The Man Who Bought London by Edgar Wallace Page A

these people,’ he stormed. He interviewed her in her little den, and she was palpably unprepared for social functions of any description, being in her dressing-gown.
    ‘My dear Hermann,’ she said, ‘don’t rave! I have a headache – it is a woman’s privilege.’
    ‘You always have headaches when I want you,’ he said sulkily.
    She did not look any too well. He wondered –
    ‘No,’ she answered his unspoken thought. ‘I noticed that the gas was turned on at the stove and off at the main, so I just turned it off at the stove, too.’
    ‘What do you mean?’ he asked roughly.
    She smiled.
    ‘I have always appreciated your gift – a stove in Sèvres ware must have cost a lot of money. When I lay down this afternoon the main was turned off – that I’ll swear. When I woke up, it was on, though why anybody should turn on the gas on a warm July afternoon, I can’t think.’
    ‘Martin –’ he began.
    ‘Martin didn’t touch it,’ she said. ‘I have asked him. Fortunately, no harm was done, because I had noticed the little tap was turned before I began to sleep. I am getting frightened, Hermann.’
    His face was ghastly pale, but he forced a smile.
    ‘Frightened, Vera – why?’ he asked in his friendliest tone.
    She shook her head at him slowly, her eyes never leaving his face.
    ‘It is getting so near the time,’ she said, ‘and I feel somehow that I cannot bear up against the strain of always fighting for my life.’
    ‘Rubbish!’ he cried genially. ‘Come along and see my people. Leete is one, Hubbard, one of the Federation directors, is another. Bolscombe hasn’t turned up. Why don’t you get rid of the worry of your money?’ he said with a show of solicitude. ‘Pool it with mine, as I suggested months ago. You’ll go mad if you don’t.’ He stopped short and eyed her curiously. ‘I think you’re a little mad now,’ he said slowly, and she shook her distress off and laughed.
    ‘Hermann, you’re the most versatile man I know,’ she said; ‘but so horribly unoriginal.’
    ‘Are you going out tonight?’
    He paused at the door to ask the question, and she nodded.
    ‘With your headache?’ he sneered.
    ‘To get rid of it,’ she replied.
    He went downstairs to his guests.
    ‘My sister is not very well,’ he said. ‘She’s rather depressed lately –?’
    Then occurred the devilish idea: that flash of inspiration to villainy which has sent men to the gallows and has tenanted Broadmoor with horrible gibing things that once were human. Ten days! said the brain of Hermann Zeberlieff. Do it now!
    With scarcely a pause he went on –
    ‘We’re all friends here, and I don’t mind telling you that she is worrying me – she has distinctly suicidal tendencies.’
    There was a murmur of commiseration.
    ‘I’ll just see how she is,’ he said; ‘and then we’ll start dinner.’
    ‘I thought I saw your sister standing at her window,’ said Leete, and added with a smirk: ‘I rather flattered myself that she was waving her hand to me.’
    Hermann looked at him in frank surprise. He knew that Vera hated Leete as intensely as a woman with fine instincts could hate a man. It would be an unsuspected weakness in her if she endeavoured to make friends with his associates; but it bore out all that the girl had said. She was frightened, was clutching at straws, even so unsavoury a straw as Leete.
    He walked carelessly from the room and mounted the stairs. He had in his heart neither fear nor remorse for the dreadful deed he contemplated. He did not go straight to where she was, but slipped into her bedroom, which communicated with the sitting room.
    He stepped stealthily, silently.
    By the side of the window was a long curtain-cord of silk. He drew a chair, stepped noiselessly upon it and severed the cord high up. He stepped down as noiselessly. He had three minutes to do the work. In three minutes’ time he would be with his guests smiling apologetically for his sister’s absence, by