The Dumpling

No matter how scorching the July sun, no matter how alluring the thought of paddling out to ascertain whether the richly wooded lake-side looked equally lovely from the water; n...

Of the two Chinamen who were placidly smoking opium in a corner of the opium den I had no fear. Though their bodies lay immovable as logs, the eyes of these Chinamen turned cont...

"My presence here?" I said, as if surprised by the question. "Why shouldn't I come here, any more than you? It is a public place, isn't it? And I came here to smoke opium, as yo...

Surprised, not to say startled, I certainly was, and all the more so for the reason that I recognised the voice of the speaker. It was that of my long time friend and at one tim...

Smoking may, as some good folk aver, be a vile and filthy habit, but it was the fact that I am a smoker which saved my life that night. On my way to the den I had fancied a pipe...

The fellow had walked some way in the direction of the house after vaulting the fence, but now he turned and retraced his steps towards the spot where I was lying, with my legs...

"It's this way," Parker began a trifle importantly--and something there was in his way of saying even these three words which made me suspect him to be a man fond of the sound o...

It was "murder," as Parker had said. Even as I went down I was conscious of the horror, of the inhumanity, of letting a poor devil, tied hand and foot like a dog in a sack, go t...

Witnessing my rather ceremonious "send off," the very young and perhaps recently-enlisted member of the force, on duty in the outer office, had evidently been duly impressed wit...

As the murder of Black Sam plays no further part in this story, I do not propose to describe in detail the ghastly scene which presented itself when, in company with the police...

As I had now decided to devote myself to finding the man known as the Dumpling, and to the clearing up of the mystery of my friend's death and of the opium den, the first questi...

Then she recognised me. Except for the fact that her face suddenly flamed and then as suddenly hardened, her breeding stood her in good stead, and with cold, clear eyes, which l...

"Game?" I said. "Game? I haven't any game. You've heard my story. It's the truth. I haven't anything else to tell or any game to play. What do you take me for?"

Miss Clara sat down--perhaps I should say collapsed down. But for the fact that a huge Chesterfield stood immediately at her back, ready to receive the fair burden of her charms...

One arm was stretched through the broken window towards the conservatory door, which he was trying to unlock; but seeing that someone was approaching he withdrew his arm hurried...

Romantic, Miss Clara may or may not have been; superstitious she certainly was not. For some reason of her own she had formed a not unflattering opinion of my intelligence--an o...

The place selected in which to keep my watch had, I imagine, been intended by the builder for a coal-cellar; but from the fact that the walls of thick cement were set around wit...

The only wonder is that I wasn't killed outright, as would have happened had my antagonist been as tall as I. But enormously strong as the Dumpling was, my superior height saved...

Then I played the craven. It is useless to say any more. It is idle to urge an excuse. I played the craven, and pleaded to the man at whom, a few minutes before, when he was unp...

The man, as I have said before, was mad--stark, staring mad, and with a madman one must go warily. Had I too profusely protested my sympathy, too readily declared myself an adhe...

"You say--I read it in your eyes--that I am mad," the Dumpling went on, after a pause. "Wait and see. If mad I am, then mad were Cæsar, Alexander, Moses--mad even perhaps the Ch...

When I awoke next morning it was with a singular feeling of depression--the reaction, I told myself, from the excitement of the last few days. Life seemed flat and at loose ends...

A younger and more pessimistically disposed man than I might conceivably have been plunged into the depths of despair at being thus told by the woman he loved that she hated him...

"Forgive me. I have some decent instincts left, I hope--in spite of my being a detective," I added bitterly. "You are, of course, within your rights; and if you so command, I ha...

The inquest over--for two mortal days I was kept hanging about Southend, to the mortuary of which the bodies had been taken--I returned to town, eager to see Kate, and to compel...

That Kate and her aunt were now aware of the identity of John Carleton with the Dumpling, I was absolutely sure. I could point back, even, to the moment when--to the latter, at...

Given the fact that I had promised to refrain from further detective work, the fact that the two Miss Carletons had disappeared and had forbidden me to try to find or to follow...

"He's only starving!" the woman had said. But as I stooped to lift the frail little figure from the ground, as I hurried with it across the street and into the baker's shop, the...

"You noisy fool, Wright!" he said, still holding me in his iron grip. "I heard you ranting in the street outside." Then, "Am I hurting you, Mr. Rissler?" he asked.

That my knowledge of his identity would come to him as a surprise, I was tolerably sure; and, in springing it thus suddenly upon him, I hoped to gather by his face, which I was...

My discomfiture at the Dumpling's derisive repudiation of the supposition that he was John Carleton was completed next morning, when John Carleton himself returned to town, and...

Looking back now upon the time of which I am writing, I cannot altogether acquit myself of criminal negligence for failing to realise--until it was too late to take action--how...

When, at the head of his Labour legions, the Dumpling set forth on that eventful Sunday afternoon to march westwards, he and his lieutenants--and, by means of his lieutenants, h...

From that moment onward the rebels carried all before them. The first encounter with soldiery was at London Fields, where a regiment of militia, hastily summoned from a neighbou...

Because the Rising had seemingly broken out in one day, because on the Saturday night London had gone to bed in peace and quietness, on the Sunday night London was aflame, and,...

Until three o'clock on Monday afternoon there was no new disturbance, no reassembling of the rioters; but soon after that hour it was clear that something was astir. This time t...

At Charing Cross, soon after the defeat and dispersion of the rebels, I had caught sight of a face which set my heart beating wildly--the proud, pale face of Kate, who was sitti...

"Yesterday night--so much has happened since then that it is difficult to believe it was so short a time ago--yesterday night, after the rioters had disbanded and gone home, I r...

"'On the contrary,' said the Dumpling, with a short laugh of devilish triumph, 'on the contrary, it is quite possible with a King so trustful that he goes out for an evening str...

"Don't turn from me, darling," I said, kneeling beside her. "No one who fears God and honours his King, who loves his country, could have acted other than I did. The man meant w...