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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
Edgar Wallace's "The Strange Countess" delves into the murky depths of ambition, deception, and the intricacies of human relationships within a vibrant early 20th-century London backdrop. Wallace employs a gripping narrative style, combining elements of crime fiction and mystery with sharp, dynamic prose that reflects the pulse of a society in transition. The novel's exploration of social class, identity, and the juxtaposition of charm and menace is set against the thrilling literary context of the interwar period, revealing the darker undercurrents of an era marked by both hope and disillusionment. As a prolific British writer known for his contributions to crime and thriller genres, Edgar Wallace drew on a rich tapestry of experience as a journalist, playwright, and novelist. His background in the bustling streets of London, coupled with his incisive understanding of human nature, enables him to craft compelling narratives that resonate deeply with readers. This wealth of life experiences informs "The Strange Countess," where themes of moral ambiguity and the psychological underpinnings of ambition take center stage. For any enthusiast of classic crime literature or those intrigued by the complexities of character and society, "The Strange Countess" is a must-read. Wallace's masterful storytelling pulls the reader into a world where every action holds weight and every character harbors secrets. This novel not only entertains but also invites reflection on the human condition and the choices that shape our destinies. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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The Strange Countess
Table of Contents
Introduction
When respectability hardens into an alluring mask, The Strange Countess turns the chase for truth into a duel between social power and private terror, where whispered threats unsettle drawing rooms, watchful eyes shadow dim corridors, and the fragile boundaries between protection and exploitation blur until the urge to conceal, the need to survive, and the stubborn pull of justice collide, forcing investigators, bystanders, and the threatened alike to reckon with what a title can hide, what a reputation can purchase, and what courage must risk when appearances grow strange and danger insists on being seen.
Edgar Wallace, one of the most widely read British crime writers of the early twentieth century, crafted The Strange Countess as a taut mystery-thriller situated within the traditions of popular interwar suspense. First published in the 1920s, it aligns with Wallace’s prolific output of brisk, high-stakes narratives that move between the drawing rooms of the well-to-do and the shadowed haunts of criminal enterprise. Set against British society and its hierarchies, the novel exemplifies the period’s fascination with the collision of privilege and peril, offering readers a story that is simultaneously urbane and unsettling, modern in tempo yet steeped in atmospheric unease.
Without venturing beyond the premise, the novel orbits an enigmatic noblewoman whose influence and inscrutable poise cast a long, disquieting shadow. An imperiled figure—drawn, by accident or design, into the countess’s gravity—becomes the catalyst for official attention and mounting suspense. From there, separate threads of inquiry and suspicion converge, pulling the narrative through genteel salons and less reputable precincts where money, secrets, and silence trade hands. The result is an experience of tightening dread and curiosity rather than simple shock, built on incremental revelations that challenge first impressions while preserving the larger mystery that gives the tale its haunting momentum.
Readers encounter a voice and rhythm that bear Wallace’s journalistic imprint: scenes arrive quickly, conversations snap, and chapters often close at moments of poised uncertainty. The mood balances sophistication with menace, letting glamour and threat glint off one another. Wallace’s craft favors economy over ornament, and the effect is a clipped, cinematic flow that keeps attention trained on the next turn. Though never starkly procedural, the book draws energy from methodical probing and the steady pressure of surveillance, all tempered by shrewd touches of wit and a relish for the theatrical flourish that defined much of Britain’s popular crime fiction during this era.
At its core, The Strange Countess examines how status can obscure motive and how fear thrives in the spaces created by deference. The story weighs the credibility of institutions against the ingenuity of those bent on evasion, testing whether formal authority can pierce cultivated ambiguity. It also explores the uneasy fit between public persona and private intent, a theme that lends the novel its lingering chill. Questions of vulnerability—especially the precarious position of those without power navigating rooms where power is assumed—resonate beneath the suspense, as do reflections on loyalty, perception, and the moral cost of seeing clearly in a world invested in disguise.
These concerns make the book strikingly pertinent today. Readers accustomed to debates about image management, institutional trust, and hidden abuses will recognize the mechanisms by which charm or pedigree can hide coercion. The narrative invites reflection on the difference between protection and control, and on the courage required to resist pressures that masquerade as benevolence. Beyond its thrills, the novel prompts an ethical curiosity: how do we decide whom to believe, and what risks do we accept in order to challenge a convenient story? In that sense, it offers both entertainment and a sharpened lens for examining contemporary power.
