Edgar Wallace

“ T. X. looked at him in astonishment. The hate in the man's face took his breath away. Never before had he experienced or witnessed such a vehemence of loathing.
“What did Kara do to you?” he demanded.
The other looked out of the window.
“I am sorry,” he said in a milder tone; “that is my weakness. Some day I will tell you the whole story but for the moment it were better that it were not told. I will tell you this,” he turned round and faced the detective squarely, “Kara tortured and killed my wife.” ”

“ John Lexman rose up from his seat, and paced the apartment, his head upon his breast.
“From that moment,” he said, “I lived only for one thing, to punish Remington Kara. And gentlemen, I punished him.”
He stood in the centre of the room and thumped his broad chest with his clenched hand.
“I killed Remington Kara,” he said, and there was a little gasp of astonishment from every man present save one. That one was T. X. Meredith, who had known all the time. ”

“ The room was a big one and most of the furniture had been cleared out to admit the guests who had come from the ends of the earth to learn the story of the twisted candles, and to test John Lexman's theory by their own.
They sat around chatting cheerfully of men and crimes, of great coups planned and frustrated, of strange deeds committed and undetected. Scraps of their conversation came to Belinda Mary as she stood in the chintz-draped doorway which led from the drawing-room to the room she used as a study. ”

“ It is not the practice of the average money lender to go after his clients with a loaded revolver. Another peculiar thing is that if he wished to blackmail you, that is to say, bring you into contempt in the eyes of your friends, why did he choose to meet you in a dark and unfrequented road, and not in your house where the moral pressure would be greatest? Also, why did he write you a threatening letter which would certainly bring him into the grip of the law and would have saved you a great deal of unpleasantness if he had decided upon taking action! ”

“ Sir George dropped heavily into the arm-chair, and stretched out his long thin legs.
“What I want,” he said, looking up at the ceiling and putting his hands together, “is to discover something about one Remington Kara, a wealthy Greek who has taken a house in Cadogan Square, who has no particular position in London society and therefore has no reason for coming here, who openly expresses his detestation of the climate, who has a magnificent estate in some wild place in the Balkans, who is an excellent horseman, a magnificent shot and a passable aviator.” ”

“ Kara folded the letter and inserted it in its envelope. He rang a bell on his table and the girl who had so filled T. X. with a sense of awe came from an adjoining room.
“You will see that this is delivered, Miss Holland.”
She inclined her head and stood waiting. Kara rose from his desk and began to pace the room.
“Do you know T. X. Meredith?” he asked suddenly.
“I have heard of him,” said the girl.
“A man with a singular mind,” said Kara; “a man against whom my favourite weapon would fail.”
She looked at him with interest in her eyes.
“What is your favourite weapon, Mr. Kara?” ”

“ It was against a wooden surface beneath the sleeve that his knuckles struck, and this view of the stranger's infirmity was confirmed when the other reached round with his right hand, took hold of the gloved left hand and thrust it into the pocket of his overcoat.
“Where is Kara?” growled the stranger.
“He will be back very shortly, sir,” said the urbane Fisher.
“Out, is he?” boomed the visitor. “Then I shan't wait. What the devil does he mean by being out? He's had three years to be out!”
“Mr. Kara expects you, sir. He told me he would be in at six o'clock at the latest.” ”

“ Mansus was silent; what he might have said, or what further provocation he might have received may be never known, for at that moment, the Chief himself walked in.
The Chief of the Police in these days was a grey man, rather tired, with a hawk nose and deep eyes that glared under shaggy eyebrows and he was a terror to all men of his department save to T. X. who respected nothing on earth and very little elsewhere. He nodded curtly to Mansus.
“Well, T. X.,” he said, “what have you discovered about our friend Kara?” ”

“ He had recovered his self-possession and had continued his aimless stroll about the room.
“You must remember I am a Greek, and the modern Greek is no philosopher. You must remember, too, that I am a petted child of fortune, and have had everything I wanted since I was a baby.”
“You are a fortunate devil,” said the other, turning back to his desk, and taking up his pen.
For a moment Kara did not speak, then he made as though he would say something, checked himself, and laughed. ”

