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Title: Again the Ringer
Author: Wallace, Richard Horatio Edgar (1875-1932)
Date of first publication: 1929
Edition used as base for this ebook:
London: Hodder and Stoughton, undated
Date first posted: 22 September 2009
Date last updated: 17 June 2014
Faded Page ebook#20090908
This ebook was produced by:
Marcia Brooks, woodie4, D Alexander
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
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[Illustration: cover]
AGAIN THE RINGER
BY
EDGAR WALLACE
[Illustration: Publisher symbol]
HODDER AND STOUGHTON LTD
_Printed in Great Britain by
Wyman and Sons, Ltd., London Fakenham and Reading._
NOVELS BY
EDGAR WALLACE
_Red Aces
The India-Rubber Men
Again the Ringer
Again Sanders
The Flying Squad
The Double
Again the Three Just Men
The Forger
The Squeaker
The Man Who Knew
The Clue of the Twisted Candle
The Feathered Serpent
Terror Keep
The Ringer
The Traitor’s Gate
The Northing Tramp
The Brigand
The Joker
The Square Emerald
The Black Abbot
Sanders
The Door with Seven Locks
Penelope of the “Polyantha”
The Day of Uniting
We Shall See
The Yellow Snake
The Four Just Men
The Terrible People
The Three Just Men
The Mind of Mr. J. G. Reeder
The Gaunt Stranger
The Strange Countess
The Valley of Ghosts
Double Dan
The Sinister Man
The Green Archer
The Clue of the New Pin
The Crimson Circle
The Angel of Terror
The Law of the Four Just Men_
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LIMITED LONDON
TO
MY GENIAL AND BRILLIANT FRIEND
WALTER HACKETT
_CONTENTS_
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE MAN WITH THE RED BEARD 9
II. CASE OF THE HOME SECRETARY 23
III. THE MURDERER OF MANY NAMES 41
IV. A SERVANT OF WOMEN 63
V. THE TRIMMING OF PAUL LUMIÈRE 81
VI. THE BLACKMAIL BOOMERANG 99
VII. MISS BROWN’S £7,000 WINDFALL 117
VIII. THE END OF MR. BASH–THE BRUTAL 136
IX. THE COMPLETE VAMPIRE 154
X. THE SWISS HEAD WAITER 175
XI. THE ESCAPE OF MR. BLISS 195
XII. THE MAN WITH THE BEARD 212
XIII. THE ACCIDENTAL SNAPSHOT 231
XIV. THE SINISTER DR. LUTTEUR 248
XV. THE OBLIGING COBBLER 264
XVI. THE FORTUNE OF FORGERY 280
XVII. A “YARD” MAN KIDNAPPED 300
_CHAPTER I THE MAN WITH THE RED BEARD_
To the average reader the name of Miska Guild is associated with slight and
possibly amusing eccentricities. For example, he once went down Regent
Street at eleven o’clock at night at sixty miles an hour, crippled two
unfortunate pedestrians, and smashed a lamp standard and his car. The
charge that he was drunk failed, because indisputably he was sober when he
was dragged out of the wreckage, himself unhurt.
Nevertheless, an unsympathetic magistrate convicted, despite the conflict
of medical evidence. Miska Guild went to the Sessions with the best
advocates that money could buy and had the conviction quashed.
The inner theatrical set knew him as a giver of freakish dinner parties;
had an idea that he gave other parties even more freakish but less
descriptive. Once he went to Paris, and the French police most obligingly
hushed up a lurid incident as best they could.
They could not quite hush up the death of the pretty chorus-girl who was
found on the pavement outside the hotel, having fallen from a fifth-floor
window, but they were very helpful in explaining that she had mistaken the
French windows for the door of her sitting-room. Nobody at the inquiry
asked how she managed to climb the balcony.
The only person who evinced a passionate interest in the proceedings was
one Henry Arthur Milton, a fugitive from justice, who was staying at the
hotel–not as Henry Arthur Milton, certainly not as “The Ringer,” by which
title he was known; indeed, he bore no name by which the English police
could identify him as the best-wanted man in Europe.
Mr. Guild paid heavily for all the trouble he had caused divers police
officials and came back to London and to his magnificent flat in Carlton
House Terrace quite unabashed, even though some of the theatrical
celebrities with whom he was acquainted cut him dead whenever they met him;
even though the most unpleasant rumours surrounded his Paris trip.
He was a man of thirty, reputedly a millionaire three times over. It is
certain that he was very rich, and had the queerest ideas about what was
and what was not the most amusing method of passing time. Had the Paris
incident occurred in London neither his two nor his three millions would
have availed him, nor all the advocacy of the greatest lawyers averted the
most unpleasant consequences.
* * * * *
One bright November morning, when the sun rose in a clear blue sky and the
leafless trees of Green Park had a peculiar splendour of their own, the
second footman brought his breakfast to his bedside, and on the tray there
was a registered letter. The postmark was Paris, the envelope was marked
“Urgent and confidential; not to be opened by the secretary.”
Miska Guild sat up in bed, pushed back his long, yellowish hair from his
eyes, bleared for a moment at the envelope and tore it open with a groan.
There was a single sheet of paper, closely typewritten. It bore no address
and began without a conventional preamble:
_On October 18 you went to Paris, accompanied by a small party. In
that party was a girl called Ethel Seddings, who was quite unaware
of your character. She committed suicide in order to escape from
you. I am called The Ringer; my name is Henry Arthur Milton, and
Scotland Yard will furnish you with particulars of my past. As you
are a man of considerable property and may wish to have time to
make arrangements as to its disposal, I will give you a little
grace. At the end of a reasonable period I shall come to London and
kill you._
That was all the letter contained. Miska read it through; looked at the
back of the sheet for further inspiration; read it through again.
“Who the devil is The Ringer?” he asked.
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