The Crimson Blind

A bell tolled mournfully with a slow, swinging cadence like a passing bell. On winter nights folks, passing the House of the Silent Sorrow, compared the doleful clanging to the...

"So Reginald Henson bullies women," Rawlins said, after a long pause. There was a queer smile on his face; he appeared perfectly at his ease. He did not look in the least like a...

Lord Littimer polished his rarely used eye-glass carefully and favoured Chris with a long, admiring stare. At the same time he was wondering why the girl should have taken such...

Lord Littimer sat on the terrace, shaded from the sun by an awning over his deck-chair. From his expression he seemed to be at peace with all the world. His brown, eager face ha...

There was an uneasy grin on Merritt's face, a suggestion that he did not altogether trust those around him. Hard experience in the ways of the wicked had taught him the folly of...

David Steel dropped his eyes from the mirror and shuddered as a man who sees his own soul bared for the first time. And yet the mirror was in itself a thing of artistic beauty--...

Bell's professional enthusiasm got the better of his curiosity for the moment. It was a nice psychological problem. Already Steel was impulsively busy in the conservatory pullin...

Steel dropped into a chair and gazed at Inspector Marley with mild surprise. At the same time he was not in the least alarmed. Not that he failed to recognise the gravity of the...

The emotion of surprise seemed to have left Steel altogether. After the last discovery he was prepared to believe anything. Had anybody told him that the whole Bench of Bishops...

David walked swiftly along, his mind in a perfect whirl. Now that once he had started he was eager to see the adventure through. It was strange, but stranger things had happened...

Hatherly Bell turned up at Downend Terrace gay and debonair as if he had not a single trouble in the world. His evening dress was of the smartest and he had a rose in his button...

"I am certain that I am on the right one," David replied; "but, when I come to consider the thing calmly, it seems more by good luck than anything else. I came out with you to-n...

If you had asked the first five people on the Littimer Estate what they thought of the lord of the soil you would have had a different answer from every one. One woman would hav...

On the whole Mr. James Merritt, ex-convict and now humanitarian, was enjoying himself immensely. He did not sleep at the castle, for Lord Littimer drew the line there, but he co...

There was a long pause till the sound of the horse's hoofs died away. Bell was waiting for his companion to speak. Her head was partly turned from him, so that he could only wat...

The blinds were all down at Longdean Grange, a new desolation seemed to be added to the gloom of the place. Out in the village it had by some means become known that there was s...

Littimer put up his glass and gazed with apparent vacancy in the direction of the window. He saw a tall man with a grey beard and hair; a man most immaculately dressed and of di...

David did not appear in the least surprised; indeed, he was long since past that emotion. Before the bottom of the mystery was reached a great many more strange things were pret...

Whilst events were moving rapidly outside, time at Longdean Grange seemed to stand still. The dust and the desolation were ever there. The gloom brooded like an evil spirit. And...

Steel swallowed a hasty breakfast and hurried off town-wards. He had L1,000 packed away in his cigar-case, and the sooner he was free from Beckstein the better he would be pleas...

"Before we go any farther," Bell said, after a long pause, "I should like to search the house from top to bottom. I've got a pretty sound theory in my head, but I don't like to...

"I am going to tell you the story of the great sorrow that has darkened all our lives, but I shall have to go a long way back to do it," Enid said. "I go back to the troublous d...

Waiting with the eagerness of the greyhound in leash, David Steel was more annoyed and vexed over the disappearance of the wounded Van Sneck than he cared to admit. He had an un...

After the first passionate outburst of scorn Lord Littimer looked at his visitor quietly. There was something almost amusing in the idea that Bell should attempt such a trick up...

There were more sides to the mystery than David Steel imagined. It had seemed to him that he had pretty well all the threads in his hands, but he would have been astonished to k...

"Of course it was," Bell replied. "Henson found out that Van Sneck was here, as he was certain to do sooner or later. He comes here to make inquiries and finds you; also he come...

The expression on Henson's usually benign countenance would have startled such of his friends and admirers as regarded him as a shining light and great example. The smug satisfa...

"It's a useful discovery in its way," he said; "but not very remarkable when you come to think of it. Somebody with an eye to damaging Steel changed that cigar-case. How the cha...

