Read "The Northing Tramp" by Edgar Wallace online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
MR. PFFIEFER was a stout man with a sense of humour; but since he was a lawyer, having his dealings with a dour people who had one public joke which served the whole county when recited at farmers' conventions, and one private obscenity which, told in a smoky atmosphere 'twixt shuffle and cut, had convulsed generations of hearers, he never displayed the bubbling sense of fun that lay behind his pink mask of a face. He could have filled his untidy office with unholy laughter now, but he kept a solemn face, for the man who sat on the opposite side of a table covered with uneven mounds of papers, law books and personal memoranda, was a great personage, a justice of the peace and the leading farmer in the county.
"Let me get this thing right, Mr. Pffiefer," Andrew Elmer's harsh voice was tense with anxiety. "I get noth'n' out of this estate unless October is married on her twen'y-first anniversary?"