Bones in London
By Edgar Wallace
No word they spoke, keeping step with the stern precision of soldiers. Together they wheeled through the open doors of the Commercial Trust Building, together they left-turned into the elevator, and simultaneously raised their heads to examine its roof, as though in its paneled ceiling was concealed some Delphic oracle who would answer the riddle which circumstances had set them.
They dropped their heads together and stood with sad eyes, regarding the attendant’s leisurely unlatching of the gate. They slipped forth and walked in single file to a suite of offices inscribed “Pole Brothers, Brokers,” and, beneath, “The United Merchant Shippers’ Corporation,” and passed through a door which, in addition to this declaration, bore the footnote “Private.”
Here the file is divided, one going to one side of a vast pedestal desk and one to the other. Still with their hands pushed deep into their pockets, they sank, almost as at a word of command, each into his cushioned chair, and stared at one another across the table.
They were stout young men of the middle thirties, clean-shaven and ruddy. They had served their country in the late War and had made many sacrifices for the common cause. One had worn a uniform and one had not. Joe had occupied some mysterious office which permitted and, indeed, enjoined upon him the wearing of the insignia of captain, but had forbidden him to leave his native land. The other had earned a little decoration with a very big title as a buyer of boots for Allied nations. Both had subscribed largely to War Stock, and a reminder of their devotion to the cause of liberty was placed to their credit every half-year.
But for these, war, with its horrific incidents, its late hours, its midnight railway journeys by trains on which sleeping berths could not be had for love or money, its food cards and statements of excess profits, was past. The present held its tragedy so poignant as to overshadow that breathless terrifying moment when peace had come and found the firm with the sale of the Fairy Line of cargo steamers uncompleted, contracts unsigned, and shipping stock which had lived light-headedly in the airy spaces, falling deflated on the floor of the house.
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Edgar Wallace
Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace (1 April 1875 – 10 February 1932) was a British writer of sensational detective, gangster, adventure and sci-fi novels, plays and stories.
Born into poverty as an illegitimate London child, Wallace left school at the age of 12. He joined the army at age 21 and was a war correspondent during the Second Boer War for Reuters and the Daily Mail. Struggling with debt, he left South Africa, returned to London, and began writing thrillers to raise income, publishing books including The Four Just Men (1905). Drawing on his time as a reporter in the Congo, covering the Belgian atrocities, Wallace serialized short stories in magazines such as The Windsor Magazine and later published collections such as Sanders of the River (1911). He signed with Hodder and Stoughton in 1921 and became an internationally recognized author.
After an unsuccessful bid to stand as Liberal MP for Blackpool (as one of David Lloyd George’s Independent Liberals) in the 1931 general election, Wallace moved to Hollywood, where he worked as a scriptwriter for RKO. He died suddenly from undiagnosed diabetes, during the initial drafting of King Kong (1933).
Wallace was such a prolific writer that one of his publishers claimed that a quarter of all books in England were written by him. As well as journalism, Wallace wrote screenplays, poetry, historical non-fiction, 18 stage plays, 957 short stories, and over 170 novels, 12 in 1929 alone. More than 160 films have been made of Wallace’s work.
In addition to his work on King Kong, he is remembered as a writer of “The Colonial Imagination”, for the J. G. Reeder detective stories, and for The Green Archer serial. He sold over 50 million copies of his combined works in various editions and The Economist in 1997 described him as “one of the most prolific thriller writers of [the 20th] century”, although the great majority of his books are out of print in the UK, but are still read in Germany. A 50-minute German TV documentary was made in 1963 called The Edgar Wallace Story, which featured his son Bryan Edgar Wallace.
Life and work
Ancestry and birth
Wallace’s great-grandfather was entertainer James Henry Marriott, and his grandmother was actress Alice Marriott. Wallace was born at 7 Ashburnham Grove, Greenwich, to actors Richard Horatio Marriott Edgar (1847–1894) and Mary Jane “Polly” Richards, née Blair (born 1843).
Wallace’s mother’s family had been in show business, and she worked in the theatre as a stagehand, usherette, and bit-part actress until she married in 1867. Her husband, Captain Joseph Richards, was born in 1838; he was from an Irish family. He and his father John Richards were both Merchant Navy captains, and his mother Catherine Richards came from a mariner family. Joseph died at sea in 1868, leaving his pregnant wife destitute. After the birth of Wallace’s older sibling, his mother returned to the stage, assuming the stage name “Polly” Richards. In 1872, she met and joined the Marriott family theatre troupe, managed by Alice Marriott, her husband Richard Edgar, and her three adult children (from earlier liaisons), Grace, Adeline, and Richard Horatio Marriott Edgar.
Wallace’s parents had a “broom cupboard” style sexual encounter during an after-show party. Discovering she was pregnant, his mother invented a fictitious obligation in Greenwich that would last at least half a year and obtained a room in a boarding house where she lived until her son’s birth, on 1 April 1875. During her confinement, she had asked her midwife to find a couple to foster the child. The midwife introduced Wallace’s mother to her close friend, Mrs Freeman, a mother of ten children, whose husband George Freeman was a Billingsgate fishmonger. On 9 April 1875, his mother took Wallace to the semi-literate Freeman family and made arrangements to visit often.
Edgar Wallace