Approached as an introduction to Wallace, The Strange Countess demonstrates how a classic-era thriller can deliver pace without sacrificing atmosphere, and mystery without forfeiting emotional complexity. It promises a reading experience shaped by carefully ratcheted tension, crisp staging, and the eerie poise of a central figure whose very presence refracts every clue. For newcomers and long-time admirers of early twentieth-century crime fiction, it stands as an accessible, compelling example of why these stories endure: they dramatize the peril of mistaking polish for virtue, and they reward patient attention with the steady illumination of what lies, at last, behind the mask.
Synopsis
The Strange Countess opens in London, where a capable but financially pressed young woman becomes the target of unsettling telephone calls warning that she will soon die. A sudden brush with danger suggests the threats are real, drawing the attention of Scotland Yard. Public curiosity and police concern converge, and the incident unexpectedly brings her to the notice of a reclusive aristocrat known simply as the Countess. Offered a position as companion at the Countess’s country home, she hesitates but accepts for the security it promises. With this decision, the setting shifts from urban bustle to a secluded estate where older secrets seem to press in.
At the estate, the household proves strict, formal, and filled with oblique tensions. The Countess maintains precise routines and imposes curious restrictions, while servants behave with a guarded deference that hints at long-standing anxieties. The new companion observes locked doors, irregular comings and goings, and a muted rivalry among those who depend on the Countess’s favor. At times the mistress is gracious and confiding; at others, cool and dismissive. The young woman’s duties draw her into the private rhythms of the house, and she senses that her presence serves a purpose not fully explained, as if she were a piece in a larger design.
Meanwhile, a methodical Scotland Yard investigator pursues the source of the threats. He links recent events to an older, unresolved case involving the death of a relative of the Countess and to rumors surrounding an heir whose status once provoked legal disputes. The trail leads from London’s streets to institutional corridors, where an unstable figure claims to possess knowledge about the warning calls. Records suggest someone is manipulating official channels while concealing their own identity. Through interviews, surveillance, and incremental discoveries, the investigator develops a theory that the danger to the young woman is entangled with the Countess’s past and the fortunes of her house.
Life within the estate grows increasingly strange. The companion is told to avoid certain corridors and to ignore nocturnal sounds. She glimpses a shadowy figure near a wing that appears barricaded, and she encounters a confidant among the household—someone sympathetic yet not fully trustworthy. The Countess alternates between protectiveness and veiled menace, hinting at family disgraces that must remain undisclosed. Letters arrive without signatures; a portrait is removed from a gallery. The atmosphere becomes a puzzle of half-truths, in which kindness may mask coercion and loyalty may hide fear. The young woman weighs her livelihood against a rising intuition that she has been placed in harm’s way.
Threats escalate into action. An apparent accident almost claims the companion’s life, and a second incident is narrowly averted. Patterns emerge that echo earlier tragedies associated with the estate. The investigator uncovers financial motives involving inheritance, trusts, and the legitimacy of claims on the Countess’s wealth. A trigger clause in a will, an annuity tied to a specific lineage, and the presence of a potential claimant all give shape to a conspiracy that needs the young woman either removed or controlled. The circle of suspects widens to include a discreet solicitor, a watchful steward, and visitors whose attentions arrive just when scrutiny intensifies.
Through patient inquiry, a tangled backstory takes form. Years before, a marriage was concealed, a child’s identity obscured, and official records adjusted to avert scandal. Transfers between guardians, travel under assumed names, and the ambiguous status of a person confined to an institution have left gaps that an ambitious mind could exploit. Fragments of correspondence and testimony suggest that the Countess’s power depends on maintaining uncertainty about who is entitled to her protection—and to her fortune. A ruthless associate appears to act as the hidden hand, arranging intimidation while keeping the principal insulated, and an old grievance resurfaces under a new guise.
The investigator prepares a controlled confrontation, using the companion’s routine as bait while surrounding her with unseen safeguards. The household’s equilibrium begins to falter: loyalties shift, secrets are traded, and the Countess wavers between candor and reserve. A clandestine meeting is arranged, purportedly to trade information for silence, but the exchange erupts into violence that exposes both desperation and planning. In darkened corridors and a shuttered library, an attempt to erase a key witness is thwarted at the last moment. The intervention yields concrete evidence, and the network of complicity becomes visible, though the mastermind’s identity remains just beyond open accusation.
