Читать книгу Edgar Wallace — Each Way - Robert Curtis - Страница 6

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Wallace had a wide first-hand experience of crooks and their ways, having mixed with and got to know personally criminals of all types, from the petty larcenist to the murderer.

Quite a number of men with a first-hand knowledge of the inside of one or more of His Majesty's prisons visited him from time to time and were interviewed in his study—ferocious-looking customers, some of them, whose appearance at the front door inspired terror in the housemaid. More than once she came to me in grave anxiety and urged me, while "that man" was in the study, to stand outside the door in readiness to lend assistance if Wallace should be in need of it. But they all seemed very docile fellows, and Wallace, in any case, knew how to handle them.

Some of them, at any rate, I found interesting. With one in particular who had recently served a term of imprisonment for doping racehorses, I spent many a pleasant afternoon in Wallace's flat. Edgar, I believe, was proposing to write the man's confessions for some newspaper, and he came to the flat to supply the necessary copy, but Wallace had usually gone racing, and I was delegated to receive the confessions in his stead.

"Confessions" was hardly an apt word. There was nothing of the penitent about the gentleman in question. He was quite frankly proud of the fact that he was considered the most expert doper of horses in the business, and that if a four-year-old were to be substituted for a three-year-old and run in a three-year-old event—a not uncommon occurrence, he assured me—he was among the few skilled craftsmen who could be relied upon so to fake the substituted horse that it could not be distinguished from the animal actually entered for the race.

As a testimonial to his skill he told me that the Cambridgeshire was once won by a substituted horse which had been honoured with his alterations, and that another of his masterpieces even got past the keen scrutiny of Steve Donoghue, who had many times ridden the real animal.

As a sideline he was a cardsharper. His hands were like shoulders of mutton, but it was amazing what he could do with a pack of cards, and though on several afternoons Wallace and I sat one on each side of him and never took our eyes from his hands, neither of us was once able to see anything amiss.

Wallace, I fancy, had helped him on his release from prison, and the man seemed more than anxious to do something to show his gratitude. He was picking up the threads of his horse-doping connection again, he told me, and would soon be in full swing once more. Whenever he was doping or faking a horse for a race he would give Wallace the tip, and he could put his shirt on it.

He kept his word. For several months after he had left London telegrams arrived from him from time to time giving Wallace the promised tips. Usually the horses won. One of them carried off one of the most important events of the year. But Wallace, with that punctilious honesty which characterised him, would never back them. Racing was very dear to his heart and he hated to see it smirched with crooked dealing.

Incidentally, our horse-doping friend expressed to him an opinion which, coming from a man of his experience of the inner mysteries of racing, deserved serious consideration. He stated most emphatically that anyone who backed a horse, as most punters do, without "knowing something" was a mug—plus an adjective. Wallace, of course, paid no heed to that. I daresay he knew it already. I am sure his bookmaker did.

"Ferocious-looking customers..."

The man, however—Freeman will serve as a name for him, since by those who practise his particular calling publicity is not considered desirable—was useful to Wallace in another way. He was well-known among the racing fraternity, and as Wallace at this time was contemplating a second venture as a racing tipster—the weather was far too fine for serial writing—it struck him that Freeman's name would give a cachet to the firm.

It was, of course, public knowledge that he had been concerned in a case of doping racehorses, and the subtle suggestion, I suppose, which it was intended to convey by using his name for the firm's title was that, whenever one of his faked or doped horses was running, Freeman & Co.'s clients would receive the tip.

Wallace was sufficient of a psychologist to know that, though a man might strongly denounce such malpractices as doping or faking a horse, his robust convictions on the subject would not prevent his backing the horse if he had the tip for it.

Wallace—he was very hard up at the time—accordingly paid Freeman the sum of £250 for the privilege of running the business under his honoured name, and the business was duly started.

It was an altogether more impressive affair than our first venture in the tipping business. The firm of Freeman & Co operated from an office of its own in Regent Street, and had a clerical staff—he called opportunely, I believe, to touch Wallace for 10s., and received the appointment as a bonus—a typewriter and a telephone, and, crowning glory, a tape machine!

Wallace was sure that he had found a gold mine. Story-writing? Bah!

