The Dark Star

I have written every week to mother and have made my letters read as though I were still married, because it would almost kill her if she knew the truth.

As long as she could remember she had been permitted to play with the contents of the late Herr Conrad Wilner's wonder-box. The programme on such occasions varied little; the ch...

The interior of the entire house was now in an uproar; shots came fast from every landing; the semi-dusk of stair-well and corridor was lighted by incessant pistol flashes and t...

Over the drenched sea wall gulls whirled and eddied above the spouting spray; the grey breakwater was smothered under exploding combers; _quai_, docks, white-washed lighthouse,...

The suite of rooms into which they were ushered appeared to be furnished in irreproachable taste. Except for the _salon_ at the further end of the suite, where play was in progr...

From the road, just before he descended to cross the bridge into Brookhollow, he caught a gleam of light straight ahead. For a moment it did not occur to him that there was anyt...

The usual signs of land greeted Neeland when he rose early next morning and went out on deck for the first time without his olive-wood box--first a few gulls, then puffins, tern...

When the taxicab carrying Captain Sengoun and the unknown Russian girl had finally disappeared far away down the Boulevard in the thin grey haze of early morning, Neeland looked...

But very little was said during that formality; and in the silence the serious nature of the episode which so suddenly had deprived the Princess of the olive-wood box and the pa...

She had told him her story from beginning to end, as far as she herself comprehended it. She was lying sideways now, in the depths of a large armchair, her cheek cushioned on th...

But it was a very weary young man who stretched himself out for ten minutes' repose. And, when again he unclosed his eyes, the austere clock on the mantel informed him that it w...

Perhaps it was because he did not feel particularly hungry that his dinner appeared unappetising; possibly because it had been standing in the corridor outside his door for twen...

At the Orangeville garage Neeland stopped his car, put on his straw hat, got out carrying suitcase and box, entered the office, and turned over the care of the machine to an emp...

"Well, wasn't I singing hymns with Doc and Cap till breakfast time? And believe _me_, we trimmed the Senator's bunch! They've got their transportation back to Albany, and that's...

He sat there, holding the letter and looking absently over it at the little dog who had gone to sleep again. There was no sound in the room save the faint whisper of the tea-ket...

After she had become accustomed to the smell of rancid oil and dyestuffs and the interminable racket of machinery she did not find her work at the knitting mill disagreeable. It...

She found Neeland alone in the music-room, standing in the attitude of the conventional Englishman with his back to the fireless grate and his hands clasped loosely behind him,...

The mother, shading the candle with her work-worn hand, looked down at the child in silence. The subdued light fell on a freckled cheek where dark lashes rested, on a slim neck...

The east dining-room was almost empty now, though the lobby and the cafe beyond still swarmed with people arriving and departing. Brandes, chafing at the telephone, had finally...

Through the crowded Paris terminal Neeland pushed his way, carrying the olive-wood box in his hand and keeping an eye on his porter, who preceded him carrying the remainder of h...

A rain-washed world, smelling sweet as a wet rose, a cloudless sky delicately blue, and a swollen stream tumbling and foaming under the bridge--of these Mr. Eddie Brandes was ag...

Their adieux to Fifi and Nini were elaborate and complicated by bursts of laughter. The Tziganes recommended Captain Sengoun to go home and seek further adventures on his pillow...

It was mid-afternoon when they began to pass through that series of suburbs which the city has flung like a single tentacle northward for a hundred miles along the eastern banks...

There came the indeterminate year when Ruhannah finished school and there was no money available to send her elsewhere for further embellishment, no farther horizon than the sky...

At midnight the two young men had not yet parted. For, as Sengoun explained, the hour for parting was already past, and it was too late to consider it now. And Neeland thought s...

The girl had never before had to do with any mature man. She was therefore at a disadvantage in every way, and her total lack of experience emphasised the odds.

Assorted denizens of the Atlantic took part in the traditional vaudeville performance for the benefit of the _Volhynia_ passengers; gulls followed the wake to mid-ocean; Mother...

The sun hung well above the river mists and threw long, cherry-red beams across the choppy channel where clotted jets of steam and smoke from tug and steamer drifted with the fo...

Late hours, hot weather, indiscreet nourishment, and the feverish anxiety incident to betting other people's money had told on Stull. His eyes were like two smears of charcoal o...

The Princess Mistchenka and Rue Carew had retired to their respective rooms for that hour between four and five in the afternoon, which the average woman devotes to cat-naps or...

A child on the floor, flat on her stomach in the red light of the stove, drawing pictures; her mother by the shaded lamp mending stockings; her father reading; a faint odour of...

To Neeland, the entire affair had seemed as though it were some rather obvious screen-picture at which he was looking--some photo-play too crudely staged, and in which he himsel...

Without a word--with merely a careless glance at Neeland, who remained seated under the level threat of Ali Baba's pistol, the big, handsome German removed his overcoat. Under i...

The captain of the _Volhynia_ had just come from the bridge and was taking a bite of late supper in his cabin when the orderly announced Neeland. He rose at once, offering a fri...

It was a five-hour trip. He dined aboard the train with little desire for food, the July evening being oppressive, and a thunder storm brewing over the Hudson. It burst in the v...