“ Kara's put down his steel latch,” said Fisher with a smile, “which means that he is not to be disturbed until—” he looked at his watch, “until eleven o'clock at any rate.”
“He's a funk!” snapped the other, “a beastly funk!”
He stamped down the stairs as though testing the weight of every tread, opened the front door without assistance, slammed it behind him and disappeared into the night.
Fisher, his hands in his pockets, looked after the departing stranger, nodding his head in reprobation.
“You're a queer old devil,” he said, and looked at his watch again. ”

“ T. X. made a gesture of despair.
“That is one of the mysteries which may never be revealed to me, except—” he pursed his lips and looked thoughtfully at the girl. “There are times,” he said, “when there is a great struggle going on inside a man between all the human and better part of him and the baser professional part of him. One side of me wants to hear this lecture of John Lexman's very much, the other shrinks from the ordeal.” ”

“ He came down the corridor talking to himself, and greeted Fisher.
“Damn all Greeks,” he said jovially, and Fisher could do no more than smile reproachfully, the smile being his very own, the reproach being on behalf of the master who paid him.
The traveller touched the other on the chest with his right hand.
“Never trust a Greek,” he said, “always get your money in advance. Is that clear to you?”
“Yes, sir,” said Fisher, “but I think you will always find that Mr. Kara is always most generous about money.” ”

“ If there is a better man in God's world than Hiabam Hussein Effendi, I have yet to meet him. It was he who provided me with money to leave Albania. I begged from him, too, the knife with which he had killed Salvolio. He had discovered that Kara was in England and told me something of the Greek's occupation which I had not known before. I crossed to Italy and went on to Milan. There it was that I learnt that an eccentric Englishman who had arrived a few days previously on one of the South American boats at Genoa, was in my hotel desperately ill. ”

“ Nobody had seen the weapon and he dropped it in his overcoat pocket, and walked from the cellar to the kitchen where Mrs. Beale and Mansus awaited him.
“There is a lower cellar, is there not!” he asked in a strained voice.
“That was bricked up when Mr. Kara took the house,” explained the woman.
“There is nothing more to look for here,” he said.
He walked slowly up the stairs to the library, his mind in a whirl. That he, an accredited officer of police, sworn to the business of criminal detection, should attempt to screen one who was conceivably a criminal was inexplicable. ”

“ Superintendent Mansus had a little office in Scotland Yard proper, which, he complained, was not so much a private bureau, as a waiting-room to which repaired every official of the police service who found time hanging on his hands. On the afternoon of Miss Holland's surprising adventure, a plainclothes man of “D” Division brought to Mr. Mansus's room a very scared domestic servant, voluble, tearful and agonizingly penitent. It was a mood not wholly unfamiliar to a police officer of twenty years experience and Mr. Mansus was not impressed. ”

“ The next morning John Lexman was lodged in Lewes gaol on a charge of wilful murder.
A telegram brought Mansus from London to Beston Tracey, and T. X. received him in the library.
“I sent for you, Mansus, because I suffer from the illusion that you have more brains than most of the people in my department, and that's not saying much.”
“I am very grateful to you, sir, for putting me right with Commissioner,” began Mansus, but T. X. stopped him.
“It is the duty of every head of departments,” he said oracularly, “to shield the incompetence of his subordinates. ”

“ Get down into the bottom and pull a sack over you, and do not get up until the car stops.”
The blood rushed to John Lexman's head, and he staggered.
“My God!” he whispered.
“Do as I tell you,” hissed the warder.
Like an automaton John put down his brushes, and walked slowly to the gate. The grey car was crawling up the hill, and the face of the driver was half enveloped in a big rubber mask. Through the two great goggles John could see little to help him identify the man. As the machine came up to the gate, he leapt into the tonneau and sank instantly to the bottom. ”

“ When she recovered consciousness she found herself lying on a plain stretcher bed. She sat up suddenly. Kara had gone and the door was closed. The cellar was dry and clean and its walls were enamelled white. Light was supplied by two electric lamps in the ceiling. There was a table and a chair and a small washstand, and air was evidently supplied through unseen ventilators. It was indeed a prison and no less, and in her first moments of panic she found herself wondering whether Kara had used this underground dungeon of his before for a similar purpose. ”

