The Mind of Mr. J. G. Reeder · The Stealer of Marble (1/3)

The Stealer of Marble

Margaret Belman’s chiefest claim to Mr. Reeder’s notice was that she lived in the Brockley Road, some few doors from his own establishment. He did not know her name, being wholly incurious about law-abiding folk, but he was aware that she was pretty, that her complexion was that pink and white which is seldom seen away from a magazine cover. She dressed well, and if there was one thing that he noted about her more than any other, it was that she walked and carried herself with a certain grace that was especially pleasing to a man of aesthetic predilections.

He had, on occasions, walked behind her and before her, and had ridden on the same street car with her to Westminster Bridge. She invariably descended at the corner of the Embankment, and was as invariably met by a good-looking young man and walked away with him. The presence of that young man was a source of passive satisfaction to Mr. Reeder, for no particular reason, unless it was that he had a tidy mind, and preferred a rose when it had a background of fern and grew uneasy at the sight of a saucerless cup.

It did not occur to him that he was an object of interest and curiosity to Miss Belman.

“That was Mr. Reeder⁠—he has something to do with the police, I think,” she said.

“Mr. J. G. Reeder?”

Roy Master looked back with interest at the middle-aged man scampering fearfully across the road, his unusual hat on the back of his head, his umbrella over his shoulder like a cavalryman’s sword.

“Good Lord! I never dreamt he was like that.”

“Who is he?” she asked, distracted from her own problem.

“Reeder? He’s in the Public Prosecutor’s Department, a sort of a detective⁠—there was a case the other week where he gave evidence. He used to be with the Bank of England⁠—”

Suddenly she stopped, and he looked at her in surprise.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“I don’t want you to go any farther, Roy,” she said. “Mr. Telfer saw me with you yesterday, and he’s quite unpleasant about it.”

“Telfer?” said the young man indignantly. “That little worm! What did he say?”

“Nothing very much,” she replied, but from her tone he gathered that the “nothing very much” had been a little disturbing.

“I am leaving Telfers,” she said unexpectedly. “It is a good job, and I shall never get another like it⁠—I mean, so far as the pay is concerned.”

Roy Master did not attempt to conceal his satisfaction.

“I’m jolly glad,” he said vigorously. “I can’t imagine how you’ve endured that boudoir atmosphere so long. What did he say?” he asked again, and, before she could answer: “Anyway, Telfers are shaky. There are all sorts of queer rumours about them in the City.”

“But I thought it was a very rich corporation!” she said in astonishment.

He shook his head.

“It was⁠—but they have been doing lunatic things⁠—what can you expect when a halfwitted weakling like Sidney Telfer is at the head of affairs? They underwrote three concerns last year that no brokerage business would have touched with a barge-pole, and they had to take up the shares. One was a lost treasure company to raise a Spanish galleon that sank three hundred years ago! But what really did happen yesterday morning?”

“I will tell you tonight,” she said, and made her hasty adieux.

Mr. Sidney Telfer had arrived when she went into a room which, in its luxurious appointments, its soft carpet and dainty etceteras, was not wholly undeserving of Roy Masters’ description.

The head of Telfers Consolidated seldom visited his main office on Threadneedle Street. The atmosphere of the place, he said, depressed him; it was all so horrid and sordid and rough. The founder of the firm, his grandfather, had died ten years before Sidney had been born, leaving the business to a son, a chronic invalid, who had died a few weeks after Sidney first saw the light. In the hands of trustees the business had flourished, despite the spasmodic interferences of his eccentric mother, whose peculiarities culminated in a will which relieved him of most of that restraint which is wisely laid upon a boy of sixteen.

The room, with its stained-glass windows and luxurious furnishing, fitted Mr. Telfer perfectly, for he was exquisitely arrayed. He was tall and so painfully thin that the abnormal smallness of his head was not at first apparent. As the girl came into the room he was sniffing delicately at a fine cambric handkerchief, and she thought that he was paler than she had ever seen him⁠—and more repellent.

He followed her movements with a dull stare, and she had placed his letters on his table before he spoke.

“I say, Miss Belman, you won’t mention a word about what I said to you last night?”

“Mr. Telfer,” she answered quietly, “I am hardly likely to discuss such a matter.”

“I’d marry you and all that, only⁠ ⁠… clause in my mother’s will,” he said disjointedly. “That could be got over⁠—in time.”

She stood by the table, her hands resting on the edge.

“I would not marry you, Mr. Telfer, even if there were no clause in your mother’s will; the suggestion that I should run away with you to America⁠—”

“South America,” he corrected her gravely. “Not the United States; there was never any suggestion of the United States.”

