Big Foot by Edgar Wallace

 From 1927

This one wasn’t bad, it was an interesting read. Not my favourite, but a nice police story, I liked it enough. 

Jim is like a district attorney or something, and he’s in love with Elfa Leigh who works for Gordon Cardew as his secretary. There’s also Hannah Shaw working for Gordon, something like a housekeeper, whatever; one weekend she goes to the beach house alone, and there she dies, she’s found dead.

Gordon’s neighbour Stephen Elson, scared, starts drinking. 

Gordon tells the police, meaning superintendent Minter aka Super, that someone wrote some threatening letters to Hannah, signed Big Foot, and then some big traces are found, as if made with big big feet. 

Hannah had sent a telegram to Elfa, asking her to come to the beach house, but Elfa arrives very very late because of an accident. 

Elfa rents an apartment to Seargeant Lattimer’s uncle, who is angry because someone keeps leaving eggs and flowers outside his door.

There’s more than one attempt on Super’s life. Super finally catches the homeless man who kept singing at night, and it’s Leigh, Elfa’s father that she thought dead at sea.

He was rather out of his mind, and he was the one leaving eggs and flowers because that was the place where they once lived together, and he didn’t want his little girl to starve…

There are now policemen guarding the clinic where Leigh is, for his own protection. He does receive a poisoned cake, delivered in Elfa’s name by homeless guy Sullivan. Jim finds him entirely by chance, and Super asks Gordon to interview him, so that with his intelligence and knowledge of psychology he might get somewhere… but then Gordon is found in his room, drugged with chloroform, with the bottle thrown out of the window… it really was no surprise to find out that it was Gordon himself, it was easy enough to throw the bottle out of the window. It was his excuse, to not meet Sullivan because the man could have recognized him.

Some time ago Gordon Cardew was full of debts, he had lost his clients’ money, he was ruined,  so he wrote a confession and wanted to commit suicide, but he got distracted by a bad accident at sea. He took his boat to rescue two men: one was Elson, an American running from the police, and the other was Leigh,  who was responsible for two boxes of money. So Elson hit him and threw him outside the boat, to die at sea, and the two men keep the money.

Hannah found his letter of confession, and she kept it, and they shared the money among the three of them. Now Hannah wants to marry him, she wants to be the mistress of the house, she loves him and wants to marry him no matter of his feelings. He does not love her, but she blackmails him with that letter. 

That night, he married her under another name, then they went together to Beach Cottage; he was hidden in the car, just in case someone was looking. He killed her and then he wore her hat and cape to go out and drive away. He himself had chosen that hat, no matter that it did not suit her, because it was big and could hide his face. He was the one to make those big foot tracks, to send the police off-track. He had used huge boots…

Elson is killed by Cardew, who shot him because Elson was getting too scared.

Sergeant Lattimer, who we saw take some money from Elson, was not a dirty cop at all. He was following Super’s orders, to keep around Elson, manipulating him for information, just as Super tried to manipulate Cardew, break him, and yet neither of them confessed. 

With Elson dead, Cardew tries to flee, he’s found out now but he almost manages to flee, but then Super thinks of the Thames, and that someone might use that way to escape, and so he finds Gordon’s boat and arrests him. 

ITA L’orma gigante

Double Dan / Diana of Karakara by Edgar Wallace

 From 1924.

I didn’t llike this one. It was funny, in a way, a true comedy of errors, but I didn’t like this Gordon, and I absolutely didn’t like that he ended up a couple with his very young cousin. 

Diana lives in Australia, prety comfortable with the money that an old aunt left her. She has exchanged a few letters with her English cousin, Gordon Selsbury, but they’ve never met. Suddenly she decides she wants a change, and she’ll go meet him. He has no idea and is quite shocked when she appears at his door. He doesn’t want her there because he’s an unmarried man and it’s just not done, very inappropriate, what with her being alone without a chaperon… he insists, she does too, saying that only the police will be able to get her out of that house, and that would be a scandal because she would resist… and so he wants to go out himself but she says she’ll tell the press that he disappeared… he insists and finally bursts that she must go away, so she starts phoning the press saying that she’s got nowhere else to go and her only chance now is the river… so he really has no choice but to let her stay…

Gordon is a man who feels superior, he talks philosophy with his friend Heloise and he thinks that their relationship is superior. 

She wants to go to Ostenda together, and she succeeds in convincing him. He feels embarrassed though, that he has to tell his brother everything to have ‘an accomplice’. He also feels rather indignant that his brother thinks that he and Heloise are a couple, or something, as if he was too superior to have such a thing as romantic love or sexual interest. 

He tells Diana that he’s going to Scotland, and asks his servant Trent to go to Scotland in his place and send a telegram to Diana from every station.

When they see each other at the stataion, though, Heloise starts her mother scene: she says that her husband is back, that he’s crazy jealous, and so he should go to Ostenda alone and she’ll reach him as soon as possible. His suggestion to expain everything to the man, that their friendship is entirely platonic and intellectual, is received with scorn, and Heloise dismisses the idea saying nobody would believe it.

A private investigator, Superbus, tells Diana and Bobby Selsbury about Dan, a man who can transform into anyone he wants, to rob them. He says that Dan has an accomplice, a woman, and Bobby strongly suspects Heloise and he hurries to the station to warn Gordon, but doesn’t find him. 

Gordon is too scared of this situation and of her husband, so he decides to come back home. He’s too embarrassed to let anyone know though, so he sneaks in and finds Heloise doing the same. She says she followed him and he believes it, has no suspicions at all. 

Diana finds them together so of course she thinks they’re Dan and his accomplice. Of course because Gordon is supposed to be on a train to Scotland, not sneaking around with a woman. She never entertains the possibility that Gordon could have lied to her, she thinks too highly of him…  :-/

Gordon refuses to tell her the truth and so he sort of admits to being Dan.

She does not call the police, instead she has hi work in the house.

Then Dempsi comes back. A young man that proposed to her in Australia, talked a lot about love and then, since she refused, he went and got lost in the wild, or something, and she thought him dead. Now he’s back, is inside the house, and talks of Love and Marriage. She calls Gordon ‘uncle Isaac’ and Heloise ‘aunt Lizzie’ and she wants them to act their part so she won’t be alone with Dempsi. She also calls Superbus to keep an eye on uncle Isaac who is a bit touched in the head. 

Bobby finally comes back, and at first  believes Gordon’s story, but then Gordon refuses to tell Diana the truth and only wants his money to go away, so Bobby thinks he’s Dan too now. 

One night Gordon manages to escape: Superbus is sleeping, and there is a thief in the house. Gordon knows the man and lets him open the safe, gives him a bit of money and keeps the rest for himself. He lets the man escape and then does the same himself.

Dempsi shoots Superbus’  little toe, and when the police arrive they recognize Dan in Dempsi, and arrests him. Heloise runs away.

Then Father Dempsi arrives, and Diana goes to him the money that she owes him, and that she was about to give to the other guy, the fake-Dempsi. 

Gordon arrives, he says he took a plane, and she jumps into his arms and kisses him.

Just like that.

There’s no talking about the truth: now that she knows that the guy was not really Dempsi, she must know that he was Dan, for sure, and therefore that Gordon was really him since he could not be Dan as well. 

He’s also around 50 years of age, while she’s just 18…

I do not approve of this book.

ITA il trasformista

The India-rubber men by Edgar Wallace

This was a bit boring and there was no real investigation and no real mystery. Theo nly nice, good thing was that the woman and the girl saved themselves; yes, they did need the police or the fire-fighters to take them to safety, but they wouldn’t have found them on their own.

This story has John Wade as the river cop: he’s smart enough but doesn’t do much. A normal cop, who has to follow the investigation step by step, without any genius hunch.

At the beginning of the book, we’re told of the India Rubber Men ( or, in Italy, la banda dagli occhi ciechi, the gang of the blind eyes). They’re a group of robbers who wear rubber gloves and gas maks, and it seems like Wade will have to find them. By the river there is also a club called Mecca. Golly Oaks and his wife own it, and it’s usually filled with sailors or river thieves.

Mrs Oaks has a bad attitude, while Golly is quiet and passive. They have a girl living thre, Lila Smith, who calls them aunt and uncle even though they aren’t. Wade often sotops by to see her and talk to her. 

Things start slowly: Wade sees a woman falling in the river, it’s not clear to me if she fell by accident or voluntarily. Anyway, Wade saves this Anna and sees that she’s desperately clutching an old photograph of a child. She seems mad, but Wade recognizes Lila Smith in the child. Then one inght he sees a man taking Lila to dinner, both well dressed.

