From the half-moon of the window bay he regarded a section of the Lewisham High Road and as much of Tanners Hill as can be seen before it dips past the railway bridge into sheer Deptford.
Returning to his table, he opened a carton of the cheapest cigarettes and, lighting one, puffed in an amateurish fashion. He smoked cigarettes rather like a woman who detests them but feels that it is the correct thing to do.
“Dear me,” said Mr. Reeder feebly.
He was back at the window, and he had seen a man turn out of Lewisham High Road. He had crossed the road and was coming straight to Daffodil House—which frolicsome name appeared on the doorposts of Mr. Reeder’s residence. A tall, straight man, with a sombre brown face, he came to the front gate, passed through and beyond the watcher’s range of vision.
“Dear me!” said Mr. Reeder, as he heard the tinkle of a bell.
A few minutes later his housekeeper tapped on the door.
“Will you see Mr. Kohl, sir?” she asked.
Mr. J. G. Reeder nodded.
Lew Kohl walked into the room to find a middle-aged man in a flamboyant dressing-gown sitting at his desk, a pair of pince-nez set crookedly on his nose.
“Good morning. Kohl.”
Lew Kohl looked at the man who had sent him to seven and a half years of hell, and the corner of his thin lips curled.
“Morning, Mr. Reeder.” His eyes flashed across the almost bare surface of the writing-desk on which Reeder’s hands were lightly clasped. “You didn’t expect to see me, I guess?”
“Not so early,” said Reeder in his hushed voice, “but I should have remembered that early rising is one of the good habits which are inculcated by penal servitude.”
He said this in the manner of one bestowing praise for good conduct.
“I suppose you’ve got a pretty good idea of why I have come, eh? I’m a bad forgetter, Reeder, and a man in Dartmoor has time to think.”
The older man lifted his sandy eyebrows, the steel-rimmed glasses on his nose slipped further askew.
“That phrase seems familiar,” he said, and the eyebrows lowered in a frown. “Now let me think—it was in a melodrama, of course, but was it Souls in Harness or The Marriage Vow?”
He appeared genuinely anxious for assistance in solving this problem.
“This is going to be a different kind of play,” said the long-faced Lew through his teeth. “I’m going to get you, Reeder—you can go along and tell your boss, the Public Prosecutor. But I’ll get you sweet! There will be no evidence to swing me. And I’ll get that nice little stocking of yours, Reeder!”
The legend of Reeder’s fortune was accepted even by so intelligent a man as Kohl.
“You’ll get my stocking! Dear me, I shall have to go barefooted,” said Mr. Reeder, with a faint show of humour.
“You know what I mean—think that over. Some hour and day you’ll go out, and all Scotland Yard won’t catch me for the killing! I’ve thought it out—”
“One has time to think in Dartmoor,” murmured Mr. J. G. Reeder encouragingly. “You’re becoming one of the world’s thinkers, Kohl. Do you know Rodin’s masterpiece—a beautiful statue throbbing with life—”
“That’s all.” Lew Kohl rose, the smile still trembling at the corner of his mouth. “Maybe you’ll turn this over in your mind, and in a day or two you won’t be feeling so gay.”
Reeder’s face was pathetic in its sadness. His untidy sandy-grey hair seemed to be standing on end; the large ears, that stood out at right angles to his face, gave the illusion of quivering movement.
Lew Kohl’s hand was on the doorknob.
“Womp!”
It was the sound of a dull weight striking a board; something winged past his cheek, before his eyes a deep hole showed in the wall, and his face was stung by flying grains of plaster. He spun round with a whine of rage.
Mr. Reeder had a long-barrelled Browning in his hand, with a barrel-shaped silencer over the muzzle, and he was staring at the weapon open-mouthed.
“Now how on earth did that happen?” he asked in wonder.
Lew Kohl stood trembling with rage and fear, his face yellow-white.
“You—you swine!” he breathed. “You tried to shoot me!”
Mr. Reeder stared at him over his glasses.
“Good gracious—you think that? Still thinking of killing me, Kohl?”
Kohl tried to speak but found no words, and, flinging open the door, he strode down the stairs and through the front entrance. His foot was on the first step when something came hurtling past him and crashed to fragments at his feet. It was a large stone vase that had decorated the windowsill of Mr. Reeder’s bedroom. Leaping over the debris of stone and flower mould, he glared up into the surprised face of Mr. J. G. Reeder.
“I’ll get you!” he spluttered.
“I hope you’re not hurt?” asked the man at the window in a tone of concern. “These things happen. Some day and some hour—”
As Lew Kohl strode down the street, the detective was still talking.
Mr. Stan Bride was at his morning ablutions when his friend and sometime prison associate came into the little room that overlooked Fitzroy Square.
Stan Bride, who bore no resemblance to anything virginal, being a stout and stumpy man with a huge, red face and many chins, stopped in the act of drying himself and gazed over the edge of the towel.
“What’s the matter with you?” he asked sharply. “You look as if you’d been chased by a busy. What did you go out so early for?”
Lew told him, and the jovial countenance of his roommate grew longer and longer—
“You poor fish!” he hissed. “To go after Reeder with that stuff! Don’t you think he was waiting for
