The Bronze Bell

Gall and wormwood in his mouth, more bitter than remorse, Amber became conscious. Or perhaps it were more true to say that he struggled out of unconsciousness, dragging his ego...

A shadow swept swiftly across one of the windows, and the stranger at the door was aware of a slight jarring as though some more than ordinarily brutal gust of wind had shaken t...

The shabby tin clock had droned through thirty minutes since Rutton had spoken his last word. In that interval, sitting face to face, and for a little time hand in hand, with th...

The causeway down which the horsemen of forgotten kings of Khandawar had clattered forth to war, in its age-old desuetude had come to decay. Between its great paving blocks gras...

Both hand and voice might well have been Labertouche's; Amber believed they were. And the darkness rendered visual identification impossible. No shadow of doubt troubled him as...

Rutton had crossed to and was bending over a small leather trunk that stood in one corner of the room. In the act of opening it, he glanced over his shoulder. "What?" he demande...

The passageway was long and dark and given to sudden curves and angles, penetrating, it seemed, the very bowels of the Raj Mahal. It ended unexpectedly in a low arch through whi...

In darkness the blacker for the sudden disappearance of the light, somebody stumbled over Amber--stumbled and swore in good English. The Virginian sat up, crying out as weakly a...

Forward on the promenade deck of the _Poonah,_ in the shadow of the bridge, Amber stood with both elbows on the rail, dividing his somewhat perturbed attention between a noisy l...

Ram Nath, patient and impassive as ever, had the tonga waiting for Amber before the Residency. Exalted beyond words, the American permitted himself to be driven off through Kutt...

One travels dak by relays casually disposed along the route at the whim of the native contractor. Between Badshah Junction and Kuttarpur there were ten stages, of which the conc...

That same night Amber dined at the Residency, on the invitation of Raikes, the local representative of Government, seconded by the insistence of Colonel Farrell. It developed th...

A cry in the windy dusk; a sudden, hollow booming overhead; a vision of countless wings in panic, sketched in black upon a background of dulled silver; two heavy detonations and...

"Oh, _all_ right." Drowsy, stiff and sore in bone and muscle, Amber sat up on the edge of the leather-padded bunk and stared out of the window, wondering. With thundering flange...

Roused by this sound from his solitary musings in the parlour-car of which he happened temporarily to be the sole occupant, Mr. David Amber put aside the magazine over which he...

In his astonishment he looked round quickly to meet the gaze of mischievous eyes that strove vainly to seem simple and sincere. His own, in which amusement was blended with wond...

Amber found his way out of the garden without difficulty; at the doorway an eunuch waited. The Maharana himself, perhaps in deference to the dictates of discretion, did not reap...

"I'm not," confessed Labertouche; "but I am a member of the Indian Secret Service--not officially connected with the police, observe!--and I know a deal that you don't. I think,...

Like many a wiser and a better man, Amber was able upon occasion to change his mind without entertaining serious misgivings as to his stability of purpose. Therefore, on second...

About five o'clock of an evening in April the Cunarder _Caronia_, four hours out from Queenstown and buckling down to a night's hard work against the northwesterly gale, shipped...

Shaking with rage, Amber stood for a long moment with pistol poised and eyes wary; then, bewildered, he slowly lowered the weapon. "Well," he observed reflectively, "I'm damned....

A man awoke from a long dream of night and fear, of passion, pain, and death, and opened eyes whose vision seemed curiously clear, to realise a new world, very unlike that in wh...