The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith

The dining-room of Molloy’s flat had not been built to receive twenty-five guests, but the Delegates of twenty-five affiliated Organisations had been crowded into it. The unshad...

Jane Smith sat on a bench in Kensington Gardens. Her entire worldly fortune lay in her lap. It consisted of two shillings and eleven pence. She had already counted the pennies f...

Jane took down the telephone directory, opened it, and began to run her finger along the column of “M’s.” As she did so, she wondered why the light in public call offices is so...

They stood together in a small back-yard. It seemed to be quite full of things like barrows, paving-stones, old tin cans, and broken crockery. Jane had already tripped over a me...

Jane stood in the dark, her hand upon the door knob. Slowly, very slowly, she released it. As she leaned there, her head almost touching the panelling, she could hear two men ta...

“Well, Miss Renata, that was all very stiff and businesslike. You mustn’t hold it up against me, because I hope we’re going to be friends. Don’t you want to know your plans?”

When Jane stood at her window and looked across the sea, she saw what might have been a picture of life at Luttrell Marches during those first few days. Such a smooth stretch of...

“I said you must be told. I take all responsibility for your being told. After all, if I am conducting these experiments, something is due to me, though the Government appear to...

When Jane reached her own room, she stood a long time in front of the glass frowning at herself. It might be safe to look so exactly like a schoolgirl, but it was very, very hum...

Henry went away by an early train, and Jane came down to what, as a child, she had once described as a crumpled kind of day. She remembered “darling Jimmy” looking at her in a v...

Henry’s chief was a large man who strongly resembled a clean and highly intelligent pig. A very little hair appeared to grow reluctantly on his head; his face was pink and clean...

It was next morning, whilst Jane was sorting and arranging the papers for the library table, that she caught sight of Henry’s first message. She very nearly missed it, for the f...

A feeling of exhilaration amounting to recklessness possessed Jane as she put on the white serge coat and skirt sacred to the Sabbath crocodile. Attired in it Renata, side by si...

Jane ran straight up to her room when they got back, but she was no sooner there than it came into her mind to wonder whether she had put away the files which she had been worki...

Jane waked that night, and did not know why she waked. After a moment it came to her that she had been dreaming. In her dream something unpleasant had happened, and she did not...

Jane, rather pale, wrote a neat letter to the Misses Kent, Hermione Street, South Kensington, mentioning that she would be much obliged if they would send her patterns of jumper...

Jane went to her room that night, but she did not undress. Two entirely opposite lines of reasoning had ended in inducing one and the same decision. On the one hand, it might be...

When Jane turned, and ran back down the dark passage, she had just the one thought—to get away out of earshot. That she, or any one but Anthony Luttrell, should have heard that...

Henry found Anthony Luttrell sitting on the stone bench and so oblivious of his surroundings that it needed a hand on his shoulder to rouse him. Then he said vaguely:

It was not till next day that Jane missed her handkerchief. When she reached her room after saying good-bye to Henry she had rolled the serge dress, the wet felt slippers and th...

The clang of the steel gate was the next really distinct impression which Jane received. In a moment she was herself. It was just as if she had been asleep, and then, to the jar...

Never in all her life had Jane seen anything so beautiful as the clear rain-washed sky, the grey rain-stilled sea. The little thud of the stone closing between her and Mr. Mollo...

Anthony Luttrell caught a slow local train at Withstead—the sort of train that serves little country places all over England. It dawdled slowly from station to station, sometime...

A Sabbath peace reigned outside in the deserted street. Within there was no peace at all. A crocodile hunt was in progress. Piggy, as a large and very fierce crocodile, was perf...

Mr. Ember was spending a busy Sunday. As he stood in the empty laboratory, realising Molloy’s defection and all that it involved, there was no change in his impassive face. The...

Mr. Ember, having completed all his arrangements, went in search of Lady Heritage. She had sat silently through lunch and disappeared directly afterwards. Having failed to find...

The day was chilly, the air full of moisture, and a thin, cold mist was rising off the marshes. What breeze there was came from the land and took the mist only a few hundred yar...

Anthony Luttrell’s distaste for his errand had certainly not lessened during the long drive from town. He stood now on his own doorstep facing a strange butler, and heard a form...

The last rumble of the explosion had hardly died away before Anthony Luttrell had flung open the study door, and was making his way at a run towards the Yellow Drawing-Room.