The Evil Shepherd
By E. Phillips Oppenheim
They crossed the street together, the woman self-possessed, harmful, wholly without the embarrassment of one performing an unusual action. Her companion felt the awakening of curiosity. Zealously though she had, to all appearance, endeavoured to conceal the fact, she was without a doubt personable. Her voice and manner lacked nothing of refinement. Yet her attraction to Francis Ledsam, who, although a perfectly normal human being, was no seeker after promiscuous adventures, did not lie in these externals.
As a barrister whose success at the criminal bar had been phenomenal, he had attained a specific knowledge of human nature. At any rate, he realised that this woman was no imposter. He knew that she had vital things to say. They passed into the teashop and found an empty corner. Ledsam hung up his hat and gave an order. The woman slowly began to remove her gloves. When she pushed back her veil, her vis-a-vis received almost a shock. She was quite as good-looking as he had imagined, but she was far younger—indeed, little more than a girl.
Her eyes were a deep shade of hazel brown. Her eyebrows were delicately marked, her features and poise admirable. Yet her skin was entirely colourless. She was as pale as one whose eyes had been closed in death. Her lips, although in no way highly coloured, were like streaks of scarlet blossom upon a marble image. The contrast between her appearance and that of her companion was curiously marked.
Francis Ledsam conformed in no way to the accepted physical type of his profession. He was over six feet in height, broad-shouldered, and powerfully made. His features were cast in a large mould. He had a fair, almost sandy complexion, and his mouth was more humourous than incisive. His eyes alone, grey and exceedingly magnetic, suggested the gifts that undoubtedly lay behind his massive forehead.
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E. Phillips Oppenheim
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.
Biography.
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.”
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
