The Incendiary: A Story of Mystery

It was about half-past three in the afternoon when Bertha, the housemaid, came running down the steps, with a shrill cry of "Fire!" and fell plump into the arms of the bake-shop...

"Accident is out of the question, John Davidson." The hands of the clock were moving toward midnight in Klein's restaurant, but mugs were still clinking, dishes rattling and wai...

"You don't care for 'The Headless Horseman'?" said Robert to little Elsie Barlow, who was sitting on his knee in Emily's parlor. "Which of the stories do you like best of all?"

John Davidson, the marshal, was officially supposed to be endowed with insight into the origin of fires. In fact, he drew a comfortable salary for pursuing no other occupation t...

He bore the scrutiny of many hundred eyes calmly. Earnestness must have been the usual expression of his face, but today its flashing eyes and curled upper lip controlled the aq...

"Oh, everything else was just as the professor left it. His slippers under his chair, his dressing-gown over the back of it, his spectacles on the desk, his bible laid down open...

"Shagarach is the man to defend him, Miss Barlow," said old John Davidson. She was lying back against the cushions of the cab, with cheeks as white as the handkerchief she held...

The shingle could not have been more commonplace, the office stairs more dingy. A Jewish boy opened the door at Emily's knock and a young man of the same persuasion arose from h...

The letters made a goodly heap on the salver, but Harry Arnold sifted them over with an air of dissatisfaction. One cream-colored envelope, superscribed in a dainty hand, he lai...

"He was an awfully virtuous cad!" laughed Kennedy. Sunburst had offered to convey Idler safely home, while Kennedy, the black-eyed, accompanied Harry, himself none the better fo...

Bertha Lund's aunt, Mrs. Christenson, kept a boarding house for Swedes, on a street near the water front. By virtue of an intelligence-office license she was also empowered to o...

"Very well." The lawyer dismissed the subject, sent Aronson off on irrelevant business and gave a few hours of attention to his other clients. The law's delay had not infected S...

"Will you take in my card? I'm in a deuce of a rush," said Kennedy to Aronson when the latter had dismissed Simon Rabofsky. Shagarach read his name, daintily engraved in the for...

The "chink" was that hollow spot in the rear of the cell, where by pressing his ear against the wall Floyd could hear communications from Dobbs, inaudible to the rest of the pri...

The life of Emily Barlow during this balmy month of summer might be described as an oscillation in criss-cross between her home and the studio in one direction, and Shagarach's...

Is there in all the world a sight more wholesome and comforting to the tired wayfarer than a loaded hay-cart? When Emily spied one ahead of her she felt a little throb of pleasu...

Emily bit off the exclamation just a moment too late. This, then, was the interesting convict who had tried to worm himself into Robert's confidence. This was Shagarach's vaunte...

The sudden flood of light dazzled Shagarach's eyes. Glittering chandeliers threw prismatic reflections upon the twenty or thirty occupants of the room, many of them in full even...

Stupefaction is a weak word to express the feelings of Saul Aronson when a messenger awakened him at 1 o'clock Thursday morning with a request from Shagarach that he would come...

At the afternoon session Mrs. Arnold was found at her place, still unaccompanied by her son. Five lawyers had already outlined their standpoints to the judge, but still there we...

Friday was to be the last day of Warden Tapp's tenure, and Robert was aware that the convicts had determined to celebrate his removal by some demonstration of their joy. Everybo...

At 2 o'clock the alarm bell rang out thirteen ominous notes. This was the fire-box of the prison. The flames had broken out in the wicker-workers' shop, where the younger and li...

"Will I let go and see the bloke drownded? You're a spunky feller, Toot Watts. Anybody'd think you never rocked a dory before yourself. Get up in the stern, Turkey. Now pull her...

When Emily Barlow ran down to Shagarach's office at noon this Saturday she was accompanied by her friend, Beulah Ware. Beulah Ware was as dark as Emily was fair. In temperament,...

The sound was at Robert's left ear. He had been dreaming of Emily arrayed in bridal white and kneeling at his side before the altar of joy. Uncle Benjamin in a clergyman's surpl...

Have you never lain back at midnight in the bow of a Whitehall, with your hands clasped behind your head and your legs lazily outstretched--no comrades but the oarsman amidships...

It was in response to this invitation that Emily had selected an appropriate dress from her modest wardrobe and kissed her mother good-by for the evening. She was at first not a...

"Your Christ lived with sinners and publicans. And they are not all tainted, my dear," added the mother, smiling so that Emily might know whom she meant to except. "There is so...

The voice was totally different from Dobbs' whine; a strong, deep register, like a ledge of the basal rock peeping out from a smiling meadow. For the first time Robert felt the...

