Edgar Wallace

“ In the gray of the morning Wilbur Smith stood, hat in hand, at the door of a small apartment and the elderly man who had opened the door, clad in an old overcoat which was worn over his pajamas, gazed sleepily upon the unexpected visitor. ”

“ I have really come to see that you are safe,” said Wilbur kindly. “As to the money, you need not worry. I shall want it for a few days. At the end of that time if nothing happens I will return it to you.”
“I hated asking Mr. Alwin at all,” she said, “but daddy has been troubled about money, and we owed a lot of rent. I tried everybody before I asked Mr. Alwin, and I think I should have sunk through the floor with shame if he had refused. It is awful to ask,” she faltered. ”

“ Maybe Alwin is alive and in their hands, and they are holding him to ransom. Maybe they'll kill him if I go any further in the matter. But this you can bet on, that the object of sending that note to your newspaper was to get you boys to dig out all I knew about The Golden Hades—and I'm not falling for it.”
He shoo-ed the newspaper men out of his room and walked into the office. Gray-haired Sharpe heard the story without speaking.
“It sounds like something unreal,” he said when the other had finished. “It is certainly out of the ordinary.” ”