Angel Esquire by Edgar Wallace

This was good, I liked it a lot, one of the nicest books of Edgar Wallace.
Reale, a man who made a lot of money in the gambling business, rigging the game of course, has a big safe built, to be open only with a secret word. He puts all his money in there, then leaves a will stating that it will al go to the person that will solve the riddle, among his ex-"partners": Massey, that kills him and then gets himself killed falling in one of the old man's traps; Connor, a bad criminal, part of a terrible gang of thieves and murderers; Jimmy, a wealthy man, a charismatic figure, who liked to steal for the fun of it, but only to bad people; and Kathleen Kent, the daughter of a man that was ruined by Reale. The remaining three of them are given a puzzle to solve, but Connor won't play fair, and lawyer Spedding will reveal to be even worse than him. Jimmy says from the start he'll leave it all to Kathleen, but at first she hates him because she's been led to think that he took part in ruining his father, but actually he had tried to warn him, and the two of them slowly fall in love. Jimmy saves her when Connor abducted her, then again when Spedding threatened her life. To help Jimmy there is Christopher Angle of Scotland Yard, known as Angel Esquire: they work together to solve the mystery, protect the girl and stop the criminals. I liked both Angel and Jimmy, they were both interesting. Kathleen knew Jimmy loved her when they were trying to escape Spedding's mortal trap, after Angel and he had "saved" her from him. While Angel wasn't looking, Jimmy kissed her, then they succeeded in escaping unharmed. Both Jimmy and Angel, as well as Spedding, arrived at the right solution, but Angel and Jimmy came first to take away the money. It was all Kathleen's now, and Jimmy refused her offer to split it in two. Jimmy now loved her deeply, and thought of leaving the Country to forget her, not believing his love to be requited. Angel came  to tell Kathleen of this project, so that she can talk to Jimmy, to make him understand that she loves him too. Jimmy kissed her again, than Kathleen told Angel that she persuaded him to stay :-)
It was very nice. The mystery in itself was not very interesting at all, but the adventure was nice and the characters interesting and lovable. Jimmy most of all the others, was very lovable :-)
A nice touch, since Edgar is always so nice towards good characters and his readers, is that Connor is killed by Spedding! Jimmy had threatened, no, promised  to kill him at the end, after the matter was resolved, but this way he didn't have to :-)
A funny thing is that at one point they're almost beaten in time by Spedding because Angel and Jimmy went to interrogate a man in person, while Spedding thought of phoning him, thus saving time! Such a new thing as a telephone in the house had not occurred to Angel! :-p
In a way it's absurd that after that time lost, and the fact that they went to secure the money first, they still arrived in time to save Kathleen, although how did they find her is not at all clear :-) No matter, though, of course Jimmy had to save her! :-)