The Greatest Thrillers of Edgar Wallace. Edgar Wallace

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СКАЧАТЬ that no brokerage business would have touched with a barge-pole, and they had to take up the shares. One was a lost treasure company to raise a Spanish galleon that sank three hundred years ago! But what really did happen yesterday morning?’

      ‘I will tell you tonight,’ she said, and made her hasty adieux.

      Mr. Sidney Telfer had arrived when she went into a room which, in its luxurious appointments, its soft carpet and dainty etceteras, was not wholly undeserving of Roy Masters’ description.

      The head of Telfers Consolidated seldom visited his main office on Threadneedle Street. The atmosphere of the place, he said, depressed him; it was all so horrid and sordid and rough. The founder of the firm, his grandfather, had died ten years before Sidney had been born, leaving the business to a son, a chronic invalid, who had died a few weeks after Sidney first saw the light. In the hands of trustees the business had flourished, despite the spasmodic interferences of his eccentric mother, whose peculiarities culminated in a will which relieved him of most of that restraint which is wisely laid upon a boy of sixteen.

      The room, with its stained-glass windows and luxurious furnishing, fitted Mr. Telfer perfectly, for he was exquisitely arrayed. He was tall and so painfully thin that the abnormal smallness of his head was not at first apparent. As the girl came into the room he was sniffing delicately at a fine cambric handkerchief, and she thought that he was paler than she had ever seen him-and more repellent.

      He followed her movements with a dull stare, and she had placed his letters on his table before he spoke.

      ‘I say. Miss Belman, you won’t mention a word about what I said to you last night?’

      ‘Mr. Telfer,’ she answered quietly, ‘I am hardly likely to discuss such a matter.’

      ‘I’d marry you and all that, only… clause in my mother’s will,’ he said disjointedly. ‘That could be got over-in time.’

      She stood by the table, her hands resting on the edge.

      ‘I would not marry you, Mr. Telfer, even if there were no clause in your mother’s will; the suggestion that I should run away with you to America-’

      ‘South America,’ he corrected her gravely. ‘Not the United States; there was never any suggestion of the United States.’

      She could have smiled, for she was not as angry with this rather vacant young man as his startling proposition entitled her to be.

      ‘The point is,’ he went on anxiously, ‘you’ll keep it to yourself? I’ve been worried dreadfully all night. I told you to send me a note saying what you thought of my idea-well, don’t!’

      This time she did smile, but before she could answer him he went on, speaking rapidly in a high treble that sometimes rose to a falsetto squeak:

      ‘You’re a perfectly beautiful girl, and I’m crazy about you, but… there’s a tragedy in my life… really. Perfectly ghastly tragedy. An’ everything’s at sixes an’ sevens. If I’d had any sense I’d have brought in a feller to look after things. I’m beginning to see that now.’

      For the second time in twentyfour hours this young man, who had almost been tongue-tied and had never deigned to notice her, had poured forth a torrent of confidences, and in one had, with frantic insistence, set forth a plan which had amazed and shocked her. Abruptly he finished, wiped his weak eyes, and in his normal voice:

      ‘Get Billingham on the ‘phone; I want him.’

      She wondered, as her busy fingers flew over the keys of her typewriter, to what extent his agitation and wild eloquence was due to the rumoured ‘shakiness’ of Telfers Consolidated.

      Mr. Billingham came, a sober little man, bald and taciturn, and went in his secretive way into his employer’s room. There was no hint in his appearance or his manner that he contemplated a great crime. He was stout to a point of podginess; apart from his habitual frown, his round face, unlined by the years, was marked by an expression of benevolence.

      Yet Mr. Stephen Billingham, managing director of the Telfer Consolidated Trust, went into the office of the London and Central Bank late that afternoon and, presenting a bearer cheque for one hundred and fifty thousand pounds, which was duly honoured, was driven to the Credit Lilloise. He had telephoned particulars of his errand, and there were waiting for him seventeen packets, each containing a million francs, and a smaller packet of a hundred and forty-six mille notes. The franc stood at 74.55 and he received the eighteen packages in exchange for a cheque on the Credit Lilloise for £80,000 and the 150 thousand-pound notes which he had drawn on the London and Central.

      Of Billingham’s movements thenceforth little was known. He was seen by an acquaintance driving through Cheapside in a taxicab which was traced as far as Charing Cross-and there he disappeared. Neither the airways nor the waterways had known him, the police theory being that he had left by an evening train that had carried an excursion party via Havre to Paris.

      ‘This is the biggest steal we have had in years,’ said the Assistant Director of Public Prosecutions. ‘If you can slip in sideways on the inquiry, Mr. Reeder, I should be glad. Don’t step on the toes of the City police-they are quite amiable people where murder is concerned, but a little touchy where money is in question. Go along and see Sidney Telfer.’

      Fortunately, the prostrated Sidney was discoverable outside the City area. Mr. Reeder went into the outer office and saw a familiar face.

      ‘Pardon me, I think I know you, young lady,’ he said, and she smiled as she opened the little wooden gate to admit him.

      ‘You are Mr. Reeder-we live in the same road,’ she said, and then quickly: ‘Have you come about Mr. Billingham?’

      ‘Yes.’ His voice was hushed, as though he were speaking of a dead friend. ‘I wanted to see Mr. Telfer, but perhaps you could give me a little information.’

      The only news she had was that Sidney Telfer had been in the office since seven o’clock and was at the moment in such a state of collapse that she had sent for the doctor.

      ‘I doubt if he is in a condition to see you,’ she said.

      ‘I will take all responsibility,’ said Mr. Reeder soothingly. ‘Is Mr. Telfer-er-a friend of yours. Miss – ?’

      ‘Belman is my name.’ He had seen the quick flush that came to her cheek: it could mean one of two things. ‘No, I am an employee, that is all.’

      Her tone told him all he wanted to know. Mr. J.G. Reeder was something of an authority on office friendships.

      ‘Bothered you a little, has he?’ he murmured, and she shot a suspicious look at him. What did he know, and what bearing had Mr. Telfer’s mad proposal on the present disaster She was entirely in the dark as to the true state of affairs; it was, she felt, a moment for frankness.

      ‘Wanted you to run away! Dear me!’ Mr. Reeder was shocked. ‘He is married?’

      ‘Oh, no-he’s not married,’ said the girl shortly. ‘Poor man, I’m sorry for him now. I’m afraid that the loss is a very heavy one-who would suspect Mr. Billingham?’

      ‘Ah! who indeed!’ sighed the lugubrious Reeder, and took off his glasses to wipe them; almost she suspected tears. ‘I think I will go in now-that СКАЧАТЬ