In the climactic sequence, careful cross-checking of records and testimonies clarifies the roles of each participant. The bizarre phone calls and staged apparitions are traced to a calculated scheme designed to intimidate, isolate, and force decisions favorable to a single outcome. The Countess emerges as a complex figure—both an architect and a captive of her past, bound by social expectations and personal fears. The true position of the threatened young woman within the estate’s contested history is established, and the prime mover behind the violence is unmasked. Legal steps and police action follow, ensuring accountability without lingering on sensational revelation.
The resolution restores order to the estate and closes the disputes that enabled coercion and deceit. The companion leaves the ordeal with security and clarity about her identity and prospects. The investigator reflects on how secrecy, pride, and the pressure to preserve appearances can distort judgment and invite crime. The novel’s central message emphasizes that truth, once pursued with patience and corroborated by evidence, can unwind even the most carefully staged deception. By moving from urban threat to rural confinement and back to public reckoning, The Strange Countess presents a tightly interwoven tale of inheritance, façade, and the costs of power withheld or misused.
Historical Context
Edgar Wallace sets The Strange Countess in interwar England, primarily in London and the surrounding home counties, a milieu marked by the immediate aftermath of the First World War. The cityscape is one of electric streetlighting, ever-busier omnibus routes, and swelling suburbs, but also of lingering wartime austerity. New Scotland Yard on the Victoria Embankment and Bow Street Magistrates Court anchor the world of official justice, while boarding houses, hotels, and aristocratic townhouses stage encounters across class lines. Telephones, taxicabs, and motorcars stitch together city and country, allowing threats and secrets to travel quickly. The atmosphere is unsettled: prosperity is uneven, hierarchies are under pressure, and private scandal readily spills into public scrutiny.
The Great War (1914–1918) reshaped Britain: around 887,000 British servicemen died, and millions returned changed by combat. Demobilization in 1919–1920 flooded the labor market; unemployment peaked at over 2 million in 1921. The 1919 Housing and Town Planning Act (the Addison Act) sought to build hundreds of thousands of council houses, revealing both social need and state ambition. These facts inform the novel’s background of insecurity and social flux. Wallace’s characters often include veterans, widows, and those displaced by war, and the pervasive unease of the early 1920s underwrites motives such as desperation, opportunism, and the urge to conceal wartime or postwar pasts that threaten respectability.
Modern policing’s expansion frames the book’s investigative world. Scotland Yard’s Criminal Investigation Department professionalized under Commissioners like Sir Edward Henry (1903–1918), who championed fingerprinting; the Stratton brothers case (1905) produced Britain’s first murder conviction based largely on fingerprints. The Flying Squad, formed in 1919, pioneered mobile responses to serious crime. Telephones and centralized records improved coordination, while the 1912 Judges Rules formalized interrogation procedures. Wallace, a former crime reporter, mirrors this procedural texture: detectives in his fiction exploit files, forensics, and rapid mobility, but face criminals equally adept at using motorcars, aliases, and telephone calls. The cat-and-mouse dynamic reflects a real contest between a modernizing state and an adaptive underworld.
Women’s expanded public roles shape the novel’s social fabric. The Representation of the People Act 1918 enfranchised many women over 30; the Equal Franchise Act 1928 equalized the voting age at 21. The Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 opened professions and juries, and the 1923 Matrimonial Causes Act eased divorce asymmetries. By the 1921 census, women occupied growing numbers of clerical and service jobs, including secretaries and telephone operators. Wallace often centers a working woman endangered by coercion or blackmail, echoing contemporary anxieties about gendered vulnerability in workplaces and lodging houses. The combination of new autonomy and persistent patriarchal control gives the book’s threats—and its resilient female agency—historical credibility.
The erosion of aristocratic power is a crucial backdrop to a plot featuring titled figures. Estate duty, introduced in 1894, rose sharply in the 1910s; by 1919 the top rate reached roughly 40 percent. Postwar inflation and agricultural depression forced sales: between 1918 and the mid-1920s, thousands of estates were broken up, and historians estimate about 1,200 country houses were lost between 1900 and 1955. Domestic service declined markedly by the 1921 census. Wallace exploits this landscape of diminishing fortunes: old titles confront liquidity crises, heirship disputes, and the need to monetize prestige. The figure of a countess navigating a fragile household reflects how financial strain, inheritance law, and social display could breed secrecy, dependency, and crime.
