Mr. J.G.Reeder Omnibus by Edgar Wallace

Author:Edgar Wallace [Wallace, Edgar]
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery & Crime
Published: 2010-06-19T13:37:51.453000+00:00

Chapter 18

J. G. REEDER came downstairs, and those who saw his face realised that it was not the tragedy he had almost witnessed which had made him so white and drawn.

He found Gray in Daver's office, waiting for his call to London. It came through as Reeder entered the room, and he took the instrument from his subordinate's hand. He dismissed the death of Daver in a few words, and went on:

"I want all the local policemen we can muster, Simpson, though I think it would be better if we could get soldiers. There's a garrison town five miles from here; the beaches have to be searched, and I want these caves explored. There is another thing: I think it would be advisable to get a destroyer or something to patrol the water before Siltbury. I'm pretty sure that Flack has a motor-boat—there's a channel deep enough to take it, and apparently there is a cave that stretches right under the cliff… Miss Belman? I don't know. That is what I want to find out."

Simpson told him that the gold-wagon had been seen at Sevenoaks, and it required a real effort on Mr. Reeder's part to bring his mind to such a triviality.

"I think soldiers will be best. I'd like a strong party posted near the quarry. There's another cave there where Daver used to keep his wagons. I have an idea you might pick up the money to-night. That," he added, a little bitterly, "will induce the authorities to use the military!"

After the ambulance had come and the pitiable wreck of Daver had been removed, he returned to the man's suite with a party of masons he had brought up from Siltbury. Throwing open the lid of the divan, he pointed to the stone floor.

"That flag works on a pivot," he said, "but I think it is fastened with a bolt or a bar underneath. Break it down."

A quarter of an hour was sufficient to shatter the stone flooring, and then, as he had expected, he found a narrow flight of stairs leading to a square stone room which remained very much as it had been for six hundred years. A dusty, bare apartment, which yielded its secret. There was a small open door and a very narrow passage, along which a stout man would walk with some difficulty, and which led to behind the panelling of Daver's private office. Mr. Reeder realised that anybody concealed here could hear every word that was spoken. And now he understood Daver's frantic plea that he should lower his voice when he spoke of the marriage. Crazy Jack had learnt the secret of his daughter's degradation—from that moment Daver's death was inevitable.

How had the madman escaped? That required very little explanation. At some remote period Larmes Keep had evidently been used as a show-place.

He found an ancient wooden inscription fixed to the wall, which told the curious that this was the torture-chamber of the old Counts of Larme; it added the useful information that the dungeons were immediately beneath and approached through a stone trap.

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