This was never cleared satisfactorily: why did he take her out every once in a while? Like, one dinner every year?

Raggit Lane is a man who wears too much perfume, buys stolen goods from Mama Oaks and works for the old man. 

Wade is very curious and tries to spy on them but can’t hear anything. He can only follow them. 

After dinner, the man drove her to a house. After a short while Lila came back out with her usual poor clothes and with Mama Oaks. When Wade checks the house, it does not look lived in, bu then he sees three Chinese men entering, and when they go away one of them is killed by the others because he wanted to go to the police. 

Anna sees Captain Aikness ad grabs him calling him by another name, but when the police takes her away, Lord Sinifor sees her. She calls him Tommy and he follows them and pays to get her out of jail.

Wade sees the captain and knows he’s the man who takes Lila out once a year.

Wade consults with Elk on everything.

Wade sees Lila at the club. There’s a new girl calling her Miss. Lila tells Wade that she’ll go to school to learn, and that she’ll be fine, but she adds that she doesn’t like those dinners. The man acts kin to her, but she’s very scared of him. 

Raggit Lane’s role in this book seems just to try and kill Wade, and he tries a lot, but he fails every time until he’s arrested.

Wade is both curious and suspicious about people’s involvement with this Anna and he talks to Lord Siniford. He also talks to Golly, after hearng of a man singing. Wade warns both that should Anna die, they’d be locked up right away, and this is the only reason why Anna reaches the end of the book alive.

Investigating this Lord, it turns out that he gets his money as an old lady’sonly heir. Her only daughter apparently died, the lawyer is sure of it, Wade thinks otherwise. So, the child ‘died’, the lady left the money to him but only a bit at a time, he’ll get the rest after her 21st birthday.

Anna is sure the child is alive, Wade strongly suspects the child to be Lila, and Lord Siniford plans to marry Lila because of it.

Golly and some men try to kill Wade, and he gets out alive only because of a warning by Lila that she heard them talk about ventilation, so he wears a gas mask.

Another time when men are waiting for him at the club, she stops him, and he’s only injured. She hurriedly takes him away on a boat. 

Lila is put with a sergeant’s wife; Wade wants her safe, but at some point she’ll be taken away after drugging the woman, with the assistance of Mama Oaks so that Lila would go willingly. Wade arrests Mrs Oaks because of this, and just when he thinks she’ll talk, she dies, poisoned. 

Lord Siniford is found dead as well, because captain Aikness thinks of marrying her himself.

At this point it appears he might be the big boss, especially after his old boat is found. Inside there were jewels and stull, lots of it. 

He has Lila locked in a cabin, but she’s not scared because Golly is there, and she grew up with him, thinking him a good man. It’s soon clear that Golly thinks of marrying her himself, she’s worth a lot of money and is a young and pretty girl. 

Golly puts Anna in Lila’sroom to keep her quiet, thinking her mental and therefore harmless. Golly is the big boss, he let his wife act al bossy around people to look passive, but she knew him and was scared of him. He ordered to poison her. He has lots of money already and a house in South America or something, but he’s very vain and greedy. He plans two big robberies and to sail away with the girl, but Anna and Lila start a fire and manage to get out on the roof, so that the police can see them and Wade takes them away. 

The robberies go well enough, but before he can sail away, his ship is destroyed, bombarded by the police, I guess, and only Golly comes out alive, only to be hanged later on. 

The end.

It was adventurous, and probably more realistic than many other stories because the investigation moved so slowly without the cop having a ‘hunch’ out of nowhere or stuff like that. 

It was also a bit boring though, because not much happened after all.

 

ITA la taverna sul fiume

The fourth plague by Edgar Wallace

 I found this one a bit boring, honestly. There is a great story, and the biggest threat possible, but it was slow, with characters that didn’t really get to me. It was a good story, in a way, but not for me.

There’s a hero who is a bit like Sherlock Holmes in the way thata he knows stuff that nobody knows, and we’re not told how he can possibly know, just that he’s super smart. He can also always be where he needs to be, of course, knowing everything.

There is a mysterious, secret criminal organization, the Red Hand or something, very dangerous. Italian genius Tillizzini already stopped them in America, and now they are here in England.

They send threats to get money, a ‘pay or we’ll kill you’ kind of thing, but they are also frantically looking for something specific, their boss wants a very, very rare medallion. Almost unique, there’s only two in the world, made by Leonardo Da Vinci himself. one was thought to be lost and the oher is in Sir Ralph’s collection. This gang kills without a second thought.

So, the first one: a man who did have second thoughts on this whole thing, gave it to Frank Gallinford, who he knew is a gentleman. Frank will give it to Tillizzini who will keep it safe. They’ll try to kill him and fail. Count Festin will try to steal it only to fall for a duplicate. 

The second one, though, is harder to protect. Sir Ralph’s young and beautiful wife Vera is totally, passionately in love with Count Festin and will do anything for him, so eventually she steals it for him. 

Tillizzini tries to prevent this, but Festin gets it this time.

Somehow Tillizzini knew about Vera and their plan… :-/

Inside these medallionsthere’s Leonardo’s research on the plague, so now the red hand threatens the whole of England: immunity and lots of money or we’ll spread the fourth plague on this Country… It’s absurd, is what it is, of curse they can’t agree: not only there would be no Law, but there would also be no end to it. People would live knowing that at any moment they might demand something else or finallyd o it, and they’d be dead. It’s impossible, not acceptable, it would made this gang the masters of England, really unacceptable.

Count Festin also kidnaps Marjorie, because he thinks he’s in love with her, but she loves Frank. Tillizzini will free her befre having England’s full forces attack the house he’s in with his gang.

Of course Festin will die and Tillizzini be thanked for saving them all, and right at the end he reveals a fact: Count Festin was raised to be that way by a bad father, a bad man who taught him only how to be bad. Tillizzini is his older brother who hated his father and left. Which explains why they were both smart, 

But also explains the phone call from Tillizzini to Festin before starting to bombard the house. Once you know that, the phone call becomes so important, even if they say nothing of any conseguence or importance. 

Vera joined him for the end: she’s the one to tell him that he’s surrounded, to tell him the reality of the force against him, and she’s there to die with him, and it’s a powerful thing, to see her happy.

Towards the end of the attack, they go up on the roof together, and die together.

ITA La Mano Rossa

White face by Edgar Wallace

 I liked it, it’s a mystery, a crime story of a murder committed in the poorest district; everything is complicated and also easy, if you know where to look :-p

Only thing is, I was sorry because I sympathised with the murderer, even more so after learning the whole story. So sorry he died…

As is usual for Wallace, it has many characters and many stories around the main mystery, it has engaging dialogs and a complicated plot, and it has various cops, a journalist and a young woman. 

The title refers to a mysterirous thief. He appears, steals the jewels of some celebrity and disappears.

Now the plot in details, and there’s a lot of details.

Michael Quigley is a journalist, a young man in love with Janice Harman. Janice is also very young, she’s well off financially after an inheritance, but she’s so good and naive and charitable… so naive that she still believes in fairytales, in a way. 

After writing to each other for some time, Janice decides to meet and then marry Donald, who had such an adventurous life… like a true hero…

We know right away that it’s not what she thinks he is when he starts thinking of other women he knows in town, so we’re not surprised when she learns that he was a con-man.

Janice worked at Doctor Marford’s clinic, in the poorest part of town, Tidal Basin. She left it to get married, before she realised the truth about him.

One night, the doctor was chatting with sergeant Elk, as friends, when they hear two men fighting. Elk takes one into custody, the other one dies. Inez, a woman terrified about what happened, asks him  about the fight and tells him everything about her fears… but then he tells her that the men weere poor workers, she calms down and goes home.

That night, around 10, the doctor sees a man punching another, but when he sees him falling down and not moving, he runs away. The other man, he was Donald, gets up and walks, he meets cop Hartford and tells him that he did it on purpose, to fall so the other would stop. The cop walks, Donald suddenly falls down and a thief, Lamborn, sees it all and rushes forward to search his pockets. Hartford sees him and Lamborn runs but gets caught. Donald is still on the ground, but Hartford sees doctor Marford going to him so he keeps hold of Lamborn. Hartford tellsMarford to check on the man, and the doctor says that the man is dead, stabbed.

Chief Inspector Mason arrives with doctor Rudd and inspector Bray (who is a bit dumb, and resentful that Mason gives more importance to Elk who is a sesrgeant than to him).

An honest woman carrying some beer, Mrs Albert, tells the police that the man was already down when Lamborn approached him. Lorna Weston starts screaming that her husband killed that man, and she wants to see him to check it’s him, and then faints.