Mass media and sensational crime culture fueled public fascination with cases that Wallace drew upon as a journalist and storyteller. The Daily Mail (founded 1896) and other popular papers normalized banner headlines and crime serials; by the 1920s, millions followed investigations daily. High-profile cases—Dr. Crippen (1910), the Brides in the Bath murders (1915), Thompson-Bywaters (1922), and the Crumbles murder of Emily Kaye (1924)—spotlit domestic betrayal, forged identities, and forensic detection. These narratives trained readers to parse clues and motives. The Strange Countess reflects that shared repertoire: anonymous threats, blackmail, and the interplay of public rumor and private reputation unfold in a media-saturated culture where exposure is as dangerous as the crime itself.
Debates over mental health law and asylum power deeply inform the novel’s atmosphere of coercion and confinement. The Lunacy Act 1890 and the Mental Deficiency Act 1913 created expansive regimes of certification and institutionalization, overseen by the Board of Control for Lunacy and Mental Deficiency (est. 1913). By the mid-1920s, more than 100,000 people in England and Wales were in asylums, and critics warned that familial, medical, or administrative interests could too easily curtail liberty, especially for women and the socially marginal. Public concern culminated in the Royal Commission on Lunacy and Mental Disorder (1924–1926), whose recommendations led to the Mental Treatment Act 1930, promoting voluntary treatment and softening custodial language. Wallace’s plotting resonates with these controversies: threats of wrongful certification, the use of medical authority to silence inconvenient persons, and the opaque bureaucracies of private and public institutions become instruments of menace. The book’s reliance on sealed records, guardianship arrangements, and sequestered patients reflects both real legal mechanisms and contemporary headlines about asylum abuses and contested detentions. This nexus of medicine, law, and property—where a signature could mean disappearance—provides one of the story’s most historically grounded sources of dread.
As social and political critique, the book exposes the brittleness of interwar respectability. It scrutinizes aristocratic entitlement under fiscal and moral stress, showing how titles can mask insolvency and predation. It questions the reach of state and quasi-state powers—police, private detectives, doctors—when procedure shades into coercion. It highlights gendered peril within modern workplaces and lodging economies, where telephone and anonymity facilitate intimidation. And it stages the media’s double edge: scrutiny deters wrongdoing yet also weaponizes scandal. In dramatizing these pressures, The Strange Countess indicts a system that protects status more readily than the vulnerable, revealing how class divides and institutional loopholes enable quiet, plausible injustices.
The Strange Countess
Lois Margeritta Reddle sat on the edge of her bed, a thick and heavy cup of pallid tea in one hand, a letter in the other. The tea was too sweet, the bread was cut generously even as it was buttered economically, but she was so completely absorbed in the letter that she forgot the weakness of Lizzy Smith as a caterer.
The note was headed with a gilt crest and the paper was thick and slightly perfumed.
307 Chester Square, S.W.
The Countess of Moron[1] is pleased to learn that
Miss Reddle will take up her duties as resident
secretary on Monday, the 17th. Miss Reddle is assured
of a comfortable position, with ample opportunities
for recreation.
The door was thrust open and the red and shining face of Lizzy was thrust in.
"Bathroom's empty," she said briefly. "Better take your own soap—you can see through the bit that's left. There's one dry towel and one half-dry. What's the letter?"
"It is from my countess—I start on Monday."
Lizzy pulled a wry face.
"Sleep in, of course? That means I've got to get somebody to share these digs. Last girl who slept here snored. I will say one thing about you, Lois, you don't snore."
Lois' eyes twinkled, the sensitive mouth curved for a second in the ghost of a smile.
"Well, you can't say that I haven't looked after you," said Lizzy with satisfaction. "I'm the best manager you've ever roomed with, I'll bet. I've done the shopping and cooked and everything—you'll admit that?"
Lois slipped her arm round the girl and kissed her homely face.
"You've been a darling," she said, "and in many ways I'm sorry I'm going. But, Lizzy, I've tried hard to move on all my life. From the National School in Leeds to that little cash desk at Roopers, and from Roopers to the Drug Stores, and then to the great lawyers——"
"Great!" exclaimed the scornful Lizzy. "Old Shaddles great! Why, the mean old devil wouldn't give me a half-crown rise at Christmas, and I've been punching the alphabet five years for him! Kid, you'll marry into society. That countess is a she-*dragon, but she's rich, and you're sure to meet swells—go and have your annual while I fry the eggs. Is it going to rain?" Lois was rubbing her white, rounded arm, gingerly passing her palm over the pink, star-shaped scar just above her elbow. It was Lizzy's faith that whenever the scar irritated, rain was in the offing.
