Edgar Wallace

“ That so sympathetic and kindly a gentleman should utterly disregard the feelings and desires of his neighbours, that he should have in his bedroom the largest gramophone that Hampstead had ever known, and a gramophone, moreover, fitted with an automatic arm, so that no sooner was the record finished than the needle was switched to the outer edge of the disc and began all over again, and that he should choose the midnight hour for his indulgence, were facts as strange as they were deplorable. ”

“ The stout man, his face twitching, stood bare to the waist, and offered no resistance when Manfred snapped the handcuffs on him.
They led him to the door where the hat peg was, and deftly Leon slipped the loose end of the rope through the links and pulled his manacled hands tightly upwards.
"Now we can talk," said Gonsalez. "Mr. Lynne, for some time you have been engaged in abominable traffic. You have been sending women, who sometimes were no more than children, to South America, and the penalties for that crime are, as you know, a term of imprisonment and this." ”

“ MAN WHO LOVED MUSIC
The most striking characteristics of Mr. Homer Lynne were his deep and wide sympathies, and his love of Tschaikovsky's "1812." He loved music generally, but his neighbours in Pennerthon Road, Hampstead, could testify with vehemence and asperity to his preference for that great battle piece. It had led from certain local unpleasantness to a police-court application, having as its object the suppression of Mr. Homer Lynne as a public nuisance, and finally to the exchange of lawyers' letters and the threat of an action in the High Court. ”

“ Lynne would let her go. If the truth be told, the minor "artists" he sent to the South American continent were infinitely more profitable than the great performers whose names were household words in London.
"I will write you tomorrow," he said conventionally.
"You will let me go?"
He smiled.
"You are certain to go, Miss Hacker. You need have no fear on the subject. I will send you on the contract—no, you had better come here and sign it."
The girl ran down the stairs into Leicester Square, her heart singing. An engagement at three times bigger than the biggest salary she had ever received! ”

“ He has not heard from her, and he told me that Lynne was very much surprised to discover that she had any relations at all. The unrelated girl is his best investment."
"Did Lynne give the old man her address?"
Leon shrugged his shoulders.
"There are a million square miles in the Argentine—where is she? Cordoba, Tucuman, Mendoza, San Louis, Santa Fe, Rio Cuario, those are a few towns. And there are hundreds of towns where this girl may be dancing, towns which have no British or American Consul. It's rather horrible, George."
Manfred looked thoughtfully across the green spaces in the park. ”

“ Lynne was sympathetic at least three distressed parents could testify. He was a theatrical agent with large interests in South America; he specialised in the collection of "turns" for some twenty halls large and small, and the great artists who had travelled through the Argentine and Mexico, Chile and Brazil, had nothing but praise for the excellent treatment they had received at the hands of those Mr. Lynne represented. ”

“ That should bring him to Hampstead by half past ten," said Leon when he had rejoined Manfred who was waiting for him outside the post office. "We will be there an hour earlier: that is as soon as it is dark."
They entered the house without the slightest difficulty. Manfred left his two-seater outside a doctor's house, a place where an unattended car would not be noticed, and went on foot to Lynne's residence. It was a large detached house, expensively furnished, and as Leon had expected, the servants had gone. He located Lynne's room, a big apartment at the front of the house. ”

“ All night?" asked Manfred.
"For about an hour, I believe," said the policeman. "The gentleman who lives in that house can't go to sleep without music. He's a bit artistic, I think."
"He is," said Leon grimly.
The next day he found out that four servants were kept in the establishment, three of whom slept on the premises. Mr. Lynne was in the habit of returning home every evening at about ten o'clock, except on Fridays when he went out of Town.
Wednesday evening was the cook's night out, and it was also the night when Mr. Lynne's butler and general factotum was allowed an evening off. ”

“ It was exactly a month from the day she put foot on the Braganza that her hope and not a little of her faith in humanity were blasted by a stout Irishman whose name was Rafferty, but who had been born in the Argentine. He was the proprietor of a dance hall called "La Plaza" in a cattle town in the interior. ”

“ He wants the side door and the kitchen door left unlocked," he added as an afterthought. It was a brilliant afterthought if it came off, and apparently it did.
"Very good, sir," said Masters.
Leon went straight from the telephone call-box, where he had sent the message, to the counter and wrote out a wire, addressed to Lynne, Hotel Ritz, Brighton. The message ran:
"THE GIRL GOLDSTEIN HAS BEEN DISCOVERED AT SANTA FÉ. TERRIBLE ROW. POLICE HAVE BEEN MAKING ENQUIRIES. HAVE VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR YOU. I AM WAITING FOR YOU AT YOUR HOUSE."
He signed it Mandez. ”

“ A fair, dear, delicate skin, a plump, babylike face, hair extraordinarily fine: you can pick them out anywhere."
He caressed his chin and frowned.
"Callous destruction of human happiness also for profit. ”