The City of Pleasure

“No,” cried Jetsam, and there was a note of passion in his voice. “This old woman shall hear my tale. I tell it in her presence, or I tell it not at all.” Carpentaria gazed at M...

Mr. Jetsam, having with an attentive ear heard the vague sound of the shutting of a door, came out a second time from the mysterious attic and descended the stairs. He was a man...

When Pauline, standing outside Carpentaria’s bungalow, had communicated to Carpentaria the fateful fact that all Ilam’s servants had disappeared from their rooms, and had given...

And it seemed to him, indeed, that the character of her gaze had somewhat changed, though those brilliant orbs, famous in Torquay fifty years ago for their splendour, showed no...

A man was standing behind it. The French window had been opened at least eight inches, and the man stood partly in the aperture and partly in the room. He did not flinch. He did...

Juliette D’Avray had a small sitting-room of her own in the Carpentaria bungalow. It was on the first floor, and it looked west, whereas Carpentaria’s study and bedroom both loo...

The occupants of the balloon could see everything. They saw the debarcation from the steamers; they saw the unending crowd of doll-like persons thrown up out of the ground by th...

“Why, your sister, of course!” he replied, with a slight smile that disclosed momentarily the quizzical male person in him. “Consider how it complicates the affair. If I had to...

That night the City of Pleasure was illuminated. Eighty thousand tiny electric lamps hanging in festoons from standard to standard lighted the Central Way alone; the façades of...

Carpentaria dogged him with all the precautions of silence as he turned to the right down the Central Way. The great thoroughfare of the City of Pleasure was, of course, absolut...

It is a singular fact that the secondary stage of the drama which I am relating was tremendously, vitally, influenced by the marriage of Mr. Luke Shooter, junior partner in Shoo...

People may read about crimes in newspapers all their lives, and yet never properly realize that crime exists. To appreciate what crime is, one must be brought to close quarters...

She was so out of breath that at first it seemed as if she could not speak. He could hear her hurried breathing, almost like the catch of a sob, and in the moonlight he could se...

It was a stroke of genius on his part to address Mr. Ilam as “Jos.” That curt and familiar monosyllable, directed like a bullet at the formidable Ilam, the august President of t...

That evening the nightly concert of the “Carpentaria Band” was held in the great court of the Exposition Palace, partly because the weather was threatening, and partly because t...

Curious! Carpentaria meditated as he retired to his abode. “Having fallen over a man lying drunk on his steps, why should my friend and partner, Mr. Josephus Ilam, totally deny...

You will now relate to me, as accurately as you can,” said Carpentaria somewhat peremptorily to Pratt the chauffeur, “exactly what were the circumstances which led to your ceasi...

The concert was over. If it had been as great a triumph as usual--and it had--the reasons were perhaps that nothing succeeds like success, and that the Carpentaria band was so i...

One of the three richly-uniformed officials who were in charge of the captive balloon, destined to be a leading attraction of the City of Pleasure, murmured this name warningly...

The situation of the heart of the City was one of the secrets of the City. It was not located, perhaps, exactly where you might have expected it to be, and for a very good reaso...

Within the bungalow of the Ilams there remained only two persons who were legally entitled to be there, and those persons were Mrs. Ilam, motionless for ever, but with her brigh...

Yes, Ilam was saying when they came downstairs, “she has been like that since last night, and the doctors--I have had two--assure me that at her age no recovery is possible. She...

Having retired to her bedroom and divested herself of the deceitful _peignoir_, Pauline made her way, with all the precautions of secrecy, downstairs again, and so to the door w...

That summer was astoundingly fine and warm, not to say tropical. But since it remains clearly in the memory of all, especially of the London water-companies, as a unique caprice...

Pauline had put the book down on the bed, and was bending over the fire pulling the coals together with the poker. She performed this homely, natural, everyday action more to re...

Carpentaria slipped back into the car with a shiver, as it occurred to him that Ilam, had he so chosen, might have pushed him into three hundred and forty perpendicular feet of...

It was half-past seven o’clock on Monday evening. More than thirty hours had elapsed since young Rivers first began his operations to restore life to the cataleptic patient, and...

Three hours later Carpentaria, whose thoughts had been bent upon some solution of the problem set by Juliette’s strange and incomprehensible love affair with Josephus Ilam, was...

He held tightly in his hand the end of a rope, which reached up high above them and was lost in the mass of cordage. He had opened the valve to its widest.

Carpentaria ran up the stairs. If he had not had flame-coloured hair, and the fiery temper that goes with it, he would probably have pursued the more dignified course of calling...

Somewhat later on the same afternoon, in the drawing-room of the house opposite, Josephus Ilam was drinking tea with his mother. The aged Mrs. Ilam, who was very thin and not in...