The Mind of Mr. J. G. Reeder

epub:type="z3998:name-title">Mr. J. G. Reeder; “there is an unpleasant draught.”

Mr. Tommy Fenalow came on foot at two o’clock in the morning and, passing down the muddy lane, his electric torch suddenly revealed car marks. Tommy stopped like a man shot. His knees trembled beneath him and his heart entered his throat at the narrowest end. For a while he was undecided whether it would be better to run or walk away. He had no intention of going forward. And then he heard a voice. It was Ras Lal’s assistant, and he nearly swooned with joy. Stumbling forward, he came up to the shivering man.

“Did that fool boss of yours bring the car along here?” he asked in a whisper.

“Yas⁠—Mr. Ras Lal,” said Ram with whom the English language was not a strong point.

“Then he’s a fool!” growled Tommy. “Gosh! he put my heart in my mouth!”

Whilst Ram was getting together sufficient English to explain what had happened, Tommy passed on. He found his client sitting in the lobby, a black cheroot between his teeth, a smile of satisfaction on his dark face.

“Welcome!” he said, as Tommy closed the door. “We have trapped the weasel.”

“Never mind about the weasel,” said the other impatiently. “Did you find the rupees?”

Ras Lal shook his head.

“But I left them in the store⁠—ten thousand notes. I thought you’d have got them and skipped before this,” said Mr. Fenalow anxiously.

“I have something more important in the store⁠—come and see my friend.”

He preceded the bewildered Tommy up the stairs, turned on the landing light and threw open the door.

“Behold⁠—” he said, and said no more.

“Why, it is Mr. Fenalow!” said Mr. J. G.

One hand held a packet of almost lifelike rupee notes; as for the other hand⁠—

“You oughter known he carried a gun, you dam’ black baboon,” hissed Tommy. “An’ to put him in a room where the stuff was, and a telephone!”

He was being driven to the local police station, and for the moment was attached to his companion by links of steel.

“It was a mere jest or a piece of practical joking, as I shall explain to the judge in the morning,” said Ras airily.

Tommy Fenalow’s reply was unprintable.

Three o’clock boomed out from St. John’s Church as Mr. Reeder accompanied an excited girl to the front door of her boardinghouse.

“I can’t tell you how I⁠—I’ve enjoyed tonight,” she said.

Mr. Reeder glanced uneasily at the dark face of the house.

“I hope⁠—er⁠—your friends will not think it remarkable that you should return at such an hour⁠—”

Despite her assurance, he went slowly home with an uneasy feeling that her name had in some way been compromised. And in melodrama, when a heroine’s name is compromised, somebody has to marry her.

That was the disturbing thought that kept Mr. Reeder awake all night.

The Green Mamba

The spirit of exploration has ruined more promising careers than drink, gambling or the smiles of women. Generally speaking, the beaten tracks of life are the safest, and few men have adventured into the uncharted spaces in search of easy money who have not regarded the discovery of the old hard road whence they strayed as the greatest of their achievements.

Mo Liski held an assured position in his world, and one acquired by the strenuous and even violent exercise of his many qualities. He might have gone on until the end of the chapter, only he fell for an outside proposition, and, moreover, handicapped himself with a private feud, which had its beginning in an affair wholly remote from his normal operations.

There was a Moorish grafter named El Rahbut, who had made several visits to England, travelling by the banana boats which make the round trip from London River to Funchal Bay, Las Palmas, Tangier and Oporto. He was a very ordinary, yellow-faced Moor, pockmarked and undersized, and he spoke English, having in his youth fallen into the hands of a well-meaning American missionary. This man Rahbut was useful to Mo because quite a lot of German drugs are shipped via Trieste to the Levant, and many a crate of oranges has been landed in the Pool that had, squeezed in their golden interiors, little metal cylinders containing smuggled saccharine, heroin, cocaine, hydrochlorate and divers other noxious medicaments.

Rahbut brought such things from time to time, was paid fairly and was satisfied. One day, in the saloon bar of The Four Jolly Seamen, he told Mo of a great steal. It had been carried out by a group of Anghera thieves working in Fez, and the loot was no less than the Emeralds of Suliman, the most treasured possession of Morocco. Not even Abdul Aziz in his most impecunious days had dared to remove them from the Mosque of Omar; the Anghera men being what they were, broke into the holy house, killed two guardians of the treasure, and had got away with the nine green stones of the great king. Thereafter arose an outcry which was heard from the bazaars of Calcutta to the mean streets of Marsi-Karsi. But the men of Anghera were superior to the voice of public opinion and they did no more than seek a buyer. El Rahbut, being a notorious bad character, came into the matter, and this was the tale he told to Mo Liski at The Four Jolly Seamen one foggy October night.

“There is a million pesetas profit in this for you and me, Mr. Good Man,” said Rahbut (all Europeans who paid on the nail were “Mr. Good Man” to El Rahbut). “There is also death for me if this thing becomes known.”

Mo listened, smoothing his chin with a hand that sparkled and flashed dazzlingly. He was keen on ornamentation. It was a little outside his line, but the newspapers had stated the bald value of the stolen property, and his blood was on fire at the prospect of earning half a million so easily. That Scotland Yard and every police headquarters in the world were on the lookout for the nine stones of