“ Across the moor came the dull sullen boom of a gun.
“You haven't time for argument. They discovered your escape,” he said. “Get in.”
John clambered up into the frail body of the machine and Kara followed.
“This is a self-starter,” he said, “one of the newest models of monoplanes.”
He clicked over a lever and with a roar the big three-bladed tractor screw spun.
The aeroplane moved forward with a jerk, ran with increasing gait for a hundred yards, and then suddenly the jerky progress ceased. ”

“ He dare not let his mind dwell upon the long aching years ahead. He dare not think of the woman he left, or let his mind dwell upon the agony which she was enduring. He had disappeared from the world, the world he loved, and the world that knew him, and all that there was in life; all that was worth while had been crushed and obliterated into the granite of the Princetown quarries, and its wide horizon shrunken by the gaunt moorland with its menacing tors. ”

“ It is, I might say, a remarkable piece of reconstruction,” he spoke very deliberately, and swept away John Lexman's astonished interruption with a stern hand, “please wait and do not speak until I am out of hearing,” he growled. “You have got into the skin of the actual assassin and have spoken most convincingly. One might almost think that the man who killed Remington Kara was actually standing before us. For that piece of impersonation we are all very grateful;” ”

“ He was a man possessed of singular beauty of face and of figure. Half a head taller than the author, he carried himself with such a grace as to conceal his height.
“I missed you in town,” he said, “so I thought I'd run down on the off chance of seeing you.”
He spoke in the well-modulated tone of one who had had a long acquaintance with the public schools and universities of England. There was no trace of any foreign accent, yet Remington Kara was a Greek and had been born and partly educated in the more turbulent area of Albania. ”

“ You can create men and destroy them, call into existence fascinating problems, mystify and baffle ten or twenty thousand people, and then, at a word, elucidate your mystery.”
John laughed.
“There is something in that,” he said.
“As for the rest of your life,” Kara went on in a lower voice, “I think you have that which makes life worth living—an incomparable wife.” ”

“ Kara will see you, sir,” said Fisher.
“Oh!” said the other glaring at the unoffending Fisher, “that's very good of him. Very good of this person to see a scholar and a gentleman who has been about his dirty business for three years. Grown grey in his service! Do you understand that, my man!”
“Yes, sir,” said Fisher.
“Look here!”
The man thrust out his face.
“Do you see those grey hairs in my beard?”
The embarrassed Fisher grinned.
“Is it grey!” challenged the visitor, with a roar.
“Yes, sir,” said the valet hastily.
“Is it real grey?” insisted the visitor. ”

“ Kara's voice was strained and cracked.
“Would you also swear as to the hour of your arrival in London?”
“Somewhere in the region of ten or eleven,” said the Greek.
T. X. smiled.
“Would you swear that you did not go through Guilford at half-past twelve and pull up to replenish your petrol?”
The Greek had now recovered his self-possession and rose.
“You are a very clever man, Mr. Meredith—I think that is your name?”
“That is my name,” said T. X. calmly. “There has been, no need for me to change it as often as you have found the necessity.” ”

“ I feel that anything less will neither rehabilitate me in your esteem, nor secure for me the remnants of my shattered self-respect. “I am hoping you will dine with me next week and meet a most interesting man, George Gathercole, who has just returned from Patagonia,—I only received his letter this morning— having made most remarkable discoveries concerning that country. “I feel sure that you are large enough minded and too much a man of the world to allow my foolish fit of temper to disturb a relationship which I have always hoped would be mutually pleasant. ”

“ She examined the room carefully. At the farthermost end was another door and this she pushed gently at first and then vigorously without producing the slightest impression. She still had her bag, a small affair of black moire, which hung from her belt, in which was nothing more formidable than a penknife, a small bottle of smelling salts and a pair of scissors. The latter she had used for cutting out those paragraphs from the daily newspapers which referred to Kara's movements. ”

“ In her heart of hearts she did not doubt Kara's complicity in this medieval attempt to gain a wife, but of this adventure she had told her husband nothing. Until her marriage she was constantly receiving valuable presents which she as constantly returned to the only address she knew—Kara's estate at Lemazo. A few months after her marriage she had learned through the newspapers that this “leader of Greek society” had purchased a big house near Cadogan Square, and then, to her amazement and to her dismay, Kara had scraped an acquaintance with her husband even before the honeymoon was over. ”