Edgar Wallace

“ He had hated his sometime friend since the day Tab had made mock of his adoration. He had loathed him when the incredible fact had been proved beyond doubting, that Tab had stolen into the girl’s heart, and had won her in his absence.
He never doubted that with his great wealth, Ursula Ardfern was his wife for the asking. He had planned his life on this supposition. Wealth! The possession of great power, the ability to bestow upon the object of his choice all that human vanity or human weakness could desire. ”

“ He brought the rarest of glass to adorn the board, unearthed unsuspected treasures in chinaware, and substituted them for the crockery of the restaurant. This done, he summoned to his room the maitre d’hotel and the wine chef, and chose the dinner with the most exquisite care.
“Yeh Ling has really done himself proud,” said Tab admiring the table.
The girl nodded. She had hoped that Yeh Ling would have chosen another room, but she had no real feeling of repugnance and besides she had been here since Trasmere’s death. ”

“ Every human being was endowed some time or other, with as powerful and potent an instinct as the most sensitive of wild animals. With the growth of reason, the instinctive quality faded, until today, in humanity, we find only the faintest trace of it. Yet,” he said earnestly, “it is possible for humanity to cultivate that germ of instinct so that one can go to a race-track and pick every winner.”
“You are joking,” said Tab surprised, but Carver shook his head.
“You get flashes of it at times; you call them ‘hunches’. It is really your atrophied instinct asserting itself. ”

“ But if Carver could not come, they had a visitor. There came a tap and the door opened slowly.
“Great Moses!” said Tab springing up. “How the dickens did you know that we were here, Rex?”
“I spotted you,” said Rex Lander reproachfully, “slinking in at the side door like two guilty souls! May I offer my congratulations, Miss Ardfern, and lay at your feet the fragments of a broken heart?”
She laughed nervously at his jest.
“No, I can’t stay,” said Rex, “I have a party and, moreover, I am entertaining a man with terrific ideas on architecture. Isn’t that queer! ”

“ What the devil do you want?”
“I’ll talk to him,” whispered Tab and took the receiver from the detective’s hands.
“Is that you Rex?”
“Hullo, who is that, Tab? What’s the idea?”
“We have had a visitor,” said Tab. “You remember I told you about the burglar? Well, he came again tonight.”
“The devil he did.”
“In fact, we’ve turned the old flat into a shooting gallery,” said Tab, “and Carver wonders whether you have had a similar experience.”
“Not I,” was the cheerful reply. “It is as much as a man’s life’s worth to wake me out of my sleep.” ”

“ And you are in it, too,” he tapped Tab’s chest with a plump forefinger, “head, heels and eyebrows! You are in it from my point of view, especially because it is your job to show the police just where they are wrong, and you have had exceptional opportunity. I am not going to say what will happen to you if you don’t get the biggest story of your life out of this murder, because I don’t believe in threatening a man who may fall down here, and come up smiling on another case, and anyway you are too good a man to threaten. But we’ve got to get this crime cleared up, Holland.” ”

“ The Chinaman pursued his course to the unsavoury end of Reed Street; children who saw him screamed derisively; a frowsy old woman standing in a doorway yelled a crude witticism, but Yeh Ling passed on unmoved. Turning sharply into a narrow alleyway, he stopped before a darkened shop and tapped upon a side door. It was opened at once and he passed into a thick and pungent darkness. A voice hissed a question and he answered in the same dialect. Then, without guide, he made his way up the shaky stairs to a back room. ”

“ Drawing his car up close to a hedge, he gathered the limp figure on his shoulder, and tramped across the muddy ground until he came to the uprights that supported the cement vats. There was a flicker of lightning on the horizon. Yeh Ling could see in that flash (even if he had not known) , that no progress had been made in the construction of his Pillar of Grateful Memories: the tub-like molds stood in place, the steel core, like an attenuated tree-trunk, leaned and swayed in the gale drunkenly. ”

