Edgar Wallace

“ Sir John Maxell was standing up behind his writing table, a fine, big man with his grey hair neatly brushed back from his forehead and his blue eyes magnified behind rimless glasses.
“T. A. C. Anderson,” he said, coming round the table with slow steps. “Surely this is not the little Timothy I heard so much about years and years ago!”
“That is I, sir,” said Timothy.
“Well, well,” said Maxell, “I should never have known you. Sit down, my boy. You smoke, of course—everybody smokes nowadays, but it seems strange that a boy I knew in short breeches should have acquired the habit. ”

“ He devoted his undoubted talent to the study of other games of chance. He played cards for matches with a broker’s clerk, who harboured secret ambitions of going to Monte Carlo with a system; he purchased on the hire system wonderfully cheap properties on the Isle of Thanet—and he worked.
For all his fooling and experimenting, for all his gambling and his chancing, Timothy never let a job of work get past him, if he could do it, and when he wasn’t working for sordid lucre he was working for the good of his soul. ”

“ Studio life is pretty tough on the eyes, isn’t it?”
She closed her lorgnette with a snap, and turned to the girl.
“You’d better see what Sir John is doing,” she said. “Ask him what he thinks I am, that I should wait in the hall like a tramp.”
It was then that the girl came out of the shadow and Timothy saw her.
“This is the ward or niece,” he said to himself, and sighed, for never had he seen a human creature who so satisfied his eye. There is a beauty which is neither statuesque nor cold, nor to be confounded with prettiness. ”

“ It is dreadful!”
“I shall have to work,” said the girl practically and with a little smile. “I do not think that will kill me. Hundreds of thousands of girls have to work for their living, Timothy, and I shall have to work for mine.”
Timothy drew a long breath.
“Not if I can help it, you won’t,” he said. “I am sure I shall make a lot of money. I can feel it in my bones. If a man takes a job——”
“You mustn’t talk like that,” she said, pressing his arm, “and anyway, how could I let you help me or keep me? That sort of thing isn’t done—not by nice girls.” ”

“ Through the years this fringe of people about the table would remain, though units would go out, and as units went out new units would replace them, and everlastingly would sit shabby old men and women with their cryptic notebooks, making their tableaux with red and black pencils, religiously recording the result of every coup, staking now and again their five-franc pieces, and watching them raked to the croupier with stony despair or drawing with trembling hands the few poor francs which fortune had sent them. ”

“ Willie Ellsberger, chairman and chief victim, decided on one big throw for fortune. The play decided upon does not matter, because it was written by Willie himself, with the assistance of his advertising man, but it contained all the stunts that had ever got by in all the photo plays that had ever been produced, and in and out of every breathless situation flashed Sadie O’Grady, the most amazing, the most charming, the most romantic, the highest salaried artiste that filmland had ever known. ”

“ Give me a pen!”
“There is one point in the deed I must discuss,” said the lawyer firmly, “if mademoiselle will excuse us for a moment——” He opened the door of his inner office invitingly and with a shrug M. Brigot followed him in.
“I have told you, monsieur,” said the lawyer, “that I do not think your action is wise. You are surrendering a property for a sum less than a quarter of what you paid for it to a perfectly unknown woman——”
“M. l’Avocat,” said the other gravely, “you are speaking of a lady who to me is more precious than life!”
The lawyer concealed a smile. ”

“ He was silent.
“You’re just too good to go that way, Timothy,” she went on. “There are lots of chances that a man can take in this world, in matching his brains, his strength and his skill against other men, and when he wins his stake is safe. He doesn’t lose it the next day or the next month, and he’s picking winners all the time, Timothy.” ”

“ You’re one of nature’s little spenders—now, Brigot, don’t let us quarrel. There is a time to end feuds like ours, and this is that time. I am a business man, and so are you. You’re as anxious to sell your property at a good price as I am to buy it. I’ve come to make you an offer.”
M. Brigot laughed sarcastically.
“Ten thousand pounds?” he demanded with gentle irony. “To build a house for a beautiful American widow, eh?”
Cartwright accepted the gibe with a smile. ”

“ He has two fool parents who were born to slavery—the sort of people who are content to work for somebody all their lives and regard revolt against their condition as an act of impiety. I’ve only seen the kid once, and he struck me as the sort who might break loose from that kind of life and take a chance. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have interested myself in him.”
“How far does your interest extend?” asked Maxell curiously. “You’re not the sort of person, I should imagine, who would take up the unfortunate poor as a hobby.”
“Not a something-for-nothing man, in fact,” laughed Cartwright. ”

“ I feel I have a duty to my poor uncle and I could trust you to do your very best. I could afford it, Timothy”—she laid her hand on his arm and looked up at him almost beseechingly—“indeed I can afford it. I have more money than I shall ever spend.”
He patted her hand softly.
“Mary,” he said, “it is just the kind of job I should like, and with anybody’s money but yours, why, I’d be out of the country in two shakes, looking for Mr. Cartwright in the most expensive cities of the world. ”

