The Lake Mystery

It was in the evening of this same day, at dinner, that the element of tragedy was first injected into the situation. In addition to Mrs. West and her daughter, May Thurston, an...

Since the large chamber was in utter darkness, Saxe decided on recourse to a device which had served him well in similar situations of his boyhood among the mountains. As soon a...

Roy was aroused to sudden consternation, when a lull in his ecstatic emotion let him once again think of mundane things, for it flashed on him that the explosive to which the fu...

Margaret, as she let herself down into the chimney, held the torch so as to show her surroundings. She still clung to the rock above with her right hand, while the left was occu...

To the astonishment of Roy Morton and May Thurston, this day also passed without the appearance of the engineer at the cottage. The girl, at first experiencing some alarm over t...

Saxe Temple regarded with pardonable pride the supper-table laid for four in the parlor of his bachelor apartment. Then, as a knock made known the first arrival, he went to the...

An unwonted activity prevailed in the miser’s cottage. The presence of Saxe Temple and his companions brought into the isolated dwelling a varied and bustling atmosphere, which,...

It was the belief of Saxe and his friends that the person guilty of the outrage against them was none other than Hartley Masters. Now, at last, Roy confided to his associates th...

“The conclusion to which I have come,” he declared ponderously, “is compelled by exact reasoning from all the facts in our possession. The late Mr. Abernethey unquestionably lef...

At the cottage that same night, Margaret made an excuse of fatigue, and withdrew to her chamber immediately when dinner was done, to the discomfiture of Saxe. May Thurston, too,...

Roy, after an hour of basking on the turf in the mellow warmth of the sunshine, felt himself his own man again, in spite of the dull pain in his head. Curiosity spurred him to a...

Jake stood disconsolate, scratching his head, and staring wistfully from one to another. It was evident that he accepted the catastrophe as irremediable. Not so Billy Walker! On...

Masters, who was not minded to let the value of a small weekly stipend stand between him and the possession of riches, had now abandoned even the pretense of work. He let it be...

It was the morning of another day, and the exhaustive search commanded by Billy Walker as the mouthpiece of inexorable logic had begun. The voice of the oracle could at this mom...

“And to think of them, off adventuring now, this very minute!” she exclaimed, pouting a little. “It was rather horrid of them to go at such an unearthly hour, when of course we...

For a little, after he had realized the fact that the water could mount no higher, Saxe experienced such joy as must come to any normal person on escaping out of the peril of de...

Masters came suddenly on May Thurston that same afternoon, as she chanced to be alone on the cottage porch. When he appeared so swiftly out of the wood, which was thick behind t...

At the house, no one was visible with the exception of Billy Walker, who, on the porch, reclined in a large rocking-chair, displaying his customary masterly inactivity, the whil...

The passage continued of limited width for a number of rods. The floor lay almost level, smooth enough to make going easy. The light from the torch showed only walls of bare roc...

May passed a sleepless night, wearying her brain in a futile endeavor to see her path clearly. She felt that, for the sake of what had been, she could not bring herself to accus...

As Mrs. West, with Margaret and May Thurston, had gone for a stroll soon after the departure of David and the engineer, the mystery concerning the identity of the person in the...

Billy’s vanity was well content with the compliments accorded him by his friends, who gave the appreciation that was justly his due for persistent effort when they had wearied....

The dwelling in the wilderness contained only two servants, a woman of fifty, who performed the duties of housekeeper and cook, and her husband, slightly older, who did the smal...

In the hour preceding dawn, Roy gave over his fight against an unaccustomed nervousness that had kept him awake, rose, took a sponge bath, shaved, and dressed himself for the da...

In the performance of her secretarial duties, May Thurston duly drummed on her machine the remarkable letter to Saxe Temple, in which the old miser made known his intended dispo...

The clue discovered by Billy Walker was accepted without hesitation. No secret was made of the information thus obtained as the first progress in the search for the gold, and an...