Just Men Omnibus by Edgar Wallace

Author:Edgar Wallace [Wallace, Edgar]
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery & Crime
Published: 2010-06-19T13:37:48.234000+00:00

The Man Who Loved Music

The most striking characteristics of Mr. Homer Lynne were his deep and wide sympathies, and his love of Tschaikovsky's "1812." He loved music generally, but his neighbours in Pennerthon Road, Hampstead, could testify with vehemence and asperity to his preference for that great battle piece. It had led from certain local unpleasantness to a police-court application, having as its object the suppression of Mr. Homer Lynne as a public nuisance, and finally to the exchange of lawyers' letters and the threat of an action in the High Court.

That so sympathetic and kindly a gentleman should utterly disregard the feelings and desires of his neighbours, that he should have in his bedroom the largest gramophone that Hampstead had ever known, and a gramophone, moreover, fitted with an automatic arm, so that no sooner was the record finished than the needle was switched to the outer edge of the disc and began all over again, and that he should choose the midnight hour for his indulgence, were facts as strange as they were deplorable.

Mr. Lynne had urged at the police court that the only method he had discovered for so soothing his nerves that he could ensure himself a night's sleep, was to hear that thunderous piece.

That Mr. Lynne was sympathetic at least three distressed parents could testify. He was a theatrical agent with large interests in South America; he specialised in the collection of "turns" for some twenty halls large and small, and the great artists who had travelled through the Argentine and Mexico, Chile and Brazil, had nothing but praise for the excellent treatment they had received at the hands of those Mr. Lynne represented. It was believed, and was in truth, a fact, that he was financially interested in quite a number of these places of amusement, which may have accounted for the courtesy and attention which the great performers received on their tour.

He also sent out a number of small artists—microscopically small artists whose names had never figured on the play bills of Britain. They were chosen for their beauty, their sprightliness and their absence of ties.

"It's a beautiful country," Mr. Homer Lynne would say.

He was a grave, smooth man, clean-shaven, save for a sign of grey side-whiskers, and people who did not know him would imagine that he was a successful lawyer, with an ecclesiastical practice.

"It's a beautiful country," he would say, "but I don't know whether I like sending a young girl out there. Of course, you'll have a good salary, and live well—have you any relations?"

If the girl produced a brother or a father, or even a mother, or an intimate maiden aunt, Mr. Lynne would nod and promise to write on the morrow, a promise which he fulfilled, regretting that he did not think the applicant would quite suit his purpose—which was true. But if she were isolated from these connections, if there were no relations to whom she would write, or friends who were likely to pester him with

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