Fatal fingers

“I don’t know what you call it but bribery,” growled the thin, white-bearded old man seated in the easy chair by the fireplace. “I’ve really got nothing more to say to you. I wi...

As Ravenscourt stood at the corner of Denbigh Street he hailed a passing taxi and drove to the Carlton Club, where he sat in a corner of the smoking-room, pretending to read, bu...

As the chief drove Inspector Medland along in the landaulette which had been waiting, the detective again took from his pocket the document which Sir George had been so anxious...

The body of the unfortunate Goodrick was conveyed upstairs to the narrow back bedroom and laid upon the bed covered with a sheet, a grim object in the cold grey dawn.

Maidee Lambton, loosening her rich furs, seated herself in the frowsy old arm-chair before the fire, while the quick-eyed old man before her stood upon the hearthrug regarding h...

John Ambrose was a very evasive old man. Age begets cunning. He was often garrulous and reminiscent, yet his abnormal brain was as clear, as retentive, and as shrewd as it had b...

“For a month or two, at least,” he said. “See! I have to have the blinds half-down. It is so annoying not to be able to read. Books were my only pleasure, and now even they are...

A tall, slim, dark-haired, athletic-looking young man of twenty-six was lounging in a big arm-chair in the saloon of Boodle’s, idly smoking a cigarette and gazing out into the w...

For fully a quarter of an hour Gordon Cunningham had sat immovable, heedless of the fact that he was peering out into the darkness, and that the grave-faced waiter had not lower...

That evening, about the same hour, a rather florid-looking and somewhat over-dressed, elderly man, wearing round-rimmed, gold spectacles, and speaking with a strong American acc...

His executors had discovered that her ladyship and Miss Irene had been left well provided for, and that pecuniary worry could not have been held responsible for the fatal act.

By the firelight that same afternoon in the narrow, dingy sitting-room in Walworth old John Ambrose sat at ease in his shabby arm-chair. The tall, thin, sad-faced Roman Catholic...

“Yes,” replied the old man, inviting his visitor inside, but instantly upon his mettle. He eyed him from head to foot and then laughed within himself at the thinness of the dete...

The death of the mysterious Richard Goodrick had puzzled them greatly. Though the heads of Scotland Yard--all of them experts in detection of various branches of crime--had sat...

“Yes; you thought that I was dead, my dear Gordon,” Ambrose said in a deep, meaning voice, and with an evil grin. “I see, however, that you have recognised me! Probably you gues...

Next evening, in response to an invitation over the telephone, Gordon Cunningham snatched a couple of hours from his duties at the House and dined _en famille_ at Mrs. Beresford...

The doctor and one of his friends had brought him home in a taxi, and, now he had recovered, they had left him to rest. The fainting fit had, the medical man declared, been due...

In Parliament Square, that little oasis of green grass in Westminster, the traffic of motor-’buses and taxi-cabs was increasing, and foot passengers, wrapped warmly against the...

He had been down at Brighton for the past few days, he told Gordon, as he stood with him in that dim Oriental room. He had telephoned to him at the House, and the young man had...

Hardly had he paid the driver when a taxi drew up a little distance away, and a thin, wiry, elderly man, with deep-set eyes and a yellow complexion, and dressed in dark clothes,...

The sunny April afternoon was warm and drowsy in the high-up, ancient rock-village of Santa Lucia which, perched upon the summit of a conical hill, commands a magnificent view o...

Through many years John Ambrose had placed implicit faith in that solemn, pious, hook-nosed _curato_, the man who was such a brilliant scholar and such a wonderful orator that t...

The invalid was Maidee, whose sweet face, lying upon the pillow, was pale and wan, and whose dark, deep-sunken eyes bore a strange, intense look as she turned them upon her lover.

Far away over the jagged crests of the Apennines, like a horn of pallid gold, or a silver sickle for some precious harvest, the moon hung over the world that in her light was vi...

The old priest rose unceremoniously, kicked the dog’s body away beneath a bench out of sight, and then, returning to the table, carefully collected the fatal powder, dried it, a...

When old Teresa set out the big bowl of coffee and milk and the long rolls of bread and small pats of butter before the guest on that bright, sunny morning she wished him _buona...

He had been found by one of the dogs lying unconscious in the woods, four kilometres distant. Apparently he had been on his way home, and had dropped from exhaustion. He was wit...

The broad waters of the Channel lay bathed in the brilliant after-glow, for the sun was just disappearing below the horizon, and a fresh, health-giving breeze sprang up as Maide...

When, on opening his eyes at last, he saw the pale, anxious face of his friend Ambrose bent over him, he started, glaring at him in horror, as though some hideous phantom of the...

“May God forgive me for my sin,” she wrote. “My poor husband Rollo was outrageously jealous. Being a Catholic, I naturally admired the preaching of the famous Father Mellini who...