Edgar Wallace

“ But, Alan—do I get arrested for calling a very important police officer 'Alan'? I used to call you that when I was a very small girl."
"I wish you would continue," he said quietly. "It would make my mind so much easier. I've hated myself ever since that horrible night. And going on to the stand to give evidence against Johnny was torture. Every second I expected to see your face—thank God you weren't in court! I never dreamt you would forgive me." ”

“ The housekeeper lets me into the house. It is rather early for Mr. Meister: he doesn't usually come down before ten unless he has a case in the courts."
"I'll risk the shock of seeing him in his pajamas," said Alan gravely, and they both laughed.
Mr. Meister was, indeed, in bed. The room on the first floor which overlooked the garden and the leaded roof of a small room built on to the house in the eighteenth century for no apparent reason, since it was never occupied, was close and fusty with the faintly sour nidor of stale cigar smoke. But Mr. Meister was not there. ”

“ Meister says he likes old women about the house—they make him feel young."
She looked round the room; evidently its gross untidiness, the smell and fug of it, were not unfamiliar.
"Alan, don't you think Mr. Meister is a very generous man?"
Alan Wembury scratched his thin nose thoughtfully.
"I suppose he is," he said with caution.
"He must pay out an immense sum in the course of a year to these poor people," she went on; "and some of them aren't a bit grateful. I've overheard them wrangling with him as though they had a right to his charity. One woman, Mrs. Haggitt—do you know her?" ”

“ There are certain forms of architecture, just as there are certain types of humanity, from which the pristine beauty of design cannot be wholly worn, and the houses of Flanders Lane maintain something of their faded dignity. ”

“ She sighed heavily. "Seven years is a long time, isn't it? Johnny bears no malice, Alan: I had a letter from him a month ago and he asked to be remembered to you if I ever saw you. Walk back with me, won't you? Flanders Lane is all eyes! They will think I am being arrested, and I am in a fair way to being a heroine."
She laughed softly as they turned back towards Mr. Meister's house. ”

“ The hand that grasped Alan Wembury's was cold and damp. "Is there any—any news about—about——?"
"You've had a wire, I suppose?" Meister nodded and swallowed. "I doubt if The Ringer will bother you: he has been seen in the neighbourhood of Southampton Docks. At least, a dock policeman, who, we have since discovered, knew the man, was found clubbed insensible behind one of the dock stores. He isn't conscious yet—but we guess The Ringer."
"The Ringer uses a knife—he always uses a knife," said Meister, and his full lower lip trembled. ”

“ The drab women who supported most doorposts on fine mornings and occupied the front steps on warm nights were in agreement, and since she gave smile for smile and nod for nod, "Good morning, Mrs. Timms" for "Good morning, Miss Lenley," the general approval had no reservations as to haughtiness. Invariably she looked as if she had stepped from the show window of Higgins & Jones' Select Mantle House & Ladies' Outfitters, and achieved, in point of appearance, the ideal of every scrawny and sophisticated maiden of Deptford. ”

“ Many a man had "gone away" and left his wife and children to starve—as they would have starved but for the little allowance they received in Meister's gaunt reception-room on the entrance floor.
He defended clients in the courts and never asked a penny for his services. In some cases he employed great advocates to plead for the liberty of a big man taken in crime. He did this for Johnny Lenley—though Johnny could not, by any stretch of imagination, be called big, for he fell at his second burglary and was sent down to the Awful Place for seven long and bitter years. ”

“ Flanders Lane did not love him. Nor did Old Mill Lane, nor Little Holland Street, nor other of these ungracious places. But for some reason they were afraid of him. Men who got too fresh with Lewis Meister were often arrested by the police and charged with crimes which they themselves had almost forgotten. It was regarded as unlucky to quarrel with this good man. ”

“ He told friends and clients that this was the cause of his unpopularity with his own cloth, and since the psychology of envy was a phenomenon familiar enough, they thought it was very likely that Mr. Meister stated the fact.
He had one real enemy: one man who actively hated him. All Deptford knew this; the police knew this; Mr. Meister knew it best of all. ”

“ Of her meeting with The Ringer and her marriage to Henry Arthur Milton, he only learnt at third hand. Alan came back to duty on promotion, a week before The Ringer escaped.
"Peter says that she's left Australia—that's all." Meister blinked rapidly. He had a trick of expressing disapproval that way. "Queer thing when the Australian police had her trailed they couldn't pick up The Ringer. It ought to have been easy. That is what women are for, Wembury—police work would be hell if it wasn't for the woman who's always around to lead you to the man you want." ”