Edgar Wallace

A King by Night

Warsaw 2018

Contents

I. THE GIRL FROM SACRAMENTO

II. THE LETTER

III. THE TRAILER

IV. THE MAN AT THE DOOR

V. MR. LOCKS

VI. MR. SELBY LOWE

VII. A VISIT TO A LAWYER

VIII. A DEAL IN DIAMONDS

IX. MEETING SELBY LOWE

X. THE DAGGER

XI. THE MAN IN THE PASSAGE

XII. THE LONG COAT

XIII. MURDER

XIV. THE MAN WITH THE RING

XV. THE DOCTOR MEETS THE TERROR

XVI. A ROAD INSPECTOR

XVII. THE SPY

XVIII. THE SEARCH

XIX. THE TRAMP

XX. A BREEZE

XXI. MR. SMITH AND HIS VISITORS

XXII. AN UNEXPECTED MEETING

XXIII. THE FORBIDDEN PHONE

XXIV. THE SOUP

XXV. EXIT THE NEW KITCHENMAID

XXVI. THE LETTER

XXVII. THE MAN ON THE QUAY

XXVIII. MR. FLEET RECEIVES TWO SHOCKS

XXIX. THE MAN WHO MADE NO MISTAKES

XXX. THE DOCTOR’S VISITOR

XXXI. MR. FLEET REVIVES

XXXII. THE LOST POISON

XXXIII. JUMA’S LAIR

XXXIV. THE CAGE

XXXV. ENTER JOHN BROMLEY

XXXVI. WHO IS MR. BROMLEY?

XXXVII. THE DETECTIVES

XXXVIII. MR. BROMLEY GOES TO THE GLASS FACTORY

XXXIX. THE DOCTOR’S STORY

XL. THE LISTENER-IN

XLI. BILL TAKES ACTION

XLII. PREPARING A DINNER

XLIII. THE STOLEN LETTER

XLIV. NEWS FROM BOBBY

XLV. MR BROMLEY REVEALS HIMSELF

XLVI. THE WHY OF BROMLEY

XLVII. NORMA TRAVELS

XLVIII. THE HOUSE WITH BARS

XLIX. MRS. WALTHAM’S HOUSE

L. THE OFFER

LI. A TALK WITH JENNINGS

LII. THE CHAINED MAN

LIII. NORMA’S ORDEAL

LIV. IN THE HOME OF JUMA

LV. THE MANUSCRIPTS

LVI. THE STORY OF STALMAN

LVII. THE CERTIFICATE

LVIII. THE GREY MAN

LIX. THE GOING AWAY

LX. THE CAPTURE

LXI. THE TRAMP

LXII. THE CHASE

LXIII. A BURGLARY IS ARRANGED

LXIV. JUMA

LXV. A PROPOSAL

LXVI. THE REVELATION

LXVII. THE STORY OF AL CLARKE

I. THE GIRL FROM SACRAMENTO

DR. ARNOLD EVERSHAM sat at his broad writing-table, his head resting on one long white hand, the other laid upon the open book beneath the table lamp. There was no other light in the room, but the lemon-coloured walls of his study glowed in the reflected rays that were thrown from the white blotting-pad to the ceiling and back again. The room was simply furnished; a deep-blue carpet covered the centre of the parquet floor, and across one wall stretched a dwarf book-case of dark wood; a chintz-covered davenport, a big arm-chair drawn up by the flower-filled fire-place, two other chairs and the writing-table constituted the bulk. A few Medici prints in dark frames hung on the walls–a Corot, a Terbosche, a Van Mere, and da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.

He looked up as somebody knocked softly on the door, and, so looking, his brows met. He was a particularly good-looking man of fifty-five, slightly grey at the temples. His thin, intellectual face showed none of the tell-tale markings that characterise men of his years, and his grave, deep-set eyes held all the sparkle and fire of youth.

“Come in,” he said.

A serving-maid in grey livery came silently into the room.

“There is a young lady to see you, sir.”

