The Great Reward
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Edgar Wallace
Edgar Wallace (1875–1932) was one of the most popular and prolific authors of his era. His hundred-odd books, including the groundbreaking Four Just Men series and the African adventures of Commissioner Sanders and Lieutenant Bones, have sold over fifty million copies around the world. He is best remembered today for his thrillers and for the original version of King Kong, which was revised and filmed after his death.
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The Great Reward - Edgar Wallace
Edgar Wallace
The Great Reward
Warsaw 2018
Contents
Chapter I. A Masterful Maiden
Chapter II.A Sweet Disposition
Chapter III. Say It With Flowers
Chapter IV. Wanted for Felony
Chapter V. A Big Beam of Sunlight
Chapter VI. Suicide Manor and Dead Man's Pool
Chapter VII. Let Him Perish
Chapter VIII. The Animated Clothes Basket
Chapter IX. The Down, Down, Down Girl
Chapter X. You Must Return Them
Chapter XI. Poor Detectives
Chapter XII. Our Mr. Jones
Chapter XIII. A Jones In The Family
I. A MASTERFUL MAIDEN
WHY is it, Jordan,
asked Josephine, pinching her lips thoughtfully, somewhat to the detriment of articulation, that so many men desert their wives?
She frowned at the handbills pinned to the cretonne curtains of the dining-room; the portraits which adorned the majority of the slips frowned back. They were frowning men, foreordained to steal guiltily from their slumbering responsibilities and to invoke the energies of the law.
Jordan said nothing. In the first place, he was not interested in Josephine’s grisly quest, and had long since ceased to protest against her practice of using the dining-room curtains as a rogue’s gallery. Accustomed now to the display of police notices concerning deserters, larcenists, burglars, and house thieves, he could meet even the portrait of an occasional murderer at breakfast without turning a hair. In the second place–
Jordan, Jordan! You’re asleep!
Jordan Yeoman rumpled his grey hair, guiltily.
I wasn’t asleep, Josephine–honestly I heard you–every word. You said something about wives getting their deserts.
I said nothing of the kind,
said his daughter, severely. "You were asleep!"
Perhaps I was,
admitted Mr. Yeoman, and yawned. Where is Georgina?
Josephine tilted her chin resolutely. Jordan must be cured of this habit of asking mechanical questions. He was not a bit concerned in the whereabouts of Georgina, or, if he was, he knew that, ink-bespattered and wild of hair, she was sitting in the garret wrestling with her new play. Georgina began writing a new play every week. Sometimes it was completed. More often than not it went the way of other futilities.
Where is Helen?
asked Jordan, patiently persistent, as he settled himself to a position of greater comfort in the deep chair.
Josephine did not answer. She knew perfectly well that he had been talking with Helen in the garden half an hour before. She had both seen and heard, for Helen, in her prim way, had been instructing the bored Jordan in the chemistry of farming–Helen came out first in the agricultural class at St. Margaret’s.
Josephine gazed absently upon the portrait gallery. Unwillingly she confessed that the collection was neither a thrilling nor a promising one. The rewards offered were fairly paltry, and the men of whom the police sought information were curiously vapid.
Josephine had this weakness; that she believed a day would dawn when there would walk into her ken a greatly desired criminal, for whose arrest a fabulous reward was offered. She pictured him as a small man, her inferior in physical strength. Between other rehearsals she had practiced, with Helen’s aid, the exact procedure she would follow.
Helen, whose sporting instincts had not been developed in the course of her stay at St. Margaret’s, entered a vigorous protest after the third practice.
"Really, father, I should like to oblige Josephine, but do think she is inconsiderate if she expects me to be knelt upon three times a day, and be mauled and gagged with an awful dish-cloth every time I come into the kitchen! Besides, it hurts–kneeling on one, I mean."
Where does she kneel, ducky?
asked Jordan, indiscreetly.
I’d rather not say, father,
said Helen, in a tone which did not encourage further inquiry.
Josephine came to the table, pulled out a rush-seated chair, and with an effort addressed herself to the business of account-keeping.
It was a pleasant room, this in which they were, the prettiest in Crab Apple Farm. Spacious, airy, sweet-smelling, the men and women who had chosen its furnishings had been dead these two hundred years. Through the big open window you saw the corner of a garden, splashes of crimson and claret, dapplings of gold and blue. Beyond were the sloping meadows, and a flash of silver where the river ran.
Josephine was pretty, though nobody had told her so, except Georgina. But she insensibly discounted Georgina’s praise, for Georgie was at heart a poet, and given to extravagance of speech.
Helen, who had taken
physiognomy as part of her science training at St. Margaret’s, said Josephine’s nose was too short and her chin too square. She did not think, either, that goldy-brown hair went
with the peculiar shade of grey in Josephine’s eyes.
Helen felt it was her duty to explain these shortcomings to her sister. Josephine laughed, kissed her, called her a snub-nosed reptile,
and dismissed her with a mince pie. Helen, who had studied hygiene at St. Margaret’s, knew exactly the effect of pastry upon the complexion, and dropped the pie into the pigsty, where it was greatly appreciated by a lady who had heard nothing of hygiene, but who knew that warm mince pie tasted good.
Though it was the month of June, a log fire smouldered in the great open fireplace, before which Jordan Yeoman nodded and dozed, whilst his capable daughter wrestled with corn and hay accounts.
Jordan, you’re a fug! I wonder you don’t roast. Jordan!
What the dickens do you want?
he growled. I’ve been up half the night with that infernal cow.
Josephine