Category: Crime, Thrillers and Mystery

The Cinema Murder

With a somewhat prolonged grinding of the brakes and an unnecessary amount of fuss in the way of letting off steam, the afternoon train from London came to a standstill in the station at Detton Magna. An elderly porter, putting on his coat as he came, issued, with the dogged a...

Chapters

32. Chapter 32

And, after all, nothing happened. Dane's barely veiled threats seemed to vanish like the man himself into thin air. Beatrice, after the breakdown of her one passionate outburst,...

8. Chapter 8

"There's a little one at the bottom, looks as though it had been shoved in at the last moment. I don't know whether you noticed it. It announced the mysterious disappearance of...

26. Chapter 26

Philip was awakened the next morning by the insistent ringing of the telephone at his elbow. He took up the receiver, conscious of a sharp pain in his left shoulder as he moved.

17. Chapter 17

The success of "The House of Shams" was as immediate and complete as was the social success of its author. After a few faint-hearted attempts, Philip and Elizabeth both agreed t...

22. Chapter 22

It was not until they were crossing Brooklyn Bridge, on their way into the city, that she asked him that question. They crawled along, one of an interminable, tangled line of ve...

21. Chapter 21

Something of his overnight's optimism remained with Philip when at eleven o'clock on the following morning he was ushered into Elizabeth's rooms. It was a frame of mind, however...

30. Chapter 30

Late though it was when Philip reached his rooms, he found on his writing table a message addressed to him from the telephone call office in the building. He tore it open:

1. Chapter 1

With a somewhat prolonged grinding of the brakes and an unnecessary amount of fuss in the way of letting off steam, the afternoon train from London came to a standstill in the s...

27. Chapter 27

Philip let the pen slip at last from his tired fingers. The light had failed. He had been writing with straining eyes, almost in the darkness. But there was something else. Had...

29. Chapter 29

The close of the performance left them both curiously tongue-tied. They waited until the theatre was half empty before they left their seats. Then they joined the little throng...

14. Chapter 14

New York became a changed city to Philip. Its roar and its turmoil, its babel of tongues speaking to him always in some alien language, were suddenly hushed! He was no longer co...

10. Chapter 10

After a fortnight of his new life, Philip took stock of himself and his belongings. In the first place, then, he owned a new name, taken bodily from certain documents which he h...

4. Chapter 4

Mr. Raymond Greene, very soon after the bugle had sounded for dinner that evening, took his place at the head of one of the small tables in the saloon and wished every one good...

6. Chapter 6

All the physical exhilaration of his unlived youth seemed to be dancing in Philip Romilly's veins when he awoke the next morning to find an open porthole, the blue sea tossing a...

15. Chapter 15

Three months later, a very different Philip stood in the smaller of a handsome suite of reception rooms in a fashionable Fifth Avenue hotel. He was wearing evening clothes of th...

11. Chapter 11

Philip stepped into his own little bedroom and made scanty preparations for this, his first excursion. Then he made his way down into the shabby hall and was seated there on the...

31. Chapter 31

Philip was still gazing into vacancy and smoking cigarettes when Elizabeth arrived. She seemed conscious at once of the disturbed atmosphere. His hands, which she held firmly in...

19. Chapter 19

Philip waited nearly a quarter of an hour for Elizabeth. When at last she returned, she was unusually silent. They drove off together in her automobile. She held his fingers und...

7. Chapter 7

Philip Romilly was accosted, late that afternoon, by two young women whose presence on board he had noticed with a certain amount of disapproval. They were obviously of the chor...

23. Chapter 23

The slow fever of inaction, fretting in Philip's veins, culminated soon after Martha's departure in a passionate desire for a movement of some sort. The very silence of the room...

3. Chapter 3

The sun was shining into his bedroom when Philip Romilly was awakened the next morning by a discreet tapping at the door. He sat up in bed and shouted "Come in." He had no occas...

9. Chapter 9

Philip Romilly, on the last day of the voyage, experienced to the full that peculiar sensation of unrest which seems inevitably to prevail when an oceangoing steamer is being sl...

28. Chapter 28

Beatrice replaced the programme which she had been studying, on the ledge of the box, and turned towards Philip, who was seated in the background. There was something a little n...

20. Chapter 20

Philip's disposition had been so curiously affected by the emotions of the last few months that he was not in the least surprised to find himself, that evening, torn by a very c...

12. Chapter 12

A few nights later Philip awoke suddenly to find himself in a cold sweat, face to face with all the horrors of an excited imagination. Once more he felt his hand greedy for the...

16. Chapter 16

"You dear, dear man!" she exclaimed. "To think what you have missed! It would have been the evening of your life. It's a success, do you hear?--a great success! It was wonderful!"

5. Chapter 5

Philip Romilly found himself alone at last with the things which he had craved--darkness, solitude, the rushing of the salt wind, the sense of open spaces. On the other, the she...

13. Chapter 13

"Come in and shut the door," he ordered. "Look! Look!" he added, pointing to his table. "Thirty-three sheets! I've been working all the time. I've been living, I tell you, livin...

18. Chapter 18

"I am rather terrified of her," Elizabeth confided, supporting herself by her companion's shoulder. "I think I know that ultra-independent type. Kick me if I put my foot in it....

24. Chapter 24

Philip fetched his hat, and the two men stepped out on to the pavement. A servant in quiet grey livery held open the door of an enormous motor car. Sylvanus Power beckoned his c...

25. Chapter 25

everything to do with them. However, I tried a new move. I built that theatre in New York--there isn't another place like it in the world--and offered it to her for a birthday p...

2. Chapter 2

The railway station at Detton Magna presented, if possible, an even more dreary appearance than earlier in the day, as the time drew near that night for the departure of the las...