"You'll have to have that electrocuted, or whatever the word is," said the snub-nosed girl when the other shook her head. "Sleeves are about as fashionable nowadays as crinolines."
From the bathroom Lois heard her companion bustling about the little kitchen, and, mingled with the splutter and crackle of frying eggs, came shrilly the sound of the newest fox-trot as Lizzy whistled it unerringly.
They had shared the third floor in Charlotte Street since the day she had come to London. Lois was an orphan; she could not remember her father, who had died when she was little more than a baby, and only dimly recalled the pleasant, matronly woman who had fussed over her in the rough and humble days of her early schooling. She had passed to the care of a vague aunt who was interested in nothing except the many diseases from which she imagined she suffered. And then the aunt had died, despite her arrays of medicine bottles, or possibly because of them, and Lois had gone into her first lodging.
"Anyway, the countess will like your classy talk," said Lizzy, as the radiant girl came into the kitchen. She had evidently been thinking over the new appointment.
"I don't believe I talk classily!" said Lois good-humouredly.
Lizzy turned out the eggs from the frying-pan with a dexterous flick.
"I'll bet that's what got him," she said significantly, and the girl flushed.
"I wish you wouldn't talk about this wretched young man as though he were a god," she said shortly.
Nothing squashed Lizzy Smith. She wiped her moist forehead with the back of her hand, pitched the frying-pan into the sink and sat down in one concerted motion.
"He's not common, like some of these pickers-up," she said reminiscently, "he's class, if you like! He thanked me like a lady, and never said a word that couldn't have been printed on the front page of the Baptist Herald. When I turned up without you, he was disappointed. And mind you, it was no compliment to me when he looked down his nose and said: 'Didn't you bring her?'"
"These eggs are burnt," said Lois.
"And a gentleman," continued the steadfast Lizzy. "Got his own car. And the hours he spends walking up and down Bedford Row just, so to speak, to get a glimpse of you, would melt a heart of stone."
"Mine is brass," said Lois with a smile. "And really, Elizabetta, you're ridiculous."
"You're the first person that's called me Elizabetta since I was christened," remarked the stenographer calmly, "but even that doesn't change the subject so far as I am concerned. Mr. Dorn——"
"This tea tastes like logwood," interrupted the girl maliciously, and Lizzy was sufficiently human to be pained.
"Did you hear old Mackenzie last night?" she asked, and when Lois shook her head: "He was playing that dreamy bit from the Tales of Hoggenheim—Hoffmann is it? All these Jewish names are the same to me. I can't understand a Scotsman playing on a fiddle; I thought they only played bagpipes."
"He plays beautifully," said Lois. "Sometimes, but only rarely, the music comes into my dreams."
Lizzy snorted.
"The middle of the night's no time to play anything," she said emphatically. "He may be our landlord, but we're entitled to sleep. And he's crazy, anyway."
"It is a nice kind of craziness," soothed Lois, "and he's a dear old man." Lizzy sniffed.
"There's a time for everything," she said vaguely, and, getting up, took a third cup and saucer from the dresser, banged it on the table, filled it with tea and splashed milk recklessly into the dark brown liquid.
"It's your turn to take it down to him," she said, "and you might drop a hint to him that the only kind of foreign music I like is 'Night Time in Italy.'"
It was their practice every morning to take a cup of tea down to the old man who occupied the floor below, and who, in addition to being their landlord, had been a very good friend to the two girls. The rent they paid, remembering the central position which the house occupied and the popularity of this quarter of London with foreigners who were willing to pay almost any figure for accommodation in the Italian quarter, was microscopic.
Lois carried the cup down the stairs and knocked at one of the two doors on the next landing. There was the sound of shuffling feet on the bare floor, the door opened, and Rab Mackenzie beamed benevolently over his horn-rimmed spectacles at the fair apparition.
"Thank you, thank you very much, Miss Reddle," he said eagerly, as he took the cup from her hand. "Will you no' walk round? I've got my old fiddle back. Did I disturb you last night?"
"No, I'm sorry I didn't hear you," said Lois, as she put the cup on the well-scrubbed top of the bare table.
The room, scrupulously clean, and furnished only with essentials, was an appropriate setting for the little old man in his baggy trousers, his scarlet slippers and black velvet coat. The clean-shaven face was lined and furrowed, but the pale blue eyes that showed beneath the shaggy eyebrows were alive.