She could have smiled, for she was not as angry with this rather vacant young man as his startling proposition entitled her to be.

“The point is,” he went on anxiously, “you’ll keep it to yourself? I’ve been worried dreadfully all night. I told you to send me a note saying what you thought of my idea⁠—well, don’t!”

This time she did smile, but before she could answer him he went on, speaking rapidly in a high treble that sometimes rose to a falsetto squeak:

“You’re a perfectly beautiful girl, and I’m crazy about you, but⁠ ⁠… there’s a tragedy in my life⁠ ⁠… really. Perfectly ghastly tragedy. An’ everything’s at sixes an’ sevens. If I’d had any sense I’d have brought in a feller to look after things. I’m beginning to see that now.”

For the second time in twenty-four hours this young man, who had almost been tongue-tied and had never deigned to notice her, had poured forth a torrent of confidences, and in one had, with frantic insistence, set forth a plan which had amazed and shocked her. Abruptly he finished, wiped his weak eyes, and in his normal voice:

“Get Billingham on the phone; I want him.”

She wondered, as her busy fingers flew over the keys of her typewriter, to what extent his agitation and wild eloquence was due to the rumoured “shakiness” of Telfers Consolidated.

Mr. Billingham came, a sober little man, bald and taciturn, and went in his secretive way into his employer’s room. There was no hint in his appearance or his manner that he contemplated a great crime. He was stout to a point of podginess; apart from his habitual frown, his round face, unlined by the years, was marked by an expression of benevolence.

Yet Mr. Stephen Billingham, managing director of the Telfer Consolidated Trust, went into the office of the London and Central Bank late that afternoon and, presenting a bearer cheque for one hundred and fifty thousand pounds, which was duly honoured, was driven to the Credit Lilloise. He had telephoned particulars of his errand, and there were waiting for him seventeen packets, each containing a million francs, and a smaller packet of a hundred and forty-six mille notes. The franc stood at 74.55 and he received the eighteen packages in exchange for a cheque on the Credit Lilloise for £80,000 and the 150 thousand-pound notes which he had drawn on the London and Central.

Of Billingham’s movements thenceforth little was known. He was seen by an acquaintance driving through Cheapside in a taxicab which was traced as far as Charing Cross⁠—and there he disappeared. Neither the airways nor the waterways had known him, the police theory being that he had left by an evening train that had carried an excursion party via Havre to Paris.

“This is the biggest steal we have had in years,” said the Assistant Director of Public Prosecutions. “If you can slip in sideways on the inquiry, Mr. Reeder, I should be glad. Don’t step on the toes of the City police⁠—they are quite amiable people where murder is concerned, but a little touchy where money is in question. Go along and see Sidney Telfer.”

Fortunately, the prostrated Sidney was discoverable outside the City area. Mr. Reeder went into the outer office and saw a familiar face.

“Pardon me, I think I know you, young lady,” he said, and she smiled as she opened the little wooden gate to admit him.

“You are Mr. Reeder⁠—we live in the same road,” she said, and then quickly: “Have you come about Mr. Billingham?”

“Yes.” His voice was hushed, as though he were speaking of a dead friend. “I wanted to see Mr. Telfer, but perhaps you could give me a little information.”

The only news she had was that Sidney Telfer had been in the office since seven o’clock and was at the moment in such a state of collapse that she had sent for the doctor.

“I doubt if he is in a condition to see you,” she said.

“I will take all responsibility,” said Mr. Reeder soothingly. “Is Mr. Telfer⁠—er⁠—a friend of yours. Miss⁠—?”

“Belman is my name.” He had seen the quick flush that came to her cheek: it could mean one of two things. “No, I am an employee, that is all.”

Her tone told him all he wanted to know. Mr. J. G. Reeder was something of an authority on office friendships.

“Bothered you a little, has he?” he murmured, and she shot a suspicious look at him. What did he know, and what bearing had Mr. Telfer’s mad proposal on the present disaster? She was entirely in the dark as to the true state of affairs; it was, she felt, a moment for frankness.

“Wanted you to run away! Dear me!” Mr. Reeder was shocked. “He is married?”

“Oh, no⁠—he’s not married,” said the girl shortly. “Poor man, I’m sorry for him now. I’m afraid that the loss is a very heavy one⁠—who would suspect Mr. Billingham?”

“Ah! who indeed!” sighed the lugubrious Reeder, and took off his glasses to wipe them; almost she suspected tears. “I think I will go in now⁠—that is the door?”

Sidney jerked up his face and glared at the intruder. He had been sitting with his head on his arms for the greater part of an hour.

