Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns Read online

  Copyright & Information

  Mr. J.G. Reeder Returns

  First published in 1932

  © David William Shorey as Executor of Mrs Margaret Penelope June Halcrow (otherwise Penelope Wallace); House of Stratus 1932-2010

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The right of Edgar Wallace to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  This edition published in 2010 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

  Stratus Books Ltd., 21 Beeching Park, Kelly Bray,

  Cornwall, PL17 8QS, UK.

  Typeset by House of Stratus.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

  EAN ISBN Edition

  1842327003 9781842327005 Print

  0755115112 9780755115112 Print (Alt)

  0755121635 9780755121632 Pdf

  0755119355 9780755119356 Mobi

  075512264X 9780755122646 Epub

  This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.

  Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

  We would like to thank the Edgar Wallace Society for all the support they have given House of Stratus. Enquiries on how to join the Edgar Wallace Society should be addressed to: Email: [email protected] Web: http://www.edgarwallace.org/

  www.houseofstratus.com

  About the Author

  Edgar (Richard Horatio) Wallace was born illegitimately in 1875 in Greenwich, London, to Polly Wallace, a minor actress who although married conceived Wallace through a liaison with a fellow player, Richard Horatio Edgar. He was initially fostered to George Freeman, a porter at Billingsgate fish market and later adopted by him.

  At eleven, Wallace sold newspapers at Ludgate Circus and upon leaving school aged twelve took a job with a printer. Many other jobs followed until at nineteen he enlisted in the Royal West Kent Regiment, later transferring to the Medical Staff Corps and was sent to South Africa. Whilst in the army he started writing, short poetry at first, but quickly graduated to journalism by contributing articles to the Cape Colony press and was able to supplement his army pay. The army disapproved and after the publication of a short book of poetry, The Mission That Failed, he left the service in 1899 to became a correspondent for Reuters followed by an appointment as South African war correspondent for The Daily Mail. This came to an end when the Commander-in-Chief, Lord Kitchener, revoked Wallace’s press credentials after he scooped the story of the final peace treaty, which brought the Boer War to an end, and the Daily Mail was able to publish twenty four hours ahead of the official announcement. His various articles were later published as ‘Unofficial Dispatches’.

  Whilst in South Africa, Wallace married Ivy Caldecott, the daughter of a Wesleyan minister. Their first child died from meningitis in 1903, but a son, Bryan, was born the following year.

  After a brief spell with the Rand Daily Mail, which ended after an argument with the proprietor, Wallace returned to London and resumed his association with the Daily Mail, as a day-today reporter. By this time Wallace was heavily in debt after gambling on the South African Stock Market and also starting to lead the extravagant lifestyle to which it was clear he wished to become accustomed. Money troubles led him to commence work on his first full novel; The Four Just Men.

  However, instead of proceeding conventionally, Wallace decided to embark upon a scheme which he believed would earn him a lot more. In 1905 he founded the Tallis Press, his own publishing company and decided upon a grandiose marketing and publicity campaign. Central to this was a competition he ran which invited readers to guess the solution to a conundrum – namely how the ‘Foreign Secretary’ had been murdered by ‘anarchists’ in the storyline. Extravagant prizes were offered by Wallace, to whom it never occurred that more than one person might win. He also underestimated production and publicity costs. Sinking even deeper into debt, he was bailed out by a large loan from Alfred Harmworth, the proprietor of the Daily Mail, who was concerned the bad publicity surrounding the events would harm the newspaper.

  There then followed two libel actions involving the Mail in which Wallace was concerned – one of his own making after he had made up part of a story, and one involving a campaign Harmsworth was running against the soap manufacturers, Lever Bros. In the event, he was dismissed from the paper in 1907 and his standing in Fleet Street was so low no paper would employ him.By this time Ivy had given birth to a second surviving child, a daughter, and Wallace was effectively bankrupt, albeit not declared as such.

  In 1909 he hit upon the idea of using some of his knowledge from reporting for the Mail in the Belgian Congo was as a basis for a series of short stories for a penny magazine. The initial batch, which were full of adventures of empire, a little patronising of native Africans, and contained strong characters, were a huge success and were eventually published in 1911 as Sanders of the River, the first of eleven such volumes.

  Journalistic employment once again followed and Wallace also indulged in one of his great passions; horse racing. He both gambled and wrote about the subject and became tipster for various papers prior to starting two of his own. Another child was born to Ivy in 1916, but their marriage was failing and they were divorced in 1919. Shortly afterwards, Wallace married the daughter of a financier, Violet King, who had previously been one of his secretaries. They had a child, Penelope, in 1923. During the first World War Wallace had also served as a Special Constable at Lincoln’s Inn and as a special interrogator for the War Office.

