Terror Keep/Chapter 4

by Edgar Wallace

 

TERROR KEEP 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. She wore a flimsy négligée.

"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 cherrywood 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."

P.-C. 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 sympathise 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.