It was he who brought into the organization one O. Sweizer, the Swiss-American bank robber; he who recruited Adolphe Victoire; and they brought others to the good work. For this was Crazy John’s peculiar asset—that he could attract to himself, almost at a minute’s notice, the best brains of the underworld. Though the rest of the Flacks were either dead or jailed, the organization was stronger than ever, and stronger because lurking somewhere in the background was this kinky brain.
Thus matters stood when Mr. J. G. Reeder came into the case—being brought into the matter not so much because the London police had failed, but because the Public Prosecutor recognized that the breaking up of the Flacks was going to be a lengthy business, occupying one man’s complete attention.
Cutting the tentacles of the organization was an easy matter, comparatively.
Mr. Reeder took O. Sweizer, that stocky Swiss-American, when he and a man unknown were engaged in removing a safe from the Bedford Street Post Office one Sunday morning. Sweizer was ready for fight, but Mr. Reeder grabbed him just a little too quickly.
“Let up!” gasped Sweizer in French. “You’re choking me, Reeder.”
Mr. Reeder turned him onto his face and handcuffed him behind; then he went to the assistance of his admirable colleagues who were taking the other two men.
Victoire was arrested one night at the Charlton, where he was dining with Denver May. He gave no trouble, because the police took him on a purely fictitious charge and one which he knew he could easily disprove.
“My dear Mr. Reeder,” said he in his elegant, languid way, “you are making quite an absurd mistake, but I will humour you. I can prove that when the pearls were taken from Hertford Street I was in Nice.”
This was on the way to the station.
They put him in the dock and searched him, discovering certain lethal weapons handily disposed about his person, but he was only amused. He was less amused when he was charged with smashing the Bank of Lena, the attempted murder of a night watchman, and one or two other little matters which need not be particularized.
They got him into a cell, and as he was carried, struggling and raving like a lunatic, Mr. Reeder offered him a piece of advice which he rejected with considerable violence.
“Say you were in Nice at the time,” he said gently.
Then one day the police pulled in a man in Somers Town, on the very prosaic charge of beating his wife in public. When they searched him, they found a torn scrap of a letter which was sent at once to Mr. Reeder. It read:
“Any night about eleven in Whitehall Avenue. Reeder is a man of medium height, elderly-looking, sandy-grayish hair and side whiskers rather thick, always carries an umbrella. Recommend you to wear rubber boots and take a length of iron to him. You can easily find out who he is and what he looks like. Take your time … fifty on acc … der when the job is finished. …”
This was the first hint Mr. Reeder had that he was especially unpopular with the mysterious John Flack.
The day Crazy John Flack was sent down to Broadmoor had been a day of mild satisfaction for Mr. Reeder. He was not exactly happy or even relieved about it. He had the comfort of an accountant who had signed a satisfactory balance sheet, or the builder who was surveying his finished work. There were other balance sheets to be signed, other buildings to be erected—they differed only in their shapes and quantities.
One thing was certain, that on what other project Flack’s mind was fixed, he was devoting a considerable amount of thought to J. G. Reeder—whether in reprisal for events that had passed or as a precautionary measure to check his activities in the future, the detective could only guess; but he was a good guesser.
The telephone bell, set in a remote corner of the room, rang sharply. Mr. Reeder took up the instrument with a pained expression. The operator of the office exchange told him that there was a call from Horsham. He pulled a writing pad toward him and waited. And then a voice spoke, and hardly was the first word uttered than he knew his man, for J. G. Reeder never forgot voices.
“That you, Reeder? Know who I am?”
The same thin, tense voice that had babbled threats from the dock of Old Bailey, the same little chuckling laugh that punctured every second.
Mr. Reeder touched a bell and began to write rapidly on his pad.
“Know who I am?—I’ll bet you do! Thought you’d got rid of me, didn’t you, but you haven’t! Listen, Reeder, you can tell the Yard I’m busy—I’m going to give them the shock of their lives. Mad, am I? I’ll show you whether I’m mad or not. And I’ll get you, Reeder—”
A messenger came in. Mr. Reeder tore off the slip and handed it to him with an urgent gesture. The man read and bolted from the room.
“Is that Mr. Flack?” asked Reeder softly.
“Is it Mr. Flack, you old hypocrite! Have you got the parcel? I wondered if you had. What do you think of it?”
“The parcel?” asked Reeder, more gently than ever, and before the man could reply: “You will get into serious trouble for trying to hoax the Public Prosecutor’s office, my friend,” said Mr. Reeder reproachfully. “You are not Crazy John Flack—I know his voice. Mr. Flack spoke with a curious cockney accent which is