Mrs Albert was carrying beer because her husband can’t drink beer at work, he’d be fired if found out, so the man leaves the gate open for her wife to use to bring him some beer…

Louis Landor, Inez’s husband, was the man who punched Donald, and then he escaped using that open gate, closing it after passing.

Donald was Inez’s first husband, and was now blackmailing her.

Marford helps fainted Lorna, and takes her to the police station, but siince they realise she’s an addict, she’s seentto the infirmary, she can’t talk.

Rudd, quite a rude man, says that he has a theory - nobody is too eager to listen to him, but he won’t tell anyway for now, and then he disappears.

Michael visits the crime scene with Mason and sees Janice’s ring, and he starts lying about not knowing it. After talking to Janice, who gave the ring to Donald, he tells Mason everything. Smart girl.

There’s a good man living at Tidal Basin, old Gregory who owns his own taxi, and he’s reknown as the most honest man there is.

Lamborn refuses to tell anything to the police, sure that they want to jail him for something or other.

…

Now it’s not too difficult to discover the truth, if someone thinks about what they’re reading. 

So I’ll move to the explanation. 

Years ago there were two brothers, Thomas and Walter, orphans. Thomas was younger and was sent to school, while Walter did everything he could to send him money so he could have a good life.

Thomas gets through medicine school.  To findthe money, Walter started robbing banks, and then he met Donald, in Australia. He used the name Furse, and Thomas did too after joining him there. He met Lorna on the ship, and they’ll soon get married. He didn’t want to wait, but he’ll soon regret it, while Lorna will meet Donald and fall in love with him, and will love Donald forever.

Thomas is so grateful that he wants to help him now, and the three of them rob a bank. It goes well, but then the newspapers say that if someone helps the police arrest the robbers, he’ll get immunity and also a monetary reward. The brothers are not surprised when they learn that Donald betrayed them. They tried to run away as soon as they read it, but they get arrested and put in prison.Walter dies there.

Thomas will never forget it or forgive him, of course. He loved his brother very much.

Still, he is a doctor, and in Australia he was known as Furse, so he comes to England and starts working using his real name, Marford.

Lorna finds him and still knows who he is, so she blackmails him. Marford starts stealing jewels as White Face - because he covvers his face iwth a white piece of cloth - using a toy gun. Walter was against weapons. He said that it’s despicable to kill someone because they’re doing their job, like protecting the bank or trying to arrest criminals.

Marford only steals jewels from rich people, and then he sells the stones. That’s how he ha the money for Lorna, and to keep a clinic to help the people and children of Tidal Basin.

Then he learns that Donald is in England, and that night he sees him. The second time Donald fell on the floor, it was because he had a heart condition. When Marford sees Hartford stopping the thief, he approaches the fallen man, sees a dagger or something that Landor lost, and uses it to stab Donald.

Of course, who else could have done it, but the thief or the doctor? The thief was totally clean when Hartford stopped him, while the doctor’s hands was stained with blood, supposedly because he checked on the dead man.

Marford also saw some keys on the floo and took them.

Marford tells Mason that it must have been a murder of vengeance, that someone took this chance to avenge something that happened years ago, maybe.

Knowing that as a doctor he won’t reveal what people tell him, we’re supposed now to think that maybe he knows something of who did it but won’t tell.

When Marfod is caught, he doesn’t resist at all, and tells Mason everything, before killing himself with a vial of cyanide that he kept in his mouth. 

They tried to make us think that Rudd was involved, and for that purpose at the end, when Marford tries to escape and has to take Rudd prisoner because he had guessed the truth right away, we read that ‘he’ talks to ‘the doctor’, telling him he will soon wake up completely and use his car to get to the police.

Marford wanted to run away but had no money, so he used Landor’s keys to steal his money, and unhappily hits Elk on the head because he had no choice. He likes Elk and still thinks of him as a friend. Elk does too.

Also, he was the one who drugged Lorna so she wouldn’t be able to tell her story too soon.

He smiles when he tells Mason that if only Rudd and Lamborn had talked to him and told him everything right away, he would have realised the truth in no time.

From 1930. ITA Maschera bianca

The lady of Ascot by Edgar Wallace

 1930.

This book was unusual and qite nice, sweeet, in a way. There’s a mystery, there’s a robbery, there is, technically, a murder. There is a Scotland Yard detective and a private investigator, and yet there isn’t anyone arrested or chased. It’s not a love story, although there is a wedding of course, but it is a story of love more than anything. 

Our protagonist is John Morlay, who is a private investigator, but he deals with financial matters, not murders. He knows Julian Lester, a man who is always perfectly dressed and comfortable in any social situation. Lester has friends in many areas of society, and always takes advantage of these acquaintances to get a free meal, or a free ride… he’s not a poor man by any means, buthe says he is. He hates to spend money, he likes to get more. His goal is to put together half a million, and live with thata. He is getting there through various clever investments. He asks John to invetigate Marie Fioli, a countess from Italy, and Mrs Carawood, the woman who’s taken care of her since her family died. Lester wants to know if Marie has money or if Mrs Carawood stole it from her… his aim is to marry her if she has enough money.

John is disgusted and refuses, but he is also intrigued and goes to meet them. Marie is just 18 and leaving her college to live in a house in Ascot, that Mrs Carawood bought for her.

John is convinced that Mrs Carawood is an honest woman, and he is also charmed by Marie.

Mrs Carawood is scared after knowing that he is an investigator, but instead of running away she hires him to protect Marie, so that he might get to know her and care for her.

This is the plot. The mystery is not who is the misterious lonely cat who steals jewels here and there, nor it is who robbed the bank. The real mystery is, does Marie has money? Who really is Mrs Carawood and what she did with Marie’s inheritance?

Well, it’s not really a book I’d like to read again, but I’m glad I read it once because it was different and touching.

Lester was an interesting character because he wasn’t evil, he wasn’t really bad or with bad intention. He is nice to all his friends, and he would have treated Marie extremely well, but he doesn’t really care for anyone but himself and money. He’s the one who stole jewels, but he never hurt anyone. On the contrary, when he found a robber in his house, he gave him food and let him go. He is really clever, so much that nobody knows what he does, and nobody thinks there’s really something worth investigating.

He does mysterious research for a book that will never be published, and we learn that he’s in touch with every manufacturer of safes and their keys… when he learns from the robber that he knows who robbed the bank, and more details like where they are now and what kind of safe they have, he asks those people he knows for a key saying he wasn’t given the second one when he bought the safe, or something like that. 

Detective Pickles, called Peas for a bout of English humour I don’t really care about, is really really full of himself, always says how great he is, the best cop there is, and stuff like that, and yet he found Mrs Carawood suspicious, but he never thought the same of Lester. He even heped him carry the bag with the money…

Marie is the young Milady that attended great schools, made friends, and never wanted for anything in her life. Mrs Carawood is a widow who has various shops in the city, a business that she created by herself through hard work. Good clothes for people, so that even those who don’t have a lot of money can buy a pretty fashionable dress. She lives above one of these shops. Herman is an illiterate boy who works for her, and worships her because she’s the only one who treated him really well, she even reads here cheap novels aloud because he likes to hear it.

Joe Hoad, who sometimes goes by the name Smith, is an ex convict, the one who tried to rob Julian. He’s the one who tells Julian that he knows who robbed the bank because he saw the men and knows their method. Two men who took an apartment near Morlay, some time before the robbery, so to have a place to hide in plain sight, of course under another name.

Things take another turn when he finds himself face to face with Mrs Carawood. That’s when it all comes out. This Hoad was married to her, and she kept sendng him a bit of money all this time, but not too much. When he learns that she has money now, he gets angry because he wants her to use it for him and nothing else. When he sees Marie, this unpleasant man understands the truth that she is his daughter. 

Mrs Carawood tries to explain everything to him. She worked for the countess Fioli, a kind woman, with a good education. She had lived her whole life trying hard to get by, and always afraid when she lived with Joe. When he was arrested, she took her chance. She helped him, making it so that he was sent to an asylum and not hanged, but other than that and the money she sent, she cut all ties. She had a daughter, but nobody knew it was hers. When the countess died, there was no big inheritance like Julian hoped, because Marie was not a Fioli. But Mrs Carawood gave her the title, and worked hardto build her business, and used the money to send Marie to school, give her a good education while keeping her away from all that Joe was. Mrs Carawood thought that if she knew, there would be that like calling her away. I mean, Joe followed his father’s path, it’s like he never had a choice knowing of his past and heritage, and she wanted a different life for Marie.

