The Greatest Thrillers of Edgar Wallace. Edgar WallaceЧитать онлайн книгу.
they were brought to his presence, a dishevelled man and a girl at the sight of whose face, he gasped.
“My little friend of the Riviera,” he said wonderingly, and the smile she gave him was like a ray of sunshine to his heart.
He stood up, a magnificent figure of a man, and she eyed him admiringly.
“I am sorry if my men have frightened you,” he said. “You have nothing to fear, madame. I will send my soldiers to escort you to Tangier.”
And then he frowned. “Where did you come from?”
She could not lie under the steady glance of those liquid eyes.
“We landed on the shore from a boat. We lost our way,” she said.
He nodded.
“You must be she they are seeking,” he said. “One of my spies came to me from Tangier tonight, and told me that the Spanish and the French police were waiting to arrest a lady who had committed some crime in France. I cannot believe it is you — or if it is, then I should say the crime was pardonable.”
He glanced at Marcus.
“Or perhaps,” he said slowly, “it is your companion they desire.”
Jean shook her head.
“No, they do not want him,” she said, “it is I they want.”
He pointed to a cushion.
“Sit down,” he said, and followed her example.
Marcus alone remained standing, wondering how this strange situation would develop.
“What will you do? If you go into Tangier I fear I could not protect you, but there is a city in the hills,” he waved his hand, “many miles from here, a city where the hills are green, mademoiselle, and where beautiful springs gush out of the ground, and there I am lord.”
She drew a long breath.
“I will go to the city of the hills,” she said softly, “and this man,” she shrugged her shoulders, “I do not care what happens to him,” she said, with a smile of amusement at the pallid Marcus.
“Then he shall go to Tangier alone.”
But Marcus Stepney did not go alone. For the last two miles of the journey he had carried a bag containing the greater part of five million francs that the girl had brought from the boat. Jean did not remember this until she was on her way to the city of the hills, and by that time money did not interest her.
The End
The Clue of the Twisted Candle (1918)
Chapter I
The 4.15 from Victoria to Lewes had been held up at Three Bridges in consequence of a derailment and, though John Lexman was fortunate enough to catch a belated connection to Beston Tracey, the wagonette which was the sole communication between the village and the outside world had gone.
“If you can wait half an hour, Mr. Lexman,” said the stationmaster, “I will telephone up to the village and get Briggs to come down for you.”
John Lexman looked out upon the dripping landscape and shrugged his shoulders.
“I’ll walk,” he said shortly and, leaving his bag in the stationmaster’s care and buttoning his mackintosh to his chin, he stepped forth resolutely into the rain to negotiate the two miles which separated the tiny railway station from Little Tracey.
The downpour was incessant and likely to last through the night. The high hedges on either side of the narrow road were so many leafy cascades; the road itself was in places ankle deep in mud. He stopped under the protecting cover of a big tree to fill and light his pipe and with its bowl turned downwards continued his walk. But for the driving rain which searched every crevice and found every chink in his waterproof armor, he preferred, indeed welcomed, the walk.
The road from Beston Tracey to Little Beston was associated in his mind with some of the finest situations in his novels. It was on this road that he had conceived “The Tilbury Mystery.” Between the station and the house he had woven the plot which had made “Gregory Standish” the most popular detective story of the year. For John Lexman was a maker of cunning plots.
If, in the literary world, he was regarded by superior persons as a writer of “shockers,” he had a large and increasing public who were fascinated by the wholesome and thrilling stories he wrote, and who held on breathlessly to the skein of mystery until they came to the denouement he had planned.
But