Once the trio were in the operating-room Bell gave one rapid glance at Heritage. But the latter seemed to have forgotten all his fears. There was an alert air about him; he was...

David Steel followed his guide with the feelings of the man who has given himself over to circumstances. There was a savour of nightmare about the whole thing that appealed dist...

Chris gave Henson one swift searching glance before her eyes dropped demurely to the ground. Lord Littimer appeared to be taking no heed of anything but his own annoyance. But q...

The queer, misshapen figure striding along by Steel's side would have attracted attention anywhere; indeed, Hatherly Bell had been an attractive personality from his schooldays....

Something bulky was struggling to get through the window. Half hidden in the shadow, Christabel watched with the deepest interest. If she had been afraid at first that sensation...

Reginald Henson had had more than one unpleasant surprise lately, but none so painful as the sight of Lord Littimer seated in the Longdean Grange drawing-room with the air of a...

Henson took his weary way in the direction of Brighton. He had but a few pounds he could call his own, and not nearly enough to get away from the country, and at any moment he m...

"Now, look here," David said, sternly. "You are more or less in our power, you know, but we are not disposed to be hard on you so long as you are quite candid with us. Henson re...

Bell's sanguine expectation that Van Sneck would be ready for an immediate operation was not quite correct. As the day wore on the man seemed more feverish and restless, which f...

David was silent for some little time. The strangeness of the situation had shut down on him again, and he was thinking of nothing else for the moment. In the dead stillness of...

Lord Littimer returned, as he declared, with the spirits and appetite of a schoolboy. All the same, he did not for one moment abandon his usual critical analysis. He rattled on...

The lamps gleamed upon the dusty statuary and pictures and faded flowers in the hall, they glinted upon a long polished oak casket there reposing upon trestles. Ever and anon a...

It looked like being a long, dull evening for Steel if he were not going to the theatre or anything of that kind. He generally read till about eleven o'clock, after which he sat...

Bell followed Dr. Cross into the hospital with a sense of familiar pleasure. The cool, sweet smell of the place, the decorous silence, the order of it all appealed to him strong...

David idly mixed himself some whisky and soda water in the dining-room, where he finished his cigarette. He was tired and ready for bed now, so tired that he could hardly find e...

Henson forced a smile to his face and a hand from his side as he approached Merritt and the rest. It was not until the two found themselves alone that the mask was dropped.

Chris crossed the corridor like one who walks in a dream. She had not enough energy left to be astonished even. Her mind travelled quickly over the events of the past hour, and...

Reginald Hensen struggled out of bed and into his clothing as best he could. He was terribly weak and shaky, far more weak than he had imagined himself to be, but he was in dang...

It was the very moment that Henson had been waiting for. All his listlessness had vanished. He sprang to his feet and made his way hurriedly across the lawn. Dark as it was, he...

With a sigh of unutterable relief Enid heard Williams returning. Reginald Henson had not come down yet, and the rest of the servants had retired some time. Williams came up with...

"There ought to be an object in everything that even an irrational man says or does," Bell replied. "I have achieved some marvellous results by following up a single sentence ut...

David Steel stood contemplating the weird scene with almost doubting eyes. In his wildest moments he had never imagined anything more dramatic than this. The candle in its silve...

"The brute is fast asleep," he said. "I've just been in his room. He left the lamp burning, and there is a lump on the side of his head as big as an ostrich egg. But he didn't m...

"For the present I fancy we have done enough," she said. "I want to go to bed now, and I want you both to do the same. Also I shall be glad if you will come down in the morning...

Bell seemed to know by intuition that Chris required him, or perhaps he caught a glimpse of her white dress from the terrace. Anyway, he strolled leisurely in her direction.

"Good night's work," she said to her smiling reflection. "Now the danger is passed and now that I am away from that dreadful house I feel a different being. Strange what a diffe...

Two dancing eyes of flame were streaming up the lane towards the girls, a long shadow slanted across the white pathway, the steady flick of hoofs drew nearer. Then the hoofs cea...

Lord Littimer was greatly interested in all that Chris had to say. The whole story was confided to him after dinner. Over his coffee on the terrace he offered many shrewd sugges...

His mind began to move at length. The more he thought of it the more absolutely certain he was that he had fastened the door before leaving the house. True, the latch was only a...