Everything she did was for Marie, and she did it, but now Joe is not at all touched by this. He’s an unpleasant man, cruel, selfish, and wants it all for himself now. Mrs Carawood doesn’t know what to do, he might ruin everything for Marie, so she talks to him, tries to calm him down, and thinks that the next day she might talk to Morlay and get his advice or something.

Herman heard them talk, heard enough to understand a few things, Mrs Carawood confirmed that the man was her husband, so Herman doesn’t really know what to do. But after she goes to her room to sleep, the man talks quite roughly to Herman, and Herman understands enough, that the man is not a good one, that this man is causing much distress to Mrs Carawood and will do even worse probably. So when the man has a heart attack, because he’s ill and always carries his medicine around because he might die without it, Herman considers the situation. Joe barks at him to give him the medicine, but Herman knows that the man showed no sympathy towards Mrs Carawood, and Herman would do anything, really anything for good Mrs Carawood, so he breaks the vials and throws them away, then he pushes the man’s body outside the shop, to be found on the street.

And that’s how it goes, a cop finds the body on the street. Joe Hoad is found dead because of his heart problem, and the matter is closed, nobody thinks there’s anything more behind this.

Mrs Carawood and John Morlay will know, but they will never say anything to anyone of course.

Marie is the only one who learned of Julian’s stealing activity, and told him to leave her alone, to leave Mrs Carawood alone and go away, leave England. Julian does, after he gets the bank robbery’s money for himself. It quite amuses him that Pickles helps him, never suspecting a thing…

John Morlay fell in love with Marie, of course, and he has enough money for himself, and even a Lord title from his family, so he never cared for Marie’s money. Marie understands that she has no money, so she needs to get married. Luckyly for her, she was quite happy to accept John’s proposal.

It ends right after the wedding, with Mrs Carawood having tea with Marie, and sending all the men away because she wants this meeting alone. There’s fond words, Marie now knows that all she ever got it came from mrs Carawood, and tells her she was like a mother for her… there’s much love between them, and being alone Mrs Carawood asks her to pretend just for once, and call her mother…

This is how it ends, letting us know that for the first and last time Mrs Carawood heard that word…

Mr Fenner is not really important to the story, but it’s a bit of color  :lol:  he spent his days talking about people being all  equals, about workers’ rights, and stuff like that, until his boss dies and leaves his business to him. Slowly he changes his tune, having gone up from worker who needs to work to boss who employs others. Still, he’s not a bad man, he doesn’t become unpleasant or cruel, he just sees things from another perspective… :p

ITA la contessa di Ascot

The forger by Edgar Wallace

 Or The counterfeiter, 1927

The book was inteerstng and engaging, but the ending was not satisfying at all.

Peter Clifton is rich, and after giving money to a man, John, he gets engaged to his daughter Jane. The get married early, and she says that she doesn’t love him. He was afraid that h ‘bought her’ and guessed as much. Bu when things take a turn for the worst, showing that there’s a mystery and Peter might be in serious danger, she cares for him and slowly realises she does love him, and keeps trying to help him as much as she can.

One night she saw him in a secret room with a printer for fake money, and thought he might be the famous Fox, the forger that nobody knew the identity of. Then her old friend Basil told her that Peter was crazy, that he had inherited the madness that his father had when he died in an asylum.

Peter was afraid of it, had confided everything to a doctor, Donald, and believed the worst. When Basil is found dead, Peter doesn’t remember anything. Jane found him in bed covered in blood, and changed his clothes and washed his hands. 

A cop, Rouper, met Donald because he found his name on a fake bandnote, but then he took money from Donald and believed his words that Peter was a crazy murderer, and followed his instructions, but Rouper’s boss at Scotland Yard is Bourke. Bourke is a friend of Peter’s, and strongly believes him innocent, so he helps Jane in protecting him. He gets rid of the dirty clothes, and later on keeps helping when they find Peter outside the house fo an old lawyer that has beeen shot dead.

Peter believed Donald’s words, and would have confessed to something that he didn’t remember doing, but Jane and Bourke stopped him. 

Her beloved father keeps telling her to believe Donald, and when she realises that if Peter was found crazy, she would have control of his money, she realises his diabolical plan.

There’s also a woman, Basil’s mother, who had married Peter’s father while he was still married to his mother. She’s crazy, she thinks her Basil is so precious, and also that he has rights to Peter’s money… she loses her mind when Basil dies.

She gets money from a usurer, Blonberg or something, that nobody knows who he is, but she thinks it’s Peter, I guess. She thinks everything is Peter’s fault.

At the end, Basil’s mom goes to Blonberg and shoots him dead. Bourke finds the body, it was Donald. Then Jane sees Peter in a taxi, with a man who owns his own taxi and only goes out at nights, sometimes. When he gets home, he tells Jane that her father went away, and confirms for her that he was the Fox.

They find some documents at Donald’s office, and Peter finally learns that he’s the son of the sane Alexander Welerson. There was a cousin with the same name who married his mother afterwards, and he was the crazy one who later on married Basil’s mom. 

I liked Jane’s character, a strong character who acts instead of screaming. It ends simply with her asking if her father got away, then she took an hour for herself to cry in peace and compose herself, and then she joins her husband again to talk of something else and put it all behind them.

ITA il falsario

The clue of the new pin by Edgar Wallace

 Written in 1923.

This is one book  in which I got it right away, because it was really easy, and those who didn’t get it that’s because they were thinking like Hastings and not like Poirot, if you know what I mean. Poirot suspects everyone, as he should, while Hastings lets his personal feelings dictate what to think, so he never suspectsthose he considers gentlemen or friends.

This is just like that. The guilty one is obvious from the start, unless you let yourself be led astray by the lead character’s thinking. 

This all starts with the murder of Jesse Trasmere, a very rich man with a tough but not evil character. He spent his life in China, he can read and write Chinese perfectly. He has some business with Chinese restaurant owner Yeh Ling, he dislikes his nephew Rex Lander because he likes to do nothing, he is quite unpleasant with his servants and has a locked room in his house where he keeps documents and money. 

He is found murdered in that room, locked and with the key on the table in front of him. A will is found leaving all his money to his only relative, Rex.

Tab Holland is Rex’s roommate and friend, and he is also a journalist, and the lead character in this book. Carver is the inspector in charge of the investigation.

When Trasmere is found, Carver and Tab saw the servant Walters running away, and Rex coming out of the house under shock. The day before they had received the visit of Wellington Brown, a man back from China who had some past with Trasmere, and that threatened his life.

Carver finds the murder very hard to understand, because unless they can explain how someone could do it, an arrest would lead to nothing. Trasmere had been shot from behind, therefore murder it was, but the only key to the room was in front of him, away from the door. Carver and Tab also found a pin on the floor, but they have no idea of its importance.

This is the story, now with the solution in details, because it is really really simple and obvious. It is a bit frustrating every time a couple of characters let us know that they know stuff, but they don’t want to say it. Anyway, it is really obvious. Another character I didn’t mention is Ursula Ardfern, an actress. Tab met her for an interview to ask if she was really getting married (no, she wasn’t), because Rex is in love with her after seeing her at the theatre and wanted to know.

After becoming rich, Rex says he wants to leave for a while, to leave this horror behind himself.

Tab falls in love with Ursula, of course.

Yeh Ling had Brown stay in a opium house, to keep him there likeTrasmere asked him to do because he didn’t want to see him, so Ling can tell Carver that brown did not kill him, for sure.

Walters lives in terror for a while, until Carver gets him, but he confesses to thievery, not murder. He swears he didn’t do it, and Carver tends to believe him, Tab too.

Ursula slowly reveals things to Tab, really slowly, and eventually we learn her story. She was an orphan, after her father killed her mother and was hanged for it (or so she believed, at the end we realise together with her that Brown was her father), and she was raised in a home with many many little girls. She soon got a job washing dishes or something, until Trasmere found her. He sent her to a school to get an education, and launched her acting career. It’s like Yeh Ling, Trasmere also helped him get his own restaurant. Now both were giving part of their money to Trasmere, and doing things for him. 

Ursula went to his house every night, to work as a typist for him. 

There’s also a connection between Yeh Ling and Ursula, because when she was young, she helped care for Ling’s son, maybe even saving his life, and Ling never forgot that.

Both Yeh Ling and Ursula know who did it. He knew from the start, she knew shortly after, from something Tab told her: he said that Rex got everything because they found a will naming his the only heir.

Tab never suspects anything, he is sure that his friend is abroad, and believes him when Rex comes back saying that he bears no grudge from Tab’s engagement with Ursula. Just because he’s a ‘friend’, he believes it all. But really, Rex was the only one in that house, he got all the money, he craved money to live the rich life, he was obsessed with famous actress Ursula… not only that, but Tab’s apartment was robbed twice by somehow moving in the dark, taking something from Rex’s trunk and tearing apart Tab’s pictures… a thing that Tab dismissed without thinking on it, quite the silly thing to do. There’s always a reason behing such an act. Rex was crazy jealous of Tab and Ursula.

