The Greatest Thrillers of Edgar Wallace. Edgar Wallace

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СКАЧАТЬ been made to appease a mad woman, it is true, but it had been made. She was now holding a good position-a secretaryship at one of the political headquarters, for which post she had to thank Mr. J.G. Reeder, if she only knew it.

      He took up the ‘phone and called her number, and, after the normal delay, heard her voice.

      ‘Er-Miss Belman,’ Mr. Reeder coughed, ‘I have-er-two tickets for a theatre tonight. I wonder if you would care to go?’

      Her astonishment was almost audible.

      ‘That is very nice of you, Mr. Reeder. I should love to come with you.’

      Mr. J.G. Reeder turned pale.

      ‘What I mean is, I have two tickets-I thought perhaps that your-er-your-er-that somebody else would like to go-what I mean was-’

      He heard a gentle laugh at the other end of the phone.

      ‘What you mean is that you don’t wish to take me,’ she said, and for a man of his experience he blundered badly.

      ‘I should esteem it an honour to take you,’ he said, in terror that he should offend her, ‘but the truth is, I thought-’

      ‘I will meet you at the theatre-which is it? Orpheum-how lovely! At eight o’clock.’

      Mr. Reeder put down the instrument, feeling limp and moist. It is the truth that he had never taken a lady to any kind of social function in his life, and as there grew upon him the tremendous character of this adventure he was overwhelmed and breathless. A murderer waking from dreams of revelry to find himself in the condemned cell suffered no more poignant emotions than Mr. Reeder, torn from the smooth if treacherous currents of life and drawing nearer and nearer to the horrid vortex of unusualness.

      ‘Bless me,’ said Mr. Reeder, employing a strictly private expression which was reserved for his own crises.

      He employed in his private office a young woman who combined a meticulous exactness in the filing of documents with a complete absence of those attractions which turn men into gods, and in other days set the armies of Perseus moving towards the walls of Troy. She was invariably addressed by Mr. Reeder as ‘Miss.’ He believed her name to be ‘Oliver.’ She was in truth a married lady with two children, but her nuptials had been celebrated without his knowledge.

      To the top floor of a building in Regent Street Mr. Reeder repaired for instruction and guidance.

      ‘It is not-er-a practice of mine to-er-accompany ladies to the theatre, and I am rather at a loss to know what is expected of me, the more so since the young lady is-er-a stranger to me.’

      His frosty-visaged assistant sneered secretly. At Mr. Reeder’s time of life, when such natural affections as were not atrophied should in decency be fossilised!

      He jotted down her suggestions.

      ‘Chocolates indeed? Where can one procure – ? Oh, yes, I remember seeing the attendants sell them. Thank you so much, Miss-er-’

      And as he went out, closing the door carefully behind him, she sneered openly.

      ‘They all go wrong at seventy,’ she said insultingly.

      Margaret hardly knew what to expect when she came into the flamboyant foyer of the Orpheum. What was the evening equivalent to the square-topped derby and the tightly-buttoned frock coat of ancient design which he favoured in the hours of business? She would have passed the somewhat elegantly dressed gentleman in the correct pique waistcoat and the perfectly tied butterfly bow, only he claimed her attention.

      ‘Mr. Reeder!’ she gasped.

      It was indeed Mr. Reeder: with not so much as a shirt-stud wrong; with a suit of the latest mode, and shoes glossy and V-toed. For Mr. Reeder, like many other men, dressed according to his inclination in business hours, but accepted blindly the instructions of his tailor in the matter of fancy raiment. Mr. J.G. Reeder was never conscious of his clothing, good or bad-he was, however, very conscious of his strange responsibility.

      He took her cloak (he had previously purchased programmes and a large box of chocolates, which he carried by its satin ribbon). There was a quarter of an hour to wait before the curtain went up, and Margaret felt it incumbent upon her to offer an explanation.

      ‘You spoke about “somebody” else; do you mean Roy-the man who sometimes meets me at Westminster?’

      Mr. Reeder had meant that young man. ‘He and I were good friends,’ she said, ‘no more than that-we aren’t very good friends anymore.’

      She did not say why. She might have explained in a sentence if she had said that Roy’s mother held an exalted opinion of her only son’s qualities, physical and mental, and that Roy thoroughly endorsed his mother’s judgment, but she did not.

      ‘Ah!’ said Mr. Reeder unhappily. Soon after this the orchestra drowned further conversation, for they were sitting in the first row near to the noisiest of the brass and not far removed from the shrillest of the wood-wind. In odd moments, through the thrilling first act, she stole a glance at her companion. She expected to find this man mildly amused or slightly bored by the absurd contrast between the realities which he knew and the theatricalities which were presented on the stage. But whenever she looked, he was absorbed in the action of the play; she could almost feel him tremble when the hero was strapped to a log and thrown into the boiling mountain stream, and when the stage Jove was rescued on the fall of the curtain, she heard, with something like stupefaction, Mr. Reeder’s quivering sigh of relief.

      ‘But surely, Mr. Reeder, this bores you?’ she protested, when the lights in the auditorium went up.

      ‘This-you mean the play-bore me? Good gracious, no! I think it is very fine, remarkably fine.’

      ‘But it isn’t life, surely? The story is so wildly improbable, and the incidents-oh, yes, I’m enjoying it all; please don’t look so worried! Only I thought that you, who knew so much about criminology-is that the word?- would be rather amused.’

      Mr. Reeder was looking very anxiously at her.

      ‘I’m afraid it is not the kind of play-’

      ‘Oh, but it is-I love melodrama. But doesn’t it strike you as being-far-fetched? For instance, that man being chained to a log, and the mother agreeing to her son’s death?’

      Mr. Reeder rubbed his nose thoughtfully.

      ‘The Bermondsey gang chained Harry Salter to a plank, turned it over and let him down, just opposite Billingsgate Market. I was at the execution of Tod Rowe, and he admitted it on the scaffold. And it was “Lee” Pearson’s mother who poisoned him at Teddington to get his insurance money so that she could marry again. I was at the trial and she took her sentence laughing-now what else was there in that act? Oh, yes, I remember: the proprietor of the sawmill tried to get the young lady to marry him by threatening to send her father to prison. That has been done hundreds of times-only in a worse way. There is really nothing very extravagant about a melodrama except the prices of the seats, and I usually get my tickets free!’

      She listened, at first dumbfounded and then with a gurgle of amusement.

      ‘How queer-and yet-well, frankly, I have only met melodrama once in life, СКАЧАТЬ