“That is as good a place as any, Brill,” he said. “I’m sorry I must leave you for two hours, but I have an idea that nobody will disturb you there. I am leaving the lamp burning, which will give you enough light.”
“Very good, sir,” said the man from Scotland Yard, and took up his post.
Five minutes later, Mr. Reeder locked the door of his room and went downstairs to the waiting party.
They were in the big hall, a very silent and preoccupied trio, until his arrival galvanized them into something that might pass for light conversation. There was indeed a fourth present when he came in: a sallow-faced woman in black, who melted out of the hall at his approach, and he guessed her to be the melancholy Mrs. Burton. The two men rose at his approach, and after the usual self-deprecatory exchange which preceded the cutting for partners, Mr. Reeder found himself sitting opposite the military looking Colonel Hothling. On his left was the pale girl; on his right, the hard-faced Rev. Mr. Dean.
“What do we play for?” growled the Colonel, caressing his moustache, his steely blue eyes fixed on Mr. Reeder.
“A modest stake, I hope,” begged that gentleman. “I am such an indifferent player.”
“I suggest sixpence a hundred,” said the clergyman. “It is as much as a poor parson can afford.”
“Or a poor pensioner either,” grumbled the Colonel, and sixpence a hundred was agreed.
They played two games in comparative silence. Reeder was sensitive of a strained atmosphere but did nothing to relieve it. His partner was surprisingly nervous for one who, as he remarked casually, had spent his life in military service.
“A wonderful life,” said Mr. Reeder in his affable way.
Once or twice he detected the girl’s hand, as she held the cards, tremble never so slightly. Only the clergyman remained still and unmoved, and incidentally played without error.
It was after an atrocious revoke on the part of his partner, a revoke which gave his opponents the game and rubber, that Mr. Reeder pushed back his chair.
“What a strange world this is!” he remarked sententiously. “How like a game of cards!”
Those who were best acquainted with Mr. Reeder knew that he was most dangerous when he was most philosophical. The three people who sat about the table heard only a boring commonplace, in keeping with their conception of this somewhat dull-looking man.
“There are some people,” mused Mr. Reeder, looking up at the lofty ceiling, “who are never happy unless they have all the aces. I, on the contrary, am most cheerful when I have in my hand all the knaves.”
“You play a very good game, Mr. Reeder.”
It was the girl who spoke, and her voice was husky, her tone hesitant, as though she was forcing herself to speak.
“I play one or two games rather well,” said Mr. Reeder. “Partly, I think, because I have such an extraordinary memory—I never forget knaves.”
There was a silence. This time the reference was too direct to be mistaken.
“There used to be in my younger days,” Mr. Reeder went on, addressing nobody in particular, “a knave of hearts, who eventually became a knave of clubs, and drifted down into heaven knows what other welters of knavery! In plain words, he started his professional—um—life as a bigamist, continued his interesting and romantic career as a tout for gambling hells, and was concerned in a bank robbery in Denver. I have not seen him for years, but he is colloquially known to his associates as ‘the Colonel’: a military looking gentleman with a pleasing appearance and a glib tongue.”
He was not looking at the Colonel as he spoke, so he did not see the man’s face go pale.
“I have not met him since he grew a moustache, but I could recognize him anywhere by the peculiar colour of his eyes and by the fact that he has a scar at the back of his head, a souvenir of some unfortunate fracas in which he became engaged. They tell me that he became an expert user of knives—I gather he sojourned a while in Latin America—a knave of clubs and a knave of hearts—hum!”
The Colonel sat rigid, not a muscle of his face moving.
“One supposes,” Mr. Reeder continued, looking at the girl thoughtfully, “that he has by this time acquired a competence which enables him to stay at the very best hotels without any fear of police supervision.”
Her dark eyes were fixed unwaveringly on his. The full lips were closed, the jaws set.
“How very interesting you are, Mr. Reeder!” she drawled at last. “Mr. Daver tells me you are associated with the police force?”
“Remotely, only remotely,” said Mr. Reeder.
“Are you acquainted with any other knaves, Mr. Reeder?”
It was the cool voice of the clergyman, and Mr. Reeder beamed around at him.
“With the knave of diamonds,” he said softly. “What a singularly appropriate name for one who spent five years in the profitable pursuit of illicit diamond-buying in South Africa, and five unprofitable years on the breakwater in Capetown, becoming, as one might say, a knave of spades from the continual use of that necessary and agricultural implement, and a knave of pickaxes, too, one supposes. He was flogged, if I remember rightly, for an outrageous assault upon a warder, and on his release from prison was implicated in a robbery in Johannesburg. I am relying on my memory, and I cannot recall at the moment whether he reached Pretoria Central—which is the colloquial name for the Transvaal prison—or whether he escaped. I seem to remember that he was concerned in a banknote
