The Greatest Thrillers of Edgar Wallace. Edgar Wallace

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СКАЧАТЬ man, though a drinker of beer, informed the police. Ras Lal and his friend and assistant Ram were arrested, brought before a magistrate, and would have been discharged but for the fact that Mr. J.G. Reeder saw the record of the case and was able to supply from his own files very important particulars of the dark man’s past. Therefore Mr. Ras Lal was sent down to hard labour for six months, but, what was more maddening, the story of his ignominious failure was, he guessed, broadcast throughout India.

      This was the thought which distracted him in his lonely cell at Wormwood Scrubbs. What would India think of him?-he would be the scorn of the bazaars, ‘the mocking point of third-rate mediocrities,’ to use his own expression. And automatically he switched his hate from Smith Sahib to one Mr. J.G. Reeder. And his hate was very real, more real because of the insignificance and unimportance of this Reeder Sahib, whom he likened to an ancient cow, a sneaking weasel, and other things less translatable. And in the six months of his durance he planned desperate and earnest acts of reprisal.

      Released from prison, he decided that the moment was not ripe for a return to India. He wished to make a close study of Mr. J.G. Reeder and his habits, and, being a man with plenty of money, he could afford the time, and, as it happened, could mix business with pleasure.

      Mr. Tommy Fenalow found means of getting in touch with the gentleman from the Orient whilst he was in Wormwood Scrubbs, and the handsome limousine that met Ras Lal at the gates of the Scrubbs when he came out of jail was both hired and occupied by Tommy, a keen business man, who had been offered by his German printer a new line of one-hundred-rupee notes that might easily develop into a most profitable sideline.

      ‘You come along and lodge at my expense, boy,’ said the sympathetic Tommy, who was very short, very stout, and had eyes that bulged like a pug dog’s. ‘You’ve been badly treated by old Reeder, and I’m going to tell you a way of getting back on him, with no risk and a ninety per cent profit. Listen, a friend of mine-’

      It was never Tommy who had snide for sale: invariably the hawker of forged notes was a mysterious ‘friend.’

      So Ras was lodged in a service flat which formed part of a block owned by Mr. Fenalow, who was a very rich man indeed. Some weeks after this, Tommy crossed St. James’s Street to intercept his old enemy.

      ‘Good morning, Mr. Reeder.’

      Mr. J.G. Reeder stopped and turned back.

      ‘Good morning, Mr. Fenalow,’ he said, with that benevolent solicitude which goes so well with a frock coat and square-toed shoes. ‘I am glad to see that you are out again, and I do trust that you will now find a more-er-legitimate outlet for your undoubted talents.’

      Tommy went angrily red.

      ‘I haven’t been in “stir” and you know it, Reeder! It wasn’t for want of trying on your part. But you’ve got to be something more than clever to catch me-you’ve got to be lucky! Not that there’s anything to catch me over-I’ve never done a crook thing in my life, as you well know.’

      He was so annoyed that the lighter exchanges of humour he had planned slipped from his memory.

      He had an appointment with Ras Lal, and the interview was entirely satisfactory. Mr. Ras Lal made his way that night to an uncomfortably situated rendezvous and there met his new friend.

      ‘This is the last place in the world old man Reeder would dream of searching,’ said Tommy enthusiastically, ‘and if he did he would find nothing. Before he could get into the building, the stuff would be put out of sight.’

      ‘It is a habitation of extreme convenience,’ said Ras Lal.

      ‘It is yours, boy,’ replied Tommy magnificently. ‘I only keep this place to get-in and put-out. The stuff’s not here for an hour and the rest of the time the store’s empty. As I say, old man Reeder has gotta be something more than clever-he’s gotta be lucky!’

      At parting he handed his client a key, and with that necessary instrument tendered a few words of advice and warning.

      ‘Never come here till late. The police patrol passes the end of the road at ten, one o’clock and four. When are you leaving for India?’

      ‘On the twenty-third,’ said Ras, ‘by which time I shall have uttered a few reprisals on that cad Reeder.’

      ‘I shouldn’t like to be in his shoes,’ said Tommy, who could afford to be sycophantic, for he had in his pocket two hundred pounds’ worth of real money which Ras had paid in advance for a vaster quantity of money which was not so real.

      It was a few days after this that Ras Lal went to the Orpheum Theatre, and it was no coincidence that he went there on the same night that Mr. Reeder escorted a pretty lady to the same place of amusement.

      When Mr. J.G. Reeder went to the theatre (and his going at all was contingent upon his receiving a complimentary ticket) he invariably chose a melodrama, and preferably a Drury Lane melodrama, where to the thrill of the actors’ speeches was added the amazing action of wrecked railway trains, hair-raising shipwrecks and terrific horse-races in which the favourite won by a nose. Such things may seem wildly improbable to blase dramatic critics-especially favourites winning-but Mr. Reeder saw actuality in all such presentations.

      Once he was inveigled into sitting through a roaring farce, and was the only man in the house who did not laugh. He was, indeed, such a depressing influence that the leading lady sent a passionate request to the manager that ‘the miserable-looking old man in the middle of the front row’ should have his money returned and be requested to leave the theatre. Which, as Mr. Reeder had come in on a free ticket, placed the manager in a very awkward predicament.

      Invariably he went unaccompanied, for he had no friends, and fifty-two years had come and gone without bringing to his life romance or the melting tenderness begot of dreams. In some manner Mr. Reeder had become acquainted with a girl who was like no other girl with whom he had been brought into contact. Her name was Belman, Margaret Belman, and he had saved her life, though this fact did not occur to him as frequently as the recollection that he had imperilled that life before he had saved it. And he had a haunting sense of guilt for quite another reason.

      He was thinking of her one day-he spent his life thinking about people, though the majority of these were less respectable than Miss Margaret Belman. He supposed that she would marry the very goodlooking young man who met her street car at the corner of the Embankment every morning and returned with her to the Lewisham High Road every night. It would be a very nice wedding, with hired motorcars, and the vicar himself performing the ceremony, and a wedding breakfast provided by the local caterer, following which bride and bridegroom would be photographed on the lawn surrounded by their jovial but unprepossessing relatives. And after this, one specially hired car would take them to Eastbourne for an expensive honeymoon. And after that all the humdrum and scrapings of life, rising through villadom to a little car of their own and Saturday afternoon tennis parties.

      Mr. Reeder sighed deeply. How much more satisfactory was the stage drama, where all the trouble begins in the first act and is satisfactorily settled in the last. He fingered absently the two slips of green paper that had come to him that morning. Row A, seats 17 and 18. They had been sent by a manager who was under some obligation to him. The theatre was the Orpheum, home of transpontine drama, and the play was ‘The Fires of Vengeance.’ It looked like being a pleasant evening.

      He took an envelope from the rack, addressed it to the box office, and had begun to write the accompanying letter returning the surplus voucher, when an idea occurred to him. He owed Miss Margaret Belman СКАЧАТЬ