The Mystery of Suicide Place

The next morning dawned gloriously, and in due time the carriages reached the picnic-grounds--just a mile past Suicide Place--a picturesque grove on the banks of a river. There...

Floy was alive, he felt sure, and he foreboded that she would be turning up at some inopportune moment in Maybelle’s path, and blocking her way to success with Beresford.

When he parted from Floy that night beneath the vines on the cottage porch and hurried away to perform the mission on which he was sent across the sea, his heart was full of her...

“I left Floy at the hotel, very busy looking over a few thousand dollars’ worth of finery she purchased yesterday, but if you both will return with me, I think she will be glad...

She presently recognized that it was the voice of Mrs. Banks, uplifted in those grievous cries, and a conviction of the truth rushed over her mind--something terrible had happen...

Merry little Floy went dancing like a sunbeam through the dark oak grove, and sat down to rest on the porch before she entered the house for her night’s vigil.

A moment of blank, awed silence ensued, then every one seemed to join in a cry of alarm and dismay as they pressed forward to the banks and watched the eddying circles of water...

“Yes, and he knows it. That makes him all the more dangerous, because he is determined on revenge for her scorn;” and the detective related the story of that night when he found...

She was pale to the lips--pale as a ghost, as the saying goes--and there was a strange expression in her blue eyes, as if they had looked upon something uncanny.

“No; she is very busy painting, and Alva loves art better than society, you know. Besides, she has a companion--a lovely young girl whom she has employed as a model.”

“How he loves me, my noble, splendid, beautiful, dark-eyed lover! He has chosen me, simple little Floy, poor and obscure, out of a whole world of rich and beautiful girls, any o...

He knew that it was late to intrude, but under the peculiar circumstances of the case, he deemed it best to waive ceremony and go at once to the house.

His usual clear head and steady nerves had apparently deserted him. The truth was, that he was on the verge of a severe illness that seized on him that night and prostrated him...

Otho Maury’s tone was light and contemptuous, but at heart he was furious. He had a _penchant_ for Florence Fane himself, and dreaded a rival in this man whose face had paled at...

She looked at him with questioning eyes, and, although he was usually very quiet and reserved, after the English nature, the lovely face drew him so strangely to her that he con...

For even in the horror and remorse of the moment, knowing that he had caused Floy’s death as certainly as though he had plunged a dagger in her heart, a swift, prudential consid...

Her genial, sunny nature, always looking at the bright side of everything, soon attracted admiring friends among her fellow employés, and made her popular with the elegant custo...

“Oh, how I have prayed and prayed for some one to come,” she continued. “Ever since midnight I have lain here fainting and reviving, fainting and reviving, too weak to rise, and...

As he seated himself by her side, Floy thought of her exquisite dream of the rose garden, where she had walked by his side, with his arm about her waist and his low voice whispe...

At his hotel, which was located within a square of the Maury mansion, he found that the all-absorbing subject of conversation was of the disasters that had befallen the Maury fa...

She thought that St. George Beresford was the grandest, bravest, most beautiful hero in the world, and her heart swelled with gratitude to him for his manly defense of a helples...

“Oh, Miss Maybelle, how can I let my child go into that great wicked city of New York, with all its terrible temptations to a poor girl who has to earn her bread! Couldn’t I go,...

“She told me I was pretty--that she was looking at me as if I had been a picture; she can not be angry with her son for loving me,” she murmured, sagely, and she decided that if...

But we must digress a short while from the main points of our story to note what became of our villain, Otho Maury, after Floyd Landon and our heroine left him unconscious on th...

“I dreamed of you,” repeated Beresford, bending lower over the girl until her fragrant breath floated up to him, and the magnetism of her nearness enveloped him in an atmosphere...

But he had not expected a reply. He knew that the blow must fall with too crushing a weight on the lover’s heart to admit of comment, and he knew also that Beresford would never...

“Bravo, miss, that was a brave deed! He deserved death; but if you had waited a minute longer, I would have killed him for you myself!” exclaimed an admiring voice, and a man wh...