Freeman & Co.'s business career was brief and inglorious. The clerical staff proved unreliable, particularly, I fancy, on the book-keeping side; and if Wallace, who was, of course, responsible for supplying the "good things" for his clients, ever tipped a winner, I feel sure I should have heard the glad tidings.

How far the rapid decline and ultimate decease of Freeman & Co were due to lack of nutritive value in the tips which Edgar supplied, I do not know. At all events, the business faded out, the clerical staff vanished from our ken, and the whole depressing episode was forgotten in a spurt of high-speed serial writing.

It was recalled, however, a few months later by a frantic telephone message from the erstwhile clerical staff. He had been arrested, he said, and fined £2, and he had no money, and if he couldn't pay the fine he would have to go to prison, and what would his wife think then, and would Mr. Wallace pay the fine for him?

I inquired which of his misdemeanours had been discovered and had led to his arrest. He told me, with tears in his voice, that he had stolen a chicken!

I reported to Wallace, who, much to my surprise, said he was hanged if he would pay the fine. The clerical staff had served him a dozen low-down tricks, and he could get out of his trouble as best he might. I wondered if that were the real reason—it was unlike Wallace to be vindictive—or whether it was the pettiness of the theft of a chicken that had stirred him to contempt. I had an idea that if his late employee had only had bigger ideas and purloined a leg of beef or the Crown Jewels, Wallace would have paid the fine without demur.

Later, he came into my room and tossed a couple of one-pound notes on to my desk.

"Go round to the police court, Bob," he said, "and pay that fine for him. I once stole a pair of boots myself."

When I returned from my errand Wallace was deep in thought at his desk.

"They say I'm a criminologist, Bob," he said, "but this beats me. I can't get the man's psychology. Why the devil should he want to steal a chicken?"

I explained that it was a trussed chicken from a poulterer's shop, and that he stole it, so he had said, because he needed food.

Wallace sighed with relief.

"I wish you'd told me that sooner," he said. "I've been wondering all the afternoon why a man should want to keep a live chicken in a two-roomed flat."

Wallace's association with Freeman ended with another disillusionment. He called at the flat one day, got Edgar to cash him a cheque for £15, went off with three fivers in his pocket, and never reappeared.

His cheque did, however—marked "No effects." For years Wallace kept that cheque in one of the drawers of his desk. It was still there when we sailed last year for America. Now and then he would take it out and gaze at it sadly.

For all his self-confidence, Wallace was in reality an extremely sensitive man, and, like most sensitive men, he had his streak of vanity. His dignity—and he could be very dignified when he chose—was all too easily hurt. I do not think that, when big success came to him, he could ever quite manage to forget that he was the famous Edgar Wallace, whose name had become almost a household word, who had been caricatured in Punch as one of the personalities of the day, whose books were read from one remote corner of the world to the other.

Press cuttings concerning him—in recent years we lived in a constant shower of them—gave him immense satisfaction, provided they had something nice to say, and I am not sure that he ever reached the point, which so many authors claim to have reached, where the sight of his name in print gave him no thrill.

He liked to be recognised in public, and Press photographers, reporters and interviewers, though, as part of his rôle as a person of importance, he simulated the conventional dislike of them, can never have found him a very elusive quarry.

He was, though he did his utmost to disguise the fact, super-sensitive as to the opinions others held about him and his work, and it was as easy to hurt him with a perfectly just adverse criticism as it was to flatter him with obviously exaggerated praise. He could absorb flattery in unlimited quantities, and never reach saturation point—a weakness which, during the periods of his prosperity, must have cost him thousands of pounds. It undoubtedly led him into many ventures which, though they benefited the flatterers, brought Wallace nothing but soothing syrup and an overdraft at the bank.

His love of public recognition occasionally produced its humorous incidents. I remember once sitting in the front row of the dress circle on the first night of one of his plays at Wyndham's Theatre, and watching Wallace arrive. He entered his box with that self-complacent smile which I knew so well, and glanced round at the audience as though expecting some sign of recognition. But no one, apparently, had noticed his entrance, and there came neither round of applause nor even buzz of excitement.