“ Tab shook his head.
“The question is,” said the detective, “has he made a get-away in a hurry, or is he on an urgent errand for his boss? Anyway we ought to see Trasmere. Shall we take a cab or walk?”
“Walk,” said Tab promptly. “Only the detectives of fiction take cabs, Carver. The real people know that when they present their cab bills to the head office, a soulless clerk will question each item.” ”

“ A hundred yards away from the house was a secondary road, and into this the runner turned. As Carver reached the corner he heard a motor-car engine and dimly saw the bulk of a large touring car retreating rapidly.
He came back to the house to find Yeh Ling sitting in Ursula’s room holding his head in his hands.
“This is the second man; it isn’t the wide-awake gentleman,” said Carver. “Now, Yeh Ling, give an account of your actions. How are you feeling?”
“Pretty dizzy,” said Yeh Ling and to Tab’s surprise his tone was that of a cultured man, his English faultless. ”

“ He was serious in a moment. “I hope this isn’t a very violent attachment of yours, Rex,” he said quietly, “in the first place, it struck me that Ursula Ardfern is not of the marrying kind, that even your great possessions would not tempt her. In the second place—” he stopped himself.
“Well?” asked Rex impatiently. “What ever other just cause or impediment do you see?”
“I don’t know that it is any business of mine,” said Tab, “and I certainly am not in a position to give you fatherly advice.”
“You mean that an actress is the worst kind of a wife a man can have, I suppose. ”

“ On most matters Tab had very definite views. His mentality was such that he never hesitated to form a judgment, or wavered in his convictions. That type of mind cannot understand in others the vacillating hesitancy, which so often distinguishes them in their judgment of people and things. And yet, strive as he did, he could not reduce to a formula, his own chaotic feelings in relation to Ursula Ardfern. One thing he knew. It was no vicarious interest he was showing—he did not even in his own mind regard himself as standing for Rex Lander. ”

“ Lander’s trunk was the hand that destroyed Trasmere. I had a queer feeling when you telephoned to me,” he went on, “a queer feeling as though you or somebody was going to hand to me a ready-made solution of Trasmere’s death.”
“And you are disappointed. My poor old Carver,” said Tab, pityingly. “You think too much!”
“We all think too much,” said Carver, relapsing into his natural gloom.
The next morning the tenant who occupied the flat below came up whilst Tab was dressing and Mr. Holland was a little taken aback to see one who so seldom put in an appearance on any day. ”

“ Carver!
And Yeh Ling was in it too!
The wind had risen and half a gale swept through the deserted Peak Avenue as he strode along to the house of mystery. He did not see Rex until he passed through the gate. That young man was standing under the shelter of the portico by the door. Nearby in the concrete yard Tab saw a car.
“We’ll find our way on in the dark. I’ve got a pocket lamp,” he whispered, and Tab stepped into the dark, deserted hall, with its musty scent and its strangely oppressive atmosphere of decay and neglect. ”

“ He liked Rex and Rex liked him, and they had shared happily the mild vicissitudes which came to young men with large ambitions and limited incomes. Of the two, Tab had been the richer in the old days, and had often helped the other through the morasses which grip the ankles of men who systematically live beyond their means. ”

“ Then, bending down, he brought the limp arm of Lander about his neck, and with a jerk, lifted him to his shoulder. Slowly, painfully, he passed down the stairs with his burden. At the foot of the stairs he was compelled to lay the man down. He tried to find a chair, but without success. Sitting on the floor by the side of his victim, Yeh Ling recovered his breath, and getting up noiselessly, opened the door wide.
Black as the night was, there was sufficient light to distinguish objects faintly. He could not hoist the man again; he could only drag him across the hall. ”

“ Yeh Ling stooped and his slim fingers encircled the man’s wrist. The pulse was weak but regular.
“It is good,” he said, turning to the old carver of ivory. “Every morning there must be air in this room. No other smoker must come, you understand, Yo Len Fo? He must be kept here.” ”