Rex killed Trasmere for his money, then later he killed Brown because they had met by chance and now Brown knew that he was right there and not abroad. Ursula knew it was him when she heard about the will  because Trasmere never learned to write in English. Yeh Ling knew from the start, and that’s why he was always around, protecting her, even appearing behind them when Rex surprised them at the restaurant. 

At one point, Rex wants to kill Tab because he’s in a relationship with Ursula, he has kissed her, and Rex hates that. All Rex has to do is to call Tab on the phone, at home, to tell him that he finally realised how things actually happened, and wants to tell him everything. But only to him because Carver and Yeh Ling are involved! Tab is surprised but he also kinda believes him, so he tells nothing to anyone and runs to Trasmere’s house where Rex is waiting for him, and trustingly turns his back on him.

Rex knocks him out, ties him up, confesses everything in a moment of folly, and then locks him in that room, all tied up like that that Tab can’t even move. Tab at least can finally see how Rex used the pin and some thread to slide the eky back inside after he locked the room from the outside, until the key fell on the table. 

Rex runs away, and Tab would have burned inside if neighbour Stott, quite drunk, hadn’t come to his rescue, saving his life. Quite remarkable for the old man : he was so scared before that he couldn’t even read a car’s license plate for fear someone might see him, but that night he drank a glass of pure whisky. He never drank usually, but that night he wanted his servant Eline to drink because she was keeping him awake with her tooth ache. When they saw the fire, he ran there and saved Tab’s life!!!

Now Rex is oviously directed towards Ursula’s house, he was quite obsessed with her, but when he entered the house, he never reached Ursula’s room. Her protector got him first. Rex had a gun, but before he could use it, Ling stabbed him to death, then he carried the body outside, and threw the body down a column he was building for his new house, the column of happy memories, or something, I think he wanted the house done for his son who was becoming an important figure, but I’m not sure on this.

Anyway, Tab is very much relieved to find her well and unaware of everything when he reaches her room, and Carver has Rex’s confession that Tab rescued from that house before running away from the fire.

Nobody but Ling will ever know what happened to Rex, but nobody really cared too much to find out, I think.

Yeh Ling will burn some paper near the column, and that’s more than Rex deserves, maybe.

ITA L’enigma dello spillo.

The clue of the silver key by Edgar Wallace

Also called “The silver key”

A good book, intriguing. Some characters are not nice at all :-p I mean,this cop Surefoot Smith can be rather rude when he wants too, but after all sometimes the situation calls for it, like : if a policeman was to tail a man and loses him instead, Smith is quite hard, can’t have him thinking it doesn’t matter. Even worse when a man forgets to tell him something important. He also loves beer, and can drink a bottle after another without feeling it.

There’s a nice female character: Mary Lane. There’s only one girl in the book, but she’s smart, and tough, a great character.

It was written in 1930, they do have telephones here. Not in every room, but they can find one whenever necessary.

It has many characters, although as the time goes, there’s fewer of them as they get murdered…

Let’s try to make sense of it: Mary is a young actress. Mike is her producer: he has a past of bankrupcy and insolvency, but now he has rich and eccentric Washington Wirth giving money to the theatre. 

Dick is Mary’s boyfriend, and also an inventor; he recently invented a new rifle that has great success.

Hervey Lyne is an old usurer, he is Dick’s uncle and by her father’s will, he’s also managing Mary’s money. He is quite unpleasant and rude to everyone. Binny, his servant, receives most of his temper, but doesn’t seem to care.

Leo Moran is a banker, hile Jerry is a young snob: h’s in need of money to repay Lyne, but gentlemen don’t work, he thinks. 

Jules is Jerry’s sort-of-friend, and Smith is the detective for Scotland Yard.

When Tickler, a small thief gets murdered at night, Smith is involved. Tickler was blackmailing the murderer. Never a smart move.

Lyne is going blind in his old age, and can see very little but won’t admit it to anyone. 

Dick’s rifle gets stolen, but he’s not too woried because it can’t be sold anymore, because he already filed for his patents.

Things reach another level when Lyne is found murdered. Binny took him to the park as always, on his wheelchair, and was reading to him as usual when Smith and Dick find him and realise the old man has been shot dead.

Moran has Mary sign some documents and then he disappears, raising suspicions on himself when it is found out that someone was stealing Lyne’s money.

After Smith talks to Mike about some bank paper in Mary’s possession, her house is searched. Nothing is stolen, someone was looking for that document, but Smith had it, so it was safe.

Mike is murdered too and left in the country, 

Leo Moran almost dies of gas poisoning, with a written page confessing everything… but he’s not the murderer, no. He was almost killed to blame it all on him. The real criminal is Binny. He lost his first job because was caught stealing, then he went to Amerca and got a name for himself there, as a thief and a murderer under a different name. Now back home, he got himself hired so that he could steal Lyne’s money. He was also Wirth with a wig, because he truly loved theatre and because if he managed to gather enough stars he could rob them all. This did not happen here.

He killed Lyne because he was suspecting him. He killed Tickler and Mike because they were blackmailing him. He searched Mary’s home. 

Jerry died too, but it was an accident. He had stolen the rifle for money, but he waited too long and after the patents, it was useless. So he tried to hide it in a hole in the ground, or something, but he didn’t know how this new type worked, and killed himself by accident.

Mary is the first to suspect Binny, but she has the natural desire to not look silly in case she’s wrong, so she doesn’t say anything about it while she investigates. Well, she told Smith she was doing it, though, so he had a man tailing her for protection.

She got it all right: Binny had started paying everyone in cash, and every month Lyne would sign the cheques that he would keep for himself. He got lots of money this way.

When Lyne asked for his bank manager, Binny sent Mike to him, to pretend to be Moran. But then Lyne heard Moran speaking on the radio, and realised the voice was different.

Lyne sent a message to Mary, to gather Moran and Smith and go to him, but it was too late.

They knew everything now, but they still couldn’t find Binny. He was hidden in a secret space in the house, and got away without anyone seeing him. He was really good at camouflaging himself, and become someone else.

Maybe he could have gotten away, but he got in his head that he wanted to do something big, something nobody had done before, he wanted to kill Smith before disappearing.

He kidnaps Smith pretending to be a woman. Smith didn’t recognise him, and was surprised. 

Now, since Smith is the hero of this story, he is not killed right away. He is taken to a house in the country, (and is seen speeding and ignoring a red light(, and then left bound in a room for a long time while he was digging the grave.

All this because he didn’t want anyone to discover what had happened, how and where. So he wanted to shoot Smith outside, and have him fall into his grave. All this took a lot of time.

Meanwhile, the police got alerted and started searching for him. 

Simth was saved. Binny tried again to escape, he even took Mary as a hostage, meeting her by chance on the road, but still he was found and captured. 

The day he’s hanged, is the day Smith drinks alcohol instead of just beer, to get drunk.

P.s. I love the fact that in this book, written in 1930, the clue of the broken watch is already old stuff and something not to be trusted, while on tv they kept doing this for years, I recently watched an old Columbo episode from season 3, so 1073 or 74, where the murderer tried this breaking the victim’s watch on purpose, and all other cops but Colombo bought it. 

ITA l’enigma della chiave d’argento

The crimson circle by Edgar Wallace

 A very nice one, a mystery book, intriguing. I guessed right this time, but for a long time I was conflicted, I suspected this guy but I also thought it wasn’t possible… but it fit, and I was right. I insist on this because it’s not something that happens too often :-p

I love the opening story/moral. There was a man sentenced to death in France, but the executioner and his helpers (or whatever they’re called) had a party the night before, it was his birthday or something, and this little fact changed a lot for many people, and many people died because he chose to get drunk the night before the execution. The guillotine didn’t work because he set it wrong, and the man was let go. A few years later a mysterious criminal plagues England.

He calls himself the crimson circle, and he’s the boss of a big organization; he finds desperate people and offers them money to do stuff for him. Sometimes it’s big things like murder, but many other times it’s little things, like ‘watch that man and tell me what he does’, or ‘bring some stuff to some place’, and nobody knows anybody else, and nobody knows the boss identity. He’s the only one who knows all the people involved because he chooses them personally. 

In this story there are a few characters that we follow to the end, and a few other names that don’t last till the end :p

Inspector Parr is leading the investigations; Detective Derrick Yale is a private investigator, very much admired by everyone for his mysterious powers; Jack Beardmore is the son of a rich man that gets murdered, and is in love with Thalia, or so he says, though why that is we’re not sure. 

