Red Aces Read Online Free PDF Page A

repeated Mr Reeder, “and hated drawing attention to himself.”
     
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    >Something in his tone emphasized the tense he used. She shrank back.
    “Was?” Her voice was a whisper. “He’s not dead…oh, my God! he’s not dead?”
    Mr Reeder smoothed his chin.
    “Yes, I’m afraid – um – he is dead.”
    She clutched the edge of the table for support. Mr Reeder had never seen such horror, such despair in a human face before.
    “Was it…an accident – or – or–”
    “You’re trying to say ‘murder’,” said Reeder gently. “Yes, I’m very much afraid it was murder.”
    He caught her in his arms as she fell, and, laying her on the sofa, went in search of water. The taps were frozen, but he found some water in a kettle, and, filling a glass with this, he returned to sprinkle it on her face, having a vague idea that something of the sort was necessary; but he found her sitting up, her face in her hands.
    “Lie down, my dear, and keep quiet,” said Mr Reeder, and she obeyed meekly.
    He looked round the room. The thing that struck him anew was the revolver which hung on the wall near the right-hand side of the fireplace just above the bookcase. It was placed to the hand of anybody who sat with his back to the window. Behind the armchair was a screen, and, tapping it, Mr Reeder discovered that it was of sheet iron.
    He went outside to look at the door, turning on the hall light. It was a very thick door, and the inside was made of quarter-inch steel plate, screwed firmly to the wood. Leading from the kitchen was the bedroom, evidently Wentford’s. The only light here was admitted from an oblong window near the ceiling. There were no other windows, and about the narrow window was a stout steel cage. On the wall by the bed hung a second pistol. He found a third weapon in the kitchen, and, behind a coat hanging in the hall, a fourth.
    The cottage was a square box of concrete. The roof, as he afterwards learned, was tiled over sheet iron, and, except for the window through which he had squeezed, there was none by which ingress could be had.
    He was puzzled why this man, who evidently feared attack, had left any window so large as that through which he had come. He afterwards found the broken wire which must have set an alarm bell ringing when the window was opened.
    There was blood on the mat in the hall, blood in the tiny lobby. He came back to where the girl was lying and sniffed. There was no smell of cordite, and having seen the body, he was not surprised.
    “Now, my dear.”
    She sat up again.
    “I am not a police officer; I am a – er – a gentleman called in by your friend, Mr Wentford – your late friend,” he corrected himself, “to do something – I know not what! He called me by ’phone; I gave him my – um – terms, but he offered me no reason why he was sending for me. You, as his secretary, may perhaps–”
    She shook her head.
    “I don’t know. He had never mentioned you before he spoke to me on the telephone.”
    “I am not a policeman,” said Mr Reeder again, and his voice was very gentle; “therefore, my dear, you need have few qualms about telling me the truth, because these gentlemen, when they come, these very active and intelligent men, will probably discover all that I have seen, even if I did not tell them. Who was the man who went out of this house when I knocked at the door?”
    Her face was deathly pale, but she did not flinch. He wondered if she was as pretty when she was not so pale. Mr Reeder wondered all sorts of queer little things like that; his mind could never stagnate.
    “There was nobody – in this house – since I have been here–”
    Mr Reeder did not press her. He sighed, closed his eyes, shook his head, shrugged his shoulders.
    “It’s a great pity,” he said. “Can you tell me anything about Mr Wentford?”
    “No,” she said in a low voice. “He was my uncle. I think you ought to know that. He didn’t want anybody to know, but that must come