Again the Ringer Read Online

Again the Ringer

Again the Ringer

by

Edgar Wallace

    I - THE MAN WITH THE RED BEARD

    II - CASE OF THE HOME SECRETARY

    III - THE MURDERER OF MANY NAMES

    IV - A SERVANT OF WOMEN

    V - THE TRIMMING OF PAUL LUMIERE

    VI - THE BLACKMAIL BOOMERANG

    VII - MISS BROWN'S £7,000 WINDFALL

    VIII - THE END OF MR. BASH—THE BRUTAL

    IX - THE COMPLETE VAMPIRE

    X - THE SWISS HEAD WAITER

    XI - THE ESCAPE OF MR. BLISS

    XII - THE MAN WITH THE BEARD

    XIII - THE ACCIDENTAL SNAPSHOT

    XIV - THE SINISTER DR. LUTTEUR

    XV - THE OBLIGING COBBLER

    XVI - THE FORTUNE OF FORGERY

    XVII - A "YARD" MAN KIDNAPPED

    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.

    The footman, who was an authority upon such matters, gave him a little inaccurate information. Miska examined the envelope without being enlightened any further, and then with a chuckle he was about to tear the letter into pieces but thought better "Send it up to Scotland Yard," he commanded his secretary later in the morning, and would have forgotten the unpleasant communication if he had not returned from lunch to find a rather sinister-looking man with a short black beard who introduced himself as Chief Inspector Bliss from Scotland Yard.

    "About that letter? Oh, rot! You're not taking that seriously, are you?"

    Bliss nodded slowly. "So seriously that I'm putting on two of my best men to guard you for a month or two."

    Miska looked at him incredulously.

    "Do you really mean that? But surely...my footman tells me he's a criminal; he wouldn't dare come to London?"

    Inspector Bliss smiled grimly. "He dared go into Scotland Yard when it suited him. This is the kind of case that would interest him."

    He recounted a few of The Ringer's earlier cases, and Miska Guild became of a sudden a very agitated young man.

    "Monstrous...a murderer at large, and you can't catch him? I've never heard anything like it! Besides, that business in Paris—it was an accident. The poor, silly dear mistook the window for her sitting-room door—"

    "I know all about that, Mr. Guild," said Bliss quietly. "I'd rather we didn't discuss that aspect of the matter. The only thing I can tell you is that, if I know The Ringer—and nobody has better reason for knowing him and his methods—he will try to keep his word. It's up to us to protect you.