Thalia Drummond is, indeed, very beautiful. And a thief.

Jack’s father receives a warning, to pay a large sum of money or he’ll die. He doesn’t yield, he isn’t scared, and he gets murdered around his property. Parr and Yale were there to protect him, but failed.

Marl was not a good man, he was a criminal and a blackmailer, and yet when he approached that house he got terrified, and not long after that day he got killed himself. 

Thalia got arrested by Parr one day after she stole a valuable little statue from her employer Froyant (or something). She was let go with a warning because it was her first time, but since it was clear she was in need of money, the crimson circle approached her, and she started working for him.

First she got herself a job at a specific bank, passing information on various things. Sending messages to a specific place, where he would get them and read them. The night she went to dinner with Marl was the night he died. The banker first disappeared, ,and after he decided to talk to the police, he was murdered too. Her ex employer got a letter like Beardmore, and he decided to pay, but since he was one of those people that love money above all else, he couldn’t leave it at that, and tried to get his money back, and in doing so he inadvertently found out the crimson circle identity. He was murdered in his house, under Parr and Yale’s guard, using a glove. She had been instructed to bring a glove to that house…

Parr is at risk of losing his job, very very close to it, because both his superiors and the public opinion, guided by the newspapers of course, was against him because he hadn’t stopped him yet. Yale on the other hand was applauded because he had caught the man whose hand killed Beardmore, (and maybe another murderer too, but I don’t remember. 

This murderer was killed in his cell.

Thalia is more and more involved, many things lead to her; at first Yale hires her after she loses the job at the bank, to keep an eye on her, but then he starts talking as if she’s too into it, as if she’s the boss herself. This is really at the end, when it seems like he also has doubts on Parr. This is what the writer wants us to believe, but the reader starts thinking of these two men quite early, wondering who between them will be the crimson circle.

Too many things point to someone with inside information, it’s so obvious that the chief of police thinks so too. It’s not difficult to realise that Parr is the real cop, while Yale is fake. The powers, for one. He touches something, and finds the murderer… and he was always present, and there was one occasion in which he was assaulted, and Froyant’s money ‘taken’. Parr and Jack were in another room, he was alone. We soon know that Thalia was hidden in that room, but you either believe that she did it, or you start suspecting him. You can also believe that someone got into his room by the window, somehow, but it’s not  really probable or acceptable. 

At the end, Parr reveals that Yale is the crimson circle, and shows his neck to everyone. That’s why he was called that way since he was in France, because he had a red circle around his neck, not a tattoo, just red skin. Because of that, there is really no doubt that it’s him, so he’s arrested and will be executed, hanged, since this is England.

Parr reveals that the merit of his success is his dear mum, and it turns out that he has no mother and no wife anymore, but he has a daughter. She always took care of him since she lost her mom, so he took to call her mom. 

Thalia wanted to help him, so she got a job neara Beardmore because he had received that threat. She stole because she had to give herself a certain criminal background to attrack the crimson circle’s attention. She did everything he ordered to stay in the group and get as much informations as she could.

Finally Jack Beardmore has his wish, she’s not really a thief, and he will marry her… because of course they will. It’s a bit annoying, but it was 1922 after all. It’s already nice to have a strong, capable girl in this story, a very brave and intelligent girl who should have had a brilliant career, but since she was  a woman nobody knew what reward would be right for her. Parr got a promotion, but she was a woman… well, come to think of it I think there were already female agents in female prisons… I think. She could have become a cop, or something, but her only reward was that now that Jack knew the truth, she could marry him. 

ITA il cerchio scarlatto     Written in 1922

The squeaker by Edgar Wallace

 Also known as “The sign of the leopard” and “the squealer”.

An interesting one, engaging and mysterious, I quite liked it. As if often happens, Imy only problem with it is how bluntly it ends, as soon as the last mystery is revealed, you read The End. What happened then, to the other characters involved? Well, at least to one, that was not one of the leads, but still, he tried to help Leslie any way he could, and he also was a bit hurt that Leslie appeared to be an ex-convict; there’s a line towards the end that says that his next action brought him to ruin, or something… and I would have liked to know if that was true,if something bad happened to him… because we see nothing bad, and he helped the good guys after all, even if he didn’t know it, but he helped Leslie, wanting to help him.

But we have no real ending, so we can only guess.

It’s a story of… well, many things, where to start…

The police periodically receive informations on criminals, anonymous letters that are always pretty spot on, and have let the police put a lot of people behind bars.

This Deep Throat may have helped the police, in a way, but he did it for his own gain, as revenge towards someone who didn’t want to sell to him, who didn’t accept what he offered, or maybe to get someone out of the way… 

Barrabal is a mysterious policeman, the chief inspector that everyone talks about but few have ever seen.

Larry Graeme is a criminal trafficking jewels, among other things, and after he refuses to sell to a guy who offered too low a price, he’s busted by the police because of a letter by Deep Throat. He goes to prison, and vows vengeance, but when he’s out and has found out the identity of the man who betrayed him, he is killed before he can get his revenge.

Then we are at the Sutton Company:

Frank Sutton is the boss, and everybody seems to love him, because Sutton is cordial to everyone, always nice, always speaking well of everyone, alwasy wanting to help… he hires ex-convicts saying that he wants to give them a second chance.

Beryl Stedman is his fiancee, but she spends most of her time with an employee, Leslie, because since they met they just clicked, I think I could say.

Captain John Leslie works there but has fallen in love with Beryl very fast. He is an ex-convict, ery sarcastic, nobody but Beryl likes him in that company.

Millie Trent is Sutton’s secretary. She has a really bad attitude, and is not a nice person.

Lew Friedman is the man that raised Beryl since she was little. He was friends with her father, they used to steal together, until the man died. Beryl’s mother died because she couldn’t bear the truth, or something like that, he says. And because of that now he insists that Beryl will not tie herself to anyone who’s been in prison or who isn’t an honest man. Because of this, he practically forces Beryl to marry Sutton, because he says that Sutton is an honest man…

Friedman does everything he can to put a stop to the love he can see growing between Beryl and Leslie. He lies to the man saying that she’ll get married in a week, and then he has her marry the next day, I think. 

She’s very conflicted because Lew is of course very important to her, but she’s also in love. When Leslie is arrested because they found stolen jewellery in his office, and they say that he is Deep Throat, Beryl is shocked and devastated, she can’t believe he could have been the man who betrayed and ruined so many people. 

So, Beryl gets married, and is very sad and numb.

The police let Leslie go after barely a few hours, and here starts the final showdown.

When they get married, Friedman gives Sutton quite a lot of money, for Beryl’s dowry and also to help his company. Afterwards, Lew overhears him talking to Millie Trent (we don’t know that he’s listening yet). Millie is very angry because every other time he got married to steal dowries he immediately left the girls, right outside the church, while now he’s in their house and planning to go on his honeymoon the next day. Millie is his wife, the first and real one. Sutton is the real Deep Throat.

Leslie hates him and had promised to kill him if he marries her (and let’s say here that Wallace does his very best to make us believe that he did it all, everything…)

The leopard club is owned by Bill, a man that managed to buy it with the help of Lew Friedman who gave him the money, or something. That’s why Friedman is one of the two man that mean the most to him. The second he doesn’t really know, but this man saved his life when they were at war together, and for some reason used to call him Percy. Maybe Bill couldn’t talk and so he chose a random name.

Anyway, he feels a bit hurt when he sees him after so many years, and learns that he is an ex convict. He thinks that Leslie might want to have revenge over Sutton and he is afraid but he still helps him. When he thinks that Leslie shot Sutton, he lets him escape and then goes to him to offer him the money he has, and whatever help he can.

Leslie doesn’t say anything about the murder to Beryl, but Lew does, admitting that it was him, after what he learn about the man that he had given to his beloved Beryl, he couldn’t stand it. He even goes to confess to the police, only to learn that he didn’t kill him, nobody did, the shot was heard and the man was on the floor, but barely unconscious because he was so nervous or something that he drugged himself with the drug that he intended to give to Millie, plus he had drunk a lot.

Plus, there’s Joshua Collie who is a reporter for the Post-Courier, while Arthur Tillman Jones works for the competition, the Megaphone. It’sa secret till the end who Tillman really is, but it was not difficult to guess.

The final reveal at the end, is about Leslie - who apparently had a personal grudge against Sutton because he also married his sister, stealing her money. She got over it, eventually, and got married again, but still.

Now we learn that he wanted so much to catch Sutton and Deep Throat that he went to prison for it, meaning that since he knew that Sutton only hired ex convict, he got himself arrested.

