Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns Read Free

trace, though he seemed to have changed his name on two occasions and at his last address had no name at all. The shrewd little chauffeur came back to Sevenways, a very preoccupied man. He found awaiting him a letter forwarded from London – a pathetic, pleading, incoherent letter, written in perfect English by his middle-aged gambler friend.
    Joe Lidgett had an idea. A few days later his master was well enough to see him and he gave an account of his search for Digby Olbude.
    “I would like to see him,” said Leonard feebly. “I am afraid I’m in a bad way, Lidgett – where are you?”
    “I’m here, sir,” said Lidgett.
    “It is rather difficult to see. My eyesight has become a little defective.”
    The gentleman Mr Lidgett had found arrived by car the next morning. He went up more than a little nervously to the dying man’s bedroom, and was introduced with pathetic formality to the lawyer Mr Leonard had brought from London. He did not like lawyers, but the occasion demanded expert legal assistance.
    “This is my brother-in-law, Digby Olbude…”
    The will was signed and witnessed with some difficulty. It was characteristic of Lane Leonard that he did not even send for his heiress or leave any message of affection or tender farewell. To him she was a peg on which his theory was to hang – and it was not even his own theory.
    She was notified of his passing in a formal letter from her new guardian, and she received the notification on the very day that Larry O’Ryan decided upon adopting a criminal career.
    When Larry O’Ryan was expelled from a public school on a charge of stealing some eighty-five pounds from Mr Farthingale’s room, he could not only have cleared himself of the accusation, but he could also have named the culprit.
    He had no parents, no friends, being maintained at the school by a small annuity left by his mother. If Creed’s Bank had been a little more generous with his father, if the Panton Credit Trust had been honestly directed, if the Medway and Western had not forced a sale, Larry would have been rich.
    It was no coincidence that these immensely rich corporations were patrons of the Monarch Security Steel Corporation – Monarchs had a monopoly in this kind of work – but we will talk about that later.
    He hated the school, hated most the pompous pedagogue who was a friend of Mr Farthingale and used his study when the housemaster was out – but he said nothing. After all, what chance had his word against a master’s? He took his expulsion as an easy way of escaping from servitude, interviewed the lawyer who was his guardian and accepted the expressions of horror and abhorrence with which that gentleman favoured him.
    Anyway, the eighty-five pounds was restored; before he left the school Larry saw the terrified thief and said a few plain words.
    “I’ll take the risk of being disbelieved,” he said, “and I’ll go to the head and say I saw you open the cash-box just as I was going into the study. I don’t know why you wanted the money, but the people who investigate will find out.”
    The accused man thundered at him, reviled him, finally broke.
    It was a grotesque situation, a middle-aged master and a lanky sixth-form boy, bullying and threatening one another alternately. Larry did not cry; on the other hand, his protagonist grew maudlin. But he restored the money. Everybody thought that it was Larry or Larry’s lawyer-guardian who sent the notes by registered post; but it wasn’t.
    He went out into the world with the starkest outlook, looked round for work of sorts, was errand boy, office boy, clerk. No prospects. The army offered one, but the army stood for another kind of school discipline, housemasters who wore stripes on their sleeves.
2
    Larry thought it over one Saturday night and decided on burglary as a profession. For a year he went to night classes and polished up his knowledge of ballistics. At the end of the year he got a job at a safe-makers and locksmith’s