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 room-mate grew longer and longer —
‘You poor fish!’ he hissed. ‘To go after Reeder with that stuff! Don’t you think he was waiting for you? Do you suppose he didn’t know the very moment you left the Moor?’
‘I’ve scared him, anyway,’ said the other, and Mr. Bride laughed.
‘Good scout!’ he sneered. ‘Scare that old person!’ (He did not say ‘person.’) ‘If he’s as white as you, he is scared! But he’s not. Of course he shot past you-if he’d wanted to shoot you, you’d have been stiff by now. But he didn’t. Thinker, eh-he’s given you somep’n’ to think about.’
‘Where that gun came from I don’t-’
There was a knock at the door and the two men exchanged glances.
‘Who’s there?’ asked Bride, and a familiar voice answered.
‘It’s that busy from the Yard,’ whispered Bride, and opened the door.
The ‘busy’ was Sergeant Allford, C.I.D., an affable and portly man and a detective of some promise.
‘Morning, boys-not been to church, Stan?’
Stan grinned politely.
‘How’s trade, Lew?’
‘Not so bad.’ The forger was alert, suspicious.
‘Come to see you about a gun-got an idea you’re carrying one. Lew-Colt automatic R.7/94318. That’s not right. Lew-guns don’t belong to this country.’
‘I’ve got no gun,’ said Lew sullenly.
Bride had suddenly become an old man, for he also was a convict on licence, and the discovery might send him back to serve his unfinished sentence.
‘Will you come a little walk to the station, or will you let me go over you?’
‘Go over me,’ said Lew, and put out his arms stiffly whilst the detective rubbed him down.
‘I’ll have a look round,’ said the detective, and his ‘look round’ was very thorough.
‘Must have been mistaken,’ said Sergeant Allford. And then, suddenly: ‘Was that what you chucked into the river as you were walking along the Embankment?’
Lew started. It was the first intimation he had received that he had been ‘tailed’ that morning.
Bride waited till the detective was visible from the window crossing Fitzroy Square; then he turned in a fury on his companion.
‘Clever, ain’t you! That old hound knew you had a gun-knew the number. And if Allford had found it you’d have been “dragged” and me too!’
‘I threw it in the river,’ said Lew sulkily.
‘Brains-not many but some!’ said Bride, breathing heavily. ‘You cut out Reeder-he’s hell and poison, and if you don’t know it you’re deaf! Scared him? You big stiff! He’d cut your throat and write a hymn about it.’
‘I didn’t know they were tailing me,’ growled Kohl; ‘but I’ll get him! And his money too.’
‘Get him from another lodging,’ said Bride curtly. ‘A crook I don’t mind, being one; a murderer I don’t mind, but a talking jackass makes me sick. Get his stuff if you can-I’ll bet it’s all invested in real estate, and you can’t lift houses-but don’t talk about it. I like you, Lew, up to a point; you’re miles before the point and out of sight. I don’t like ReederI don’t like snakes, but I keep away from the Zoo.’
So Lew Kohl went into new diggings on the top floor of an Italian’s house in Dean Street, and here he had leisure and inclination to brood upon his grievances and to plan afresh the destruction of his enemy. And new plans were needed, for the schemes which had seemed so watertight in the quietude of a Devonshire cell showed daylight through many crevices.
Lew’s homicidal urge had undergone considerable modification. He had been experimented upon by a very clever psychologist-though he never regarded Mr. Reeder in this light, and, indeed, had the vaguest idea as to what the word meant. But there were other ways of hurting Reeder, and his mind fell constantly back to the dream of discovering this peccant detective’s hidden treasure.
It was nearly a week later that Mr. Reeder invited himself into the Director’s private sanctum, and that great official listened spellbound while his subordinate offered his outrageous theory about Sir James Tithermite and his dead wife. When Mr. Reeder had finished, the Director pushed back his chair from the table.
‘My dear man,’ he said, a little irritably, ‘I can’t possibly give a warrant on the strength of your surmises-not even a search warrant. The story is so fantastic, so incredible, that it would be more at home in the pages of a sensational story than in a Public Prosecutor’s report.’
‘It was a wild night, and yet Lady Tithermite was not ill,’ suggested the detective gently. ‘That is a fact to remember, sir.’
The Director shook his head.
‘I can’t do it-not on the evidence,’ he said. ‘I should raise a storm that’d swing me into Whitehall. Can’t you do anything-unofficially?’
Mr. Reeder shook his head.
‘My presence in the neighbourhood has been remarked,’ he said primly. ‘I think it would be impossible to-er-cover up my traces. And yet I have located the place, and could tell you within a few inches-’
Again the Director shook his head.
‘No, Reeder,’ he said quietly, ‘the whole thing is sheer deduction on your part. Oh, yes, I know you have a criminal mind-I think you have told me that before. And that is a good reason why I should not issue a warrant. You’re simply crediting this unfortunate man with your ingenuity. Nothing doing!’
Mr. Reeder sighed and went back to his bureau, not entirely despondent, for there had intruded a new element into his investigations.
Mr. Reeder had been to Maidstone several times during the week, and he had not gone alone; though seemingly unconscious of the fact that he had developed a shadow, for he had seen Lew Kohl on several occasions, and had spent an uncomfortable few minutes wondering whether his experiment had failed.
On the second occasion an idea had developed in the detective’s mind, and if he were a laughing man he would have chuckled aloud when he slipped out of Maidstone station one evening and, in the act of hiring a cab, had seen Lew Kohl negotiating for another.
Mr. Bride was engaged in the tedious but necessary practice of so cutting a pack of cards that the ace of diamonds remained at the bottom, when his former co-lodger burst in upon him, and there was a light of triumph in Lew’s