“Seven in all. He must have written to her every day until he received your letter that she was dead. And such letters! fully of the silliest love. Pah!” cried the girl, who des...

All her pride was brought low. If she could have known where to find the mysterious girl her son loved, she would have dragged her by force, if necessary, to her son’s bedside,...

“I fear not, for her disappearance was so strange. Listen, mamma: they took her to Bellevue, and she did not recover consciousness the whole way. They supposed she would certain...

“Only think!” she cried. “When I am dead and gone--when the light has faded from my eyes--when this form of mine is dust in a forgotten grave--this beauty will live on upon the...

The day after the theater party Miss Beresford stood alone in her beautiful studio in a sunny wing thrown out at the side of the mansion, and gazed meditatively at her latest work.

When the beautiful Miss Maybelle Maury, of Mount Vernon, New York, was returning in October, 1894, from her tour of Europe with her chaperon, Mrs. Vere de Vere, a New York socie...

How sadly her fortunes had altered since we first saw her flashing through the streets of Mount Vernon on her bicycle, a vision of beauty, light of heart, and careless as a joyo...

“You need not look so glad that she is dead, mother; my grief is bitter enough without that. Well, it was Otho Maury, if you wish to know who wrote me she was dead. He sent me a...

“It would seem like deserting my darling. I can not go until I find her,” he answered, resolutely; and so the burning August days found them lingering still in the city, though...

It was two months now since their parting at the cottage door, in the May moonlight, under the drooping vines that shaded the porch--two months since that last kiss of love so t...

The room where Floy sat had been her mother’s bedchamber. It was a large, handsome apartment, with stenciled walls and deep mahogany wainscoting after the old style, and the dar...

“No, I am not ill, but--I--have had--a great shock--so that I can not bring myself to go on with the search for Miss Fane. You must employ some one else.”

“Yes, I meant it, every word, Maybelle, for it is true, curse the luck! and unless we carry things with a high hand, he is lost to you forever. In fact, I never saw a fellow so...

Otho Maury joined the theater party to see “Trilby,” and devoted himself to the beautiful brown-eyed Alva Beresford, who looked like a young princess, and accepted his devotion...

“I changed my mind,” she answered, softly; then threw her arms around his neck, laughing, and whispering: “I’m sorry I disturbed your nap, you dear old darling, but I’ll creep s...

What Floy would have answered to her lover’s ardent question was lost in the rumble and noise of the carriage wheels as the driver reined up his horses in front of Bird’s Nest C...

“It is the ring I gave her when we became engaged,” exclaimed St. George, taking it and kissing it in memory of that night, his heart thrilling with the memory of her beauty and...

He found her there, beautiful, brave, defiant, her angry blue eyes fixed on him, and her white hand grasping the weapon whose shining blade would surely be sheathed in his heart...

“Hush! hush! I did not mean to refer to myself!” cried Alva; and sure as she was of the girl’s sympathy, she repented of her momentary self-betrayal, and wrapped herself in a ma...

“It will be lonely for you, dear, without us. Perhaps you had better go on to Newport next week, as we had planned,” they said to Alva, who answered, cheerily:

“Do not tell Miss Beresford about that villain. You can simply say you found me at Suicide Place,” she had urged while they were on the train coming to New York.

It was no wonder that the fiends’ laugh echoed no longer through the dark, grim halls of Suicide Place, since its awful Moloch had claimed the sacrifice of the sixth decade.

The odor of the roses, their bloom and beauty, had recalled her to his mind as she had been the night that he had dreamed of her among the roses--blessed dream that had sent him...

“Not to her, though I love her dearly; for, oh! there is danger for me in her vicinity, since it is the home of Otho Maury, also. No; I must seek another hiding-place. Oh, sir,...

“Yes, I can imagine it, for I knew the original in all her living beauty, the fairest among women. Oh! my sister, how exquisitely you have reproduced her upon canvas! This pictu...