“I say⁠ ⁠… what do you want?” he asked feebly. “I say⁠ ⁠… I can’t see anybody⁠ ⁠… Public Prosecutor’s Department?” He almost screamed the words. “What’s the use of prosecuting him if you don’t get the money back?”

Mr. Reeder let him work down before he began to ply his very judicious questions.

“I don’t know much about it,” said the despondent young man. “I’m only a sort of figurehead. Billingham brought the cheques for me to sign and I signed ’em. I never gave him instructions; he got his orders. I don’t know very much about it. He told me, actually told me, that the business was in a bad way⁠—half a million or something was wanted by next week⁠ ⁠… Oh, my God! And then he took the whole of our cash.”

Sidney Telfer sobbed his woe into his sleeve like a child. Mr. Reeder waited before he asked a question in his gentlest manner.

“No, I wasn’t here: I went down to Brighton for the weekend. And the police dug me out of bed at four in the morning. We’re bankrupt. I’ll have to sell my car and resign from my club⁠—one has to resign when one is bankrupt.”

There was little more to learn from the broken man, and Mr. Reeder returned to his chief with a report that added nothing to the sum of knowledge. In a week the theft of Mr. Billingham passed from scare lines to paragraphs in most of the papers⁠—Billingham had made a perfect getaway.

In the bright lexicon of Mr. J. G. Reeder there was no such word as holiday. Even the Public Prosecutor’s office has its slack time, when juniors and sub-officials and even the Director himself can go away on vacation, leaving the office open and a subordinate in charge. But to Mr. J. G. Reeder the very idea of wasting time was repugnant, and it was his practice to brighten the dull patches of occupation by finding a seat in a magistrate’s court and listening, absorbed, to cases which bored even the court reporter.

John Smith, charged with being drunk and using insulting language to Police Officer Thomas Brown; Mary Jane Haggitt, charged with obstructing the police in the execution of their duty; Henry Robinson, arraigned for being a suspected person, having in his possession housebreaking tools, to wit, one cold chisel and a screwdriver; Arthur Moses, charged with driving a motorcar to the common danger⁠—all these were fascinating figures of romance and legend to the lean man who sat between the press and railed dock, his square-crowned hat by his side, his umbrella gripped between his knees, and on his melancholy face an expression of startled wonder.

On one raw and foggy morning, Mr. Reeder, self-released from his duties, chose the Marylebone Police Court for his recreation. Two drunks, a shop theft and an embezzlement had claimed his rapt attention, when Mrs. Jackson was escorted to the dock and a rubicund policeman stepped to the witness stand, and, swearing by his Deity that he would tell the truth and nothing but the truth, related his peculiar story.

“P.C. Ferryman No. 9717 L. Division,” he introduced himself conventionally. “I was on duty in the Edgware Road early this morning at 2:30 a.m. when I saw the prisoner carrying a large suitcase. On seeing me she turned round and walked rapidly in the opposite direction. Her movements being suspicious, I followed and, overtaking her, asked her whose property she was carrying. She told me it was her own and that she was going to catch a train. She said that the case contained her clothes. As the case was a valuable one of crocodile leather I asked her to show me the inside. She refused. She also refused to give me her name and address and I asked her to accompany me to the station.”

There followed a detective sergeant.

“I saw the prisoner at the station and in her presence opened the case. It contained a considerable quantity of small stone chips⁠—”

“Stone chips?” interrupted the incredulous magistrate. “You mean small pieces of stone⁠—what kind of stone?”

“Marble, your worship. She said that she wanted to make a little path in her garden and that she had taken them from the yard of a monumental mason in the Euston Road. She made a frank statement to the effect that she had broken open a gate into the yard and filled the suitcase without the mason’s knowledge.”

The magistrate leant back in his chair and scrutinised the charge sheet with a frown.

“There is no address against her name,” he said.

“She gave an address, but it was false, your worship⁠—she refuses to offer any further information.”

Mr. J. G. Reeder had screwed round in his seat and was staring open-mouthed at the prisoner. She was tall, broad-shouldered and stoutly built. The hand that rested on the rail of the dock was twice the size of any woman’s hand he had ever seen. The face was modelled largely, but though there was something in her appearance which was almost repellent, she was handsome in her large way. Deep-set brown eyes, a nose that was large and masterful, a well-shaped mouth and two chins⁠—these in profile were not attractive to one who had his views on beauty in women, but Mr. J. G. Reeder, being a fair man, admitted that she was a fine-looking woman. When she spoke it was in a voice as deep as a man’s, sonorous and powerful.

“I admit it was a fool thing to do. But the idea occurred to me just as I was going to bed and I acted on the impulse of the moment. I could well afford to buy the stone⁠—I had over fifty pounds in my pocketbook when I was arrested.”