Edgar Wallace

The Devil Man Edgar Wallace

On the western outskirts of Sheffield-the Sheffield of 1875-there was a dingy red factory that had seen the bankruptcies of at least three concerns which had been housed within its high walls. In this year it was occupied by the staff of a Mr Wertheimer, who produced nothing that was of commercial value, and was rather secretive about what he hoped to produce at all. He called himself and his partner, known and unknown, "The Silver Steel Company", which, as Baldy said subsequently, was a contradiction in terms. On a certain wintry night a young man dropped a rope ladder from oneof the walls and came gingerly to the ground. His name was Kuhl, he was a Swiss from the Canton de Vaud, by profession an engineer, and by disposition an admirer of attractive ladies. He picked his way across the uneven ground towards the road and was met halfway by two men. A woman, driving into Sheffield, saw the three talking by the side of the road where a closed wagonette, drawn by two horses, was standing. The men were talking loudly and gesticulating at one another. Looking back over her shoulder, she saw what was apparently a free fight in progress, and whipped up her horse. She did not inform the police because, as she said, it was none of her business, and, besides, fights were pretty frequent in those days and in that part of the world. Later she informed Sergeant Eltham, but could give no satisfactory account of how the fight finished. This Sergeant Eltham was a police officer who never ceased to apologize for being seen in public without his uniform. But for this it might almost have been forgotten that he had ever worn a uniform at all, since he was the most astute of the "plain clothes men" that ever went on the roll of the Sheffield Police Force. He was tall, broad-shouldered, bushy-bearded, bald. Wrongdoers, who did not like him and never spoke of him except in the most lurid terms, called him "Baldy" or "Whiskers" as the fancy seized them.