Explore "The Man who Bought London" by Edgar Wallace on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Elsie Marion was a busy girl and a happy one. The green on the map was spreading. She called them the "marks of conquest," and took a pride in their extension. Then came the day of days when the papers were filled with the colossal deal which King Kerry had carried through -- the purchase of Lord George Fallington's enormous estate. Lord Fallington was a millionaire peer, who derived an enormous income from ground rents in the very heart of the West End of London. He may have been urged to the action he took by the fear of new punitive legislation against landowners, and there certainly was justification for his fear, for at the time the government in power was the famous Jagger-Shubert Coalition which, with its huge democratic measures to be provided for out of revenue and its extraordinary demands in the matter of the navy (a rare combination in any government), was framing its estimate with an avaricious eye upon the land.
Whatever was the cause, Lord Fallington sold out, and when, following that event Bilsbury's fell into the hands of the Trust, the battle was half won.