A Maker of History

Monsieur Albert was not often surprised, and still less often did he show it. The party, however, who trooped cheerily into his little restaurant at something after midnight on...

Duncombe was out of the room in a very few seconds. The others hesitated for a moment whether to follow him or not. Spencer was the first to rise to his feet and moved towards t...

The boy sat up and rubbed his eyes. He was stiff, footsore, and a little chilly. There was no man-servant arranging his bath and clothes, no pleasant smell of coffee--none of th...

Spencer tried to rise from the sofa, but the effort was too much for him. Pale and thin, with black lines under his eyes, and bloodless lips, he seemed scarcely more than the wr...

They came face to face in the hall of the Grand Hotel. Duncombe had just returned from his call upon the Marquise. Andrew was leaning upon the arm of a dark, smooth-shaven man,...

The three men were sitting at a small round dining-table, from which everything except the dessert had been removed. Duncombe filled his own glass and passed around a decanter o...

The amber wine fell in a little wavering stream from his upraised glass on to the table-cloth below. He leaned back in his chair and gazed at his three guests with a fatuous smi...

The table around which they were seated was strewn with papers and maps. The door of the room was locked, and a sentry stood outside in the passage. The three men were busy maki...

Spencer, whose recovery during the last few days had been as rapid as the first development of his indisposition, had just changed for dinner, and was lighting a _cigarette d'ap...

Mademoiselle Mermillon was not warmly welcomed at the Grand Hotel. The porter believed that Sir George Duncombe was out. He would inquire, if Mademoiselle would wait, but he did...

"At the sport, my young friend," Henri murmured, from the depths of his basket chair, "I yield you without question supremacy. Your rude games, trials mostly of brute strength,...

"Oh, I had to amuse myself somehow," she answered. "I've done my hair a new way, rearranged all my ornaments, and really I don't think a man has a right to such a delightful man...

Runton was apparently enjoying the relaxation of having got rid of practically the whole of its guests for the day. The women servants were going about their duties faithfully e...

It was perhaps as well for Andrew Pelham that he could not see Phyllis' look as she entered the room. An English gentleman, she had been told, was waiting to see her, and she ha...

Guy moved uneasily upon his chair. The color mounted almost to his forehead. It was a humiliation this, upon which he had not counted. Monsieur Grisson was sitting within a few...

Duncombe had the nerves and temperament of the young Englishman of his class, whose life is mostly spent out of doors, and who has been an athlete all his days. But nevertheless...

At precisely half-past nine on the following evening Duncombe alighted from his _petite voiture_ in the courtyard of the Grand Hotel, and making his way into the office engaged...

There was something strange about Andrew's manner as he moved up to Duncombe's side. The latter, who was in curiously high spirits, talked incessantly for several minutes. Then...

"Ah, these Englishmen!" she exclaimed. "These dull, good, obstinate, stupid pigs of Englishmen! If they would lose their tempers once--get angry, anything. Do they make love as...

He was grieved and polite because Mademoiselle was beautiful and in trouble. For the rest he was a little tired of her. Brothers of twenty-one, who have never been in Paris befo...

It seemed to Duncombe that time stood still. Andrew's face, wholly disfigured by the hideous dark spectacles, unrecognizable, threatening, was within a few inches of his own. He...

"You have heard now," Duncombe said, finally, "the whole history of my wanderings. I feel like a man who has been beating the air, who has been at war with unseen and irresistib...

At three o'clock in the morning Groves, in a discarded dressing-gown of his master's, opened the front door and peered cautiously out into the darkness. Monsieur Louis, who was...

"Not once," he answered. "He behaved very decently about it on the whole; treated it quite lightly--but he wouldn't let me go near the police. It was a long way the most unpleas...

Duncombe leaned his gun up against a gate. A few yards away his host was talking to the servants who had brought down luncheon. The rest of the party were only just in sight a f...

Duncombe was passed from the concierge to a footman, and from a footman to a quietly dressed groom of the chambers, who brought him at last to Madame la Marquise. She gave him t...

Spencer wrote out his luncheon with the extreme care of the man to whom eating has passed to its proper place amongst the arts, and left to Duncombe the momentous question of re...

One of his three visitors Duncombe recognized immediately. It was Monsieur Louis. Of the other two one was a Frenchman, a somewhat sombre-looking person, in a black beard and go...

It was obvious that Mademoiselle was of the class which does not frequent night cafés alone, but after all that was scarcely Monsieur Albert's concern. She came perhaps from tha...

"In the most unlikely places!" Duncombe murmured to himself as he bowed to the Frenchman, whose name his friend had mentioned. "I am very glad to meet you again, Monsieur le Bar...

"Extraordinary indeed," his friend assented. "But so far as I am concerned you can see how I am fixed. I am older than either of them, but I have always been their nearest neigh...

On the following morning the inhabitants of London, Paris, Berlin, and St. Petersburg for a sum varying from a halfpenny to a penny were treated to sensationalism as thrilling a...

"I Suppose," the boy said thoughtfully, "I must seem to you beastly ungrateful. You've been a perfect brick to me ever since that night. But I can't help being a bit homesick. Y...

For three days Duncombe saw nothing of Spencer. Three long days devoid of incident, hopelessly dull, aimless, and uninteresting. On the fourth the only change in the situation w...

Exactly a week later, at five minutes after midnight, Guy Poynton, in evening dress, entered the Café Montmartre, in Paris. He made his way through the heterogeneous little crow...

"MY DEAR DUNCOMBE,--Fielding has cried off the shoot to-day. Says he has a motor coming over for him to try from Norwich, and his dutiful daughter remains with him. Thought I wo...

Duncombe unfastened the chain and bolts of the ponderous front door, and looked out into the darkness. A carriage and pair of horses were drawn up outside. A man and a woman, bo...

She came into the room a little late, and her entrance created almost a sensation. Duncombe only knew that she wore a black gown and looked divine. Lady Runton murmured "Paquin"...

"I only wanted a word with you," he said. "We're all starving, and if you don't mind we'll get on as quickly as we can. About to-morrow. You shoot with us, of course?"