The Great Pearl Secret

The house taken furnished by Lyda Pavoya belonged to a woman well known in society, who had gone abroad. Jack Manners had visited there before the war; but the drawing room was...

Juliet's mind was confused. "The pearls false!" She tried to hammer the words into her brain, and understand fully what the thing would mean for her and Pat. She thought of Loui...

Manners did not go to his hotel when he left Lyda. He walked for miles. He was happy. He was proud. He was wretched. He was ashamed. He believed in Lyda Pavoya. He doubted her....

It was just after dinner, early yet to begin the real evening at the Grumblers (known to some outsiders as the "Plunderers") Club; and Lowndes had been killing time with a nap.

A perfectly charming young man came in--a young man so delightful to look at that it seemed almost too much that he should be a duke. With that merry brown face (the war had lef...

Next morning Jack Manners was hideously jerked from sleep before eight by the jangle of a telephone bell close to his bed. In self-defence he reached out and grabbed the receive...

Madame Veno--alias Mrs. Sam Piggott--had a key to the door of the janitor's flat. She, her husband, and their associates could come and go as they chose when the janitor was awa...

Lyda Pavoya lifted her drooping head a little--only a little, and fixed upon Manners a pair of dark eyes. "A pair of dark eyes!" Simple words, and a simple act. There are many w...

A maid opened the door leading from a bedroom to a salon of the "royal suite" at Harridge's Hotel. Dusk had fallen, and entering, she switched on the electricity. The room, with...

The strain of constant suspense was like a screw tightening her nerves to breaking point. Her irritation grew against Jack, who persisted in warning her that she would repent he...

"Can't you forget those orders, and persuade her to make an exception for us?" As he spoke, Manners took from his pocket a cigarette-case and extracted from it a twenty-dollar b...

The French maid turned pale in rather a repulsive way she had, beginning at the lips, which she bit to keep their colour. From her looks she might have been furious--or frightened.

At five minutes before five o'clock Jack Manners entered the Palm Room of the Hotel Lorne. This room adjoined the restaurant, and was crowded with small tables lit by pink-shade...

Simone had been in the act of coming downstairs, dressed for a walk with her mistress's English bulldog, Admiral Beatty, when a vision flashed through the hall: a reedlike figur...

At six forty-two the Duchess of Claremanagh descended from a plebeian taxicab in front of her pretentious home. She had sent away her own car, before going to the Lorne, and tho...

She was a person of almost oppressively respectable appearance, with grey hair parted in the middle, gold-rimmed _pince nez_ resting on a thin nose, and a neat body clad in blac...

"I wish to heaven the scent of Pat's tobacco weren't so d--d strong on that handkerchief in the packet. It's the blackest bit of evidence against him!" Manners was saying to the...

John Manners was not the messenger bringing the pearls. Even if he had been asked to bring them, he would not have accepted the responsibility of escorting Claremanagh's "ewe la...

Mrs. Lowndes, Emmy West's sister-in-law, was giving a luncheon for the Duchess of Claremanagh; and the Duchess was late. Nine lovely ladies (including the hostess) were waiting...

"Captain Manners, this is Monsieur Defasquelle, private secretary to Monsieur Mayen, of whom you have heard me speak," Claremanagh introduced the two men, as the messenger came...

If Simone had not already telephoned to the private office of the _Inner Circle's_ editor, she might have changed her mind about going there that night. She was less superstitio...

Pat Claremanagh floated in a grey sea, under a grey sky. It seemed to him that the grey sea and sky were part of some existence after death. He vaguely remembered that he had di...