It was late in the afternoon when the Public Prosecutor strolled into his room and glanced at the big pile of manuscript through which his subordinate was wading.
“What are you reading—the Green business?” he asked, with a note of satisfaction in his voice. “I’m glad that is interesting you, though it seems a fairly straightforward case. I have had a letter from the president of the man’s bank, who for some reason seems to think Green was telling the truth.”
Mr. Reeder looked up with that pained expression of his which he invariably wore when he was puzzled.
“Here is the evidence of Policeman Burnett,” he said. “Perhaps you can enlighten me, sir. Policeman Burnett stated in his evidence—let me read it:
“ ‘Some time before I reached the bank premises I saw a man standing at the corner of the street, immediately outside the bank. I saw him distinctly in the light of a passing mail van. I did not attach any importance to his presence, and I did not see him again. It was possible for this man to have gone round the block and come to 120, Firling Avenue without being seen by me. Immediately after I saw him, my foot struck against a piece of iron on the sidewalk. I put my lamp on the object and found it was an old horseshoe. I had seen children playing with this particular shoe earlier in the evening. When I looked again towards the corner, the man had disappeared. He would have seen the light of my lamp. I saw no other person, and so far as I can remember, there was no light showing in Green’s house when I passed it.’ ”
Mr. Reeder looked up.
“Well?” said the Prosecutor. “There’s nothing remarkable about that. It was probably Green, who dodged round the block and came in at the back of the constable.”
Mr. Reeder scratched his chin.
“Yes,” he said thoughtfully, “ye—es.” He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Would it be considered indecorous if I made a few inquiries, independent of the police?” he asked nervously. “I should not like them to think that a mere dilettante was interfering with their lawful functions.”
“By all means,” said the Prosecutor heartily. “Go down and see the officer in charge of the case: I’ll give you a note to him—it is by no means unusual for my officer to conduct a separate investigation, though I am afraid you will discover very little. The ground has been well covered by Scotland Yard.”
“It would be permissible to see the man?” hesitated Reeder.
“Green? Why, of course! I will send you up the necessary order.”
The light was fading from a grey, blustering sky, and rain was falling fitfully, when Mr. Reeder, with his furled umbrella hooked to his arm, his coat collar turned up, stepped through the dark gateway of Brixton Prison and was led to the cell where a distracted man sat, his head upon his hands, his pale eyes gazing into vacancy.
“It’s true; it’s true! Every word.” Green almost sobbed the words.
A pallid man, inclined to be bald, with a limp yellow moustache, going grey. Reeder, with his extraordinary memory for faces, recognised him the moment he saw him, though it was some time before the recognition was mutual.
“Yes, Mr. Reeder, I remember you now. You were the gentleman who caught me before. But I’ve been as straight as a die. I’ve never taken a farthing that didn’t belong to me. What my poor girl will think—”
“Are you married?” asked Mr. Reeder sympathetically.
“No, but I was going to be—rather late in life. She’s nearly thirty years younger than me, and the best girl that ever—”
Reeder listened to the rhapsody that followed, the melancholy deepening in his face.
“She hasn’t been into the court, thank God, but she knows the truth. A friend of mine told me that she has been absolutely knocked out.”
“Poor soul!” Mr. Reeder shook his head.
“It happened on her birthday, too,” the man went on bitterly.
“Did she know you were going away?”
“Yes, I told her the night before. I’m not going to bring her into the case. If we’d been properly engaged it would be different; but she’s married and is divorcing her husband, but the decree hasn’t been made absolute yet. That’s why I never went about with her or saw much of her. And of course, nobody knew about our engagement, although we lived in the same street.”
“Firling Avenue?” asked Reeder, and the bank manager nodded despondently.
“She was married when she was seventeen to a brute. It was pretty galling for me, having to keep quiet about it—I mean, for nobody to know about our engagement. All sorts of rotten people were making up to her, and I had just to grind my teeth and say nothing. Impossible people! Why, that fool Burnett, who arrested me, he was sweet on her; used to write her poetry—you wouldn’t think it possible in a policeman, would you?”
The outrageous incongruity of a poetical policeman did not seem to shock the detective.
“There is poetry in every soul, Mr. Green,” he said gently, “and a policeman is a man.”
Though he dismissed the eccentricity of the constable so lightly, the poetical policeman filled his mind all the way home to his house in the Brockley Road, and occupied his thoughts for the rest of his waking time.
It was a quarter to eight o’clock in the morning, and the world seemed entirely populated by milkmen and whistling newspaper boys, when Mr. J. G. Reeder came into Firling Avenue.
He stopped only for a second outside the bank, which had long since ceased to be an object of local awe and fearfulness, and pursued his way down the broad avenue. On either side of the thoroughfare ran a row of pretty villas—pretty although they bore a strong family resemblance to one another; each house with
