The Avenger
By E. Phillips Oppenheim
Wrayson was by no means a coward. He had come once or twice into close touch with dangerous happenings and conducted himself with average pluck. However, he never attempted to conceal from himself that these few minutes were minutes of breathless, unreasoning fear. His heart was thumping against his side, and the muscles at the back of his neck were almost numb as he slowly looked around the room. His eyes paused at the door. It was slightly open, to his nervous fancy it seemed to be shaking. His teeth chattered, and he felt his forehead, and it was wet. He rose to his feet and listened.
There was no sound anywhere, from above or below. He tried to remember what it was that had awakened him so suddenly. He could remember nothing except that awful start. Something must have disturbed him! He listened again. Still no sound. With his eyes glued upon the half-closed door, he drew a little breath and recollected that he had left it open so that he might hear Barnes go upstairs. With a little laugh, still not altogether natural, he moved to the spirit decanter and drank off half a wineglassful of neat whisky! “Nerves,” he said softly to himself. “This won’t do! What an idiot I was to go to sleep there!” He glanced at the clock. It was five minutes to three. Then he moved towards the door and stood with the handle in his hand for several moments. Gradually, his confidence was returning. He listened attentively.
There was no sound to be heard in the entire building. He turned back into the room with a little sigh of relief. “Time I turned in,” he muttered. “Wonder if that’s rain.” He lifted the blind and looked out. A few stars were shining still in a misty sky, but a bank of clouds was rolling up, and rain was beginning to fall. The pavements were already wet, and the lamp-posts obscured. He was about to turn away when a familiar but unexpected sound from the street immediately below attracted his notice. The window was open at the top, and he had distinctly heard the jingling of a hansom bell.
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E. Phillips Oppenheim
Edward Phillips Oppenheim (22 October 1866 – 3 February 1946) was an English novelist and a prolific writer of best-selling genre fiction featuring glamorous characters, international intrigue, and fast action.
Biography.
Notably, easy to read, they were viewed as popular entertainment. He was featured on the cover of Time magazine in 1927. Edward Phillips Oppenheim was born on 22 October 1866 in Tottenham, London, the son of Henrietta Susannah Temperley Budd and Edward John Oppenheim, a leather merchant. After attending Wyggeston Grammar School until the sixth form in 1883, his family’s finances forced him to withdraw, and he worked in his father’s business for almost twenty years. His father subsidized the publication of his first novel, which proved successful enough to break even.
He published five books between 1908 and 1912 under the pseudonym “Anthony Partridge”. Around 1900, Julien Stevens Ulman (1865–1920), a wealthy New York leather merchant who enjoyed Oppenheim’s books, bought the leather works and made him a salaried director to support his writing career. He quickly found a successful formula and established his reputation. In 1913, John Buchan, launching his career as a suspense novelist, called Oppenheim “my master in fiction” and “the greatest Jewish writer since Isaiah”.
As early as that year, his publishers were bringing out new editions of some of his earlier works to meet, in the words of one trade publication, “the insatiable demand of the public for more stories by him”. It added: “Readers of the author’s recent books will find these first stories of life sketches full of interest, their very crudeness being positively amusing in light of his present finished craftsmanship.” In 1892, Oppenheim married an American, Elise Clara Hopkins of Easthampton, Massachusetts. They lived in Evington, Leicestershire, in what is now The Cedars pub until the First World War and had one daughter. During that war, he worked for the Ministry of Information.
E. Phillips Oppenheim
