Edgar Wallace

Blue Hand Edgar Wallace

MR. SEPTIMUS SALTER pressed the bell on his table for the third time and uttered a soft growl. He was a stout, elderly man, and with his big red face and white side-whiskers, looked more like a prosperous farmer than a successful lawyer. The cut of his clothes was queerly out of date, the high white collar and the black satin cravat that bulged above a flowered waistcoat were of the fashion of 1850, in which year Mr. Salter was a little ahead of his time so far as fashions were concerned. But the years had caught him up and passed him, and although there was not a more up-to-date solicitor in London, he remained faithful to the style in which he had made a reputation as a "buck." He pressed the bell again, this time impatiently. "Confound the fellow!" he muttered, and rising to his feet, he stalked into the little room where his secretary was usually to be found. He had expected to find the apartment empty, but it was not. A chair had been drawn sideways up to the big ink-stained table, and kneeling on this, his elbows on the table, his face between his hands, was a young man who was absorbed in the perusal of a document, one of the many which littered the table. "Steele!" said Mr. Salter sharply, and the reader looked up with a start and sprang to his feet. He was taller than the average and broad of shoulder, though he gave an impression of litheness. His tanned face spoke eloquently of days spent out of doors, the straight nose, the firm mouth, and the strong chin were all part of the characteristic "soldier face" moulded by four years of war into a semblance of hardness. Now he was a little confused, more like the guilty school-boy than the V. C. who had tackled eight enemy aeroplanes, and had come back to his aerodrome with a dozen bullets in his body.