Read Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns for Free Online Page B

furnished, but most cheaply maintained. The untidy remnants of a meal were on a table. The room gave him the impression that it had neither been dusted nor swept for a week. Over one chair were a few articles of women’s apparel, which she snatched up.
    “I want to say this, Mr Reeder,” she said, almost before he was in the room, “that if there is anything wrong I know nothing about it. Billy’s been very good to me, but he’s trying. I don’t know how he got his money, and I’ve never asked him.”
    To Mr Reeder fell the unpleasant duty of telling her of the fate that had overtaken her man, and again he found that the tragic end of ex-Constable Buckingham evoked no very violent emotions. She was shocked, but impersonally shocked.
    “That’s terrible, isn’t it?” she said breathlessly. “Billy was such a good boy” (the description sounded a little ludicrous even in that tragic moment), “though he wasn’t what you might call particularly intellectual. I only saw him now and again, once a fortnight, sometimes once a week.”
    “Where did he come from?” asked Reeder.
    She shook her head.
    “I don’t know. He never told me things; he was very close about his private life. He worked in the country for a very rich man. I don’t even know what part of the country it was.”
    “Had he plenty of money?”
    “You mean Billy? Yes, he always had plenty of money, and lived well. He had an office in the city somewhere, something to do with land. I wouldn’t have known that, but I saw a telegram that he left behind here one day. It was addressed to the Something Land Corporation, but it wasn’t in his own name–”
    “The Land Development Corporation?” asked Mr Reeder quickly. “Do you remember the address?”
    The girl wasn’t sure, but she knew it was in the City.
    She had nothing of the man’s in her possession except – and here was the most important discovery – a photograph of Buckingham taken a year before. With this in his possession Mr Reeder drove to the City.
    The Land Development Corporation had an office in one of the big blocks near the Mansion House. It consisted of one room, in which a clerk and a typist worked, and a smaller room, very plainly furnished, where the Managing Director sat on his infrequent visits.
    For an hour Mr Reeder plied clerk and typist with questions, and when he got back to Scotland Yard he was in possession of so many facts that contradicted one another, so many that were entirely irreconcilable, that he found it difficult to put them in sequence.
    The plain, matter-of-fact report which he put before his superior may be quoted in full.
    “In the case of William Buckingham. Line of investigation, Land Development Corporation. This corporation was registered as a private company two years ago. It has a capital of £1,000 and debentures amounting to £300,000. The Directors are the clerk and the typist and a Mr William Buck. The bank balance is £1,300, and the company is proprietor of a large number of land blocks situated in the south of England, and evidently purchased with the object of development. A considerable number of these have been resold. Mr Buck was undoubtedly Buckingham. He came to the office very rarely, only to sign cheques. Large sums of money have been paid into and withdrawn from the bank, and a superficial inspection of the books suggests that these were genuine transactions. A further examination, necessarily of a hurried character, reveals considerable gaps in the accounting. The field where the body of Buckingham was found is part of the property of this company, and obviously Buckingham would be well acquainted with the land, though it is a curious fact that he had been there recently twice by night…”
5
    The next morning a portrait of Buckingham appeared in every London newspaper, together with such particulars as would assist in a further identification. No news came until the afternoon of that day. Mr Reeder was in his office,