He took up the violin which lay on the sideboard with a gentle, tender touch.
"Music is a grand profession," he said, "if you can give your time to it. But the stage is damnable! Never go on the stage, young lady. Keep you on the right side of the footlights. Those stage people are queer, insincere folk." He nodded emphatically and went on: "I used to sit down in the deep orchestra well and watch her little toes twisting. She was a bonny girl. Not much older than you, and haughty, like stage folks are. And how I got up my courage to ask her to wed me I never understood." He sighed heavily. "Ah, well! I'd rather live in a fool's paradise than no paradise at all, and for two years——"
He shook his head. "She was a bonny girl, but she had the criminal mind. Some lassies are like that. They've just no conscience and no remorse. And if you've no conscience and no remorse and no sense of values, why, there's nothing you wouldn't do from murder downwards."
It was not the first time Lois had heard these rambling and disjointed references to a mysterious woman, these admonitions to avoid the stage, but it was the first time that he had made a reference to the criminal mind.
"Women are funny creatures, Mr. Mackenzie," she said, humouring him.
He nodded.
"Aye, they are," he said simply. "But, generally speaking, they're superior to most men. I thank ye for the tea, Miss Reddle."
She went upstairs to find Lizzy struggling into her coat.
"Well, did he warn you off the boards?" asked Miss Smith, as she strolled to the little mirror and dabbed her nose untidily with powder. "I'll bet he did! I told him yesterday that I was going into a beauty chorus, and he nearly had a fit."
"You shouldn't tease the poor old man," said Lois.
"He ought to have more sense," said Lizzy scornfully. "Beauty chorus! Hasn't he got eyes?"
The Strange CountessChapter Two
They went off to the office together, walking through the Bloomsbury squares, and only once did Lois look round apprehensively for her unwelcome cavalier. Happily he was not in sight.
"About that scar on your arm," said Lizzy, when they were crossing Theobalds Road. "I know a perfectly posh[2] place in South Moulton Street where they take away scars. I thought of going there to have a face treatment. The managing clerk suggested it—Lois, that fellow is getting so fresh he ought to be kept on ice. And him forty-eight with a grown-up family!"
Two hours later, Mr. Oliver Shaddles picked up some documents from the table, read through with quick and skilful eyes, rubbed the grey stubble on his unshaven chin irritably, and glared out upon Bedford Row.
He turned towards the little bell-push on his table, hesitated a second, then pressed it.
"Miss Reddle!" he snapped to the clerk who answered his summons with haste.
Again he examined the sheet of foolscap, and was still reading when the door opened and Lois Reddle came in.
Lois was a little above medium height, and by reason of her slimness seemed taller than she was. She was dressed in the severe black which the firm of Shaddles & Soan imposed upon all their feminine employees. Mr. Shaddles had reached the age, if he had ever been at any other, when beauty had no significance. That Lois Reddle had a certain ethereal loveliness which was all her own might be true, but to the lawyer she was a girl clerk who received thirty-five well-grudged shillings every week of her life, minus the cost of her insurance.
"You go down to Telsbury."
He had a minatory manner, and invariably prefaced his remarks with the accusative pronoun. "You'll get there in an hour and a half. Take those two affidavits to the woman Desmond, and get her to sign the transfer form. The car's there——"
"I think Mr. Dorling had it——" she began.
"The car's there," he said obstinately. "You'll have a dry trip, and you ought to be thankful for the opportunity of a breath of fresh air. Here, take this," as she was going out with the foolscap. It was a little slip of paper. "It is the Home Office order—use your senses, girl! How do you think you'll get into the gaol without that? And tell that woman Desmond—— Anyway, off you go."
Lois went out and closed the door behind her. The four faded, middle-aged clerks, sitting at their high desks, did not so much as look up, but the snub-nosed girl with the oily face, who had been pounding a typewriter, jerked her head round.
"You're going to Telsbury, by the so-called car?" she asked. "I thought he'd send you. That old devil's so mean that he wouldn't pay his fare to heaven! The juggernaut will kill somebody one of these days," she added darkly, "you mark my words!"
