The lion's share

The first time that Colonel Rupert Winter saw Cary Mercer was under circumstances calculated to fix the incident firmly in his memory. In the year 1903, home from the Philippine...

No sooner was Mrs. Melville ushered into her section than the colonel went through the train. He was not so suspicious as he told himself he might have been, with such a dovetai...

When the colonel awoke next morning the train was running smoothly over the Iowa prairies, while low hills and brick factory chimneys announced Council Bluffs. The landscape was...

“In my opinion,” said Aunt Rebecca, critically eying her new drawing-room on the train to San Francisco; “the object of our legal methods seems to be to defend the criminal. And...

“I was,” admitted the colonel; “can--can the boy be hiding to scare us?” He spoke to Miss Smith. She had grown pale; he did not know that his own color had turned. Millicent sta...

“Well, Bertie?” Mrs. Winter had gone back to her parlor in the most docile manner in the world. Her submission struck Rupert on the heart; it was as if she were stunned, he felt.

A mud-splashed automobile runabout containing two men was turning off Van Ness Avenue down a narrower and shadier side street in the afternoon of the Sunday following the disapp...

When the two men got into the house the dim rooms made them stumble for a moment after the brilliant sunshine of the outer skies; but in a second Birdsall’s groping hand had fou...

The time was two hours later. Rupert Winter was sitting on one of the stone benches of the colonnade about the _patio_. The court was suffused with the golden glow presaging sun...

If Mercer’s avowal surprised the colonel, there was no trace of such emotion in his face or his manner. “I rather thought it might be,” he said. “And our young friend who is pro...

It was no false lure to distract pursuit, that hurried sentence of Randall’s which had met the colonel’s angry appeal for information. The woman was not only repeating Mrs. Wint...

There was no one but Mrs. Winter to welcome the colonel when, jaded, warm and dusty, he tapped on Aunt Rebecca’s parlor door. Mrs. Millicent was bristling with a sense of injury...

But there was not a sign of life revealed by the search. Meanwhile, Winter was examining the body. His first thought was that Keatcham had tried to escape and had been struck do...

Although I sent you a postal yesterday, I am writing again to-day to try to keep you in touch with our _extraordinary series_ of events. Nothing has been heard from Archie excep...

The changes which Mrs. Melville had accepted so philosophically, the metamorphosis of the tragic and lonely house of mystery into a luxurious country villa, the flinging open of...

One Sunday after Mrs. Melville Winter and Archie came to Casa Fuerte, Mr. Keatcham sent for the colonel. There was nothing unusual in such a summons. From the beginning of his i...

While the colonel was trying to decipher his tragical puzzle, while Edwin Keatcham was busied with plans that affected empires and incidentally were to save and to extinguish so...

Winter would have said that he was too old a man to stay awake all night, when he had a normal temperature; yet he saw the stars come out and the stars fade on that fateful Apri...

And it was delightful to discover that you were so distressed about me. I must be getting a trifle maudlin in my old age, for I have had a lump in my throat every time I have th...