Red aces

When a young man is very much in love with a most attractive girl he is apt to endow her with qualities and virtues which no human being has ever possessed. Yet at rare and pain...

There was a car coming from the direction of Beaconsfield. The horseman, sitting motionless in the centre of the snowy road, watched the lights grow brighter and brighter. Prese...

Mr. Enward climbed into the driver’s seat gratefully, keeping some distance between himself and his shivering clerk. The car was on a declivity and would start without trouble....

He caught her in his arms as she fell, and, laying her on the sofa, went in search of water. The taps were frozen, but he found some water in a kettle, and, filling a glass with...

(“The trouble about Reeder,” said Gaylor to the superintendent in the course of a long telephone conversation, “is that you feel he does know something which he shouldn’t know....

“At some hour between eight and ten James Verity, a member of the Mounted Branch of the Buckinghamshire Constabulary, and Walter Wentford, an eccentric, and, it is believed, a r...

The last page of the letter which Mr. Eric Kingfether had begun with such ease in the early part of the morning was extremely difficult to compose. It had become necessary to sa...

When her visitor was gone, Ena opened the letter he had left with her, read a few lines of it, then threw letter and envelope into the fire. Funny, the sameness of men… they all...

Margot Lynn had spent a wretched and a weary day. The little city office which she occupied, and where she had conducted most of her uncle’s business, had become a place of bad...

There was some rather heavy play at Mr. Machfield’s private establishment--heavier than usual, and this gave the proprietor of the house cause for uneasiness. If Mr. Reeder had...

Mr. Reeder kept what he called a case-book, in which he inscribed a passionless account of all the cases in which he was engaged. Some of these cases had no value except to the...

The man who stood with such an air of ease in the dock of the North-West London Police Court bore himself with a certain insolent dignity. There was a smile which was half conte...

There were moments when he saw himself walking into the next room and addressing Miss Gillette in firm but fatherly tones. He would point out to her the impossible situation whi...

Miss Gillette arrived an hour late, which was not very remarkable. She had not seen the advertisements, so Mr. Reeder had nothing to explain. Her interest in his affairs had app...

The drizzle had turned to rain. It pelted down on Mr. Reeder’s mackintosh and flowed in spasmodic splashes from the brim of his high-crowned hat, as he trudged towards the neare...

The morning brought a surprise to Mr. Reeder. When he arrived at his office he found Miss Gillette already on duty. That in itself was a notable event. She was entertaining in h...

In the dusk of the evening the rower brought his skiff under the overshadowing hull of the Baltic steamer and rested on his oars, the little boat rising and falling gently in th...

On the following Saturday night, as Mr. Reeder was returning home, he saw two men fighting in Brockley Road. He had what is called in Portuguese a _repugnancio_ to fighting men....

This visit of Reeder was the culmination of a series of enquiries he had conducted in the course of a few days. He turned in a short report to Scotland Yard, and went home to Br...

It was half past twelve when Mr. Reeder’s taxi brought him into Shadwick Lane, which was alive with people. A police cordon was drawn across the gate, but Gaylor, who was waitin...

Mr. Reeder’s housekeeper had, since his arrival, behaved with a certain secretiveness which could only mean that she had something important to communicate. It was after he had...

John Southers made a brief appearance at the Tower of London Police Court--a dazed, bewildered young man, so overwhelmed by his position that he could do no more than answer the...

Reeder spent the rest of the afternoon in the West End of London, calling upon a succession of theatrical agents. Some were very important personages who received him in walnut-...

Mr. Reeder was conscious of a headache and that the light shining in his eyes was painful. It was a tiny globe which burned in the roof of the cabin. Somebody was talking very d...

A car dropped them at the end of Shadwick Lane, which had already settled down to normality and had grown accustomed to the notoriety which the murder had brought to it.

One of those amazing things which so rarely happen, that fifty-thousand-to-one-against chance, had materialized, and the high chiefs of Scotland Yard grew apoplectic as they ask...