Read The Mind of Mr. J. G. Reeder for Free Online

Saturday he was busy. The Sabbath brought him a new interest.
    On this bright Sunday morning, Mr Reeder, attired in a flowered dressing-gown, his feet encased in black velvet slippers, stood at the window of his house in Brockley Road and surveyed the deserted thoroughfare. The bell of a local church, which was accounted high, had rung for early Mass, and there was nothing living in sight except a black cat that lay asleep in a patch of sunlight on the top step of the house opposite. The hour was 7.30, and Mr Reeder had been at his desk since six, working by artificial light, the month being October towards the close.
    From the half moon of the window bay he regarded a section of the Lewisham High Road and as much of Tanners Hill as can be seen before it dips past the railway bridge into sheer Deptford.
    Returning to his table, he opened a carton of the cheapest cigarettes and, lighting one, puffed in an amateurish fashion. He smoked cigarettes rather like a girl who detests them but feels that it is the correct thing to do.
    ‘Dear me,’ said Mr Reeder feebly.
    He was back at the window, and he had seen a man turn out of Lewisham High Road. He had crossed the road and was coming straight to Daffodil House – which frolicsome name appeared on the doorposts of Mr Reeder’s residence. A tall, straight man, with a sombre brown face, he came to the front gate, passed through and beyond the watcher’s range of vision.
    ‘Dear me!’ said Mr Reeder, as he heard the tinkle of a bell.
    A few minutes later his housekeeper tapped on the door.
    ‘Will you see Mr Kohl, sir?’ she asked.
    Mr J G Reeder nodded.
    Lew Kohl walked into the room to find a middle-aged man in a flamboyant dressing-gown sitting at his desk, a pair of glasses set crookedly on his nose.
    ‘Good morning, Kohl.’
    Lew Kohl looked at the man who had sent him to seven and a half years of hell, and the corner of his thin lips curled.
    ‘ ’Morning, Mr Reeder.’ His eyes flashed across the almost bare surface of the writing-desk on which Reeder’s hands were lightly clasped. ‘You didn’t expect to see me, I guess?’
    ‘Not so early,’ said Reeder in his hushed voice, ‘but I should have remembered that early rising is one of the good habits which are inculcated by imprisonment.’
    He said this in the manner of one bestowing praise for good conduct.
    ‘I suppose you’ve got a pretty good idea of why I have come, eh? I’m a bad forgetter, Reeder, and a man in Dartmoor has time to think.’
    The older man lifted his sandy eyebrows, and the glasses slipped farther askew.
    ‘That phrase seems familiar,’ he said, and the eyebrows lowered in a frown. ‘Now let me think – it was in a play, of course, but was it Souls in Harness or The Marriage Vow ?’
    He appeared genuinely anxious for assistance in solving this problem.
    ‘This is going to be a different kind of play,’ said the long-faced Lew through his teeth. ‘I’m going to get you, Reeder – you can go along and tell your boss, the Public Prosecutor. But I’ll get you sweet! There will be no evidence to swing me. And I’ll get that nice little stocking of yours, Reeder!’
    The legend of Reeder’s fortune was accepted even by so intelligent a man as Kohl.
    ‘You’ll get my stocking! Dear me, I shall have to go barefooted,’ said Mr Reeder, with a faint show of humour.
    ‘You know what I mean – think that over. Some hour and day you’ll go out, and all Scotland Yard won’t catch me for the killing! I’ve thought it out–’
    ‘One has time to think in Dartmoor,’ murmured Mr J G Reeder encouragingly. ‘You’re becoming one of the world’s thinkers, Kohl. Do you know Rodin’s masterpiece – a beautiful statue throbbing with life–’
    ‘That’s all.’ Lew Kohl rose, the smile still trembling at the corner of his mouth. ‘Maybe you’ll turn this over in your mind, and in a day or two you won’t be feeling so happy.’
    Reeder’s face was pathetic in its sadness.