Mrs. Arnold came forward on the rose-embroidered veranda. An old look crept into her face. Her brow darkened. Her heart froze. But love conquered jealousy, and for Harry's sake...

Honora Riley, who washed for Mrs. Barlow, lived in a ramshackle, desolate district of the city which was appropriately known as "the Barrens." Colliers, sooty to the eyerims, tr...

Beulah Ware called that evening to talk over their plans for a trip to the provinces, which Dr. Eustis, the Barlows' family physician, had imperatively ordered for the wasting g...

It is no wonder at all that Emily Barlow should have come to regard Inspector McCausland as the villain of the drama in which she was taking a part. Although whenever she tried...

Eyes, lifted slowly, of deep, dark blue, and the level brows laid over them for a foil. Beautiful eyes, we male observers say in our rough, generic fashion, but the finer percep...

This was how Aronson made the acquaintance of Serena Lamb. One day there resounded through the Ghetto (where Aronson lived) the pounding of a violent drum. Tum, tum, tum! Tum, t...

Saul Aronson was not the only person who found pleasure in the company of Miss Lamb. There were others, with eyes not glamoured by any golden mist of love, who would have found...

Walter Riley, Thomas J. Fenton and Arthur Watts had a separate trial from the other members of the "club," which resorted to Lanty Lonergan's back kitchen. There was only one ch...

There was a vacant seat in the barouche that stood before the Marches' villa. It had been destined for Tristram, but even behind the black glasses he wore the August sunshine da...

"The Earl of Marmouth sends his regards. He will be unable to join us." Tristram March held a coroneted note in his hands while he made this announcement to the company. There w...

Shagarach's office was a hive of industry the next time Emily Barlow called. Walter Riley, installed in Jacob's place, looked smartly clerical, with a pen over one ear, docketin...

"Who's talking of Woodlawn? Just where I came from, and if the fronds of those ferns aren't as fine-cut as petals, then I don't know an oak from a gooseberry bush."

There on the top of the hut, his body half emerging where the planks had been shoved aside, McCausland for the first time saw the long-missing oaf, and Dr. Silsby his peeping To...

"What will remind me of the summer while you are away, dear?" Robert had said to Emily one morning, little thinking that the sweet girl would treasure the saying for a whole day...

The artist started at his sister's voice. He had been lounging over the steamer's side watching a full-rigged ship in the offing. Its majestic sails glistened as white as snow,...

Daylight rose, gray and hollow-eyed, on the Atlantic. The sun was merely a moving brightness in the sky. Ocean, the blind Titan, still heaved and roared, playing his part in som...

Mrs. Riley was pinning the bandage on Walter's neck, while Emily buttoned his jacket. She and the quondam Whistler had become fast friends, especially since the day of the strug...

"But not insurmountable," replied the lawyer. "Dr. Whipple happens to be the most methodical of men. 'At 3:48 p. m., on Saturday, June 28, I took Mr. Harry Arnold's pulse in his...

"This is the gravest charge known to the law," said the district attorney, "and the man found guilty of it by a jury of his peers is condemned, under the statutes of this common...

Assistant District Attorney Badger conducted the examination of the first witness for the government, who gave his name as the Rev. St. George Thornton and wore the manner of an...

Nearly the same gathering was admitted to the courtroom on the second day as on the first. But, wedged in between Mrs. Arnold and the unknown woman in black, Emily had pointed o...

Shagarach's assistant had been amazed to find a subpoena thrust into his hands just as he returned to his desk after the noon recess. Of what service could he be to the prosecut...

"What in the world is he smiling for?" asked Emily. Inspector McCausland's smile was a barometer of her own uneasiness, and she could not help remarking his unusual geniality at...

"I was in New York at the time on important business, which I proceeded to expedite as far as its weighty nature would permit. Large bodies travel slowly, you know. Then when th...

Far back in our story there was mention of a half-witted brother of the Lacy girls, who jumped from the Harmon building and were killed. Nature had made one of her capriciously...

The witness drew a deep breath before he answered. He no longer had the heart to look toward Rosalie, though her eyes were turned with stony fixity upon his face and she had eve...

Now that Robert's acquittal was almost assured, Emily's pity began to overflow toward Harry Arnold and Rosalie, whose position was exactly her own of the day before. For the vox...

"At any cost!" The last words of his master tingled in Saul Aronson's ears when he left the court-room with the summons in his hand. Ever since the disclosures of Serena Lamb he...

"Will you take these spectacles, Miss Lund?" said Shagarach, handing Bertha a pair. They looked like the "horns" that used to straddle our grandfathers' noses, being uncommonly...