His full name is John Leslie Barrabal.

ITA il castigo della spia

The mind of Mr J.G. Reeder / The murder book of Mr J:.G. Reeder

 This is a collection of short stories with protagonist JG Reeder. 

They say here that he’s over 50, but he’ll be nearly 50 in next book Terror Keep :p

The first one is so short, you’ve barely met the characters and it’s alread over.

The poetical policeman ITAil poliziotto poeta

It’s really short. In a bank, the policeman making his nightly round finds the guards tied up and gagged with chloroformio, and dead because of it. 

All suspicions are on the bank director because this Green has been in prison once. Of course he says he didn’t do it, he wanted to get married and live a normal life, but someone blackmailed him into going away or he’ll reveal his past.

Reeder is not a policeman, he’s a private investigator, but he’s asked to work for the Director of Public Prosecutions.

He talks to Green and then meets his girl Magda. He looks at her flowers, and then picks up the horse shoe outside her house. Next he talks to Burnett, the cop that discovered the crime. he was making his round when he saw the horse shoe, and got the idea of using it to send some flowers with one of his poems to Magda, he threw it on to her window sill, or something. 

After this, Reeder knows everything and tells us all. Green had been in jail. He made it to bank director, now, and wanted to marry Magda as soon as she got her divorce. A letter scared Green into running away. The bank guardian was the one. He wrote him that letter, to use him as scapegoat. He was also Magda’s father, and had told her to get informations on Green. He had planned it all; he took the money then waited for Burnett to make his round. As soon as he saw Burnett’s torch light, he ran into the bank, tied himself up and laid down, and I guess he also put the chloroform… 

Anyway, Burnett also liked Magda, and had talked to her before, and so eh knew that it was her birthday, and so when he found the horseshoe, he got the idea and went to get some flowers.

So he got to the bank a good ten minutes later than he should have, and the guardian was dead.

The treasure hunt  ITa caccia al tesoro

The police always receive lots of anonymous letters, and one of these brings Reeder to meet Sir James. His wife died at sea, but the letter puts blame on him. 

Reeder looks around and talks to the people in town, learning that she always got seasick, and that a certain part fo Sir James’ property was never again used, stuff like that. He is sure that he killed his wife before going on that boat, and hid her body. A simple search would prove Reeder’s theory, but he’s got not enough proof to get a search warrant. 

Now, there’s Lew Kohl, a man he put in prison years ago and that swore vengeance, and there’s te fact that everyone thinks Reeder has a fortune hidden somewhere. This is because in the criminal world they think that every cop who reaches a certain position must have put together a good deal of money from his corruption and such. So Reeder leads Lew to believe that he hid his m oney in there, so that it would be Kohl to go there and dig. 

The troupe  ITA la squadra

Mah, it’s very short and quite plain. Reeder learns that an American rented a house by a lake. It’s Art Lomer, a con-man from Canada who works with a group of people. This time, he convinces a rich man that he has a huge deal ongoing regarding precious stones, diamonds and emeralds, and manages to get a check from him. As soon as he cashes the money, Reeder is outside the bank to get him.

The stealer of marble  ITA il furto del marmo

It’s when Reeder meets Margaret Belman, who lives near him, like, on the same road or something, and works as a secretary for Sydney Telfer. He’s been left in charge of the company too young, and doesn’t know what to do. 

It appears that Mr Billingham robbed him of all his cash: he was the man that managed the company.

When a woman is arrested on suspicious circumstances, she refuses to give her name or her address. She had with her a big suitcase, quite an expensive one, and it was full of marble rocks. The police finds out her identity, she works for Sydney, sort of raised him, and Reeder guesses the truth and finds the papers to prove it. The woman, quite crazy, convinced Sydney to marry her, and now she has power over the company. It was her that asked Billingham to get the money, and then she killed him. Now she wants to kill Margaret because Sydney wanted to run away with her. Margaret had told him no, but this doesn’t seem to matter to her, if she even knows it. At the end, she locks Margaret in a room, but Reeder entered the house too, and now he convinces her to let Margaret go because she’s ‘his wife’ and therefore would not run away with anybody. Reeder calls the police to explain: the crazy woman had learned from an ex-husband who was a chemist, or something like that, interesting things, like how to make poisonous gar from burned marble…

Anyway, she’s arrested, Margaret is free, and Reeder now can’t stop asking himself if he should or not apologise to Margaret for calling her his wife…

Sheer melodrama  ITA vero melodramma

Reeder has free tickets to see a melodrama, so he calls Margaret Belman to give her both tickets, but she encourages him to take her. They have a lovely time, but the some guy that served time because of Reeder wants to have his revenge, so kidnaps both him and Margaret and locks them in his house, and he’s so stupid to lock him in the same room where the fake money were, plus a telephone! 

Margaret still had a lovely time, but Reeder is seriously troubled by how late she went home, as if this might compromise her…

The green mamba   ITA il mamba verde

Two inspectors talk about Reeder: the one who knows him better calls him a mamba, apparently small and harmless, but actually very poisonous. This story is there to prove it.

Mo Linski had never been in prison because they failed to prove his guilt. He’s quite smug about that. 

A man called Plessy is put in prison, and his evil wife Marylou hates Reeder for it. Not because she partcularly loves her husband, evil as she is, she just hates him for who he is and because he could have put her in prison too and didn’t. So she sends him poisoned chocolates. This time he has her pu in prison.

Her friend Mo is quite angry, and threatens him quite publicly, giving them an excuse to imprison him too.

Mo can’t think of anything other than revenge on Reeder now.

First, they try to use Margaret to lure him into some kind of club: a thing like that might be enough to ruin a man’s career, but Reeder has the police raid the place. He’s the one to tell Mo, with many apologies, and invites the man home to talk about chickens. Mo thinks he’s getting scared and looking for peace, and accepts.Twice more Reeder stops him for a chat, and all three times a man connected to Mo got arrested the next day. 

Reeder sets a fourth appointment, but Mo is injured by another man, who had knows from Reeder of the appointment. All his men were now convinced that he was selling them to Reeder.

The strange case   ITA Lo strano caso.

A very short thing: Reeder likes to spend time with Margaret, and on one occasion he mets her roommate. He learns that she’s the abandoned wife of a man named Carlin.

Reeder is called for a case: Lord Sellington is a rich man, and Carlin’s uncle. Since Carlin is not a respectable man, his uncle will leave him only the title, but not the money. Now Lord Sellington thinks that Carlin stole money from him, because his associate Lassard told him he never asked for that money and never took it.

When Lord Sellington is killed, poisoned, Reeder goes to see Carlin with another policeman, well known to Carlin. This means that when Carlin saw them through the window, he thought he’d be accused of murder and shot himself.

Truth is, Lassard is the guilty one. He’s actually Elter, a criminal that Reeder knew years ago, a con-man with many names and skills, but that always made the same mistake: he couldn’t write a certain word the correct way. Reeder saw this mistake in a letter and understood.

The investors   ITA Il mistero degli azionisti scomparsi

Firsst, there’s a little side story, of a certain Mills that got out of prison and delivered to Reeder an envelope written by an inmate who had a grudge against him. Reeder understands from the riddle that the letter is contaminated with scarlet fever, which was a very serious thing back then, and they’re adults too, so he cleans up throughly and changes clothes, and sends Mills away with a warning that he might have it too now.

the real case is that some people seem to disappear, and nobody ever knows anything about them anymore. Adults, men and women, and according to Reeder it’s been going on for at least a year. These were people with their little bit of money, but no family or relations. One thing they had in common, they got dividends on the first day of the months, but after their disappearance the money stopped coming.

Now, Reeder keep enjoying his walks with Margaret Belman, he waits for her in the morning when she goes to work and in the evenings when she comes back, he rather likes her because she’snot only pretty, but she has an healthy dose of common sense, and I’d say also a good head on her shoulders. 

When she tells Reeder that she too receives dividends every first day of the month, he’s suspicious and worried, asks questions and explains the situation, and she tells him all she knows. A secretive Mexican company chose carefully its investors, making them swear not to talk about it to anyone. The company’s lawyers reassured her it was alright, and so far she had received money every month. Reeder starts asking questions, goes to the lawyers and to the company’s office. 

When Margaret disapears too he becomes more serious and determined, and informs the lawyers that the company’s men will be arrested as soon as he can get his hands on them, and shortly after the lawyers tell him that this mysterious DeSilvo has been found and is now at their house, they’re keeping him talking until he can get there. 

I guess he still had no suspicions, because he got caught quite easily, he crossed the room to shake the lawyer’s hand, and didn’t notice that the carpet covered a trap. He fell down, and found Margaret there, prisoner as he was. 

