The Mind of Mr. J. G. Reeder Read Online Free PDF Page A

to wear,’ he mentioned by name an eminent politician; ‘and I loathe his clothes, people who see him coming into the office think he’s a coroner’s officer, but he’s capable. His side-whiskers are an abomination, and I have a feeling that, if I talked roughly to him, he would burst into tears – a gentle soul. Almost too gentle for my kind of work. He apologizes to the messenger every time he rings for him!’
    The judge, who knew something about humanity, answered with a frosty smile.
    ‘He sounds rather like a potential murderer to me,’ he said cynically.
    Here, in his extravagance, he did Mr J G Reeder an injustice, for Mr Reeder was incapable of breaking the law – quite. At the same time there were many people who formed an altogether wrong conception of J G’s harmlessness as an individual. And one of these was a certain Lew Kohl, who mixed banknote printing with elementary burglary.
    Threatened men live long, a trite saying but, like most things trite, true. In a score of cases, when Mr J G Reeder had descended from the witness stand, he had met the baleful eye of the man in the dock and had listened with mild interest to divers promises as to what would happen to him in the near or the remote future. For he was a great authority on forged banknotes and he had sent many men to prison.
    Mr Reeder, that inoffensive man, had seen prisoners foaming at the mouth in their rage, he had seen them white and livid, he had heard their howling execrations and he had met these men after their release from prison and had found them amiable souls half ashamed and half amused at their nearly forgotten outbursts and horrific threats.
    But when Lew Kohl was sentenced to ten years, he neither screamed his imprecations nor registered a vow to tear Mr Reeder’s heart, lungs and important organs from his frail body.
    Lew just smiled and his eyes caught the detective’s for the space of a second – the forger’s eyes were pale blue and speculative, and they held neither hate nor fury. Instead, they said in so many words:
    ‘At the first opportunity I will kill you.’
    Mr Reeder read the message and sighed heavily, for he disliked fuss of all kinds, and resented, in so far as he could resent anything, the injustice of being made personally responsible for the performance of a public duty.
    Many years had passed, and considerable changes had occurred in Mr Reeder’s fortune. He had transferred from the specialized occupation of detecting the makers of forged banknotes to the more general practice of the Public Prosecutor’s bureau, but he never forgot Lew’s smile.
    The work in Whitehall was not heavy and it was very interesting. To Mr Reeder came most of the anonymous letters which the Director received in shoals. In the main they were self-explanatory; and it required no particular intelligence to discover their motive. Jealousy, malice, plain mischief-making; and occasionally a sordid desire to benefit financially by the information which was conveyed, were behind the majority. But occasionally:
     
    Sir James is going to marry his cousin, and it’s not three months since his poor wife fell overboard from the Channel steamer crossing to Calais. There’s something very fishy about this business. Miss Margaret doesn’t like him, for she knows he’s after her money. Why was I sent away to London that night? He doesn’t like driving in the dark, either. It’s strange that he wanted to drive that night when it was raining like blazes.
     
    This particular letter was signed A Friend . Justice has many such friends.
    ‘Sir James Tithermite,’ said the Director when he saw the letter. ‘I seem to remember that Lady Tithermite was drowned at sea.’
    ‘On the nineteenth of December last year,’ said Mr Reeder solemnly. ‘She and Sir James were going to Monte Carlo, breaking their journey in Paris. Sir James, who has a house near Maidstone, drove to Dover, garaging the car at the Lord Wilson Hotel. The night was