His chief looked up: it was an inspiration which made him say:
“Get him!”
Mr. Reeder nodded very slowly.
“I have often thought that it would be a good idea,” he said. His gaze deepened in melancholy. “Liski has many acquaintances of a curious character,” he said at last. “Dutchmen, Russians, Jewish persons—he knows a Moor.”
The chief looked up quickly.
“A Moor—you’re thinking of the Nine Emeralds? My dear man, there are hundreds of Moors in London and thousands in Paris.”
“And millions in Morocco,” murmured Mr. Reeder. “I only mention the Moor in passing, sir. As regards my friend Mrs. Plessy—I hope only for the best.”
And he melted from the room.
The greater part of a month passed before he showed any apparent interest in the case. He spent odd hours wandering in the neighbourhood of Lambeth, and on one occasion he was seen in the members’ enclosure at Hurst Park racetrack—but he spoke to nobody, and nobody spoke to him.
One night Mr. Reeder came dreamily back to his well-ordered house in Brockley Road, and found waiting on his table a small flat box which had arrived, his housekeeper told him, by post that afternoon. The label was addressed in typewritten characters “John Reeder, Esq.” and the postmark was Central London.
He cut the thin ribbon which tied it, stripped first the brown paper and then the silver tissue, and exposed a satiny lid, which he lifted daintily. There, under a layer of paper shavings, were roll upon roll of luscious confectionery. Chocolate, with or without dainty extras, had an appeal for Mr. Reeder, and he took up a small globule garnished with crystallised violets and examined it admiringly.
His housekeeper came in at that moment with his tea-tray and set it down on the table. Mr. Reeder looked over his large glasses.
“Do you like chocolates, Mrs. Kerrel?” he asked plaintively.
“Why, yes, sir,” the elderly lady beamed.
“So do I,” said Mr. Reeder. “So do I!” and he shook his head regretfully, as he replaced the chocolate carefully in the box. “Unfortunately,” he went on, “my doctor—a very excellent man—has forbidden me all sorts of confectionery until they have been submitted to the rigorous test of the public analyst.”
Mrs. Kerrel was a slow thinker, but a study of current advertisement columns in the daily newspaper had enlarged to a very considerable extent her scientific knowledge.
“To see if there is any vitamines in them, sir?” she suggested.
Mr. Reeder shook his head.
“No, I hardly think so,” he said gently. “Vitamines are my sole diet. I can spend a whole evening with no other company than a pair of these interesting little fellows, and take no ill from them. Thank you, Mrs. Kerrel.”
When she had gone, he replaced the layer of shavings with punctilious care, closed down the lid, and as carefully re-wrapped the parcel. When it was finished he addressed the package to a department at Scotland Yard, took from a small box a label printed redly “Poison.” When this was done, he scribbled a note to the gentleman affected, and addressed himself to his muffins and his large teacup.
It was a quarter-past six in the evening when he had unwrapped the chocolates. It was exactly a quarter-past eleven, as he turned out the lights preparatory to going to bed, that he said aloud:
“Marylou Plessy—dear me!”
Here began the war.
This was Wednesday evening; on Friday morning the toilet of Marylou Plessy was interrupted by the arrival of two men who were waiting for her when she came into the sitting-room in her negligee. They talked about fingerprints found on chocolates and other such matters.
Half an hour later a dazed woman sat in the cells at Harlboro Street and listened to an inspector’s recital of her offence. At the following sessions she went down for two years on a charge of “conveying by post to John Reeder a poisonous substance, to wit aconite, with intent to murder.”
To the last Mo Liski sat in court, his drawn haggard face testifying to the strength of his affection for the woman in the dock. After she disappeared from the dock he went outside into the big, windy hall, and there and then made his first mistake.
Mr. Reeder was putting on his woollen gloves when the dapper man strode up to him.
“Name of Reeder?”
“That is my name, sir.”
Mr. Reeder surveyed him benevolently over his glasses. He had the expectant air of one who has steeled himself to receive congratulations.
“Mine is Mo Liski. You’ve sent down a friend of mine—”
“Mrs. Plessy?”
“Yes—you know! Reeder, I’m going to get you for that!”
Instantly somebody behind him caught his arm in a vice and swung him round. It was a City detective.
“Take a walk with me,” he said.
Mo went white. Remember that he owed the strength of his position to the fact that never once had he been convicted: the register did not bear his name.
“What’s the charge?” he asked huskily.
“Intimidation of a Crown witness and using threatening language,” said the officer.
Mo came up before the Aldermen at the Guildhall the next morning and was sent to prison for three weeks, and Mr. Reeder, who knew the threat would come and was ready to counter with the traditional swiftness of the mamba, felt that he had scored a point. The gang leader was, in the parlance of the law, “a convicted person.”
“I don’t think anything will happen until he comes out,” he said to Pyne, when he was offered police protection. “He will find a great deal of satisfaction in arranging the details of my—um—‘bashing,’ and I feel sure that he will postpone action until he is free. I had better have that protection until he comes out—”
“After he comes out, you mean?”
“Until he comes out,” insisted Mr. Reeder carefully. “After—well—um—I’d rather like to be unhampered by—um—police protection.”
Mo Liski came to his liberty with all his senses alert. The
