Jack O' Judgment

Автор

Edgar Wallace

Жанр

Зарубежная классика

Год написания книги

2019

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His voice died away to a rumble and then to a murmur.

The tears were running down Stafford's face. He sensed all the tragedy, all the loneliness of this man who had offered so cheerful a face to the world. Then Sir Stanley struggled to draw himself to his feet, and Stafford held him.

"Gently, sir, gently," he said, "you're only hurting yourself."

The dying man laughed. It was a little shrill chuckle of merriment and Stafford's blood ran cold.

"Here I am, poor old Jack o' Judgment! Little old Jack o' Judgment! Give me the lives you took and the hopes you've blasted. Give them to Jack … Jack o' Judgment!"

They were his last words.

* * * * *

A year later First Commissioner Sir Stafford King received a letter from South America. It contained nothing but the photograph of a very good-looking man, and a singularly pretty woman, who held in her lap a very tiny baby.

"Here is the last of the Boundary Gang," said Sir Stafford to Maisie. "It is the one happy ending that has emerged from so much misery and evil."

"Why, it is Lollie Marsh!"

"Lollie Crewe, I think her name is now," said Stafford. "It was queer how Sir Stanley recognised the only human members of the gang."

"Then they got away after all?" said the girl. "I've often wondered what happened at that aerodrome."

Stafford laughed.

"Oh, yes," he said drily, "they got away. They left at twenty minutes past three, after a long argument with the aviator, a man named Cartwright."

"How do you know?" she asked.

"Sir Stanley and I watched them go off," said Stafford.

He looked at the photograph again and shook his head.

"There were times when the Judgment of Jack was very merciful," he said soberly.

THE END

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