Edgar Wallace

“ It is a picture of The Golden Hades!”
“The who?”
“The Golden Hades!” replied the other. “Have you never heard of Hades?”
“Yes,” said Frank with a smile. “It is a place you send people to when they are in the way.”
“It is also the name of a deity,” said Wilbur Smith grimly, “a gentleman who is also called Pluto.”
“But why do you call it golden? Because of its color?”
The other shook his head.
“This is the third Hades I have seen, but the others were in sure-enough gold.”
He picked up the bills and counted them carefully. ”

“ Then he walked to the whitewashed lobby which led to the dressing rooms.
A girl was waiting in her street clothes, for her tiny part had been finished an hour before. Frank, his mind fully occupied with other matters, had a dim sense of obligation. He had a keener sense that he had failed to surrender a great wad of paper “money” which he had filched from the property safe, and which now reposed in his pocket. He smiled into the girl's anxious face as he approached her and slipped half a dozen bills from his pocket. ”

“ Wilbur Smith, late Captain Wilbur Smith but now just Wilbur Smith of the secret service, was lounging in a big armchair in the actor's dressing room, filling the small apartment with blue smoke. He looked up as his friend entered.
“Hello, Frank!” he exclaimed. “What's the matter? Didn't the show go?”
“I'm an ass,” said Frank Alwin, dropping into a chair before his dressing table.
“In some things, yes,” said Wilbur Smith genially; “in other things quite a shrewd man for an actor. ”