The Moving Finger

Bertrand Saton leaned against the stone coping of the bridge, and looked downwards, as though watching the seagulls circling round and round, waiting for their usual feast of sc...

Rochester was walking slowly along the country lane which led from the main road to Beauleys, when the hoot of a motor overtaking him caused him to slacken his pace and draw in...

"Really, Henry," Lady Mary Rochester said to her husband, a few minutes before the dinner-gong sounded, "for once you have been positively useful. A new young man is such a gods...

"I daresay he was very different in those days," she said. "Before the Beauleys property came to him, he was quite poor, and he was very much in love with the dearest woman--Pau...

"My dear Henry," Lady Mary said, a few days later, swinging round in her chair from the writing-table, "whatever in this world induced you to encourage that extraordinary person...

The words which passed between Pauline Marrabel and her host at the railway station were words which the whole world might have heard and remained unedified. The first part of t...

Saton was only a few minutes being whirled down the avenue of Beauleys and up along the narrow country lane, wreathed with honeysuckle and wild roses, to Blackbird's Nest. He le...

The guests at Beauleys were all grouped together in the hall after dinner, the men, and some of the women, smoking cigarettes. Coffee and liqueurs were being served from the gre...

Lois opened the gate and stole into the lane with the air of a guilty child. She gave a little gasp as she came face to face with Saton, and picking up her skirts, seemed for a...

Saton left the country on the following afternoon, arrived at St. Pancras soon after five, and drove at once to a large, roomy house on the north side of Regent's Park. He was a...

The conversazione was, in its way, a brilliant gathering. There were present scientists, men of letters, artists, with a very fair sprinkling of society people, always anxious t...

Saton, after the reading of his paper before the members of the London Psychical Society, established a certain vogue of which he was not slow to avail himself. His picture appe...

Lady Mary's boudoir was certainly the most luxurious apartment of its sort into which Saton had ever been admitted. There were great bowls of red roses upon the small ormolu tab...

Saton threw down the letter which he had been reading, with a little exclamation of impatience. It was from a man whom, on the strength of an acquaintance which had certainly bo...

"I find him so," Rochester answered, deliberately. "He dresses like other men, he walks and moves like other men, he speaks like other men, and all the time I know that he is ac...

"So you," she said at last, "were the fairy godfather. You were the man who trusted a nameless boy with five hundred pounds, because his vaporings amused you. You pushed him out...

Naudheim shook his head. He was a tall man, with gray, unkempt hair, and long, wizened face. He wore a black suit of clothes, of ancient cut, and a stock which had literally bel...

"Come and walk with me a little way," she said to Rochester. "We will go and sit amongst that wilderness of empty chairs. I want to talk. I must talk to someone. We shall be qui...

Saton turned out of Bond Street, and climbed the stairs of a little tea-shop with the depressed feeling of a man who is expiating an offence which he bitterly repents. Violet wa...

Lois came walking down the green path that led to the wood, her head a little tilted back to watch the delicate tracery of the green leaves against the sky, her thoughts apparen...

Saton wondered afterwards many times at the extraordinary nonchalance with which he faced the remainder of that terrible day. He wrote several letters, and was aware that he wro...

Rochester said no more, but his lips seemed to curl for a moment into the old disbelieving smile. Then the struggle began. In a week it was over. A magnificent constitution, and...

Rochester and Pauline were driving through the country lanes in a small, old-fashioned pony carriage. Westward, the clouds were still stained by a brilliant sunset. The air was...

Lois and her companion stopped on the summit of the hill to look at the rolling background of woods, brilliant still with their autumn coloring. The west wind had blown her hair...

The laugh which checked Vandermere in his first intention of following Lois and Saton up the field, was scarcely a mirthful effort. Saton had bent toward his companion, and his...

"I am glad to see you all, of course," she said, "but I am really delighted to see you about again, Henry. Do tell me, now. I have heard so many contradictory reports. Did you s...

A few of the Duchess's guests left early--those who had to drive a long distance, and who had not yet discarded their carriage horses for motor-cars. Afterwards the party seemed...

Pauline took the card from the hand of her servant, and glanced at it at first with the idlest of curiosity--afterwards with a fixed and steadfast attention, as though she saw i...

"So he may be," Vandermere answered grimly, "but his is not the Thespian stage. He is a lecturer and writer on occultism, and in his way, I suppose, he is amazingly clever."

The Duchess of Ampthill was giving a great dinner-party at her house in Grosvenor Square. She had found several new prodigies, and one of them was performing in a most satisfact...

Rochester's hansom set him down in Cadogan Street just as a new and very handsome motor-car moved slowly away from the door. His face darkened as he recognised Saton leaning bac...

Naudheim's disapproval was very marked and evident. He scoffed at the great bowl of pink roses which stood upon the writing-table. He pushed scornfully on one side the elegantly...

Saton deliberately turned into the Park, and sauntered along under the trees in the wake of a throng of fashionable promenaders. He exchanged greetings with many acquaintances,...

The man was harmless enough, to all appearance--something less than middle-aged, pale, and with stubbly brown moustache. He was dressed in blue serge clothes, and a bowler hat a...

"And on her birthday, too!" Lady Mary declared. "Young people, nowadays, are so _blasé_. Look at all those presents on the table for her, and here the breakfast gong has rung tw...

There seemed for the next few minutes to be a somewhat singular abstention from any desire to interfere with the two people who stood in the centre of the little group, hand-in-...