The Crime-Book Society paperback edition No.39 - 1936/7?
Edgar Wallace comes across as a master story-teller; or, to use an old-fashioned phrase - he can certainly spin a yarn. Some authors carefully set out the structure of their novel before embarking on the main writing: e.g. Daphne du Maurier published her Rebecca Notebook, which by-and-large charted chapter by chapter the sequence of events later followed in her famous novel. Others tend to 'go with the flow' and somehow arrive at the end (often with some bits that didn't really fit, or characters discarded or minimised as a tale developed). If Wallace is one of the latter, then he was a very skilful writer. Certainly, with The Hand of Power, a prior construction of a character chart would seem more likely. The 62 shortish chapters weave a complex story around a large cast of personnel.
The first Chapter - The Men of the Moor - starts well: A gale of wind and rain swept across the barren face of Dartmoor, that ancient desolation. The howl and shriek of it came to Betty Carew above the rattle and roar of the motor engine as the old car grunted and groaned up the steep hill...at the top of the hill the full force of the gale caught them and all but brought the car to a standstill. Rain smacked viciously against the screen, whipped under the lowered brim of her hat, thrashing her face till it smarted intolerably. All it needed was for the Hound of the Baskervilles to appear. In fact, the only other sentient being near her was one Dr. Joshua Laffin, more of whom later. Suddenly, a figure with a red lantern appears in front of them. He seemed to be dressed in a long, close-fitting gown like the habit of a monk...Her mouth opened wide in wonder and fear - the head was shrouded in a cowl that covered the face - and she saw only a gleam of eyes behind narrow slits cut in the cloth. Worse is to come, as Laffin is asked to follow the figure into the darkness; then Betty hears the sound of deep-chested voices of men, chanting and Dong! the deep boom of a bell. Thankfully, Laffin returns but answers none of Betty's questions. Fifteen months (and most of the book) later he offered a solution to the riddle of the moor.
We soon learn that Laffin is not a nice man (he had hard, brown eyes, that glared without winking, vulture-like in their dispassionate intensity), who rules his ward (much later, the reader finds he had forced the much younger Betty to marry him!) with a rod of iron. In London, we meet Clive the ninth Lord Lowbridge, the impecunious aristocrat, whose classics features were those that the old Greek sculptors gave to the heroes of mythology, he had the clear eyes and the frame of a trained athlete; Laffin had been his family's physician in Bath and Clive's tutor. Clive and Betty are, at the very least, on affectionate terms. There is a quick scenery change to the Pawter Intensive Publicity Services (familiarly called Pips), run by a Mr. Pawter, no less. Employed as an assistant is a young man who is to emerge as the undoubted hero of the story - Bill Holbrook (twenty-three and pleasantly featured, except for a nose that was slightly bent. He played football, and once a great international had used his features as a jumping-off place - was the latter Argentinian?!), first cousin to Pawter and ex-newspaper reporter. Pips wants a story about Betty, who it transpires in in the acting profession.
In quick succession, the author pulls in the other characters who are going to drive the tale: Captain Harvey Hale, seventy-five by fifty coarse inches of muscle and bone; a red-faced, fish-eyed, heavy-jawed skipper, without either ship or ticket and desperate for a job; Benson, the taciturn man-servant to Clive Lowbridge - who we find out at the end is not who he appears to be; La Florette, the thin-lipped French dancer at the Orpheum, where Betty also worked. She turns out to be an East Ender who lives with her mother and is jealous of Betty's far superior looks. A great character, but I never really caught on to what value she brought to the story. Far more important to the tale are The Proud Sons of Ragousa, many of whose members turn out to be a cross between Freemasons (with its lodges, Twenty-Third Degree, priors and, at the very top, the Grand Prior) and something far more sinister. (Remember the hooded figure on the moor? It will all fall into place by the end). The story-line, which inevitably was all to do with greed, is far too convoluted for a short Blog such as this, even if I did understand it all. Suffice it to say, all the above characters are increasingly part of a gripping, if nasty tale. One must add two more important participants: Inspector Bullott, usually working in the Records Department of Scotland Yard, but now drawn into tracking down a murderer and the nefarious goings-on within the Ragousa; and Toby Marsh - one of the cleverest cracksmen in London; he's only been caught once, and that was by accident. Both are to play vital parts in the rather long drawn-out denouement, which takes place on the transatlantic liner Escorial, which at one stage is being thrillingly chased by two English warships - the Sussex and the Kent - and a American cruiser through banks of fog and too-close-for-comfort icebergs. I must admit, I had suspended my disbelief quite early on. But, all good fun and the baddies (the main one I did not twig, when they were unmasked at the end) got their just deserts and Betty not only found out her real name and that she was wealthy, but that Bill Holbrook was for her.
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