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

Department?’ He almost screamed the words. ‘What’s the use of prosecuting him if you don’t get the money back?’
    Mr Reeder waited for him to calm down before he began to ply his very judicious questions.
    ‘I don’t know much about it,’ said the despondent young man. ‘I’m only a sort of figurehead. Billingham brought the cheques for me to sign and I signed ’em. I never gave him instructions; he got his orders. I don’t know very much about it. He told me, actually told me, that the business was in a bad way – half a million or something was wanted by next week… Oh, my God! And then he took the whole of our cash.’
    Sidney Telfer sobbed his woe into his sleeve like a child. Mr Reeder waited before he asked a question in his gentlest manner.
    ‘No, I wasn’t here: I went down to Brighton for the weekend. And the police dug me out of bed at four in the morning. We’re bankrupt. I’ll have to sell my car and resign from my club – one has to resign when one’s bankrupt.’
    There was little more to learn from the broken man, and Mr Reeder returned to his chief with a report that added nothing to the sum of knowledge. In a week the theft of Mr Billingham passed from scare lines to paragraphs in most of the papers – Billingham had made a perfect getaway.
    In the bright lexicon of Mr J G Reeder there was no such word as holiday. Even the Public Prosecutor’s office has its slack time, when juniors and sub-officials and even the Director himself can go away on vacation, leaving the office open and a subordinate in charge. But to Mr J G Reeder the very idea of wasting time was repugnant, and it was his practice to brighten the dull patches of occupation by finding a seat in a magistrate’s court and listening, absorbed, to cases which bored even the court reporter.
    John Smith, charged with being drunk and using insulting language to Police Officer Thomas Brown; Mary Jane Haggitt, charged with obstructing the police in the execution of their duty; Henry Robinson, arraigned for being a suspected person, having in his possession housebreaking tools, to wit, one cold chisel and a screwdriver; Arthur Moses, charged with driving a motor car to the common danger – all these were fascinating figures of romance and legend to the lean man who sat between the Press and railed dock, his hat by his side, his umbrella gripped between his knees, and on his melancholy face an expression of startled wonder.
    On one raw and foggy morning, Mr Reeder, self-released from his duties, chose the Marylebone Police Court for his recreation. Two drunks, a shop theft and an embezzlement had claimed his rapt attention, when Mrs Jackson was escorted to the dock and a rubicund policeman stepped to the witness stand and, swearing by his Deity that he would tell the truth and nothing but the truth, related his peculiar story.
    ‘PC Perryman, No. 9717 L Division,’ he introduced himself conventionally. ‘I was on duty in the Edgware Road early this morning at 2.30 a.m. when I saw the prisoner carrying a large suitcase. On seeing me she turned round and walked rapidly in the opposite direction. Her movements being suspicious, I followed and overtook her, and asked her whose property she was carrying. She told me it was her own and that she was going to catch a train. She said that the case contained her clothes. As the case was a valuable one of crocodile leather I asked her to show me the contents. She refused. She also refused to give me her name and address and I asked her to accompany me to the station.’
    There followed a detective-sergeant.
    ‘I saw the prisoner at the station and in her presence I opened the case. It contained a considerable quantity of small stone chips–’
    ‘Stone chips?’ interrupted the incredulous magistrate. ‘You mean small pieces of stone – what kind of stone?’
    ‘Marble, your worship. She said that she wanted to make a little path in her garden and that she had taken them from the