“ CHAPTER THE LAST “TIMOTHY,” said Mary, “I was just thinking about that beautiful house you took me to see at Cap Martin.”
“Were you, dear?” said Timothy without any show of interest.
They were on the cross-Channel boat and Boulogne was astern.
“Yes,” said the girl. “Do you know, I had a feeling that you had taken me there to show me to somebody, some friend of yours perhaps. All the time I was walking about the garden I had a sense of being watched. It is not an uncomfortable sensation, but just that overlooked feeling one has sometimes. I love Monte Carlo. ”

“ I have told you before I will sell out—at a price.”
“But what a price!” said Cartwright, raising his eyebrows and with a gesture of extravagant despair. “It is all the money in the world!”
“Nevertheless, it is the price,” said M. Brigot comfortably.
“I’ll tell you what I am willing to do.” Cartwright stroked his chin as though the solution had just occurred to him. “I will float your property in London, tacking on a number of other properties which I have bought in the neighbourhood. I am willing to pay you two hundred thousand pounds—that is to say, six million francs.” ”

“ Lady Maxell looked up sharply, but the girl met her eyes without wavering.
“I hope you aren’t trying to be sarcastic,” complained the older woman. “One never knows how deep you are. But I can tell you this, that sarcasm is wasted on me.”
“I’m sure of that,” said the girl.
Lady Maxell looked again, but apparently the girl was innocent of offensive design.
“I say I met Mr. Anderson. He was very polite and very nice. Then I met him again—in fact, I have met him several times,” she said thoughtfully. “So far from his being a do-nothing, Lady Maxell, I think you are doing him an injustice. ”

“ The night’s young yet, Maxell. Let us go up to the theatre.”
“The theatre?” said Maxell. “I didn’t even know the theatre was open.”
“It is called theatre by courtesy,” explained Cartwright; “the inhabitants refer to it as the circus. It’s a big wooden place on the sea edge——”
“I know it, I know it,” said Maxell. “What is being played? The only people I have ever seen there have been Spanish artistes—and pretty bad artistes, too.” ”

“ CHAPTER XV WHO killed Sir John Maxell and his wife?
Where had their bodies been hidden? These were the two questions which were to agitate England for the traditional space of nine days. For one day, at any rate, they formed the sole topic of speculation amongst the intelligent section of fifty million people.
The first question was easier to answer than the second. It was obvious to the newsmen that the murderer was Cartwright, whose threats of vengeance were recalled and whose appearance at Bournemouth had been described at second-hand by the detective in charge of the case. ”

“ I ought to be married, but I can’t afford a wife. It is a blackguardly thing to talk about money in connection with marriage and yet somehow I can think of nothing else—whenever the thought arises in my mind I see an imaginary beauty sitting on a big bag of gold!” He chuckled to himself. “Let’s go back,” he said, “the big Sok always gives me the creeps.”
Something lumbered past him in the darkness, some big, overpowering beast with an unpleasant smell, and a guttural voice cried in Arabic: “Beware!”
“Camels!” said Cartwright briefly. “They’re bringing in the stuff for the morning market. ”

“ The British public dearly love a gamble, and a gold-mining gamble, with all its mysteries and uncertainties, more dearly than any.
He went to bed late, but was taking his chocolate and roll before a little café on the boulevard before nine. At half-past nine he was joined by the girl.
Cartwright had been undecided as to whether he should take his petit déjeuner outside or inside the café, and had decided, since the morning was bright and warm, to breakfast under the striped awning in full view of the street. Such great events hang upon slight issues. ”

“ Obviously, thought Cartwright, he could do nothing less than call attention to the serious nature of the charge, the interests involved, the betrayal of shareholders, and the like. On the whole, the summing up did not diminish the comforting sense that the worst that lay before him was a few months’ imprisonment and then a start in another land under another name. He never doubted his ability to make money. The summing up was ended, and the jury retired. They were gone twenty minutes, and when they came back it was a foregone conclusion what their verdict would be. ”

“ Mary, they tell me that you’ve been seeing a lot of this young man Anderson?”
She was annoyed to find herself going red when there was really no reason for it. She need not ask who “they” were, she could guess.
“I’ve been making inquiries about that boy,” said Sir John slowly, “and I can tell you this, he is straight. Perhaps he has led an unconventional life, but all that he told Sadie was true. He’s clean, and, Mary, that counts for something in this world.”
He seemed at a loss how to proceed.
“Anything might happen,” he went on. “Although I’m not an old man, I have enemies. . . .” ”

“ Then, with a deep sigh, she replaced the package on the table.
“There’s money there,” she said, and Mary smiled.
“Not a great deal, I’m afraid. Father was comparatively poor when he died.”
“There’s money,” said Lady Maxell thoughtfully; “more than I have ever seen since I have been in this house, believe me.”
She returned, as though fascinated, and lifted the envelope again and peered inside.
“Poor, was he?” she said. “I think you people don’t know what poverty is. Do you know what all this means?”
She held the envelope up and there was a look in her face which the girl had never seen before. ”

