There was some rather heavy play at Mr. Machfield’s private establishment--heavier than usual, and this gave the proprietor of the house cause for uneasiness. If Mr. Reeder had reported his visit that afternoon to the police, and they thought the moment expedient, there would be a raid to-night, and in preparation for this all the doors leading to the mews at the back were unfastened, and a very powerful car was waiting with its engine running. Mr. Machfield might or might not use that method of escape. On the other hand, he could follow his invariable practice, which was to appear amongst those present as a guest: a fairly simple matter, because he was not registered as the proprietor of the house, and he could trust his servants.
Certainly the car would have its uses, if everything went right and there was no untoward incident. Just lately, however, there had been one or two little hitches in the smooth running of his affairs, and, being superstitious, he expected more.
He looked at his watch; his appointment with Ena was at midnight, but she had promised to ’phone through before then. At a quarter to nine, as he stood watching the players, there came a newcomer at the tail of three others. He was in evening dress, as were the majority of people round the board, and he looked strangely out of place in those surroundings, though his blue chin was newly shaved and his black hair was glossy with pomade, and in the lapel of his coat he wore a dazzling gardenia.
Mr. Machfield watched him wander aimlessly around the table, and then caught his eye and indicated that he wished to see him. Soon afterwards he walked out of the room and Mr. Kingfether followed.
“You’re rather silly to come to-night, K,” said Mr. Machfield. “There’s just a chance of a raid--Reeder was here this afternoon.”
The manager’s jaw dropped.
“Is he here now?” he asked, and Mr. Machfield smiled at the foolishness of the question.
“No, and he won’t be coming to-night, unless he arrives with a flying squad. We’ll keep that bird out at any rate.”
“Where is Ena?” asked Kingfether.
“She’ll be in later,” lied Machfield. “She had a bit of a headache, and I advised her not to come.”
The bank manager helped himself to a whisky from a decanter on the sideboard.
“I’m very fond of that girl,” said Kingfether.
“Who isn’t?” asked the other.
“To me”--there was a tremor in the younger man’s voice--“she is something outside of all my experience. Do you think she’s fond of me, Machfield?”
“I am sure she is,” said the other heartily; “but she’s a woman of the world, you know, my boy, and women of the world do not carry their hearts on their sleeves.”
He might have added, that, in the case of Ena she carried the business equivalent of that organ up her sleeve, ready for exhibition to any susceptible man, young or old.
“Do you think she’d marry me, Machfield?”
Mr. Machfield did not laugh. He had played cards a great deal and had learned to school his countenance. Ena had two husbands, and had not gone through the formality of freeing herself from either. Both were officially abroad, the foreign country being that stretch of desolate moorland which lies between Ashburton and Tavistock. Here, in the gaunt convict establishment of Princeton, they laboured for the good of their souls, but with little profit to the tax-payers who supported them, and even supplied them with tobacco.
“Why shouldn’t she? But mind, she’s an expensive kind of girl, K,” said Machfield very seriously. “She costs a lot of money to dress, and you’d have to find it from somewhere--five hundred a year doesn’t go far with a girl who buys her dresses in Paris.”
Kingfether strode up and down the apartment, his hands in his pockets, his head on his chest, a look of gloom on a face that was never touched with brightness.
“I realize that,” he said, “but if she loved me she’d help to make both ends meet. I’ve got to cut out this business of the bank; I’ve had a fright, and I can’t take the risk again. In fact, I thought of leaving the bank and setting up a general agency in London.”
Mr. Machfield knew what a general agency was when it was run by an inexperienced man. An office to which nobody came except bill collectors. He didn’t, however, wish to discourage his client; for the matter of that, Kingfether gave him little opportunity for comment.
“There is going to be hell’s own trouble about that cheque,” he said. “I had a letter from head office--I have to report to the general manager in the morning and take McKay with me. That is the usual course.”
Such details were distasteful to Mr. Machfield. He needed all the spare room in his mind for other matters much more weighty than the routine of the Great Central Bank, but he was more than interested in the fate of McKay.
Kingfether came back to Ena, because Ena filled his horizon.
“The first time I ever met her,” he said, “I knew she was the one woman in the world for me. I know she’s had a rough time and that she’s had a battle to live. But who am I to judge?”
“Who, indeed?” murmured Mr. Machfield, with considerable truth. And then, pursuing his thought, “What will happen to Mr. Kenneth McKay?”
Only for a moment did the manager look uncomfortable.