The smile vanished from his face, and, knowing how disappointed he was feeling, I was tempted to make myself conspicuous by indulging in a few hearty claps. Wallace sat down—feeling very flat, I am sure—well at the back of the box, where it was almost impossible for anyone to see him, and I was afraid that the lack of a duly demonstrative reception had spoilt his evening for him.

But I should have known better. Inch by inch, as the house filled, Wallace's chair was edged forward; gradually, as he advanced, his smile returned; until at last, with a final movement of the chair, he was right in the front of the box, in full view of the audience. And just as he reached that position came the demonstration for which I knew he was waiting—the buzz of interest, the round of applause, the cheers from the gallery—and Wallace rose, bowed his acknowledgment and sat down again, smiling and satisfied.

I smiled, too, and fervently hoped that Edgar had not noticed, as I had, that not a head had been turned in his direction, and that the applause had not been intended for him at all. The audience had been welcoming Bobby Howes, who just at that moment was taking his seat in the stalls.

It was, I suppose, this streak of vanity in Wallace which led him to rhapsodise on every possible occasion over my perfections as a secretary. I was a very rapid typist—one had to be to cope successfully with Wallace working at full speed—and the fact that I held the typewriting championship of Europe gave him tremendous personal satisfaction. I was the best typist in the country, and I was his secretary. I am afraid his friends must sometimes have grown weary of hearing about "Bob" and his perfections, for Wallace rarely missed a chance of hymning my praises, and I grew resigned to his bringing visitors into my office at any odd moment and asking me to give them an exhibition of my skill on the typewriter. As a rule, on such occasions, I managed more or less to live up to the reputation which I knew he had been giving me, but once...

Wallace at that time was doing the dramatic criticism for the Morning Post, and on the first night of a new play I used to meet him at the theatre as soon as the curtain was down, take down his criticism of the play in shorthand, type it, and deliver it at the Morning Post office so that it could appear in the next morning's issue.

On one such occasion, when I was to meet him at 11 p in at Wyndham's Theatre, I spent the earlier part of the evening at a party. It was a twenty-first birthday affair, and champagne flowed freely; but, remembering my appointment with Wallace, I strictly rationed myself to a couple of glasses. Champagne, I argued, was not a drink which could be relied upon to enhance the speed and accuracy of shorthand and type-writing; it was, moreover, one which I only drank on the rare occasions when a refusal might seem churlish, and its effect on my mental and physical equilibrium was therefore practically an unknown quantity.

I arrived at the theatre, satisfied that its effect had been nil, found Wallace at the back of the stage, produced my fountain pen and prepared to be the perfect secretary.

There was the usual first-night excitement and Wallace was in one of his most genial moods. He introduced me to everybody and insisted that I should have a drink. It was a thing he rarely did. He very infrequently drank either wine, beer or spirits himself, and I never before heard him press anyone to do so. But on this occasion he was most insistent, mixed a whisky and soda for me himself—his ideas of a tot of whisky, as of most other things, were on the grandiose scale—and thrust the glass into my hand.

"Put that down, Bob," he ordered, "and then we'll get to work."

I put it down—and I believe we did get to work. I have a vague recollection of Wallace pouring out words as generously as he had poured out the whisky, and of my making a series of crazy-looking hieroglyphs on the paper as it revolved beneath my pen. Wallace knew nothing about shorthand, however, and I congratulated myself, as I left him, that the results of mixing champagne and whisky had escaped his notice.

I made my way across a surging stage, located a swirling office, seated myself at a swaying typewriter and began to transcribe my shorthand notes.

I had scarcely started when the door opened and Wallace came in; behind him was Sir Gerald du Maurier, and following behind Sir Gerald there came into the room every member of the company playing in the show, who ranged themselves round my table.

"I've just been telling everybody that you're the fastest typist in England, Bob," said Wallace. "Show them what you can do."

My heart sank and I sent an imploring glance to Wallace; but he was smiling his most complacent smile, and evidently had not realised the effects of his heavy-handed way with the tantalus, and there was nothing to be done but make as good a show as possible for the edification of my audience, so I made a tremendous effort to pull myself together and began to type.

My usual working speed on a typewriter is approximately 6,000 words an hour, but to reach that speed it is essential for the machine to be stationary and the number of keys limited.

