A time of terror

The Court was densely crowded, and an atmosphere already vitiated became doubly poisonous now that the ushers had lighted the gas. The flaring jets revealed on every side the fl...

The two men faced each other in the calm starlight of the April evening. The Embankment was almost deserted save for the huddled, heedless outcasts on the benches. A few hansoms...

An Englishman returning to his native land after an absence of twenty-five years, might not at first discover much difference in the look of London. There stood the old familiar...

For three days public attention had been riveted on another sensational trial that had packed the New Bailey with an excited audience, and filled the report columns of the Londo...

In the Solicitor-General’s chambers, in Paper Buildings, Bobby Herrick was fuming, and looking at his watch. At intervals Wilson, the head-clerk, fussed in and out with briefs a...

Bobby Herrick was sound in wind and limb; healthy in heart and brain; but for a moment or two he sat dazed and helpless in face of the position that confronted him. The whole th...

Rumour has many wings, and, though the following day was Sunday, rumour fluttered through clubland in the morning, giving rise to many languid speculations concerning the true i...

The weather prophets declared that it was to be one of the driest and hottest summers on record; and, for once, the prophets seemed in a fair way to be justified. The strain of...

“Thank heaven!” sighed Herrick. He tossed a bulky brief on a side-table, and rose to his feet. The heat was stifling in his narrow room in Paper Buildings. Outside in the garden...

John Westwood was the son of a solicitor, and paternal influence gave him his first start at the Bar. A patient, strenuous, and able man, he missed no chance. The crest of a pol...

When Herrick awoke on the following morning, after a night of restlessness and troubled dreams, the summer sunshine seemed to be almost mocking in its brilliancy. For, in spite...

The usual Monday morning movements had kept the hotel in a bustle for some little time, and Herrick’s cab was waiting at the door. There was a motor-car waiting also, and one th...

The London season languished. Even the cult of the great god Pleasure found few genuinely zealous votaries. Trade, said the managers of the big West-end drapery establishments,...

In those never-forgettable summer weeks in the mammoth city the converted _Epoch_ published a series of denunciatory articles without parallel in the history of the modern press...

The recrudescence of the Dancing Mania first took notable form on a certain Sunday evening. At Queen’s Hall the Sunday League--which is in no way to be associated with the Leagu...

There was one, and only one, section of society in London that found unalloyed pleasure in the abnormal features of the period. The youth of the lower orders revelled in the abs...

Thus the wind of the world, which bloweth whither it listeth--or whither the Great Spirit that rules the world directs--had wafted Billy, a fortuitous atom of humanity, into tou...

When London became fully alive to the weird occurrences in its midst, the first feeling was one of contempt, but it was quickly followed by the dawn of consternation. An article...

Greatly moved by the evil things that had befallen London, and stung in some measure by the trenchant attacks appearing in the _Epoch_, a small band of London clergy who had rec...

Less than thirty miles from the monster city, now festering and malodorous under the September sun, high in a breeze-swept garden, Aldwyth Westwood, with a book upon her knees,...

The Long Vacation having dragged its monotonous length to a finish, the Courts re-opened in the third week in October. The day was dull, and dull foreboding seemed to oppress th...

A shadow had fallen upon the engagement of Herrick and Aldwyth Westwood. The Westwoods were back in Hill Street, and Herrick also had returned after a long yachting cruise with...

The acute alarm now felt in Government circles led to a hasty decision to embody a large auxiliary force of special constables. A source of much anxiety was found in the rumoure...

The appalling explosion which checked the impending conflict between the volunteers and the Leaguers, causing the latter to melt away from Lincoln’s Inn and rush in surging hord...

In the sombre days of December a double gloom settled down upon the sacred precincts of Mayfair. But little incense was being heaped on the shrine of luxury and pride. The fire...

All the week there had dwelt in Billy’s mind that, to him, new and terrible story of the murdered King of the Jews. On Sunday--a bleak, dull day, when the charred trees in the P...

On the twenty-first of December the Law Courts “rose” for the Christmas vacation. It was the end of the gloomiest and slackest term within the memory of living lawyers. The abno...

The weather had suddenly turned to bitter cold, and, in spite of prevailing alarms, every one had something more or less obvious to say on the unfailing subject. Disaster may im...

The elements ignore, and thus subdue, the rage of men. Wind alone would not have cleared the streets, but wind and snow together drove loiterers and roisterers alike to shelter....

The daring _coup de main_ of Marcus White had met with the most amazing and complete success. With the exception of the Chancery judges, who, for purposes of criminal law, were...

There were few London households in which Christmas had been “merry,” and the lack of festive doings had necessarily extended to those who are of the roofless household of the s...

On the night of Bank Holiday, Londoners did not lack illumination. Gas and electric light had failed, but north and south, and east and west, the lurid glare of burning building...

Thus the chronicler: “The Spanish Invasion being brought to a crisis, after the most assiduous application of three whole years to fit out that fleet vainly named by the Pope th...

With that mocking perversity which confutes the weatherwise, the frost and bitter wind had given place to heavy rainstorms. The wind, veering round to south-west late on Boxing...

“We have here something that he wrote for us to give into Lord Downland’s hands. It bears on the safety of Miss Westwood’s father, and perhaps on special foreign news which his...

The strike of compositors which had maddened the conductors of daily journals proved to be a blessing in disguise. Such stirring news had come to hand that a few hours’ delay in...

London went mad when all the news was known--mad with amazement, relief, anger, joy: amazement at the deadly reality of the national danger that had been averted; relief at the...

Far from the madding crowd of London, beyond sound of all the shouting and the tumult, they laid to rest, “each in his narrow cell,” Father Francis and Billy of Mayfair. The pri...

On the last day of the year there was a national service of thanksgiving in St Paul’s Cathedral. The rushing river of national feeling, at first tumultuous like the sound of man...