Okewood of the Secret Service

Mr. Arthur Mackwayte slipped noiselessly into the dining-room and took his place at the table. He always moved quietly, a look of gentle deprecation on his face as much as to sa...

It was the slack hour at the Nineveh Hotel. The last groups about the tea-tables in the Palm Court had broken up, the Tzigane orchestra had stacked its instruments together on i...

That night Nur-el-Din kept the stage waiting for five minutes. It was a climax of a long series of similar unpardonable crimes in the music-hall code. The result was that Mr. Ma...

There is a sinister ring about the word “murder,” which reacts upon even the most hardened sensibility. Edgar Allan Poe, who was a master of the suggestive use of words, realize...

The Chief and Desmond stood at the detective’s side in the Mackwaytes’ little dining-room. The room was in considerable disorder. There was a litter of paper, empty bottles, ove...

“Miss Mackwayte telephoned to ask if I could go and see her,” said the Chief to Desmond as they motored back to White hall, “Marigold gave me the message just as we were coming...

The love of romance is merely the nobler form of curiosity. And there was something in Desmond Okewood’s Anglo-Irish parentage that made him fiercely inquisitive after adventure...

A taxi was waiting in Pall Mall outside the club and Desmond hailed it, though secretly wondering what the driver would think of taking him out to Seven Kings. Rather to his sur...

It was a clear, cold night. A knife-edge icy wind blew from the north-east and kept the lanyards dismally flapping on the flag-mast over the customs house. The leave train lay i...

When Barbara reached the Chief’s ante-room she found it full of people. Mr. Marigold was there, chatting with Captain Strangwise who seemed to be just taking his leave; there wa...

The sight of Nur-el-Din filled Desmond with alarm. For a moment his mind was overshadowed by the dread of detection. He had forgotten all about Mr. Crook’s handiwork in the trai...

Clad in a suit of Mr. Basil Bellward’s pyjamas of elaborate blue-flowered silk, Desmond lay propped up in bed in Mr. Bellward’s luxuriously fitted bedroom, sipping his morning c...

In a very depressed frame of mind, Desmond turned into the library. As he crossed the hall, he noticed how cheerless the house was. Again there came to him that odor of mustines...

“No luck, Mr. Marigold,” said the Assistant Provost Marshal, “I’m sorry, but there it is! We’ve made every possible inquiry about this Private... er...” he glanced at the buff-c...

A knocking at the door of the library aroused Desmond from his cogitations. He hastened to replace the volumes of Shakespeare on their shelf and restore all to its former appear...

The room in which Desmond found Nur-el-Din was obviously the parlor of the house. Everything in it spoke of that dreary period in art, the middle years of the reign of Victoria...

Oblivious of the voices in the room below, Desmond stood with his face pressed against the glass of the window. Was Strangwise staying at “The Dyke Inn”? Nothing was more probab...

Action, or the promise of action, always acted on Desmond Okewood like a nerve tonic. His visit to the inn, followed by the fencing with Mortimer at dinner, had galvanized his n...

There are moments in life when the need for prompt action is so urgent that thought, decision and action must be as one operation of the brain. In the general consternation foll...

Francis was still wearing Mr. John Hill’s greasy jacket and moleskins, but the removal of the sandy whiskers and a remarkable wig, consisting of a bald pate with a fringe of red...

Across Morsted Fen the day was breaking red and sullen. The brimming dykes, fringed with bare pollards, and the long sheets of water spread out across the lush meadows, threw ba...

On opening the door at the farther end of the tap-room they saw before them a trap-door standing wide with a shallow flight of wooden steps leading to the darkness below. Bates...

In the age of chivalry woman must have been built of sterner stuff than the girl of to-day. At least, we read in medieval romance of fair ladies who, after being knocked down by...

Desmond drove to Wentfield Station in an angry and defiant mood. He was incensed against Francis, incensed against the Chief, yet, if the truth were told, most of all incensed a...

Clasping Barbara’s wrist in a bony grip, Mrs. Malplaquet sat at the girl’s side in the back seat of the limousine whilst Bellward placed himself on the seat opposite. The car wa...

The hour of the theatre rush was long since over and its passing had transformed the taxi-drivers from haughty autocrats to humble suppliants. One taxi after another crawled slo...

The side-door led into a little white passage with a green baize door at the end. A staircase, which from its white-washed treads, Desmond judged to be the back stairs, gave on...

Desmond sprang for the window; but it was too late. Strangwise who had not missed a syllable of the interrogatory was at the curtains in a flash. As he plucked the hangings back...

For a long time after the retreating footsteps of Strangwise and Bellward had died away, Desmond sat listless, preoccupied with his thoughts. They were somber enough. The sinist...

Desmond looked in a dazed fashion from one to the other. The rapid transition from the hush of the room to the scene of confusion going on around him had left him bewildered. Hi...

It was a clear, crisp morning with a sparkle of frost on jetty and breakwater. The English Channel stretched flashing like a living sheet of glass to the filmy line marking the...