Attached to the firm of Shaddles & Soan was a dilapidated motor-car that had seen its best time in pre-war days. It was housed in a near-by garage which, being a property under Mr. Shaddles' direction as trustee, exacted no rent for the care of the machine, which he had bought for a negligible sum at the sale of a bankrupt's effects. It was a Ford, and every member of the staff was supposed to be able to drive it. It carried Mr. Shaddles to the Courts of Justice, it took his clerks on errands, and it figured prominently in all bills of cost. It was, in many ways, a very paying scheme.
"Ain't you glad you're going?" asked Lizzy enviously. "Lord! If I could get out of this dusty hole! Maybe you'll meet your fate?"
Lois frowned.
"My what?"
"Your fate," said Elizabetta, unabashed. "I spotted him out of the window this morning—that fellow is certainly potty about you!"
A cold light of disfavour was in the eyes of Lois, but Lizzy was not easily squashed. "There's nothing in that," she said. "Why, there used to be a young man who waited for me for hours—in the rain too. It turned out that he wasn't right in his head, either."
Lois laughed softly as she wrapped a gaily coloured scarf about her throat and pulled on her gloves. Suddenly her smile vanished.
"I hate Telsbury; I hate all prisons. They give me the creeps. I am glad I'm leaving Mr. Shaddles."
"Don't call him 'Mister,'" said the other. "It is paying him a compliment."
The car stood at the door, as Mr. Shaddles had suggested, an ancient and ugly machine. The day was fair and warm, and once clear of the London traffic the sun shone brightly and she shook off the depression which had lain upon her like a cloud all that morning. As she sent the car spinning out of Bedford Row she glanced round instinctively for some sign of the man to whom Lizzy had made so unflattering a reference, and whose constant and unswerving devotion was one of the principal embarrassments of her life. But he was nowhere in sight, and he passed out of her mind, as, clear of London, she turned from the main road and slowed her car along one of the twisting lanes that ran parallel with the post route and gave one who loved the country and the green hedgerows a more entranced vision than the high road would have given her.
Seven miles short of Telsbury she brought the car back to the main thoroughfare, and spun, at a speed which she uneasily recognised as excessive, on to the tarred highway. Even as she came clear of the high hedges she heard the warning croak of a motor-horn, and jammed on her brakes. The little machine skidded out into the road. Too late, she released the brakes and thrust frantically at the accelerator. She saw the bonnet of a long, black car coming straight towards her, felt rather than heard the exclamation of its driver.
"Crash!"
In that second she recognised the driver.
"Say it!"
The girl, gripping the steering-wheel of her ancient Ford, stared defiantly across a broken wind-screen, but Michael Dorn did not accept the challenge. Instead, he put his gear into reverse, preparatory to withdrawing his running-board from the affectionate embrace of the other guard. He did this with a manner of gentle forbearance which was almost offensive.
"Say it!" she said. "Say something violent or vulgar! It is far better to have things out than to let bad words go jumping around inside!"
Grey eyes need black lashes to be seen at best advantage, he thought; and she had one of those thinnish noses that he admired in women. He rather liked her chin, and, since it was raised aggressively, he had a fair view of a perfect throat. It struck him as being extremely perfect in spite of the red and yellow and green silk scarf that was lightly knotted about. She was neatly if poorly dressed.
"Nothing jumps around inside me except my heart," he said, "and, at the moment, that is slipping back from my mouth. I don't like your necktie."
She looked down at the offending garment and frowned.
"You have no right to run into me because you disapprove of my scarf," she said coldly. "Will you please disengage your strange machine from mine? I hope you are insured."
He jerked his car back, there was a sound of ripping tin, a crack and a shiver of glass, and he was free. Then:
"You came out of a side road at forty miles an hour—you'd have turned over certain, only I was there to catch you," he said half-apologetically. "I hope you aren't hurt?"
She shook her head.
"I am not," she said, "but I think my employer will be when he sees the wreckage. Anyway, your end is served, Mr. Dorn, you have made my acquaintance."
He started and went a shade red.
"You don't imagine that I manœuvred this collision with the idea of getting an introduction, do you?" he almost gasped, and was thunderstruck when the girl with the grave eyes nodded.
"You have been following me for months," she said quietly. "You even took the trouble to make up to a girl in Mr. Shaddles' office in order to arrange a meeting. I have seen you shadowing me on my way home—once you took the same 'bus—and on the only occasion I have been to a dance this year I found you in the vestibule."
Michael Dorn fiddled with the steering wheel, momentarily speechless. She was serious now, all the banter and quiet merriment in her voice had passed. Those wonderful eyes of hers were regarding him with a certain gentle reproach that was hard to endure.
