The Greatest Thrillers of Edgar Wallace. Edgar WallaceЧитать онлайн книгу.
time replacing the letter and gathering his belongings.
‘You have a beautiful place here. Sir James-a lovely place. An extensive estate?’
‘Three thousand acres.’ This time he did not attempt to disguise his impatience. ‘Good afternoon.’
Mr. Reeder went slowly down the drive, his remarkable memory at work.
He missed the bus which he could easily have caught, and pursued an apparently aimless way along the winding road which marched with the boundaries of the baronet’s property. A walk of a quarter of a mile brought him to a lane shooting off at right angles from the main road, and marking, he guessed, the southern boundary. At the corner stood an old stone lodge, on the inside of a forbidding iron gate. The lodge was in a pitiable state of neglect and disrepair. Tiles had been dislodged from the roof, the windows were grimy or broken, and the little garden was overrun with docks and thistles. Beyond the gate was a narrow, weed-covered drive that trailed out of sight into a distant plantation.
Hearing the clang of a letterbox closing, he turned to see a postman mounting his bicycle.
‘What place is this?’ asked Mr. Reeder, arresting the postman’s departure.
‘South Lodge-Sir James Tithermite’s property. It’s never used now. Hasn’t been used for years-I don’t know why; it’s a short cut if they happen to be coming this way.’
Mr. Reeder walked with him towards the village, and he was a skilful pumper of wells, however dry; and the postman was not dry by any means.
‘Yes, poor lady! She was very frail-one of those sort of invalids that last out many a healthy man.’
Mr. Reeder put a question at random and scored most unexpectedly.
‘Yes, her ladyship was a bad sailor. I know because every time she went abroad she used to get a bottle of that stuff people take for seasickness. I’ve delivered many a bottle till Raikes the chemist stocked it-”Pickers’ Travellers’ Friend,” that’s what it was called. Mr. Raikes was only saying to me the other day that he’d got half a dozen bottles on handy and he didn’t know what to do with them. Nobody in Climbury ever goes to sea.’
Mr. Reeder went on to the village and idled his precious time in most unlikely places. At the chemist’s, at the blacksmith’s shop, at the modest building yard. He caught the last bus back to Maidstone, and by great good luck the last train to London.
And, in his vague way, he answered the Director’s query the next day with:
‘Yes, I saw Sir James: a very interesting man.’
This was on the Friday. All day Saturday he was busy. The Sabbath brought him a new interest.
On this bright Sunday morning, Mr. Reeder, attired in a flowered dressing-gown, his feet encased in black velvet slippers, stood at the window of his house in Brockley Road and surveyed the deserted thoroughfare. The bell of a local church, which was accounted high, had rung for early Mass, and there was nothing living in sight except a black cat that lay asleep in a patch of sunlight on the top step of the house opposite. The hour was 7.30, and Mr. Reeder had been at his desk since six, working by artificial light, the month being March towards the close.
From the half-moon of the window bay he regarded a section of the Lewisham High Road and as much of Tanners Hill as can be seen before it dips past the railway bridge into sheer Deptford.
Returning to his table, he opened a carton of the cheapest cigarettes and, lighting one, puffed in an amateurish fashion. He smoked cigarettes rather like a woman who detests them but feels that it is the correct thing to do.
‘Dear me,’ said Mr. Reeder feebly.
He was back at the window, and he had seen a man turn out of Lewisham High Road. He had crossed the road and was coming straight to Daffodil House-which frolicsome name appeared on the doorposts of Mr. Reeder’s residence. A tall, straight man, with a sombre brown face, he came to the front gate, passed through and beyond the watcher’s range of vision.
‘Dear me!’ said Mr. Reeder, as he heard the tinkle of a bell.
A few minutes later his housekeeper tapped on the door.
‘Will you see Mr. Kohl, sir?’ she asked.
Mr. J.G. Reeder nodded.
Lew Kohl walked into the room to find a middle-aged man in a flamboyant dressing-gown sitting at his desk, a pair of pince-nez set crookedly on his nose.
‘Good morning. Kohl.’
Lew Kohl looked at the man who had sent him to seven and a half years of hell, and the corner of his thin lips curled.
‘Morning, Mr. Reeder.’ His eyes flashed across the almost bare surface of the writing-desk on which Reeder’s hands were lightly clasped. ‘You didn’t expect to see me, I guess?’
‘Not so early,’ said Reeder in his hushed voice, ‘but I should have remembered that early rising is one of the good habits which are inculcated by penal servitude.’
He said this in the manner of one bestowing praise for good conduct.
‘I suppose you’ve got a pretty good idea of why I have come, eh? I’m a bad forgetter, Reeder, and a man in Dartmoor has time to think.’
The older man lifted his sandy eyebrows, the steel-rimmed glasses on his nose slipped further askew.
‘That phrase seems familiar,’ he said, and the eyebrows lowered in a frown. ‘Now let me think-it was in a melodrama, of course, but was it “Souls in Harness” or “The Marriage Vow”?’
He appeared genuinely anxious for assistance in solving this problem.
‘This is going to be a different kind of play,’ said the long-faced Lew through his teeth. ‘I’m going to get you, Reeder-you can go along and tell your boss, the Public Prosecutor. But I’ll get you sweet! There will be no evidence to swing me. And I’ll get that nice little stocking of yours, Reeder!’
The legend of Reeder’s fortune was accepted even by so intelligent a man as Kohl.
‘You’ll get my stocking! Dear me, I shall have to go barefooted,’ said Mr. Reeder, with a faint show of humour.
‘You know what I mean-think that over. Some hour and day you’ll go out, and all Scotland Yard won’t catch me for the killing! I’ve thought it out-’
‘One has time to think in Dartmoor,’ murmured Mr. J.G. Reeder encouragingly. ‘You’re becoming one of the world’s thinkers, Kohl. Do you know Rodin’s masterpiece-a beautiful statue throbbing with life-’
‘That’s all.’ Lew Kohl rose, the smile still trembling at the comer of his mouth. ‘Maybe you’ll turn this over in your mind, and in a day or two you won’t be feeling so gay.’
Reeder’s face was pathetic in its sadness. His untidy sandy-grey hair seemed to be standing on end; the large ears, that stood out at right angles to his face, gave the illusion of quivering movement.
Lew Kohl’s hand was on the doorknob.
‘Womp!’
It was the sound of a dull weight striking a board; something winged past his cheek, before his eyes a deep hole showed in the wall, and his face was stung by flying grains of plaster. He spun round with a whine of rage.
Mr. Reeder had a long-barrelled Browning in his hand, with a barrel-shaped silencer over the muzzle, and he was staring at the weapon openmouthed.
‘Now how on earth did that happen?’ he asked in wonder.
Lew Kohl stood trembling with rage and fear, his face yellow-white.
‘You-you swine!’ he breathed. ‘You tried to shoot me!’
Mr. Reeder stared at him over his glasses.