Explore "Angel Esquire" by Edgar Wallace on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
IT happened that on the night of the great attempt the inquisitive Mr. Lane, of 76 Cawdor Street, was considerably exercised in his mind as to the depleted condition of his humble treasury. With Mr. Lane the difference between affluence and poverty was a matter of shillings. His line of business was a humble one. Lead piping and lengths of telephone wire, an occasional door-mat improvidently left outside whilst the servant cleaned the hall, these represented the scope and extent of his prey. Perhaps he reached his zenith when he lifted an overcoat from a hatstand, what time a benevolent old lady was cutting him thick slices of bread and butter in a basement kitchen. Mr. Lane had only recently returned from a short stay in Wormwood Scrubbs Prison. It was over a trifling affair of horsehair abstracted from railway carriage cushions that compelled Mr. Lane's retirement for two months. It was that same affair that brought about his undoing on the night of the attempt. For the kudos of the railway theft had nerved him to more ambitious attempts, and with a depleted exchequer to urge him forward, and the prestige of his recent achievements to support him, he decided upon burglary. It was a wild and reckless departure from his regular line, and he did not stop to consider the disabilities attaching to a change of profession, nor debate the unpropitious conditions of an already overstocked labour market. It is reasonable to suppose that Mr. Lane lacked the necessary qualities of logic and balance to argue any point to its obvious conclusion, for he was, intellectually, the reverse of brilliant, and was therefore ill-equipped for introspective or psychological examination of the circumstances leading to his decision. Communing with himself, the inquisitive Mr. Lane put the matter tersely and brutally.
"Lead pipin's no go unless you've got a pal to r work with; telephone wires is so covered up with wood casin' that it's worse'n hard work to pinch two-penn'oth. I'm goin' to have a cut at Joneses."