissed all questions of propriety with an airy wave of her hand.

“It doesn’t matter whether it’s right or wrong. Where is Joan staying?”

This was a moment when Mr J G Reeder should have risen with dignity, opened the door, pressed a fortnight’s wages into her hand, and dismissed her to the outer darkness, but he allowed the opportunity to pass.

“Can I bring Tommy to see you?”

She leant upon the table, resting her palms on the edge. Her enthusiasm was almost infectious.

“Tommy doesn’t look clever, but he really is, and he’s always had a theory about Seafield’s bolting. Tommy says that Frank Seafield would never have bought a letter of credit–”

“Did he have a letter of credit? I thought you told me that he drew the money out of the bank?”

Miss Gillette nodded.

“It was a letter of credit,” she said emphatically, “for £6,300. That’s how we knew he had gone abroad. The letter was cashed in Berlin and Vienna.”

For a long time Mr J G Reeder looked out of the window.

“I should like to talk with Tommy,” he said gravely, and when he looked round Miss Gillette had gone.