On this occasion neither of these conditions obtained, and my speed, to say nothing of my accuracy, suffered accordingly. I typed at a rate of which most beginners having their first lesson would have been ashamed, picking out the keys with one finger on each hand, and picking at least once in every three attempts the wrong key. But it was the best I could do, and any attempt to bring more fingers into play and so speed things up a bit only involved me in hopeless chaos.

I do not know how long the ordeal lasted; it seemed an age that I sat there in an oppressive silence, punctuated now and then by the tap of a key. But I came to the end of my notes at last, took the paper from the machine and glanced round nervously at the assembled company. Sir Gerald was watching me with a quizzical smile on his face.

"Wonderful!" was his comment. "How long, Mr. Curtis, did it take you to reach that state?"

The rest of them were quick to take the cue. "Marvellous!"—"Amazing!"—"Incredible!"—"Lucky beggar!" came the chorus, and in the midst of this paean of praise I rose and prepared to go.

There are two distinct versions of my actual exit.

Mine is that I picked up my hat, said "Good night, Mr. Wallace," and went out in a perfectly natural way.

Wallace's version, which he always stuck to tenaciously afterwards, was that I set my hat on my head at a rakish angle, gave him a casual wave of the hand, and with a "Well, good night, Edgar, old cock!" strode out. But that, since I was always most punctilious about calling him "Mr. Wallace" in the presence of others, was, I am convinced, a subsequent effort of his imagination.

Wallace, when I met him the next morning, smiled.

"Find the Morning Post office all right, Bob?"

I assured him that I had.

"Did they grumble that the criticism was too short?"

"Short?"

Wallace nodded.

"There were only six lines of it."

"Is that all?" I sighed. Six lines! I had often typed an 80,000-word novel with less effort.

Thereafter, Wallace, though he never grew weary of boasting of my prowess on the typewriter, was less inclined to ask for an exhibition of my skill. As I have said, he was sensitive to a degree, especially where his work was concerned. Anyone who was prepared to praise his work was assured of a willing and attentive listener; but, like so many other authors, Wallace, even though he might have invited the criticism, really resented it if it were unfavourable.

He was inclined to take it as a personal affront if an adverse opinion were passed on something he had written, and to give the impression, though I am sure that in his own mind he was really far from having any such exaggerated idea, that any story or play from his pen was above criticism.

It was not altogether surprising. There were so many around him who were all too ready to flatter him on the slightest pretext, and to persuade him, not always from disinterested motives, that his play or story was a masterpiece, that it would have been more surprising if, with that vein of vanity running through him, he had not responded to such sympathetic treatment.

Personally, after years of intimate association with him, I was on a privileged footing in this respect. He would frequently invite my criticism of what he had written—latterly it was his invariable rule to do so and he usually listened with a good grace to what I had to say, even if it were unfavourable, and gave it serious consideration.

He never seemed to imagine, as he often did with others, that, because I thought a story had a weak point or two which might advantageously be strengthened, I was casting aspersions on his ability or "knocking" his work for the sole purpose of fault-finding. He told me more than once that I knew whether or no a story was in the true Edgar Wallace vein better than he did. Yet once, persona grata as I was, I, too, came under the shadow of his displeasure for having ventured a candid criticism.

It was in connection with a play called The Mouthpiece. Wallace gave the manuscript to me, and, with the self-satisfied smile which told me that he was confident of having written a winner, asked me to read it and tell him what I thought of it.

I read it and I told him my opinion frankly, but, I think, quite tactfully. I said that to my mind the first act dragged badly and needed speeding up if the audience were not to be bored before the first interval; that the opening lacked clearness and needed revising if the audience were to understand what it was all about; and I pointed out what struck me as a bad anti-climax in the last act. I was convinced that this play, at any rate, was not true Edgar Wallace as it stood.

To my surprise, Wallace, on this occasion, seemed very much hurt by my criticism. He disagreed with me on every point I had raised, and confidently asserted that it was the best play he had ever written and was assured of at least a year's run.

