The Firefly of France

I stood in the gallery for an instant, indulging in a reconnoissance. The hall was now illuminated by an electric torch and three guttering candles; at the foot of the staircase...

I don’t know what they thought of me, probably that I was crazy. For a good minute, a long sixty seconds, I simply stood and stared. The duke’s blue uniform, his wife’s black-go...

The restaurant of the Hotel St. Ives seems, as I look back on it, an odd spot to have served as stage wings for a melodrama, pure and simple. Yet a melodrama did begin there. No...

I was prepared for fear, for distress, for pleading as I confronted Miss Falconer; the one thing I hadn’t expected was that she should seem pleased at the meeting, but she did....

He was very weak indeed; it seemed a miracle that, at the sounds below, he had found strength to drag himself from his bed and crawl inch by inch to the room of the secret panel...

Presently, summoned by the hostess, I went to my lonely meal in a mood that nobody on earth had cause to envy me. One thing was certain: Should it ever be disclosed that Miss Es...

When I opened my eyes it was with a peculiarly reluctant feeling, for my eyelids were so heavy that they seemed to weigh a ton. My head was unspeakably groggy, and I had quite l...

Kneeling by the young man’s side, I felt for his pulse; but the moment that my fingers touched his cold wrist I knew the truth. There flashed into my mind queerly, as things do...

The sailing of the _Re d’Italia_ was scheduled for 3 P.M. promptly, but being well acquainted with the ways of steamers at most times, above all in these piping times of war, it...

Arriving in Paris at the highly inconvenient hour of 8 A.M., our _rapide_ deposited its breakfastless and grumpy passengers on the platform of the Gare de Lyon, washed its hands...

Upon descending to the courtyard, I took a seat on a bench beneath a vine-covered trellis. To stop here for a time, smoking, would seem a natural proceeding, and while I held su...

The Turin-Paris express--the most direct, the Italians call it--was too popular by half to suit the taste of morose beings who wished for solitude. With great trouble and pains...

I thought of a number of things in the ensuing thirty seconds, but they all narrowed down swiftly to a mere thankfulness that I had been born. Suppose I hadn’t; or suppose I had...

Standing there staring after him, I felt like a murderer of the deepest dye. It is one thing to hand over to the police their natural prey, a thief taken red-handed, but quite a...

In the midst of my triumph, which was as intense as if I myself, instead of pure luck, had engineered our journey, I became aware of a tiny qualm as I sat gazing across the stre...

“What’s the best hotel in the place?” I inquired somewhat dubiously. The man in the blouse, who had performed the three functions of opening my compartment-door, carrying my bag...

For a trip that had begun with such rich promise of the unusual, my voyage on the _Re d’Italia_ proved a gratifying anticlimax during its first few days. The weather was bad. We...

I was divided between exasperation and pity. The old fellow was in a bad way; I felt sorry for him. Dunny had an ancient butler, a household institution, who had presided over o...

The sanctuary into which we had stumbled was as black as Erebus save for one dimly grayish patch, which, I surmised, meant a window. When those heavy feet had clumped down the s...

The words of Franz von Blenheim seemed to fill the hall and reecho from the walls and arches, deafening me, leaving me stunned as if by an earthquake or by a flash of lightning...

Toward nine o’clock to my relief it became obvious that the _Re d’Italia_ was really going to sail at last. The first and second whistles, sounding raucously, sent the company o...

To pass straight from a humdrum, comfortable, conventionally ordered life into a career of insane adventure is a step that is radical; but it can be exhilarating, and I proved t...

“Please don’t shoot me yet,” I managed to request. “And if I sit down and think for a moment, don’t take it for a confession. Any innocent man would be shocked dumb temporarily...

The salon of conversation, as the mirrored, gilded, and highly varnished apartment was grandiloquently termed, had been the very spot chosen for our presumably not very terrible...

If I live to be a hundred, and it is not improbable since I am healthy, I shall never forget that little garden at the inn at Bleau. It was a vegetable garden too, which is not...

The great moment had arrived. General Le Cazeau and his staff were on their way back to Paris. The duke and duchess were at the chateau talking with the _blesses_; for the secon...

I did not, of course, want her to. I was no “Injun giver,” and having once pledged my word to help her, I was prepared to keep it till all was blue or any other final shade. Sti...