Poison shadows

“You must be firm, Gordon. It doesn’t matter in the least whether Sibell loves him or hates him. She must marry him, otherwise we shall both find ourselves in the cart. So there...

The hunchback Routh and his ward were back at home at The Myrtles, a pretty, rose-embowered cottage situated at the end of a garden that ran down to the picturesque Thames close...

The doctor, whose name was Clements, dashed in his car across the bridge to his surgery in East Molesey, where he snatched up some drugs and restoratives, and ten minutes later...

At eleven o’clock on the following morning Brinsley Otway, having arranged with a fellow-doctor named Tarrant, living in the Finchley Road at Golder’s Green, to look after his p...

Called by telephone, Dr. Tarrant hurried along to his young colleague Otway, whom he found stretched upon the carpet, a cushion having been placed beneath his head by the faithf...

More than a fortnight elapsed before Brinsley Otway had sufficiently recovered to get up and sit by the window. Thin and pale, a mere shadow of his former self, he had been very...

When that morning, after Ashe’s departure, Sibell’s aunt told her that she had decided to invite Brinsley to accompany them to Cannes, she at once rang him up to tell him the jo...

Feigning to be tired of the deafening orchestra and the atmosphere of the Idlers, Mr. Ashe suddenly suggested that they should take a taxi to the private hotel off the Strand wh...

Etta Wyndcliffe had changed her mind. It was a frequent habit of hers. At the last moment she had decided that it was a little too early for the Riviera, therefore she chose win...

On the second day it snowed so heavily that in the afternoon it developed into quite a blizzard. But in a winter sports centre fresh snow is always hailed with delight by old an...

Before leaving for Switzerland, Otway and Sibell had paid several visits to the long-closed Guest House at Hampton Court, and, accompanied by a Mr. Sheldon, a well-known author...

At seven o’clock on the following morning, just as it was getting light, the milkman, in the habit of leaving the usual half-pint for Mr. Farmer at the Guest House, found a scra...

“Did the deceased make any statement to you before he died?” inquired the white-headed Coroner. “I ask this because rumors are afloat concerning certain mysterious happenings pr...

Notwithstanding the verdict of the Hampton Coroner, the police, whose interest was aroused by the curious reports of strange happenings at the Guest House, commenced to make inq...

That evening the Countess of Wyndcliffe appeared at dinner, in the gay restaurant at Gurnigel, looking radiant in a pretty cyclamen gown and wearing her pearls--bought, by the w...

Etta Wyndcliffe, the incomparable chaperon, of dainty frock and exquisite etiquette, entered Sibell’s room just after finishing her coffee and rolls, as she was in the act of ta...

Etta Wyndcliffe, wearing her daintiest little hat and her sable coat, stepped into the lift, and, piloted by the page, at last stood before a door upon which the lad rapped.

The four hundred odd people in the great big hotel _de luxe_ had dwindled down to about three hundred, all of them English, yet the gaieties both day and night proceeded merrily...

At first the way across the undulating virgin snowfield, upon which here and there showed dark, jagged lines--those terrible fissures in the ice--looked easy, and Sibell, in her...

François Lebeau, the apathetic man in grey, stepped into a powerful limousine at the end of the long range of flower-beds in front of the Casino, and gave orders to the chauffeu...

Happy in each other’s ecstatic affection, they went for long walks each day in the beautiful countryside at the back of the gay resort. Now and then they would hire a car and go...

Some few minutes elapsed before Mr. Gray, descending from the platform, furious at such sudden interruption of his business, was able to gather vaguely from excited persons what...

“What do you mean?” asked the man, who did not take off his overcoat, but cast himself into a chair after helping himself to a drink from the decanter on the sideboard. “Why rot...

Brinsley Otway had for a week or two had his eyes upon a beautiful square-cut diamond and emerald ring in platinum--a single diamond, set with a very fine, well-matched emerald...

The Myrtles at Cookham was, after all, a dull, damp place in March, with the mists hanging all day over the Thames, the trees leafless, the garden pretty in summer of course, bu...

“It’s awfully close in this place,” Moyna declared sympathetically. “I can’t think why it is that at any dance club they seem to be afraid of a little ventilation--not draughts,...

Constant appeals made to Brinsley had exacted nought, for he had refused to see her; all her explanatory letters had been returned unopened, which added to her despondency. A do...

Sibell had been compelled to describe to her aunt that unfortunate incident at the hotel in London, and how she had suddenly become parted from Brinsley. Etta became furious, an...

Albert Ashe’s habit was to have the paper brought by the man with his early tea, and as he lazily scanned it, his eye caught the heading. He read it through, then, springing sud...

In the dreary weeks which followed, while Sibell waited for her home to be prepared, she often stayed at a small private hotel in Cork Street, where she had lived in the London...

Spring was lengthening into summer, and already the spacious garden of the Guest House, now so well kept after so many years of neglect, was full of bright flowers, while the an...

Early one stormy morning, about two o’clock, when the rain beat upon the window-panes, Charlesworth and the smart chauffeur, Budd, were seated together in complete darkness in t...

If the reader cares to take the trouble to cross the wide green at Hampton Court, close to the fine old red-brick turreted palace, with its wonderful old-world flower-gardens, h...