The Heart of a Mystery

Immediately on the discovery of what had happened, Clement was summoned by the Major, who then conducted Hermia to another room. A brief examination sufficed to prove that Miss...

St. Mary's clock was chiming half-past seven when Ephraim Judd, suddenly turning the corner of a street on his way to the Bank, all but ran against Peggy Lown. She was the very...

It was on the afternoon of the fifth day after leaving home that Hermia alighted from the London train at Ashdown station. Clement was there to meet her. She had written a few l...

The winter assizes at Dulminster were held early in December, so that John Brancker had not many weeks to lie in prison before being called upon to stand his trial for the murde...

Had it not been for the pressure put upon her by Mr. and Mrs. Wingate, Hermia would have returned to Ashdown by an early train next day, so disheartened was she by the result of...

"When these lines reach you, he who writes them will be no longer among the living. The end of my days is at hand. I am about to go hence, and be no more seen.

John Brancker's abrupt departure left Mr. Avison in no very enviable frame of mind. He was thoroughly dissatisfied with John; nay, more, as he told himself, he was deeply offend...

It is to be hoped that the reader has not quite forgotten Miss Pengarvon and her sister, although we have heard nothing of them since that December night, now many years ago, wh...

Miss Brancker, so far as her means allowed, was one of the most charitable of women. She had always a number of pensioners on hand, chiefly elderly spinsters, with whom life was...

The Pengarvons had been settled at Broome for three hundred years. They were the younger branch of an ancient Cornish family, which professed to be able to trace back its pedigr...

As Hermia sat playing this evening all the attention she was obliged to give to the music could not keep her uncle's words from ringing in her ears: "He is as changeable as the...

Ephraim Judd was the victim of an insatiable curiosity with regard to the affairs of other people. To pry into the private business and personal histories of his fellow clerks,...

Among those who had crowded round John Brancker in order to congratulate him the moment he was a free man was neither Mr. Edward Hazeldine nor Mr. Avison, and their absence caus...

Avison's Bank had been built about twenty years. It had been erected on the site of a much older building which dated from the period of William and Mary, and, after serving for...

"Yes, there has certainly been foul play here as well as in the other room," said John Brancker, after a brief examination of the strong room. "In the first place, the twelve hu...

Dr. Barton, having been sworn, deposed to the fact of deceased having met with his death by violence. His chest had been pierced by some sharp instrument which, in all probabili...

Ephraim Judd's mother was a widow. Her husband, a journeyman carpenter by trade, had died many years before, leaving her with three young children and a small legacy of debts. H...

One important piece of evidence bearing on the murder of Mr. Hazeldine, and one only, had been ferreted out by the police in the course of the week which preceded the adjourned...

When John Brancker had brought his narrative to a close, Hermia sat awhile without speaking. Then she got up, and flinging her arms round John's neck, she kissed him twice very...

Twenty years, with all their manifold changes, have come and gone since Isabel Pengarvon was found one December night lying in the snow in front of the great door at Broome; and...

Mention has been made of a certain Mr. Hodgson, as being the intermediary through whom John Brancker and his sister received into their charge and keeping the little three-years...

As has been already stated, it was about a year before Mr. Hazeldine's tragical end that Frank Derison had been made the confidant by his friend Winton of a secret which the lat...

Mrs. Hazeldine was a lady of fifty, who, in the small circles of Ashdown society, had at one time been accounted a beauty, and who sometimes found it difficult to forget that sh...

Miss Brancker had scarcely been five minutes back at home before Doctor Hazeldine's boy came in search of his master. The services of the latter were required immediately at an...

The Vicar's statement that there was a certain section of the good people of Ashdown who, notwithstanding the result of the trial, still regarded John Brancker with the eye of s...

It was impossible for Clement Hazeldine to say that the picture painted by his brother, dark though its colors were, was in any respect overdrawn. In truth, he knew not what rep...

On a certain bitter December evening, when the present century was several years younger than it is now, Miss Pengarvon, of Broome, in the shire of Derby, sat in the Green Parlo...

Evening was beginning to close in--the evening of the day following that of the interview between Barney Dale and Hermia--when the latter, accompanied by Aunt Charlotte and Clem...

Miss Brancker had told her brother that, whether he liked it or no, she should insist on his taking a month's holiday before he even began to look for another situation, and at...

In the press of other matters we have lost sight of Mrs. Hazeldine and Fanny for a time. The news of Mr. Hazeldine's tragical end came upon them with all the force and suddennes...

Frank Derison looked forward to the arrival of his cousin with much disfavor. Under any circumstances it would have seemed to him bad enough that his future should be cut-and-dr...

"The pity of it--oh, the pity of it!" were John Brancker's first words as soon as he was able in some measure to control his feelings. "What you have told me has both shocked an...

Edward Hazeldine and Mr. Prestwich retired to a private room in the hotel, while John Brancker walked back to the Bank like a man utterly dazed and confounded. He could not help...

Ephraim Judd's deathbed confession naturally divided itself into two parts in Clement Hazeldine's afterthoughts, of which the first had reference exclusively to John Brancker, w...

Although Edward Hazeldine had made up his mind to refund the twelve thousand pounds, it was impossible for him to do so at once. The amount had been invested by him in his mothe...

"In the course of our many talks together, you have more than once confided to me certain details of your earliest impressions and recollections. What I now want you to do is, t...

Life at Broome reverted to its old monotonous groove after the death of Miss Letitia. At the funeral it was noticed by the few people who attended it that Miss Pengarvon never o...

Had a bomb burst in the room it might have caused more alarm, but it could scarcely have been the cause of more astonishment than was the Major's sudden announcement.

Ephraim Judd's breakdown and collapse on that memorable Sunday morning was attributed by everyone there, except the unhappy young man himself, to a sudden attack of illness, and...

It was only natural that Hermia's thoughts, since "Uncle John" had revealed to her the story of her adoption, should revert times without number to the mystery which enshrouded...

"Having written and posted my last letter to you, I lost no time in asking Mr. Gruding, the landlord of the hotel where I am staying, to again favor me with his company for a sh...

But Clement Hazeldine's business at Stavering was by no means at an end. A certain purpose, the outcome of his visit to Broome, had taken him back to Ashdown; but that accomplis...

"Letter!--what letter?" he queried, with a half-mazed look, and with that he pushed back his hat and pressed his hands to his forehead for a few moments, as if trying to recall...

When Hermia, in response to Mrs. Varrel's appeal, had said: "I will myself take the parcel to London," the answer had sprung to her lips of its own accord, so to speak, and as i...