He took the card from the silver plate she carried, and read the name.

“Miss Gwendda Guildford… Sacramento,” he read, and looked up.

“Will you show the lady in, please?” he asked.

As the door closed on the servant he looked at the card again, and his lips moved as he read the name.

The girl who followed the maid into the room was at first sight a child, with all a child’s slimness and natural grace of carriage. She stood, her hand at the door, and he had time to distinguish her face in the semi-gloom. The illusion of extreme youth was not disturbed by the scrutiny, only, as, mechanically, he pressed the governor switch on his desk, and the concealed cornice light came on, filling the room with a strange sunlight glow, he saw that she was older than he had thought. The fine red lips were firmer, and the eyes that met his had a decision and a character which instantly changed his conception of her.

“Won’t you sit down, Miss Guildford… You have just arrived in London?”

“I arrived tonight, doctor, and I took the chance of your being in. I’m fortunate.”

Her voice had the sweet, low quality of the well-bred, excellently tutored college woman, and he nodded as though in approval of his first judgment. He walked leisurely to the fire-place, twisted the big chair, and pushed it towards her.

“And I feel that you have come to see me about your uncle, Mr. Trevors. I placed you the moment you came into the room. I think I must have remembered your name: did you write to me? I see that you didn’t… now, where have I heard it, and how do I know that Oscar Trevors was your uncle?”

He pursed his lips thoughtfully, and then his face cleared.

“The newspapers, of course!” he said. “There was a story about him in a Californian paper, and I saw your picture. You were a very little girl then.”

She smiled faintly. She could afford to smile, for she was relieved. She had been puzzled as to how she was to approach the great alienist, what excuse to offer for the extraordinary character of her mission, or in what way she could enlist his help. Doctors were notoriously reticent personages, and though she was Oscar Trevors’s sole relative, the relationship was all the more remote because she had never seen him though once they had been regular correspondents. But the brief smile that dawned and faded so responsively to hers gave her the courage and confidence she had needed.

“I don’t know how to begin,” she said haltingly. “I have so many protests of disinterestedness to make–and yet I’m not wholly disinterested, am I? If–if my uncle’s money comes to me–I mean, I am his heiress. And suppose that if I protested ever so violently that that part of it wasn’t–didn’t––”

She stopped breathlessly, and again she saw the quiet amusement in his eyes and felt comforted.

“I’ll believe that you are disinterested, Miss Guildford… and curious! I confess to something of that weakness myself. I am intensely curious about Oscar Trevors, whenever I have time to think about him. And at least I am disinterested.”

“I’ve got it now,” she interrupted almost brusquely. “I’d better start off by telling you that I am on the staff of the Sacramento Herald–I’m a–well, a reporter. Mr. Mailing, the editor, was a friend of my father’s, and after I left college and poor daddy died, he found a place for me. I’ve been moderately successful, especially with society stuff… Oh yes, we’ve a very exclusive society in Sacramento, so please don’t smile.”

“I’m not smiling at the possibility of there being social life in Sacramento,” he said, “though I’m ready to smile at the idea that there shouldn’t be. There is cream in the milk of London–why should I laugh at the suggestion that the milk of Sacramento is not altogether creamless? No, I was thinking how curiously unlike my ideas of a reporter you are. That is an impertinence––”

“It isn’t,” she said ruefully. “I look horribly unsophisticated, and I suppose I am. But that is another story, Dr. Eversham. To take a very short cut to the object of my visit, the Herald have paid my expenses to Europe to find Oscar Trevors.”

“And when you find him, what then?” asked the man, his eyes twinkling.

There was an awkward silence.

“I don’t know,” she confessed. “If I find him in the circumstances I fear, there will be a great story. If not, my story will end a little flatly–if he is alive.”

The doctor nodded.

“He is alive, I am convinced of that,” he said. “He is also mad, I am equally satisfied.”

“Mad?” Her eyes opened wide. “You don’t mean that he is really insane?”

He nodded, so deliberately, yet so emphatically, that it almost seemed as though he were bowing.

