The great Skene mystery

I suppose my days have been involved in as tragic circumstances as most. It is fair that the truth of them should be set down _en grande tenue_ by the one whom, after all, it mo...

Lord Skene was, as things go, a poor man--poor for an ex-judge, and poor for a nobleman. His estate was much embarrassed at the time when his lady started a resolution to nurse...

Once, when I was a boy of twelve or so, there had come to stay at Evercreech a little lady whom I hated with all my heart. This was Miss Ira Christmas; but very remote from the...

That afternoon I was sitting glum and glowering in my lodge, while the water for my tea was boiling on the fire, when I heard a light step in the passage; and the next moment sh...

She came to the lodge often after that, and amused herself putting the place in order, sometimes while I was present, but more often during my absence. I knew nothing of what wa...

Mr Pugsley sat in the study of his vicarage at Market Grazing. He was composing a sermon--no doubt on the eternal lines of pre-election and the divine partiality. He never gathe...

Near all that night I sat out in my den, wakeful and deeply meditative. Was I glad or sorry to have wormed out thus much of the truth? And of what potential profit to me was my...

On entering the dining-room at Evercreech, I found company assembled. I had not been warned, and I was not introduced. I came in late, and took my seat at the table quietly, bei...

On the second morning after its seizure, the body of the old ex-governor was carried away in a hearse to Footover Station, thence to be conveyed to its London home. I had avoide...

The mention of stone and quarry by Mr Richard Gaskett fits significantly enough here into the context of sinister events. They are to be found nowhere in more suggestive juxtapo...

When I got back to my woodland hermitage--which I regained, as I had foreseen I should, without my absence from the house having excited any comment--I put up, in a little frenz...

I was so stunned, so amazed by this sudden and utterly unexpected turn of events, that, for a time, only a monstrous sense of indignation could make room for its consideration i...

As if Fate were moved to introduce some “comic relief” into a drama grown almost intolerably serious, there re-entered astonishingly upon the stage of my affairs at this pass my...

It was with a feeling of intense suppressed excitement that I came down into the courts surrounding the inner tabernacle of that mystery which my heart was set and my nerves wer...

I wanted above all things to be alone; to re-order my disordered thoughts; to marshal into some sort of coherence the fantastic figures which ran riot in my brain. I felt like s...

As I turned to go in by the gate, a figure, coming hastily up the road from Market Grazing, made a gesture as if to detain me. I paused in surprise; and in another minute the wo...

After twenty years; and he was still in his old place of business. That was characteristic of the man. I found Mr Churton in his workshop, planing a board which seemed destined...

Now, henceforth, I was to move on with a set and deadly purpose. Murder was in the air, and I was stalking it, a hooded falcon on my wrist. Though I knew only what the reader kn...

His that is just written passes as an _entr’acte_, the fooling of a clown before the curtain, the merry jigging of the fiddles. It ends; and the lights are down once more, the d...

So she believed me to be her son and his! The deadlier mystery was none of her sharing. For that, at least, I could breathe one heartfelt prayer of thanksgiving. She was innocen...

It was a monstrous tale that he unfolded to me, scarce credible for the guile, the inhuman persecution, the infernal callousness which it revealed. And yet I could not but accep...

After Paradise the Deluge. But I held my head high, and laughed at the lowering heavens. I had enough faith in me to float an ark, with my heart for dove in it, waiting confiden...

She came to me, dear love, the moment I had entered the house. Her sweet eyes, wet and wild, were full of sorrow and unmeant reproach. They gave one startled glance at the Itali...

Henceforth the chase runs on, swift and relentless; and I give myself, with a fierce joy, to lead it over rocks and wounding briars, since it will drive me where by justice I sh...

Away with wooer’s gallivanting, and all the soft and sugary stuff of dreams. A sterner wind than Zephyr speeds me on my way, and lands me, hard of purpose, in the midst of Londo...

The last of the snow was gurgling itself away into the black drain-traps, and the face of the town was smeared like a sweep’s under a dreary drizzle, when Mr Shapter, and I, and...

I pause in the chase to jot down a note or two. It is when the quarry lies close, and the hounds are drawing cover, and a little breathing space is mine for rest and sentiment....

Clank and fury and scream; by day and by night; squibbing like a fallen unspent comet the length of France, and leaving a shining trail as we go; by flat grey pastures, hardly b...

Emerging from the pine woods at last, we saw before us a vast barren slope scattered with an infinite débris of rocks and stones. The hill went up, shouldering itself hugely aga...

It was on a dreary wet morning, laden with the very spirit of depression, that I led my little party of three across the fields to the Lone Farm. We had talked, or slept, out th...

It was evident that things had come to a deadlock between the two detectives. They could not work together, and they would not work apart. Mr Shapter was summoned at length to a...

“He has driven away this morning to catch the early express. Disillusioned for ever, he told me, as to our police methods, disappointed in his one cherished ideal, he has gone t...

My story draws to a close. I linger only yet a little by the way--a balmy breathing space, a last restful interlude between the acts--before I rally to the final struggle.

You see the heading to this chapter? Your fathers used to see and greet it for many a long day in their newspapers--especially in the evening issues, when a little excitement wa...