"Persons Unknown"

The whole of Allegra's document was never made public. Before it was read even by those concerned they heard from Nancy how, when she had run from the window of the boathouse, i...

On first recovering consciousness he had found himself lying with his head in Christina's lap, and had supposed he was in heaven. But it hadn't been heaven; it had still been th...

If the young actress and Ten Euyck, now at his best as the coroner, had, as Corey had suggested, any previous knowledge of each other, neither of them stooped to signify it now.

She was dressed in a trailing gown of silken tissue that was now gold, now silver, as the light took it; but the long vaporous slip beneath was of pale rose; molded to her motio...

"Well, for one thing," Kane said, "no mortal creature ever looked at that girl and thought her a quitter." He was standing at Ingham's table, wrinkling his eyebrows at the stori...

There was a time coming when Herrick was to salute as prophetic what he now noted with a grim amusement; that from the moment the shadow sprang upon the blind the current of his...

The door from the hall opened, letting in a flood of light. At the same time a man stepped through one of the windows. He was the first of a number whom the halls and staircases...

"The eighth district, members of the Honorable Society," said Mr. Gumama, bowing to the assembly as if he were ascending a throne, "it is my duty to inform you that, for reasons...

Herrick felt the strong light of the one lamp like something hypnotic; it reminded him of the glare in some Sardou or Belasco torture chamber. It seemed to him that the scene wa...

Herrick had written on his card, "Forgive what must seem an intrusion. I am asking your time on a matter of business, but I'm afraid I must call it a personal matter, too." Afte...

The prisoner had never taken his eyes from the Parmesan's face. Their hope was so cruel that it might have been fear, instead. If, from the world of responsibility, the girl's n...

The monstrous hope died almost in the pang that gave it birth. The lady who leaned out to him from the cab, putting aside her heavy veil, showed him the troubled countenance of...

Herrick made no outcry at Wheeler's words. He simply stood looking out into the wet and windy spaces of Times Square, where the great splashes of colored lights wavered and shon...

Christina's stream of Italian left Herrick so far behind that he could only watch the incredulity of Gumama's face turn to doubt and then to reflection. The word "American" was...

Hermann Deutch was a shortish, middle-aged Jew, belonging to the humbler classes and of a perfectly cheap and cheerful type. But at the present moment he was not cheerful. He sh...

Herrick lay in the long grass of the wooded lot, against the wall of the Hoover place. Already the night was velvet-black, and hot and thunder-scented as in summer. A million vi...

Ten Euyck's face blazed white with anger. Sick with rage, driven with bewilderment and some touch of vague suspicion, all his cold strength gathered itself. He was no longer mer...

Herrick pushed roughly past him. There was no sign of the girl, and in a cold apprehension, Herrick stared out over the lake. Denny's voice at his elbow said, "She doesn't seem...

Above the penciled scribble was neither date nor heading, but the signature in Christina's slapdash scrawl made the world spin before Herrick's eyes. Upon that sheet of paper he...

During those days Herrick and the faithful Stanley, sometimes accompanied by Wheeler's stalwart hopefulness, had persistently attempted to take up the trail where it had broken-...

The light in the little tea-room was rather dim. Christina spread out Herrick's copies of the two blackmailing letters upon the table and studied them, propping her chin on her...

Mrs. Pascoe had some last minute shopping on hand, including farewell gifts for her niece's family and a special token for Maria Rosa, and she was quite unaware that it would ha...

They listened, incredulous, straining their eyes among the black pools and bright patches of wooded, winding way up from the river and discerned--almost on the instant close at...

Once more a hand had touched the spring. Once more the meeting vibrated to a universal shock. Mr. Gumama signed to the fruit-peddler and a brace of laborers that they provide th...

At nine o'clock on the morning of Friday, the day when Christina disappeared, there stood at the little interior station of Waybrook, awaiting the train from New York, a touring...

The only professional appearance which Wheeler had hitherto permitted Christina to make in New York had been when she recited at a benefit early in the preceding spring. The ben...

