“Queer sort of thing,” said the Public Prosecutor, who had before him the dossiers of four people (three women and a man) who had so vanished in three months.
He frowned, pressed a bell and Mr. Reeder came in. Mr. Reeder took the chair that was indicated, looked owlishly over his glasses and shook his head as though he understood the reason for his summons and denied his understanding in advance. “What do you make of these disappearances?” asked his chief.
“You cannot make any positive of a negative,” said Mr. Reeder carefully. “London is a large place full of strange, mad people who live such—um—commonplace lives that the wonder is that more of them do not disappear in order to do something different from what they are accustomed to doing.”
“Have you seen these particulars?”
Mr. Reeder nodded.
“I have copies of them,” he said. “Mr. Salter very kindly—”
The Public Prosecutor rubbed his head in perplexity.
“I see nothing in these cases—nothing in common, I mean. Four is a fairly low average for a big city—”
“Twenty-seven in twelve months,” interrupted his detective apologetically.
“Twenty-seven—are you sure?” The great official was astounded.
Mr. Reeder nodded again.
“They were all people with a little money; all were drawing a fairly large income, which was paid to them in banknotes on the first of every month—nineteen of them were, at any rate. I have yet to verify eight—and they were all most reticent as to where their revenues came from. None of them had any personal friends or relatives who were on terms of friendship, except Mrs. Marting. Beyond these points of resemblance there was nothing to connect one with the other.”
The Prosecutor looked at him sharply, but Mr. Reeder was never sarcastic. Not obviously so, at any rate.
“There is another point which I omitted to mention,” he went on. “After their disappearance no further money came for them. It came for Mrs. Marting when she was away on her jaunts, but it ceased when she went away on her final journey.”
“But twenty-seven—are you sure?”
Mr. Reeder reeled off the list, giving name, address and date of disappearance.
“What do you think has happened to them?”
Mr., Reeder considered for a moment, staring glumly at the carpet.
“I should imagine that they were murdered,” he said, almost cheerfully, and the Prosecutor half rose from his chair.
“You are in your gayest mood this morning, Mr. Reeder,” he said sardonically. “Why on earth should they be murdered?”
Mr. Reeder did not explain. The interview took place in the late afternoon, and he was anxious to be gone, for he had a tacit appointment to meet a young lady of exceeding charm who at five minutes after five would be waiting on the corner of Westminster Bridge and Thames Embankment for the Lee car.
The sentimental qualities of Mr. Reeder were entirely unknown. There are those who say that his sorrow over those whom fate and ill-fortune brought into his punitive hands was the veriest hypocrisy. There were others who believed that he was genuinely pained to see a fellow-creature sent behind bars through his efforts and evidence.
His housekeeper, who thought he was a woman-hater, told her friends in confidence that he was a complete stranger to the tender emotions which enlighten and glorify humanity. In the ten years which she had sacrificed to his service he had displayed neither emotion nor tenderness except to inquire whether her sciatica was better or to express a wish that she should take a holiday by the sea. She was a woman beyond middle age, but there is no period of life wherein a woman gives up hoping for the best. Though the most perfect of servants in all respects, she secretly despised him, called him, to her intimates, a frump, and suspected him of living apart from an ill-treated wife. This lady was a widow (as she had told him when he first engaged her) and she had seen better—far better—days.
Her visible attitude towards Mr. Reeder was one of respect and awe. She excused the queer character of his callers and his low acquaintances. She forgave him his square-toed shoes and high, flat-crowned hat, and even admired the ready-made Ascot cravat he wore and which was fastened behind the collar with a little buckle, the prongs of which invariably punctured his fingers when he fastened it. But there is a limit to all hero-worship, and when she discovered that Mr. Reeder was in the habit of waiting to escort a young lady to town every day, and frequently found it convenient to escort her home, the limit was reached.
Mrs. Hambleton told her friends—and they agreed—that there was no fool like an old fool, and that marriages between the old and the young invariably end in the divorce court (December v. May and July). She used to leave copies of a favourite Sunday newspaper on his table, where he could not fail to see the flaring headlines:
Old Man’s Wedding Romance
Wife’s Perfidy Brings Grey Hair
In Sorrow to the Law Courts.
Whether Mr. Reeder perused these human documents she did not know. He never referred to the tragedies of ill-assorted unions, and went on meeting Miss Belman every morning at nine o’clock, and at five-five in the afternoons whenever his business permitted.
He so rarely discussed his own business or introduced the subject that was exercising his mind that it was remarkable he should make even an oblique reference to his work. Possibly he would not have done so if Miss Margaret Belman had not introduced (unwillingly) a leader of conversation which traced indirectly to the disappearances.
They had been talking of holidays: Margaret was going to Cromer for a fortnight.
“I shall leave on the second. My monthly dividends (doesn’t that sound grand?) are due on the first—”
“Eh?”
Reeder slued round. Dividends in most companies are paid at half-yearly intervals.
“Dividends, Miss Margaret?”
She flushed a little