“He is not my concern,” he said loudly. “There is no doubt at all that the signature on the cheque----”
“Oh, yes, yes,” said the other impatiently. “We don’t want to discuss that, do we? I mean, not between friends. You paid me the money you owed me, and there was an end to it so far as I am concerned. I took a bit of a risk myself, sending Ena down--I mean, letting Ena go,” he corrected, when he saw the look on the other’s face. “What about young McKay?”
The manager shrugged his shoulders.
“I don’t know and I really don’t care. When I got back to the bank this afternoon he’d gone, though I’d left instructions that he was to stay until I returned. Of course, I can’t report it, because I did wrong to go away myself, and it was rather awkward that one of our bank inspectors called when I was out. I shall have to work all night to make up arrears. McKay might have helped me. In fact, I told him----”
“Oh, he came back, did he?”
“For five minutes, just before six o’clock. He just looked in and went out again. That is how I knew the inspector had called. I had to tell this pup about the cheque and the banknotes. By the way, that is a mystery to me how the notes came into his hands at all--I suppose there is no mistake about them? If he was in the habit of coming here he might have got them from the table. He doesn’t come here, does he?”
“Not often.” Mr. Machfield might have added that nobody came to that place unless they had a certain amount of surplus wealth, or the means by which easy money could be acquired.
There were quite a number of his clients who were in almost exactly the same position as Mr. Kingfether--people in positions of trust, men who had the handling of other people’s money. It was no business of Machfield’s how that money was obtained, so long as it was judiciously spent. It was his boast that his game was straight; as indeed it was--up to a point. He had allowed himself throughout life a certain margin of dishonesty, which covered both bad luck and bad investments. Twice in his life he had gone out for big coups. Once he had failed, the other time he had succeeded but had made no money.
He was not persona grata in all the countries of the world. If he had arrived at Monte Carlo he would have left by very nearly the next train, or else the obliging police would have placed a motor-car at his disposal to take him across to Nice, a resort which isn’t so particular as to the character of her temporary visitors.
“I’m sorry for McKay in a way, although he is such an impossible swine, but it’s a case of his life or mine, Machfield. Either he goes down or I go down--and I’m not going down.”
Nothing wearied Mr. Machfield worse than heroics. And yet he should have been hardened to them, for he had lived in an atmosphere of hectic drama, and once had seen a victim of his lying dead by his own hand across the green board of his gaming table. But it was years ago.
“You’d better slide back to the room,” he said. “I’ll come in a little later. Don’t play high: I’ve still got some of your papers, dear boy.”
When he returned to the room, the manager had found a seat at the table and was punting modestly and with some success. The croupier asked a question with a flick of his eyelids, and almost imperceptibly Machfield shook his head, which meant that that night, at any rate, Kingfether would pay for his losses in cash, that neither his I.O.U.’s nor cheques would be accepted.
From time to time the players got up from the tables, strolled into the buffet, had a drink and departed. But there was always a steady stream of newcomers to take their places. Mr. Machfield went back to his study, for he was expecting a telephone message. It came at a quarter past ten. A woman’s voice said: “Ena says everything is O.K.”
He hung up the telephone with a smile. Ena was a safe bet: you could always trust that girl, and he did not question her ability to keep her visitor occupied for at least two hours. After that he would do a little questioning himself. But it must be he, and not that other fool.
There was no sign of raiders. He had special scouts posted at every street corner approaching the house, and a man on the roof (no sinecure this on a night of rain and sleet) to take and transmit their signals in case of danger. If there were a raid he was prepared for it. More likely the police, following their invariable custom, would postpone the visitation until later in the week. And by that time, if all went well, the house would be closed and the keys in the hands of the agents.
Kingfether was winning; there was a big pile of Treasury and five-pound notes before him. He looked animated, and for once in his life pleased. The bank was winning too; there was a big box recessed into the table, and this was full of paper money and every few minutes the pile was augmented.
A dull evening! Mr. Machfield would be glad when the time came for his loud speaking gramophone to play the National Anthem. He always closed down on this patriotic note: it left the most unlucky of players with the comforting sense that at least they had their country left to them.
He was looking at the long folding door of the room as it opened slowly. It was second nature in him to watch that opening door, and until this moment he had never been shocked or startled by what it revealed. Now, however, he stood dumbfounded, for there was Mr. Reeder, without his hat, and even without his umbrella.
Nobody noticed him except the proprietor, and he was frozen to the spot. With an apologetic smile Mr. Reeder came tiptoeing across to him.
“Do you very much mind?” he asked in an urgent whisper. “I find time hanging rather heavily upon my hands.”
