Edgar Wallace

The Stealer of Marble

In The Mind of Mr. J.G. Reeder. 1925. White Lion Publishers, 1972.

The house occupied Mr. Reeder's attention to a considerable degree. It was a red-brick modern dwelling consisting of two floors and having a frontage on the [Outer] Circle and a side road. Behind and beside the house was a large garden which, at this season of the year, was bare of flowers...He was leaning over the wooden palings eyeing the grounds through the screen of a box hedge that overlapped the fence with a melancholy stare, when he saw a door open and a big woman come out

Something dubious, involving marble chips and a vast sum of money, is going on inside '904 The Circle', and the detective from the Public Prosecutor's Department has been asked to investigate.

It was dusk when a big car drew up at the gate of the house.

A mysterious transaction follows, 'and the car went out of sight round the curve of the Circle. Mr. Reeder crossed the road and took up a position very near the front gate, waiting. Dusk came and the veil of a Regent's Park fog. The house was in darkness...He glanced round anxiously... for he had certain acts to perform which required a thick a cloaking as possible'. The marble chips, it turns out, were for making carbon monoxide (you steep them in hydrochloric acid), but Reeder's discovery comes too late to save the City financier.