It was not because this reflection was in any way cooling to his love that Herrick did not see again, for some days, the lady of his heart. He was, perhaps, not very self-assure...

A thrill shook the assemblage. It was plain enough now to what goal was the coroner directing his inquiry. The covert curiosity which all along had been greedily eyeing Christin...

The week in which Christina was to open in "The Victors" was one of those which call down the curses of dramatic critics by producing a new play each night. Thursday was to see...

This piece of information was very carefully guarded from the newspapers. Nothing of the Arm of Justice had as yet leaked out. But the fight in the Park was another matter; peop...

Without demur he turned it. He was in that commotion of bewildered feeling where one shock after another deliciously and terribly strikes upon the heart, and anything seems poss...

The countryside slept vigorously and an hour's exhaustive inquiry gleaned but the one circumstance--the search party itself discovered, pinned to the first door they came to, a...

"And you couldn't tell the coroner that that man was as slim as a whip and as dark as an Indian, about middle height and over thirty, and of a very nervous, wiry, high-strung bu...

Late the next morning Herrick struggled through successive layers of consciousness to the full remembrance of last night. But now, with to-morrow's changed prospective, those ev...

The morning of the inquest was cloudy, with a wet wind. Herrick was nervous, and he could not be sure whether this nervousness sprang from the ardor of championship or accusatio...

Herrick sat without moving while the shadows played out their play. But he saw them no longer. They had begun and ended for him with that certainty which it seemed to him, now,...

The revulsion of feeling in Christina's favor was so immense that it became a kind of panic. It practically engulfed the rest of the inquest. The taking of testimony from her mo...

It was after midnight when Stanley Ingham stopped his car and yielded up the steering-wheel to Herrick. Besides themselves their car carried three of Kane's detectives and they...

"But _is_ she?" queried Christina, swinging round from the piano, "Is she?" And she looked wistfully at Herrick as he took her outstretched hand. "Oh, if she's a very troublesom...

There was something at once commonplace and incredible about it--about the stupid ghastliness of the face and about the horrid, sticky smear in the muss of the finely tucked shi...

Daylight was in the streets when Herrick got to bed, sure he should not close his eyes; then he was wakened only by the cries of the newsboys underneath his windows, calling, as...

Oh, yes, the Italian proprietress cheerfully informed him, the parrot had been in the country with Maria Rosa and her great-aunt. Truly, the great-aunt was fond of the country,...

If the police believed Christina when she revived enough to say that it had seemed to her as if the hair were soaked in blood it was more than Herrick did. He only wondered that...

Herrick came home through a world which he had never seen before, blindly climbed his three flights of stairs, and, shutting himself into his room, sat down on his bed. He stare...

The sleepy boy at the switchboard of the house opposite did not seem to feel in the situation any of the urgency which had brought Herrick into that elegant vestibule, barefoot...

The phrase might have exploded into Herrick's mind, it leaped there with such sudden violence, distinct as the command of a voice, out of the smothering blackness of the torrid...

There are violences to nature in which she is reined up so suddenly that after them we are left stupid rather than unhappy. In such a mood of held-in turmoil Herrick walked home...

Before Herrick could prevent her, a voice from just outside the door replied, "Don't trouble yourself, Miss Hope. May I come in?" Ten Euyck, hat in hand, appeared in the doorway.

It was fully dark under the sail-cloth of the table d'hôte. A strong smell of rancid wicks disturbed nobody and in the charged, suspensive air the cheap lamps burned with a stil...

The large living-room upon which they had entered was richly furnished, but it had no screens nor hidden corners, and, on that summer night, the windows were undraped. The doorw...

When he came to himself he was trussed up like a bundle, with arms and ankles tied too tight for comfort. He still lay on the floor of the musicians' gallery and the room below...

There was no other cab in sight. But fortunately a 'bus was just starting, and bye and bye he plunged from that into a taxi. All the way up Fifth Avenue he continued to keep his...