Machfield licked his dry lips.
“Come here, will you?”
He went back to his study, Reeder behind him.
“Now, Mr. Reeder, what’s the idea of your coming here? How did you get in? I gave strict instructions to the man on the door----”
“I told him a lie,” said Mr. Reeder in a hushed tone, as though the enormity of his offence had temporarily overcome him. “I said that you had particularly asked me to come to-night. That was very wrong, and I am sorry. The truth is, Mr. Machfield, even the most illustrious of men have their little weaknesses; even the cleverest and most law-abiding their criminal instincts, and although I am neither illustrious nor clever, I have the frailties of my--er--humanity. Not, I would add, that it is criminal to play cards for money--far from it. I, as you probably know, or you may have heard, have a curiously distorted mind. I find my secret pleasures in such places as these.”
Mr. Machfield was relieved, immensely relieved. He knew detectives who gambled, but somehow he had never associated Mr. J.G. Reeder with this peculiar weakness.
“Why, certainly, we’re glad to see you, Mr. Reeder,” he said heartily.
He was so glad indeed that he would have been happy to have given this odd-looking man the money wherewith to play.
“You’ll have a drink on the house--not,” he added quickly, “that I am in any position to offer you a drink. I am a guest the same as yourself, but I know the proprietor would be annoyed if you came and went without having one.”
“I never drink. A little barley water perhaps?”
There was, unfortunately, no barley water in the establishment, but this, as Machfield explained, would be remedied in the future--even now if he wished. Mr. Reeder, however, would not hear of putting “the house” to trouble. He was anxious to join the company, and again by some extraordinary quality of good luck, he managed to insinuate himself so that he sat opposite the croupier. Somebody rose from their chair as he approached, and Mr. Reeder took the vacant seat.
He might have taken a chair on the opposite side of the table, for at the sight of him a pallid Kingfether had whipped out his handkerchief and covered the lower part of his face as though he were suffering from a bad cold.
Stealthily he rose from his seat and melted into the fringe of people standing behind the players.
“Don’t let me drive you away, Mr. Kingfether,” said Reeder’s voice, and everybody heard him.
The manager dropped back till he stood against the wall, a limp helpless figure, and there he remained through the scene that followed.
Mr. Reeder had produced a bundle of Treasury notes which he counted with great care. It was not a big bundle. Mr. Machfield, watching, guessed he was in the ten-pound line of business, and certainly there was no more than that on the table.
One by one those little notes of Reeder’s disappeared, until there was nothing left, and then a surprising thing happened. Mr. Reeder put his hand in his pocket, groped painfully and produced something which he covered with his hand. The croupier had raised his cards ready to deal--the game was trente-et-quarante--when the interruption came.
“Excuse me.” J.G. Reeder’s voice was gentle but everybody at the table heard it. “You can’t play with that pack: there are two cards missing.”
The croupier raised his head. The green shade strapped to his glossy head threw a shadow which hid the top half of his face.
He stared blandly at the interrupter--the dispassionate and detached stare which only a professional croupier can give.
“Pardon?” he said, puzzled. “I do not understand m’sieur. The pack is complete. It is never questioned----”
“There are two cards without which I understand you cannot play your game,” said Mr. Reeder, and suddenly lifted his hand.
On the table before him were two playing cards, the ace of diamonds and the ace of hearts. The croupier looked down at them, and then, with an oath, pushed back his chair and dropped his hand to his hip.
“Don’t move--I beg of you!”
There was an automatic pistol in Mr. Reeder’s hand, and its muzzle was directed towards the croupier’s white waistcoat.
“Ladies and gentlemen, there is nothing to be alarmed about. Stand back from the table against the wall, and do not come between me and Monsieur Lamontaine!”
He himself stepped backward.
“Over there!” he signalled to Machfield.
“Look here, Reeder----”
“Over there!” snarled J.G. Reeder. “Stand up by your friend. Ladies and gentlemen”--he addressed the company again without taking his eyes from the croupier--“there will be a few moments of acute unpleasantness. Your names and addresses will be taken, but I will use my best endeavours to avoid police court proceedings, because we are after something much more important than naughty people who play cards for money.”
And then the guests saw strange men standing in the doorway. They came from all directions--from Mr. Machfield’s study, from the hall below, from the roof above. They handcuffed Lamontaine and took away the two guns he carried, one in each hip pocket--Machfield was unarmed.
“What will the charge be?”
“Mr. Gaylor will tell you that at the police station. But I think the question is unnecessary. Honestly, don’t you, Mr. Machfield?”