“ Half-way through the dinner Brigot became more human.
“There will always be quarrels about women, my good Jose, and it is your business to be diplomatic,” he said. “My son is a fool; but then, all young men are fools. Why should you neglect my interests because Emanuel is a bigger fool than ever? Only this week I intended travelling to Tangier with the representative of a very rich syndicate who wishes to buy my land.” ”

“ Señor Brigot lived in some style for a man who was on the verge of ruin. He had a small house at Maisons Lafitte and a flat on the Boulevard Webber. He was a heavy, tired-looking man, with a dark moustache, obviously dyed, and a short beard, bearing evidence of the same attention. M. Brigot, like Mr. Cartwright, had many interests; but his chief interests were his own tastes and predilections. It was Señor Brigot’s boast that, although he had lived for twenty years in Paris, he had never seen Paris between the hours of six in the morning and one in the afternoon. ”

“ I want nothing from you except service. And the service I require is of a kind which you need not hesitate to give me. You’re an actress, and I can speak to you more plainly than I could to some unsophisticated girl. ”

“ John Maxell sat outside the Continental Café, in the condition of bodily content which a good dinner induces. Mental content should have accompanied such a condition, but even the memory of a perfect dinner could not wholly obliterate a certain uneasiness of mind. He had been uneasy when he came to Tangier, and his journey through France and Spain had been accompanied by certain apprehensions and doubts which Cartwright had by no means dispelled. ”

“ At midnight he took a pair of rubber boots from a locker, pulled them on, and went out through the door leading to the balcony, down the covered stairway to the garden. Unerringly he walked across the lawn to a corner of his grounds which his gardeners had never attempted to cultivate. He stopped once and groped about in the bushes for a spade which he had carefully planted there a few nights before. His hand touched the rotting wood of an older spade and he smiled. ”

“ She was watching the roulette players, and Timothy took a wad of bills from his pocket and counted out six milles. That was another thing he was to discover: there were three classes of players—those who punted in one or five louis pieces, those who bet handsomely in milles (a thousand-franc note is a “mille” and has no other name) , and those who went the maximum of twelve thousand francs on each coup.
Money had no value. He threw six thousand down to the croupier and received in exchange six oblong plaques like thin cakes of blue soap. He put a thousand francs on the black and lost it. ”

“ They tramped up the long, steep hill-street together, and they did not speak till they had passed through the ancient gate into the unrelieved gloom which lies outside the city.
“I don’t understand you, Maxell—you take an old man’s view of things,” said Cartwright irritably. “You’re comparatively young, you’re a good-looker. Why the devil don’t you marry, and marry money?” ”

“ It was inadequate, but it was all that he could say.
“Not at all,” said the Englishman. “I won a lot of money myself.”
“I’m not a great hand at arithmetic,” said Timothy, “will you tell me how many pounds twenty-seven and a half maximums make?”
It was a remarkable situation. Somebody should have laughed, but they were all too serious, the girl as serious as Timothy, and the young Englishman scrawling calculations on a loose page of his notebook.
“Thirty-five francs to a pound,” he said, “makes £340 a coup. ”

“ She was disappointed and for a moment a little hurt.
“Would two hundred pounds——” she suggested timidly.
“Not your two hundred,” he said. “That lawyer of yours should take better care of your money, Mary. He shouldn’t allow you to make these tempting offers to young men,” he was smiling now. “Will you go abroad?”
“Perhaps—some day,” she said vaguely. “Sir John wanted me to go—and I feel that I should be pleasing him. Some day, yes, Timothy.”
He nodded.
“Maybe I’ll go over at the same time as you,” he said. “I thought of taking a chance in Paris for a while—you can make big money in Paris.” ”

“ Good night!”
“Here, wait,” said Timothy.
He felt in his pocket.
“If you’re lying, it is a plausible lie and one that pleases me,” he said. “This will salve my conscience.”
He slipped two notes into the man’s hands.
Chelwyn was speechless for a moment. Then he asked:
“And where are you staying in London, Mr. Anderson?”
“At the Brussell Hotel.”
“At the Brussell Hotel,” repeated the other, “I’ll remember that. I shall hear if anything is going on and I’ll ’phone you. You’re a gentleman, Mr. Anderson.”
“So Mr. Brown said,” remarked Timothy and drove off, feeling unusually cheerful. ”

“ And not only was it flattering, but it contained a big grain of truth, expressing, to an extent, Alfred Cartwright’s creed.
“Women are more honest than men,” he said. “I should think twice before I put a man—even my best friend—in the position I’m putting you. It will be a simple matter, and I shall pay you well. You can live at one of the best hotels—in fact, it is absolutely necessary that you should. You may”—he hesitated—“you may be Madam Benson, a rich Englishwoman.” ”