The crystal claw

“Yes, an extremely pretty girl,” remarked old Dr. Feng, bending towards me and speaking softly across the _table-à-deux_ at which we were dining at the Kürhaus hotel at Mürren,...

Though I was not, as a rule, fond of society, it was impossible to resist the infection of the merry-making spirit at Mürren and in consequence I joined heartily in all the fun...

Next day, while old Humphreys remained in his invalid chair to write some business letters to his agents in the Near East, and Doctor Feng had a match at curling, I took “The Li...

“Of course, but the girl is left in your charge, and you certainly have a right to know the truth,” declared the old invalid. “Personally, I don’t like the situation at all. I s...

When I met Thelma next morning I noticed that she was pale and obviously nervous and ill at ease. I longed to question her, but to do so would have been to reveal the fact that-...

A few days later a client of ours named Powell for whom we were conducting a piece of rather intricate business concerning a mortgage of some land in Essex, invited me to join h...

As we danced Marigold told me something more about herself. She lived, I found, with three other business girls at a boarding house in Bayswater, going by tube to Dover Street e...

I am not going to deny that at first that strange warning perturbed me a good deal. After all, I make no claim to be a hero and not even a hero likes threats of death, even thou...

One cold evening I returned from the office after a heavy day which had been devoted to the successful settlement of a very complicated and serious action for libel against a pr...

“But he must be up there if his door is locked,” he said. “He never takes his key but always leaves it on the peg here,” and he indicated a board on the wall in a little box-lik...

Why was Stanley Audley, alias Philip Graydon, in possession of forged notes from the notorious factory in South America? Why had he attempted to destroy one of them, while leavi...

Try as I would I could not dismiss from my mind that old Doctor Feng, if he was not actually the writer of the strange warnings I had received, was in some way associated with t...

It was evening when I alighted from the train at the clean, spick-and-span little town of Bexhill, which in summer and autumn is so animated, yet in spring and winter is practic...

Autumn was approaching. The long vacation had begun, and London lay sweltering beneath a heat-wave in the early days of August. Legal business was nearly at a stand-still, and H...

I was no longer in that dark old room at the Cross Keys, but in a bright airy little room enameled in white. I was lying upon a narrow iron bedstead and my nostrils were full of...

I had been fortunate enough in my life to escape many of the shadows that lie in wait for most men. No serious betrayal of friendship had come to make me bitter or cynical: I di...

Next day, Feng having left for Edinburgh to visit some friends, Thelma and I traveled to London together. At King’s Cross I saw her into a taxi, for she was going to Highgate to...

“Then you haven’t seen this,” he said, handing me his copy of the _Times_ which, as most solicitors do, he was in the habit of scanning before he began his day’s work.

That night the newspapers contained a paragraph repeating what had appeared in the morning concerning Mrs. Audley’s disappearance, and stating that no trace of her had been disc...

When at last I regained consciousness, after an interval I could not measure, my half-opened eyes fell upon a strange scene, one which at first seemed to be fantastic and unreal.

Suddenly, how long afterwards I cannot tell, I distinctly saw Doctor Feng’s face grinning into mine. Upon his white-bearded countenance was a look of exultant triumph. His eyes...

“Well, Humphreys at first did his level best to prevent the marriage, but finding that impossible he went very cleverly to work. Audley, who was a young man of means--though he...