When the Gangs Came to London by Edgar Wallace

Author:Edgar Wallace [Wallace, Edgar]
Format: epub
Tags: Crime
ISBN: 9780755115228
Publisher: House of Stratus
Published: 2008-01-11T13:20:52.718000+00:00

Chapter 6

Mrs. Kerky Smith was fairly accurately described by Jiggs as lovely but dumb. In his more profane moments he called her Gardum. What that meant nobody exactly knew, but it sounded very much like bad language. If she had not been dumb she would have realised that her husband's patience was near to fraying. After her hundredth 'Can't you do sump'n?' he put down the newspaper he was studying, folded it very carefully and dropped it into the waste basket as though he Were depositing a million-dollar bond in a safe deposit.'Listen, Cora! I don't often talk my business to anybody, and you know that. I know you were put to a whole lot of inconvenience when they pushed you into that little dark room and told you to wait. Shall I tell you why you were there? It seems somebody sent one of these threatening letters to that girl Leslie Ranger. You know who she is, because you've spoken to her; you know who she is because she was coming to be my secretary; and you know who she is without asking any further questions because—why, you know who she is!'

'What's that to do with me?' she demanded.

'Well, I'm telling you. They sort of felt that I might have some influence with this low-down racketeer who's jigging around London. So they put you there until somebody pulled back that letter from Ranger and told her it was a joke. And if somebody hadn't pulled back that letter, shall I tell you what was going to happen, Cora? They were going to slice off your nut.'

She gaped at him.

'Me?' she squeaked.

He nodded rather gravely. 'Yes, they were going to kill you, take off your head, kid, and send it to me as a sort of present.'

She smiled scornfully.

'And take that laff off your voice, kid. They'd have done it. And that's only half of it. Now will you be good and quit whinin'?'

But she was boiling with rage. 'For that dam' little stenographer—say, what do you know about that, Kerky! And you sittin' around and talkin' about it as though...'

'I've finished talking about it, angel-face,' said Kerky, 'and you've finished talking about it. I know just how you're feelin', but you don't know how I'm feelin', because I don't open my trap as wide as you. Something's going to happen sooner than you think—they're not going to get away with that, no, ma'am! I'm short on ideas for the minute, but one'll strike me, and then I'll talk to this guy in a way he'll understand.'

'I'd like to have you get that girl,' she said savagely.

Kerky smiled.

'Wait,' he said significantly.

But something happened next morning, and was reported in the afternoon newspapers, which put the matter of Leslie Ranger entirely out of his mind.

Almost everybody knew Cuthbert Drood. He had an international reputation as a big-game shot, a world traveller, an excellent raconteur, and a man whose courage was guaranteed by the highest decoration that chivalry can offer—the Victoria Cross.

Cuthbert Drood was one of the few colonels in the world who called himself 'Mr.

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