Edgar Wallace's The Door with Seven Locks

The Door with Seven Locks is a 1926 Edgar Wallace thriller.

Dick Martin is a young Scotland Yard sub-inspector about to retire because he’s come into money, although now he’s wondering what on earth he’s going to do with himself. Being a cop was his life.

He’s just handled on odd case. He was to arrest a professional burglar named Pheeney but the man has an unusual alibi. At the time he was picking locks, in a totally lawful manner. He had been hired to break into a tomb.

Perhaps as a joke his superintendent assigns Dick to one last case - involving a stolen library book. That case will have surprising consequences. One of the consequence is that he meets an adorable girl named Sybil. The other consequences are more sinister - he meets a doctor named Stalletti. Stalletti occupies his time with some rather startling experiments.

Although Dick doesn’t want to become a private detective his superintendent also suggests he might like to take on a case, on a one-off basis, for a lawyer named Havelock. It involves keeping tabs on the young, unstable, eccentric, world-wandering Lord Selford. Dick is at a loose end and dreads boredom so he accepts.

These three plot strands will soon begin to intersect.

Dick is a bit surprised when someone tries to kill him, and even more surprised that his assailant doesn’t seem to be quite human.

There are also some keys which seem to be important. Sybil has one of these keys. Someone else is very keen to get hold of it.

In fact there are seven keys, and all seven are needed to unlock a door with seven locks. Nobody knows what is behind that door. The door is in the Selford Tombs, a burial complex built into a hillside by one of the current Lord Selford’s distant ancestors. That ancestor was notoriously wicked. The father of the present Lord Selford also had a reputation for wickedness.

There are quite a few shady characters mixed up in this case. Some turn out to be more sinister than initial appearances suggest while others might be fairly harmless common-and-garden crooks.

There are clearly all kinds of secrets associated with the Selford family. Sybil is distantly related to Lord Selford and indeed appears to be his only living relative.

There is a rumour that Selford Manor contains hidden rooms. There are kidnappings. Innocent people are drugged. Telephone lines get cut. There are what appear to be monstrous creatures. There are murders. There are gunfights. There are ancient sins.

Dick Martin naturally falls in love with Sybil, giving him a personal stake in the case. He’s a good detective but he’s dealing with fantastic crimes that are totally outside all his past experience.

Wallace as usual provides plenty of breathless excitement and a delightfully outrageous plot that positively races along. Wallace had a knack for making such plots finally come together in a surprisingly satisfying manner.

And as so often in Wallace’s books there are hints of gothic creepiness. Hugely entertaining and highly recommended

The Door with the Seven Locks was adapted for film in 1962 as an entry in the prolific cycle of German Edgar Wallace krimis (the German name for crime films) made by Rialto. I’ve reviewed that movie as well.