Number Seventeen

People who had arrived at the theater in fine weather were emerging into a drizzle of rain. "All London," as the phrase goes, was flocking to see the latest musical comedy at Da...

Theydon's journalistic experiences had been, for the most part, those of the "special correspondent," or descriptive writer. He had never entered one of those fetid slums of a g...

Consternation reigned for a while at the entrance to the Royal Devonshire. Men craned their necks and women uttered nervous little shrieks. But Evelyn Forbes was endowed with a...

"To think that within the next few days I would have been staying there with Edith, and planning evenings at the theater before going to Newquay!" she murmured; there was a piti...

It was no small achievement that the son of a country rector, aided only by a stout heart, a university education and an excellent physique--good recommendations, each and all,...

Theydon gazed dazedly at the skull for the best part of a minute. His state of mind was that of a man, utterly incredulous, who nevertheless thinks he sees a ghost. Then he reco...

Though Theydon was in first-rate athletic trim, that blow on the throat had nearly stunned him. The effort to rise promptly and bear a hand in the imminent capture of one whom h...

"My motto is 'Defense, not Defiance,'" he said. "I hope sincerely that I shall not be called on to shoot, or even threaten any one. Using firearms, although for self-protection,...

Mrs. Forbes, a slim, elegant woman, looked as if she were her daughter's elder sister. Although driven by hay fever to the seaside regularly at the beginning of the London seaso...

"The man who wrote that took a great many things for granted," he said. "He assumed, firstly, that you knew of Mrs. Lester's death and understood its significance; secondly, tha...

Even the boldest may flinch when confronted with that which is apparently a manifestation of the supernatural. Theydon and Forbes were standing in a chamber of death. To the bes...

So petrified was Theydon by coming face to face with the last person breathing whom he expected to meet in that room, that he stumbled over a small chair which lay directly betw...

Though a prey to that most burthensome of cares--the uneasy consciousness of an impalpable yet ever-threatening evil--Theydon was not blind to the humorous element in the presen...

Furneaux, with that phenomenally clear mind of his, had perceived and expressed in one trenchant sentence the outstanding and almost unique feature of the tragic mystery which c...

Although, as shall be seen, the final and complete defeat and extinction of the London section of the Young Manchus were directly due to forces set in motion by Furneaux, it was...

Now, Len Shi had communicated one vital fact to his compatriots which they had carefully concealed from the detectives. The opening campaign against Forbes had practically ended...

bankers in London, but he supplied very little positive information before Edith and he sailed. Indeed, I took it that his mission was highly confidential, and about that time t...

With the morning Theydon brought a mature and impartial judgment to bear on his perplexities. The average man, if asked to form an opinion on any difficult point, will probably...