Death in the dusk

Surely I am the sane one here if anyone is. Yet I cannot name the curse that lies on my spirit and keeps in my eyes the vision of the two faces, the golden hair above the black!...

About this time I was sitting on a damp sharp stone, looking about me and seeing nothing. I had walked for a long while and gotten nowhere. For there was persistent mist still i...

I don’t suppose I was in the air a second, but there was time enough for me to rue my neglect of Jack Bonnet’s invitation. Why hadn’t I turned round and gone away from the Fores...

The man was nonplussed. It had always been, at least for me, one of his chief charms when we were in the same college, the haziness and obstruction of mind that were so queerly...

While my mind was still in a haze, a small thing caught my eye and made me give a much larger thing a rapid, cursory, and at the same time careful survey. The small thing was st...

I awoke, late in the morning, of course, very much refreshed. For a moment or two I was puzzled by my situation; then the tenseness and terror of the preceding night stung me. I...

As usual, Ludlow made himself manifest. His sneer in a shrill staccato was apparently directed against Doctor Stephen Aire, a new arrival. Him I had not yet met, the table being...

Pendleton and I stared speechless at him; in me, at least, the old surprise had given place to new astonishment twice as strong. What was the matter with this man? The only ligh...

He might hardly have been in the Hall of the Moth all afternoon, had my impressions been evidence—so quiet he had kept, relapsed out of the main light of the room into the shado...

Perhaps I had gazed at this thing in fascination for twenty or thirty seconds before it stirred at all. Then the faintest swinging motion seemed to occur, on a horizontal plane,...

Yet the two men from New Aidenn had come up the Vale through that ruinous rain and wind. From the corner library window I myself had dimly seen them plodding up the leaf-stained...

And now we know that the Chief Constable has left the direct handling of the case to Salt, under a discreet supervision from afar. Wise of the Constable, since he had no hope of...

“My Lord, one more question, if you please. The man—Soames I believe his name is—who has just conducted me to the cellars says you gave him a letter to post last evening.”

For half an hour we walked on almost in silence, making the tritest remarks about our surroundings, particularly those peaks which shut in the valley ahead of us, from Great Rho...

I slipped on my rough shoes, thus completing my toilet, scribbled a note for Crofts, and passed out of the door. From the top of the stairs came a soft recurrent sound. Bob Cull...

There was, of course, a match-holder in the library. I looked into the room of weapons: although the light shone beyond the library door ajar, no sound came from inside. I thoug...

Was he, I wondered, in the room at all? So far, since eight o’clock, I had not been able to detect the slightest sound from within the chamber. For longer and longer periods I l...

I drifted away from the others, into the vacant Hall of the Moth, slouched down in one of the flimsy chairs. My mind was rather wistful for the deceased Cosgrove, wanting him ba...

Not only did Eve Bartholomew appear this morning at breakfast at the early hour Salt had suggested, but she seemed almost in brighter mood than before, and I can understand how...

I chanced upon an alternative road, with more variety in its prospects, to take me back to the mouth of the Vale, omitting New Aidenn entirely and saving a third of my journey....

Furtively, yet with a strange half-fearful pleasure, I made my way in safety to the top of the stairs and down. I knew it was useless to inspect the rooms which had been examine...

In spite of early bed last night, no one was downstairs early this bright morning, Sunday. I myself wanted breakfast at nine, but then I am the one person in the House who has a...

“So I watched the lawn and the House. I could almost see it growing darker while I waited, the light changes so rapidly in the Vale. And I hate the twilight—all the really terri...

There were some bitter things said of her, though, by those, even, who volunteered readiest for the search. Repressed criticisms of her seemingly callous behaviour since Cosgrov...

(There ended my diary. Thenceforth I was to be like a man in a maelstrom. And now that circumstances have stayed my hand from its task for weeks on end, I have no confidence tha...

We had carried Maryvale down to the bridge, and the ambulance from the Cottage Hospital at Kington had been waiting to take the unfortunate man away. We did not know until later...

Blood on the pallid cheek of Sir Pharamond, and his downfall, as had been prophesied in the olden time! I saw no one else, heard no one else, only gaped at the ruined portrait a...

In tingling silence some of us crossed the Hall and regarded the headless thing. Belvoir lit the other chandelier, and in its sparkle, to my immeasurable relief, the figure prov...

Like an imbecile, I waited stock-still in the darkness for the light to return. The sudden eclipse, however, had checked my foes as well. I heard their footsteps cease like thos...