The case of Miss Elliott

“Well?” I repeated with some acerbity. I had been wondering for the last ten minutes how many more knots he would manage to make in that same bit of string, before he actually s...

The man in the corner, ever conscious of any effect he produced upon my excited imagination, had paused for a while, giving me time, as it were, to co-ordinate in my mind the fe...

“As for the next day,” continued the man in the corner after a slight pause, “I can assure you that there was not a square foot of standing room in the coroner’s court for the a...

The man in the corner had long ceased speaking, and was placing quietly before me a number of photographs. One by one I saw the series of faces which had been watched so eagerly...

Quite by chance I found myself one morning sitting before a marble-topped table in the A.B.C. shop. I really wondered for the moment what had brought me there, and felt cross wi...

“You may well imagine,” he continued, after a while, “what a thunderbolt such a catastrophe means to those whose hopes of a fortune rested upon the fitness of the bay mare. Mr....

“These sort of cases,” continued the man in the corner after a slight pause, during which his nervous fingers toyed incessantly with that eternal bit of string—“these sort of ca...

“I doubt whether in all the annals of criminal procedure there ever occurred a more dramatic moment than that when so strange a ray of daylight was shed on the mysterious outrag...

“No,” he replied; “women don’t save themselves usually at the expense of their children, and women don’t usually ‘hocus’ a horse. It is not a female crime at all—is it?”

“It is not by any means the Law and Police Courts that form the only interesting reading in the daily papers,” said the man in the corner airily, as he munched his eternal bit o...

“From the very first the public took a very great interest in the sad death of Mrs. Yule. The old lady’s eccentricities were pretty well known throughout all her neighbourhood,...

“Some say there’s a Providence that watches over us,” said the man in the corner, when he had looked at me keenly, and had assured himself that I was really interested in his na...

“Yes, they were,” he replied; “but they had to go and travel abroad for a while, feeling was so high against them. The deed of course, not having been ‘delivered,’ could not be...

I looked at the picture more closely, and then there suddenly came back to my mind that mysterious story of the Black Diamonds, which had not only bewildered the police of Europ...

“Not only did this daring burglary cause a great deal of excitement,” continued the man in the corner, “but it also roused a good deal of sympathy in the public mind for the Kin...

“Still the mystery of the lost jewels was no nearer to its solution. Their Majesties the King and Queen of ‘Bohemia,’ had left England soon after the disastrous event which depr...

“I don’t know how the case of Wilson _v._ Barnsdale was settled, for it never came into court. There were many people in London who owed the Wilsons an apology, and it is to be...

“You must admit,” said the man in the corner to me one day, as I folded up and put aside my _Daily Telegraph_, which I had been reading with great care, “that it would be diffic...

“Although, as you may well suppose,” continued the man in the corner, after a pause, “the excitement was intense at Boreham Wood, it had not as yet reached the general newspaper...

“Yes,” said the man in the corner with a chuckle, “there was enough evidence there to hang twenty people, let alone that one fool of a girl who had run her neck so madly into a...

“Ah, yes, Pamela Pebmarsh,” he said with a smile. “There was yet another act in that palpitating drama of her life—one act—the _dénouement_ as unexpected as it was thrilling. Sa...

“Oh, if that’s it,” he replied, as he settled himself down in his corner like a great bird after the rain, “then you showed more sense than lady journalists usually possess. I c...

“Two very important bits of evidence, I must tell you, had come to light, on the first day of the inquest, and had decided the police to make this double arrest.

When I returned to the A.B.C shop for my tea at five minutes past five, there he sat in his accustomed corner, with a cup of tea before him, another placed opposite to him, pres...

“The woman Nicholson saw and spoke to a man in bed, whom she _supposed_ was old Mr. Dyke. Among the many questions put to her by those clever detectives, no one thought, of cour...

“Yet the most natural thing in the world,” retorted the man in the corner, as soon as he had ordered his lunch. “Crime invariably begets crime. No sooner is a murder, theft, or...

“In order fully to realise the interest created by this extraordinary news, you must be acquainted with the various details of that remarkable case, popularly known as the ‘Trem...

“The papers, as you know, talked of nothing else but the mysterious murder in the hansom cab. Every one’s sympathy went out at once to Lord Tremarn, who, on hearing the terrible...

“It would be difficult, I think, for any one who was not present at that memorable inquest to have the least idea of the sensation which its varied and dramatic incidents caused...

“Ah, yes, the murder, of course,” he replied with a chuckle, “the second mystery in this extraordinary case. Well, of course, whatever the identity of the deceased really was, t...

“So are most people,” rejoined the man in the corner, with that eerie way he had of reading my thoughts. “The _Artemis_ has come home, having safely delivered her dangerous carg...

“Mind you,” continued the man in the corner, after he had assured himself of my undivided attention, “all these details were unknown to the public at first. I have merely co-ord...

“A criminal action for slander and assault is always an interesting one,” continued the man in the corner, after a while, “as it always argues an unusual amount of personal anim...

“Indeed, why?” I retorted, for he had paused, and was peering at me through his bone-rimmed spectacles. “You must have a theory,” I added, as I quietly handed him a beautiful bi...

“It is _impossible_ for any person to completely disappear in a civilised country,” he said emphatically, “provided that person has either friends or enemies of means and substa...

“All seems to have gone on happily and smoothly for a time in Mrs. Brackenbury’s pretty house in Kensington,” continued the man in the corner. “Hubert Turnour was a constant vis...

The man in the corner paused in his narrative. I could see that he was coming to the palpitating part of the story, for his fingers fidgeted incessantly with that bit of string.

“Very well, then,” I retorted in triumph, “that proves that Hubert Turnour murdered Count Collini out of revenge, not for greed of money, and probably threw the body of his vict...

“I have never had a great opinion of our detective force here in England,” said the man in the corner, in his funny, gentle, apologetic manner, “but the way that department mism...

“That was the past history of Old Newton,” continued the man in the corner, after a brief pause, “that is to say, of the man who on a dark night last October was found murdered...

“You may imagine,” continued the man in the corner, after a slight pause, “with what palpitating interest we all watched the pathetic little figure, clad in deep black, who now...

“Common sense,” he said at last, with his most apologetic manner, “tells me that Ayrsham village is a remote little place, where a daily paper is unknown, and where no one reads...

“Talking of mysteries,” said the man in the corner, rather irrelevantly, for he had not opened his mouth since he sat down and ordered his lunch, “talking of mysteries, it is al...

“But the next day brought the rude awakening. Something had indeed happened which made the affair at the Novelty Theatre, what it has ever since remained, a curious and unexplai...

“But then, what in the world is the explanation of it all?” I asked bewildered, as the funny creature paused in his narrative and seemed absorbed in the contemplation of a beaut...

“We have heard so much about the evils of Bridge,” said the man in the corner that afternoon, “but I doubt whether that fashionable game has ever been responsible for a more ter...

“You may well imagine the awful commotion the girl’s wild outburst had created in the old Manor House. Lady Barnsdale had been taken ill the previous evening, and, of course, no...

“But the detectives in charge of the case had reckoned without Sir Arthur Inglewood, the great lawyer, who was watching the proceedings on behalf of his aristocratic clients,” s...

“Why, then,” he replied, with a chuckle, “the only logical conclusion is that the robbery and the murder were not committed by the same person, nor at the same hour of the night...