This is how they did it, because their firm was going very badly: they took money from people with a fake company idea, and after giving them money for a while they murdered them and kept all the rest. How: this underground cell starts to fill with water, and Reeder knows this is how they killed all the others, because there’s no escape.

Margaret doesn’t panic or lose her head, thankfully, she follows his instructions promptly, and when a door opens Reeder is quick to get her out.

It turns out that it was Mills, the man had come to rob the house, and instead had saved both their lives. Reeder lets him go, tells him to run away, and walks Margaret away.

Reeder tells the police that the lawyers kept her alive to get him too, or something, because they thought he was rather sweet on her… and he add nothing more.

ITA  L’astuzia di Mr Reeder

The man at the Carlton / or/ The mystery of Mary Grier

 A mystery/ adventure book with a twist at the end. Not my fav, but engaging.

There’s Tim Jordan sort of investigating. He follos the story and tells everything to the Scotland Yard people, because he was a captain of police in South Africa, not here. 

He’s come to speak with Mr Awkright, the man who manages his money and gives him a some, as per old Jordan’s will, I guess. Anyway, now Tim would like to stay here in London, and Mr Awkright arranges with the lawyers to transfer to him custody of his money, so that they need not meet any more.

At Mr Awkright’s house, Tim meets Mary Grier who works for him, apparently, and falls in love. But her behaviour is as weird and mysterious and Stoker’s, the butler. 

Shortly after Tim’s arrival at the house, his driver Jelf is stabbed and dies. He manages to say to Mary that it was the same man who attacked her once. She’s scared, of course, but won’t satisfy Tim’s curiosity and says nothing.

Tim doesn’t know this Jelf, he just hired him since he’s new in the Country. Other things happen, like Stoker always keeping an eye on Mary, as if to protet her, but also Mrs Daney calling and seeing Tim to tell him stuff against her husband, the famous criminal.

There’s two criminals of interest to this story: Harry Stone was a cop in South Africa but he was dirty, so Tim send him out of his Country - like, because he was a cop, he wasn’t jailed but sent away, as a kindness or something, but I guss he didn’t think of what ‘kindness’ he was doing to the other Countries that would come in contact with him…

Harry is in Scotland, he’s a con-man, trying to sell a fake gold mine to credulous people, when he sees that Lew Daney has made a job at ta bank. Lew Daney is a famous criminal, smart and ruthless. He’s stolen lots of money in various Countries. 

We see Daney meeting Harry, knowing that the other knows about his last bank robbery, before we start following Tim’s story.

Mrs Daney comes to Tim to tell him about her husband, because Lew told her that he fell in love with Mary Grier and she’s quite pissed about that. 

There’s many things that puzzle Tim: there’s the mysterious Mr Ledbetter, Stoker’s real employer, the man who let Mr Awkright rent the house for a small sum; there’s the tractor that Ledbetter bought but never used, according to Stoker, which should be always locked but isn’t. There’s mysterious movement around there, and Tim even sees a man in a frenzy, with a knife. The man runs away, but Tim is sure he’s Jelb’s murderer.

Tim learns that Mary once stole 70£, and also that she was once attacked, and is alive only thanks to two men who helped her. One of those men was Daney, the time when he saw her and fell for her, and the other man was Jelf. 

Awkright will die of an accident, falling by chance into a secret staircase and badly hitting his head, or something. This leads to the discovery that the house was one of the places used by Daney to store his money. The tractor was useful in opening and closing the entrance. 

Stoker leaves the house driving a van, having taken the money, and they wonder that he tried to betray Daney. Sure, it was a lie that they’re brothers, Stoker was just one of the men working for him.

Anyway, Stoker is found dead, shot.

Another mystery was the woman that entered the hosue one day, drunk and desperate, yelling she couldn’t stand it anymore. Now Tim meets her in London, where he’s taken Mary after all that happened. She’s Martha, and her job is to look after Willie Awkright, Mr Awkright’s son, quite touched in the head. She’s tired of looking after him, she says he tried twice already to kill her, and he’s the one who attacked Mary years ago. Mr Awkright playd her, she needed money to help her mother and her little sister, but he denied her his help and then left money around, waiting for her to yield and steal something. When he finally caught her, he blackmailed her into marrying his son, in exchange for his silence and also money for her mother. Since then, she’s lived in that house. Away from Willie, but never free of his existence.

Martha knows that the old man left everything to his son, even the money he promised Mary, he left it to Willie to give to her… so Martha wants Mary to act normal, like Willie is normal, until they get the money. Willie is dangerous though, and one night Mary finds herself alone with him and runs away. 

Tim finds her and helps her taking her to a hospital, and with the police, he will find Willie’s body, murdered. 

Mrs Daney tells Tim that poor Harry Stone left all his money to her in his will. Daney killed him and he was the heir of a man who died abroad, or something, and it’s a lot of money.

A bad mix of drugs and alcohol seems to be his end.

Lew Daney’s body is seen somewhere, come out of the water, and the truth is that all this time it was Harry. He had shot Daney before the other had a chance, and then Harry took all his papers and decided to get all his money, letting everyone believe he was dead, and blaming it all on Lew - like, leaving clues that lead directly to Lew.

Now Harry dies of a heart attack, or something, so there’s nobody left. Only Mrs Daney, who will get lots of money.

Tim goes back to Mary, now she’s not married anymore…

ITA Il bandito misterioso

Terror keep by Edgar Wallace

It was nice, not bad, there was a bit of adventure and mystery, I liked it enough, but it’s not a favourite. In this book the police doesn’t do much, nor the villain, in fact. It’s mostly just watching things unfolding, and guessing on our part. In this book JG Reeder is quite plain, honestly. He appears to know some things like Sherlock Holmes does, which means that he just knows. 

A bit of plot  :)

(I write the names as I remember them, I hope they’re right but I wouldn’t swear on it)

Margaret Belman is here again, we met her in “the mind of Mr JG Reeder”. She’s about to take another job and is very annoyed that he appears happy about her leaving. In fact, he’s relieved, because a very dangerous criminal has just escaped from the Broadmoor asylum. John Flack is very intelligent, rather crazy, and with unknown allies that helped him escape.

J.G. Reeder is a target, and indeed Flack leaves some trap to kill him, but Reeder finds it.

Margaret works at a hotel, a peculiar one. The owner Daver only accepts who he wants, and now he only has three guests.

Among the many accomplices Flack has had in his career, George Ravini is the only one that ever betrayed him, and now that Flack is free, Ravini is soon a dead man.

Flack and his men kill without giving it much thought, they’re thieves and Flack especially likes gold.

After Ravini’s death, they learn that he wanted to pursue his infatuation with Margaret, whom he met at the train station. Ravini took a room at Daver’s hotel, and from there he disappeared a few days later.

After learning this, Reeder immediately moves and goes to stay at this hotel, to continue the investigation, yes, but also to be sure that Margaret is safe.

What he finds out: the two men guests are Flack accomplices. The sad woman working there is Flack’s wife, though there’s no love there anymore. The third guest, the young woman, is Flack’s daughter Olga, and she’s married to Daver, who once worked for Flack. No love there as well, not sure realy why he insisted on marrying her. 

Daver will die when Flack learns of the marriage. 

Reeder wants to send Margaret away, to safety, but she’ll never reach Scotland Yard in London. She was taken away in another car. Flack wanted to use her against Reeder. Windows and doors could not be opened, but she managed to pull apart a bit of the capote and she jumped out. From there, it was a big adventure for her, a great escape really. 

When Reeder learns she’s not safely in London, he almost loses his mind, becomes frenetic, active, aggressive, because he’s in love with her.

In the end, Reeder will find her quite by chance and good luck, there was a secrer passage inside the big safe in the hotel connecting it to the caves. I’m not sure if Flack is captured or dead; Olga is saved and rather relieved ot be free of them all. 

Reeder is supposed to be this cool detective, oh so smart and ingenius, but tell me what’s smart about telling the men at the hotel that he knows who they are, and then leaving the matter be for the moment. Of course they run away! 

The book ends with Reeder’s awkward attempt to declare his feelings and propose, but it’s just a long series of “uhm” and Margaret has to help him doing most of the talking. he’s 47 or something, and he’s never been kissed. Now they do kiss and he quite likes it! :-p

I don’t really like how it goes - reading it now, in 2025 - but in 1927 it was different, hell when I was little it was diffferent, it was like another world, and these things maybe were funny, like: you want to marry me but since you’re older you’’re afraid you’ll ruin my young life? Well, then ruin it! And kiss kiss…

ITA il castello del terrore