Free The Mind of Mr. J. G. Reeder by Edgar Wallace Page A

purely commercial topics until the clerk returned and laid a heap of bills and banknotes on the table. Mr Lomer produced a wallet, enclosed the money securely, shook hands with the manager and walked out into the general office. And then he stopped, for Mr J G Reeder stood squarely in his path.
    ‘Payday for the troupe, Mr Lomer – or do you call it “treasury”? My theatrical glossary is rather rusty.’
    ‘Why, Mr Reeder,’ stammered Art, ‘glad to see you, but I’m rather busy just now–’
    ‘What do you think has happened to our dear friend, Mr Bertie Claude Staffen?’ asked Reeder anxiously.
    ‘Why, he’s in Paris.’
    ‘So soon!’ murmured Reeder. ‘And the police only took him out of your suburban cellar an hour ago! How wonderful are our modern systems of transportation! Marlow one minute, Paris the next.’
    Art hesitated no longer. He dashed past, thrusting the detective aside, and flew for the door. He was so annoyed that the two men who were waiting for him had the greatest difficulty in putting the handcuffs on his wrists.
     
    ‘Yes, sir,’ said Mr Reeder to his chief. ‘Art always travels with his troupe. The invisibility of the troupe was to me a matter for grave suspicion, and of course I’ve had the house under observation ever since Mr Staffen disappeared. It is not my business, of course,’ he said apologetically, ‘and really I should not have interfered. Only, as I have often explained to you, the curious workings of my mind–’
     

The Stealer of Marble
    Margaret Belman’s chief 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 bus 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’m leaving Telfers,’ she said unexpectedly. ‘It’s 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,’