“ Early in the morning Carver called at the Pitt Hotel and personally interviewed a sleepy-eyed Rex, who sat up in bed in violently striped pyjamas and expostulated with commendable mildness upon the interruption to his night’s sleep.
“I am one of those people,” he said severely, “who require at least twelve hours’ heavy slumber. Heaven having endowed me with the means whereby I can gratify my wishes in this respect, it is a little short of an outrage that Tab and you should call me up even to tell me that the flat has been burgled again.” ”

“ Tab was dead now, he thought complacently, and his confession was ashes. He regretted the impulse which had made him write. He had had no intention of doing that when he brought Tab to Mayfield, and he was rather puzzled at his own stupidity. It was a mad thing to do. Mad? He frowned. He was not mad. It was very [271] sane to desire a woman of Ursula Ardfern’s grace and beauty. It was sane enough to want money and to go to extremes to obtain what he wanted. Throughout all the ages men had killed others that their position might be enhanced. ”

“ Tab smiled to himself. He who had investigated so many burglaries had never imagined that he would be favoured by the attention of those midnight adventurers. He went into Rex’s room, turned the switch and had only to take one glance to know that somebody had been very busy indeed in his absence. Under the bed which his companion had occupied, were two shallow trunks, filled with those of Rex Lander’s belongings which he had not taken with him. One of these had been pulled out, placed on the bed and opened. ”

“ The door slammed in his face.
“Phew!” said Babe, wiping his brow. “Let’s open the window and let in some fresh air!”
“Who is he?”
“Search me,” said Rex Lander. “I’ve no illusions about Uncle Jesse’s early friends. I gather that he’s been a pensioner of the old boy’s, and there is probably some truth in his charge that he was robbed. I cannot imagine uncle giving money away from charitable motives. Anyway, I’m seeing him tomorrow and I’ll ask.”
“You’ll see nothing,” said Tab. “Do you ever read the fashionable intelligence or society news? Uncle is leaving town tomorrow.” ”

“ He will come here as soon as he finds his way about town and that will be mighty soon, for Wellington Brown is a traveller! Yeh Ling, this man is troublesome. I should be happy if he were sleeping on the Terraces of the Night.”
Again Yeh Ling shook his head.
“He cannot be killed—here,” he said. “The illustrious knows that my hands are clean—”
“Are you a man-of-wild-mind?” snarled the other. “Do I kill men or ask that they should be killed? Even on the Amur, where life is cheap, I have done no more than put a man to the torture because he stole my gold. ”

“ There was no very satisfactory portrait of Wellington Brown in existence. On the ship which brought him from China, a fellow passenger had taken a snapshot of a group in which Mr. Brown’s face, slightly out of focus, loomed foggily. With this to work on, and with the assistance of Tab, something like a near-portrait was constructed and circulated by the police. Every newspaper carried the portrait, every amateur detective in the country was looking for the man with the beard, whose gloves had been found outside the death chamber of Jesse Trasmere. ”

“ Tab was looking at Carver with a new respect.
“Every day, Carver,” he said seriously, “you are getting nearer the fictional ideal of a real detective!”
Carver’s down-turned lips took an upward curve, and then he looked at his watch.
“Ten o’clock, Miss Ardfern,” he said with mock severity, and Ursula made a move to the door. “We must turn these lights out before you leave the room. Everything must be done in order, remembering that somewhere the Black Man is watching.” ”

“ Her eyes caught his and dropped.
“I don’t think that I should make any exceptions if I were you,” she said in a low voice. “Loving people can be a great nuisance.”
“You have found it so?” said Tab icily polite.
“I have found it so,” she repeated and went on quickly: “What is Rex going to do with life? He is very wealthy. Curiously enough I never dreamt that Mr. Trasmere would leave him everything. He used to grumble about Mr. Lander’s laziness to me, but I suppose he had not made any preparation for his terribly sudden end, and Mr. Lander inherited by right of relationship. ”