The Bishop's purse

A near-sighted German music teacher crossed his legs at an inopportune moment, and this trivial action led directly to the startling incidents of the following narrative, with t...

It must now be revealed (since this is a straightforward tale) that the stolen five thousand pounds was all this time snugly reposing in a most unlikely hiding place which Heste...

Hiram Baxter, whose hidden purposes were responsible for Betty's sudden and momentous journey to London, was, in this year of the first flying machine, one of the few really int...

One immediate consequence of the golf-bag-purse-vanishing episode narrated above, was a delay of two hours in Betty Thompson's arrival in London, which delay meant that Hiram Ba...

In order to make it clear how Hester of the scarlet cloak (for it was she) happened to be waiting at the lodge gate on the evening of Betty Thompson's arrival, we must go back a...

Great was the rejoicing in the home of the field mouse on the return of the prodigal. Merle, happy in the success of his mission, watched the little fellow scamper off among the...

Hester's problem was exceedingly simple; she wanted two or three minutes alone with Miss Thompson's golf bag. That was all she asked of fortune, two or three minutes; and, for t...

Shortly before one o'clock the chiming gong for luncheon resounded pleasantly through the big house and Mrs. Baxter, with thoughtful consideration, came to the library for Betty...

The man opened the green door and came forward slowly into the chamber, but he came in a shambling, apologetic way, and Hester realized that he was not there in any aggressive o...

A charity bazaar, generally speaking, is an invention designed to mitigate the sufferings of the rich during the painful operation of removing a small portion of their superfluo...

Neither Lionel Fitz-Brown nor Kate Clendennin knew the precise degree of cousinship that constituted the bond of relationship between them. That such a bond existed had been the...

The shadowy form seen by Kate Clendennin near the conservatory was no phantom born of emotional excitement, but a flesh-and-blood creature, a keenly alert sentinel, stealthily w...

As regards the gray lady whose seeming apparition had spread such wide alarm, anyone curious to know something of the ghostly Ladye Ysobel Ippynge (she was believed to have been...

There was fluttering anticipation among the relatives as they gathered in the breakfast room the next morning and dallied with broiled kidneys and anchovy toast while awaiting B...

Kate and Harriet went straight to their bedrooms, Harriet to rehearse her part in the forthcoming scene with Horatio; Kate, in an angry fever, to ring for Gibson to pack her box...

The night before the departure of the Baxters for Brighton the spectacle of a huge pile of packed boxes and the report that the family were fleeing from the doomed mansion, neve...

Long established usage on desert islands has ordered that the first duty of the shipwrecked, after locating the crystal spring and ascertaining that the cocoanuts are ripe and t...

All this time Harriet remained in her room, pacing up and down the floor, pausing at every sound to listen at the window. Perched on the window-sill, Martin Luther mewed insiste...

Robert Baxter was the first to hear the good news, and, being a young man of few words, he lighted a candle and made straight for the wine cellar. In a few moments he returned e...

The first thing in the curate's thoughts the next morning was this perplexing fragment of a letter. He examined it carefully, reading, first, the words in An Petronia's childish...

Horatio smiled at this tragically complicated picture of Reginald's entrance upon the scene of life. Then he turned the sheet and studied what was left of the original letter, a...

In less than forty-eight hours after her arrival in Brighton, Mrs. Baxter had completely recovered from the shock of her midnight encounter with the Gray Lady. On the afternoon...

The curate walked back to Ipping House with a lighter heart than he had known for days. It was true he had not carried out his spectacular purpose of running down a criminal, no...

Since their strange meeting in Betty Thompson's chamber, the shock-headed chauffeur had made it plain to the pretty sewing-girl that he was deeply smitten with her charms. The f...

In spite of her indignant protests and her contrary plans, Hester appeared at the garage the next morning shortly before ten. There seemed nothing else for her to do. Hour after...

Meantime Hester had crossed the lawn and entered the conservatory. She carried the golf bag by its supporting strap and walked quickly. She knew that the conservatory opened dir...

Never did Horatio Merle show more sweetly the spirit of Christian humility than during this brief encounter with Ferdinand Spooner. The very sight of Spooner was abhorrent to th...

"Thanks, awfully. I say, Kate," Lionel went on, "I don't mind telling you I had all I could do to keep my hands off that half crown. I give you my word if the fellow had brought...

Following the adventure with the rose bush in its tinsel basket, there came three days of tortured conflict for Hester Storm, conflict with red-lipped, sinister-eyed Anton, who...

In this crisis, as in many another, the deciding influence was a pale yellow liquid poured out of a dark brown bottle--whiskey, in short--without which (several stiff drinks of...

The culprit faced her in pleading appeal. She had played her last card recklessly, impulsively, risking everything. She never understood afterward what had impelled her to this...

"Hello! Hello!" she called impatiently, but there was no response. She worked the lever, shook the receiver, tapped her foot, and winked her long eyelashes rapidly, all to no av...

Long after the luncheon gong had sounded Betty Thompson sat at her desk in the library, too agitated to think of eating, too anxious about the outcome of things to take her mind...

Half an hour before this, in the little mezzanine chamber, Hester Storm, with a sigh of relief, had sat down to the tray of food that Betty had left for her. At any rate, the wo...

"It may interest you young people to know," the bishop was saying in the library, "that Annie Laurie--you know she was the daughter of Sir Robert Laurie of Maxwellton, and--er--...