Someone, I guessed, had been administering a dose of flattery, with the result that Wallace's usually keen mind had been doped into believing that the play was what the Americans none too elegantly describe as a "wow." Wallace had already had one recent theatrical failure; I knew that a second might seriously injure his reputation in the theatrical world, and I was desperately anxious that the play should not be produced until he had at least spent some time knocking it into shape. Perhaps my anxiety ran away with my discretion. At any rate, I said that if it ran for a year, then I knew nothing about plays and would henceforth hold my peace. I prophesied a month's run for it at the most.

But Wallace would not listen, and I was undeniably unpopular. For over a week he hardly spoke to me.

The play was produced—more or less as it stood; the unanimous verdict of the Press critics was that it was a bad play, carelessly written, poorly constructed, wrongly cast and inadequately rehearsed. It ran, I believe, for a week.

I said "unanimous," but that is not strictly accurate. There was one exception to the general chorus of disapproval. A journalist on the staff of some obscure provincial newspaper—I cannot now even remember its name—wrote a most flattering notice of the play; so flattering that, when I read his encomium, I instantly suspected that he had not seen the piece at all. It was unbelievable that, had he sat through the wearisome performance, he could really have felt any genuine enthusiasm for it. He even went so far as to say outright that it was the best play Wallace had written.

That was incredible enough, but the sequel to his eulogistic outburst was even more so. I took the cutting to Wallace—his wounded feelings badly needed some balm—and, as he read it, I saw his eyes light up.

"Send this fellow a wire," he said, and proceeded to dictate a long and expensive telegram to the writer of the notice, congratulating him on being the only critic in the whole of England who had a true sense of dramatic values!

Later, when the first disappointment had worn thin, Wallace, I know, came to see that the enthusiastic provincial journalist had been wrong and the rest of the dramatic critics right.

"You were right, Bob, and I was wrong," he admitted frankly one morning soon after the play had been withdrawn. "The Mouthpiece is a bad play. But I'm writing another—I did the first act last night—and it's a sure winner."

I smiled. "I hope it will run for a year," I said.

"It will," said Wallace. "If I turn The Mouthpiece into a novel, Bob, I think I shall dedicate the book to you."

I asked him why.

"I've written a hundred and fifty novels," said Wallace, "twenty or so plays, hundreds of short stories, and thousands of articles, and they can't all be good. There are just three people in the world who have the pluck, or the sense, or both, to criticise my stuff, and you're one of them. By the way, you're coming racing with me this afternoon."

Thus was I received back into grace. Edgar was himself again. As if anxious to reassure me on that point, he backed five losers that afternoon.

Yet at the time he had strongly resented my criticism. He really hated adverse criticism from anyone and usually took it rather badly. To anybody who ventured to suggest an alteration in one of his plays or stories he would write stinging letters or telegrams refusing to make the alterations, would subsequently rewrite them in less truculent vein, and as often as not close the matter by agreeing to make the suggested changes.

Edgar was very human. He loved favourable as much as he hated unfavourable criticism. Of one of his last stories, "When the Gangs Came to London," I remarked, quite honestly, that I thought it was written in his very best vein. He was childishly pleased and sat down at once to write out a telegram to William Blackwood, of the Amalgamated Press, who had commissioned the story:

Story in the post. Bob thinks this is my best for years.

In the case of another serial which the Daily Mail was to have published, but which, for some reason, fell through, he was asked by the Literary Editor to write a preliminary paragraph announcing the story. This is what he wrote:

This is the best story I have ever written. I think so myself, and my wife and Mr. Curtis, my secretary, upon whose judgment I rely implicitly, both concur.

My lapse into disfavour over The Mouthpiece had not seriously distressed me. Wallace, I knew, was by nature incapable of nursing a grievance. He was far too resilient for the mere failure of a play to depress him for long, and far too fair-minded not to realise, when he considered the matter, that my anxiety over the play had been entirely anxiety for his success. Loyal himself, he never failed to appreciate loyalty in others.

I never knew him guilty of a mean or petty action; smallness of mind he abominated as heartily as smallness in anything else. In this respect he was a ruthless censor of his own actions and motives. He had a horror of doing anything which by any stretch of the imagination might be called petty or unsporting; and if he inadvertently did anything which, on reflection, failed to pass his stern self-scrutiny, he was quick to make amends.