“If he is not insane,” he said, choosing his words with great care, “then there is a state on this earth, a powerful government, of which the world knows nothing. The Kingdom of Bonginda–and Oscar Trevors is its king!”

II. THE LETTER

TWO YEARS before, Oscar Trevors had come to him, a man on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Arnold Eversham, an acknowledged authority on nervous disorders, and the author of the standard text-book on mental diseases–his work, Pathology of Imagination, made him famous at the age of twenty-five–had seen and prescribed for him. A week after his visit to Harley Street, Oscar Trevors had vanished. Six months later, a letter was received by a firm of lawyers that acted for him in New York, instructing them to sell some property. Simultaneously there came a letter to his bankers, instructing them to forward his half-yearly income to two banks, the Kantonal Bank of Berne in Switzerland, and the Credit Monogasque at Monte Carlo.

Trevors was in the peculiar position that he had inherited from his grandfather a life interest in property which was administered by a board of trustees. His income amounted to £400,000 a year, payable every six months, any balance above that sum being placed to a reserve. Every half-year thereafter came almost identical instructions from the missing man. Sometimes the letter was posted from Paris, sometimes from Vienna; once it had borne the postmark of Damascus. This went on for a few years, and then the trustees refused payment on the grounds that they were not satisfied that Oscar Trevors was alive.

That he was both lively and vicious they were to discover. An action, supported by affidavits innumerable, was entered on Trevors’s behalf, and the trustees, advised that they might be liable to heavy damages, capitulated. Every six months thereafter had come his receipt for the moneys sent, and accompanying this document, more often than not, was a pleasant and discursive letter dealing with the land in which he was living.

The girl was staring at the doctor, bewildered.

“The King of Bonginda?” she repeated. “Is there such a place?”

He walked to the book-shelf, took down a volume, and, moving back to the table, opened and turned the leaves.

“There is only one Bonginda,” he said, pointing. “It is a small town situated on a tributary of the Congo River–in Central Africa.”

There was a dead silence, which the doctor broke.

“This is the first you have heard of Bonginda?”

She nodded.

“I hadn’t heard of it,” said the doctor, “until your uncle called on me one day. He was a stranger to me and had apparently been sent by the hotel doctor, who knew that I had some success with neurasthenic cases. I saw him three times in all, and I felt he was improving under my treatment. But on the third and last visit a strange thing happened. Just as he was leaving this very room, he turned.

“‘Good-bye, doctor,’ he said. ‘I am going to resume my place in the Councils of Bonginda.’

“I thought for a moment that he was referring to some society conducted on masonic lines, but his next words removed that impression.

“‘Beware of the King of Bonginda!’ he said solemnly. ‘I, who am his heir, warn you!’”

Gwendda Guildford’s mouth was an O of astonishment.

“But how extraordinary!… King of Bonginda! I have never heard that before!”

The kindly eyes of the doctor were smiling.

“You are the first person with any authority to ask who has ever interviewed me on the subject,” he said. “The American Embassy put through a few perfunctory inquiries five years ago, but beyond that I have never been consulted.”

The girl sat looking down at the carpet, her pretty face the picture of perplexity. Suddenly she opened the bag on her lap and took out a letter.

“Will you read that, doctor?” she asked, and Arnold Eversham took the note from her hand.

“This is in Trevors’s handwriting,” he said immediately, and read:

Dear Gwendda,

Do you remember how we played Pollywogs when you were living at 2758 Sunset Avenue? Dear, I’m very happy. Please don’t worry; I’m kept busy. When I have locked my office I feel like a released prisoner. My house, which is very quiet, is quite near Longchamps away from the railroad. I have a lovely room with a western view. Tell mother, who I know will he interested, Franklin stayed here. I will stop now, for I’m weary, which is Nature’s payment. I’ll notify any change of address. Have the police made inquiries about me at your home? I ask because they did once.

Your loving uncle, O. Trevors.

The doctor handed the letter back.

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