Room 13 by Edgar Wallace

of his career. And that he did so was not flattering to the administration of justice; nor could it be regarded as a tribute to the integrity of the police.
    Emanuel had ‘straightened’ many a young detective, and not a few advanced in years. He knew the art of ‘dropping’ to perfection. In all his life he had only met three or four men who were superior to the well-camouflaged bribe. A hundred here and there makes things easier for the big crook; a thousand will keep him out of the limelight; but, once the light is on him, not a million can disturb the inevitable march of justice. Emanuel was working in the pre-limelight stage, and hoped for success.
    If his many inquiries were truthfully answered, the police had not greatly changed since his young days. Secret service men were new to him. He had thought, in spite of the enormous sums allocated to that purpose in every year’s budget, that secret service was an invention of the sensational novelist; and even now, he imagined Mr Reeder to be one who was subsidised from the comparatively private resources of the banks rather than from the Treasury.
    It was Emanuel’s action to grasp the nettle firmly. “Infighting is not much worse than hugging,” was a favourite saying of his, and once he had located Mr J G Reeder, the night-hawk – and that had been the labour of months – the rest was easy. Always providing that Mr Reeder was amenable to argument.
    The middle-aged woman who opened the door to him gave him an unpromising reception.
    “Mr Reeder is engaged,” she said, “and he doesn’t want to see any visitors.”
    “Will you kindly tell him,” said Emanuel with his most winning smile and a beam of benevolence behind his thick glasses, “that Mr Legge from Devonshire would like to see him on a very particular matter of business?”
    She closed the door in his face, and kept him so long waiting that he decided that even the magic of his name and its familiar association (he guessed) had not procured him an entry. But here he was mistaken. The door was opened for him, closed and bolted behind him, and he was led up a flight of stairs to the first floor.
    The house was, to all appearance, well and comfortably furnished. The room into which he was ushered, if somewhat bare and official-looking, had an austerity of its own. Sitting behind a large writing-table, his back to the fireplace, was a man whom he judged to be between fifty and sixty. His face was thin, his expression sad. Almost on the end of his nose was clipped a pair of large, circular pince-nez. His hair was of that peculiar tint, red turning to grey, and his ears were large and prominent, seeming to go away from his head at right angles. All this Emanuel noted in a glance.
    “Good morning, or good afternoon, Mr Legge,” said the man at the desk. He half rose and offered a cold and lifeless hand. “Sit down, will you?” he said wearily. “I don’t as a rule receive visitors, but I seem to remember your name. Now where have I heard it?”
    He dropped his chin to his breast and looked over his spectacles dolefully. Emanuel’s expansive sadle struck against the polished surface of his indifference and rebounded. He felt for the first time the waste of expansiveness.
    “I had a little piece of information I thought I’d bring to you, Mr Reeder,” he said. “I suppose you know that I’m one of those unfortunate people who, through the treachery of others, have suffered imprisonment?”
    “Yes, yes, of course,” said Mr Reeder in his weak voice, his chin still bent, his pale blue eyes fixed unwaveringly on the other. “Of course, I remember. You were the man who robbed the strong-room. Of course you were. Legge, Legge? I seem to remember the name too. Haven’t you a son?”
    “I have a son, the best boy in the world,” said Emanuel fervently.
    There was a telephone receiver at Mr Reeder’s right hand, and throughout the interview he was polishing the black stem with the cuff of his