The Fourth Plague Read Free

complex stories, but often his characteristic twists and surprises survived the constriction. Some of the highlights of the series are listed below.
    The Clue of the Twisted Candle . Anglo-Amalgamated (British), 1960. Bernard Lee (the first of several appearances as Superintendant Meredith of Scotland Yard), David Knight. Directed by Allan Davis. Based on the 1918 novel. In a room locked from the inside, a millionaire is found murdered; near him are two half-burned candles.
    The Malpas Mystery . Anglo-Amalgamated (British), 1960. Maureen Swanson, Allan Cuthbertson, Geoffrey Keen, Ronald Howard. Directed by Sidney Hayers. Based on The Face in the Night (1924). A girl, a former convict, and now secretary to a strange recluse, learns that she is the heir to a fortune- from her long-lost father, who is searching for her.
    The Man Who Was Nobody . Anglo-Amalgamated (British), 1961. Hazel Court, John Crawford, Lisa Daniely. Directed by Montgomery Tully. Based on the 1927 novel. A girl private detective’s search for a missing playboy leads her to the mysterious “South Africa Smith.”
    Clue of the New Pin . Anglo-Amalgamated (British), 1961. Paul Daneman, Bernard Archard. Directed by Davis. Based on the 1923 novel. Again, a millionaire is found killed in a locked room, the key to the door on a table near him.
    The Fourth Square . Anglo-Amalgamated (British), 1961. Conrad Phillips, Natasha Parry, Delphi Lawrence, Daneman. Directed by Davis. From Four Square Jane (1928). Three valuable jewels are stolen from three London squares, with murder thrown in.
    Man at the Carlton Tower . Anglo-Amalgamated (British), 1961. Maxine Audley, Lee Montague. Directed by Robert Tronson. From The Man at the Carlton (1931), the title altered so that scenes could be filmed at the newly constructed Carlton Tower Hotel. The chief suspect in a jewelry theft vanishes, his partner and the police searching for him.
    Clue of the Silver Key . Anglo-Amalgamated (British), 1961. Lee (Meredith), Alexander Knox, Moira Redmond. Directed by Gerard Glaister. From the 1930 novel. In another “impossible” crime, a bad-tempered blind moneylender is found shot to death.
    The Share Out . Anglo-Amalgamated (British), 1962. Lee (Meredith), Alexander Knox, Moira Redmond. Directed by Glaister. From Jack O’Judgment (1920). A shady private investigator tries to clear his past by helping Scotland Yard close in on a large blackmail ring, many of whose members are suddenly murdered.
    Number Six . Anglo-Amalgamated (British), 1962. Ivan Desny, Nadja Regin, Michael Goodliffe, Brian Bedford. Directed by Tronson. From the 1927 novel. Criminals try to ferret out the identity of “Number 6,” Scotland Yard’s secret agent.
    Although the series continued for several more years, less attention was paid to Wallace sources.
Television
    In 1959 thirty-nine half-hour television programs were fashioned from The Four Just Men , featuring, in turn, the adventures of Dan Dailey, Jack Hawkins, Richard Conte, and Vittorio De Sica, who, as private citizens, corrected injustices in various parts of the world.
Plays
    Wallace was quite successful in contributing to England’s rich tradition of melodrama theater with such plays as The Ringers (1926) and The Terror (1927); as late as the 1950s, long after his death, Princess Margaret and Elsa Maxwell participated in a society staging for charity of The Frog , which had been adapted from Wallace’s The Fellowship of the Frog (1925) by Ian Hay. Among Broadway productions, he is best remembered for Criminal at Large (a version of the stranglings at the Priory of The Frightened Lady of 1932) and On the Spot , a popular drama filmed as Dangerous to Know (1938). In this play, staged in London in 1930 and on Broadway in 1931, a gangster czar (closely resembling Al Capone) living in a Chicago penthouse is ultimately done in by his wronged Chinese mistress (Anna May Wong). Typically, Wallace wrote the play in four days.