Stolen Idols

In the morning Gregory awoke after a wonderfully sound sleep. It was still very early. There was a delightful pearly light in the sky, visible through his open porthole. The gli...

Mr. Johnson found plenty of time during the journey to Norwich to exchange remarks with and take notice of his companion. The sulkiness of her expression lightened considerably...

The two ships, pursuer and pursued, quaintly shaped, with heavy, flapping sails, lay apparently becalmed in a sort of natural basin formed by the junction of two silently flowin...

Mr. Peter Johnson, on the following morning, was indulging in the harmless occupation of practising mashie shots with a dozen golf balls over some shrubs upon the front lawn of...

It was in a sense a dinner of celebration at Ballaston Hall in which these four men were concerned, although, with the exception of one guest, it was a family party. At the head...

Ralph Endacott, erstwhile professor of Oxford University and partner in the great Oriental house of Johnson and Company, now an English country gentleman, sat before wide-flung...

The doctor, a few days later, paused in his morning promenade and took a vacant place by Claire's side. He made a few commonplace remarks about the voyage, and then leaned confi...

Mr. Johnson, that same evening, was smoking the cigar of discontent, drinking the coffee of bitterness, and sipping the brandy of fire. Around him was all the stillness and the...

Wu Ling, the trader, Chinese representative of the great house of Johnson and Company, at home and amongst his merchandise, was strangely installed. He sat in the remote corner...

At very nearly the hour of his former visit, Gregory Ballaston entered the warehouse of Messrs. Johnson and Company, on the following morning. Wu Ling, seated at his table, wave...

"I think," he announced, "that, so far as I can make out, the servants are all right. Curiously enough, however, it seems that Gregory has a key to the door in question, which h...

At half-past twelve on the following morning Mr. Peter Johnson, dressed in a blue serge suit and patent shoes--a costume which, after much deliberation, he deemed suitable for t...

It was only after he had shown her around the picture gallery on the following Sunday afternoon that Claire properly appreciated Henry Ballaston. She listened to his last little...

"Nor I," she admitted candidly. "To tell you the truth, when we all came together in the warehouse this afternoon, it seemed to me from his manner that you were not particularly...

That evening Endacott, in response to an urgent summons, rose somewhat reluctantly from his chair under the cedar tree, finished his coffee and offered a grudging explanation of...

"Things do be happening round about here, for sure," Mr. Pank remarked, as he moved down the whisky bottle from its shelf. "What it all may lead to is more than a body can say,...

The new tenant of the Great House, installed within twelve months of its dramatic vacancy, issued one evening through the small postern gate, set in the red brick wall which enc...

Sir Bertram smiled pleasantly. It was not for the two footmen standing motionless at either end of the magnificent sideboard, or even for Rawson behind his master's chair, to kn...

"For a young gentleman as hasn't moved out of his stateroom for two days, and 'as had a good deal more to drink than to eat," he pronounced, "you look wonderful, sir."

"I was abroad at the time and until a month or so ago," Mr. Johnson explained, "and it is astonishing how you lose touch with things altogether after a while. I sometimes didn't...

Towards half-past five in the morning Mr. Johnson was awakened from a heavy slumber by the clamorous and increasing twitter of birds in the shrubberies and gardens outside. He w...

If at times Mr. Endacott seemed a little out of his milieu at Ballaston Hall that evening, Claire, on the other hand, was an instantaneous and gorgeous success. In the Jacobean...

Endacott, although abstracted, seemed for him to be in an almost genial frame of mind when he obeyed the summons of the evening gong and, meeting Claire in the hall, waited to e...

Mr. Johnson was genuinely surprised at the expression in his companion's face when, at the end of that drive home through the drowsy afternoon, she put out her hand to wish him...

Endacott laughed cynically but not altogether unkindly when Claire had finished her carefully prepared little speech that night after dinner. Their coffee had been served as usu...

"Perkins," Gregory demanded, as he struggled into his dinner coat a few nights later, "what should you think if I told you to drop that grinning piece of wooden monstrosity ther...

The afternoon was still young when Mr. Johnson passed through the park gates of Ballaston Hall and drove slowly down the village street on his way back to the Great House. He st...

Sir Bertram, very lithe and debonair in his grey flannels and Panama hat, issued from his front door, whistled to dogs who seemed to come to him from all directions, and, hummin...

So far as the countenance of so perfect a servant as Rawson could betray any expression at all, there was both welcome and a suggestion of hospitality in his manner as he receiv...

Mr. Johnson returned to find a motor car standing outside his door and Major Holmes with a subordinate in colloquy with Morton. He led them himself to the library, showed them t...

"Scarcely a tragedy," she smiled. "There's my aunt across the way whom I must go in and see some time, a perfectly delightful new piano that only arrived this morning, dozens of...

Once more five men, from a safe distance behind the muslin curtains, watched the approach towards the village inn of the tenant of the Great House. This time, however, condition...