  Further writing success followed after Sanders and for the first time Wallace began to earn substantial advances for his work and royalties on a sliding scale. He wrote mostly thrillers, although there was a generous sprinkling of light comedy, romantic novels and science fiction, along with some non-fiction (such as ten volume history of the War) and it was once said that by 1928 one in four books read in England at the time were by him. His output was extraordinary and he would finish a standard length novel in less than a week. Many of his stories were filmed and he even became involved in directing.

  His flamboyant lifestyle continued, however, and he was to be seen arriving at race meetings in a yellow Rolls Royce and to be heavily involved in gambling. Nonetheless, and possible because of a knowledge of his own failings, as chairman of the Press Club he thought about others when inaugurating a fund for impoverished journalists. In 1931, he stood for the Liberal party at the general election, opposed to the National Government, but the electors of the Blackpool constituency were not convinced and he was heavily defeated. Undeterred, he turned his sights towards America and accepted a job as a screenwriter with RKO Studios in Hollywood.

  However, for some time his health had been causing him concern and the following year he was diagnosed with diabetes. Within days of this he died suddenly from double pneumonia brought about by the disease. At the time, he had been working on the film King Kong. His body was repatriated and he buried near to his home in Bourne End, Buckinghamshire.

  One further surprise awaited relatives as it transpired Wallace’s estate was in fact heavily in debt – in death as in life - but continuing royalty payments eventually enabled this to be cleared and his daughter Penelope thereafter ran a successful enterprise based upon the literary
estate.

  Wallace completed 175 novels, over 20 plays and numerous short stories, in addition to some non-fiction and countless journalistic articles. Literally hundreds of films and TV shows have been made of his work (more than any other twentieth century writer) and he continues to be very popular with new generations of readers.

  THE TREASURE HOUSE

  1

  Mr J G Reeder did odd things. And he did oddly kind things. There was once a drug addict, whom he first prosecuted and then befriended; but there was nothing unusual in that. He did the same with a young man many years later, and as a result earned for himself the high commendation of his superiors.

  But helping this drug addict led apparently nowhere. It involved a great deal of trouble, and it was an unsavoury case, and in the end Mr Reeder achieved nothing, for the man he tried to assist died in hospital without friends and without money.

  It is true that the man in the next bed knew him, and communicated a great deal of information to a ferret-faced chauffeur, who subsequently made certain inquiries.

  A more satisfactory adventure in the field of loving kindness was Mr Reeder’s association with a certain well-educated young burglar. That led to much that was pleasant to think about and remember.

  The story of the treasure house really begins with a man who had no faith in the stability of stock markets, and believed in burying his talents in the ground. He was not singular in this respect, for the miser in man is a very common quality, and though Mr Lane Leonard was no miser in the strictest sense of the word, being in fact rather generous of disposition, he was wedded to the reality of wealth, and there is nothing quite so real as gold. And gold he accumulated in startling quantities at a period when gold was hard to come by. Gold in buried chests would not satisfy him; he must have gold visible and reachable – but mainly visible. That is why he hoarded his wealth in large boxes made of toughened glass, having these containers further enclosed in steel wire baskets; for gold is very heavy and the toughest of glass is brittle.

  They said on the New York Stock Exchange that John Lane Leonard was a lucky man, but he never regarded himself that way. He was not a member of the house, and had begun as a dabbler in the kerb market, buying on margins and accumulating a very modest fortune, which became colossal overnight, through no prescience of his own, but rather because of a lucky accident. He was as near to being ruined as made no difference. Three partners, who had pooled their shares with him, became panic stricken at a bear raid and left him to hold the baby; and whilst he was holding this very helplessly, not quite sure whether he should drop it and run, powerful financial interests, of whose existence he was quite unaware, struck so savagely at the bears that they were caught short. The sensational rise in prices placed Mr Lane Leonard rich in excess of his own imagination.

  He was not a millionaire then, but he had not long to wait before another piece of luck brought him into the seven-figure class. If he had had a sense of humour, he would have recognised just how much he owed to the spin of somebody else’s coin; but, being devoid of this quality, he gave large credit to his own acumen and foresight. There were any number of people who fostered the illusion that he had the mind and vision of a great financier. His brother-in-law, Digby Olbude, was one of his most vehement and voluble sycophants.

  Lane Leonard was English, and had married an English wife; a dull lady, who hated New York and was homesick for Hampstead, a pleasant suburb it was designed she should never see again. She died, more or less of inanition, three years after her husband had acquired both his riches and a sneaking desire for American citizenship.

  By this time John Lane Leonard was an authority on all matters pertaining to finance. He wrote articles for the London Economist which were never published, because in some way they did not fit in with the views of the editor or, indeed, with the views of anybody who had an elementary knowledge of economics. Whatever Digby thought about them, he said they were great. He used to drink in those days and dabble in margins and when he lost, as he so frequently did, John Lane Leonard paid.

  They parted at last over a matter of a hundred thousand dollars, and although this sum also had to be found by the millionaire, it was in his heart to forgive his erratic relative by marriage, for he never forgot that Digby completely approved of and admired him, and had helped him considerably in his preparation of a pamphlet on the American Economy. That pamphlet was so scarified by the American press, so ridiculed by the experts of Wall Street, that Mr Lane Leonard shook the dust of New York from his feet, transferred his bank balances to England, returned to his native Kent and bought Sevenways Castle and proceeded to put his theories into practice.

  He met a pretty widow with a young child and married her. Within a few years she too had died. He changed the name of her little daughter by deed poll from Pamela Dolby to Pamela Lane Leonard, and designated her his heiress. It was necessary that he should have an heiress, though he would have preferred an heir.

  In those days Lidgett was his junior chauffeur, a hatchet-faced boy, country born, shrewd, cunning, ruthless; but Mr Lane Leonard knew nothing about his cunning or ruthlessness. He received from Lidgett a wholehearted homage which was very pleasing to him. Lidgett did not prostrate himself on the ground every time he saw his employer – he just stopped short of that. He became the confidential servant and valet as well as chief chauffeur. Mr Lane Leonard used to talk to him about the gold standard whilst he was dressing, and Lidgett used to shake his head in helpless admiration.

  “What a brain you must have, Mr Leonard! It beats me how you can keep these things in your mind! If I knew as much as you, I think I’d go mad!”

  Crude stuff, but crude stuff is effective. To Lidgett Mr Lane Leonard revealed his great plan for the creation of a gold reserve; it took three weeks for Lidgett to realise that his employer was talking about real gold. After that he became very alert.

  Mr Leonard was an assiduous churchgoer, and invariably chose Evensong for his devotions. When they were in London Lidgett used to sit at the wheel of the Rolls parked outside St George’s, Hanover Square, wildly cursing the employer who was keeping him from a perfect evening’s entertainment. There was a spieling club in Soho which was a second home to Mr Lidgett, and as soon as his master was indoors and made comfortable for the night, Lidgett lost no time in reaching the green table where they played chemin de fer.

  His employer was a careless man, who never missed a five-pound note one way or the other, and Lidgett was a lucky man at the table, more lucky than the dignified and middle-aged gentleman he so often met at Dutch Harry’s, and who seemed to come there only to lose.

  Once he borrowed twenty pounds from Lidgett and found some difficulty in repaying it. Joe Lidgett got to know all about him; rather liked him, if the truth be told.

  “You ought to give up this game, mister. You haven’t got the right kind of nut.”

  “Very possible, very possible,” said the other frigidly.

  Sometimes in the early hours of the morning the little Cockney and his somewhat aristocratic friend would go to an all-night restaurant for a meal before they separated, the unfortunate loser to an early train which carried him into the country, Mr Lidgett to his duties as chauffeur-valet.

  In the course of his confidences with Lidgett Mr Leonard mentioned his brother-in-law, and enlarged upon his genius.

  “He is one of the few men who really understand my theories, Lidgett,” he said in an expansive moment. “Unfortunately, he and I quarrelled over a trifling matter, and I haven’t heard from him for many years. A sound financier, Lidgett, a very sound financier! I have been tempted lately to get in touch with him; he is the one man I could trust to carry out my wishes if what this infernal doctor says has any foundation in fact.”

  “This infernal doctor” was a Harley Street specialist who had said something rather serious; or it would have been serious if Mr Leonard had regard
ed himself as being completely mortal.

  He saw little of his stepdaughter. She was at a school, came home for dull holidays, and listened uncomprehendingly to Mr Leonard’s lectures on gold values. She saw the first treasure house built, inspected its steel doors, and thought that the vault was a little terrifying; she heard that all this was for her sake, but could never quite believe that.

  One day Mr Leonard had a fainting fit which lasted for an hour. When he recovered he sent for Lidgett.

  “Lidgett, I want you to get in touch with Mr Digby Olbude,” he said. “I haven’t his address, but you will probably find it in the telephone book. I have never troubled to look.”

  He explained just what he wanted of Mr Olbude and Lidgett listened with interest, his agile mind working with great rapidity. Digby Olbude was to carry on the work of his brother-in-law, was to become for a number of years controller of untold wealth.

  Lidgett went forth on his tour of investigation, wondering in what manner he might benefit from the change which most evidently was due.

  Digby Olbude was not difficult to trace, though he seemed to have changed his name on two occasions and at his last address had no name at all. The shrewd little chauffeur came back to Sevenways, a very preoccupied man. He found awaiting him a letter forwarded from London – a pathetic, pleading, incoherent letter, written in perfect English by his middle-aged gambler friend.

  Joe Lidgett had an idea. A few days later his master was well enough to see him and he gave an account of his search for Digby Olbude.

  “I would like to see him,” said Leonard feebly. “I am afraid I’m in a bad way, Lidgett – where are you?”