The Odds And Other Stories

Far away over the snow she heard a distant church clock tolling midnight. It ceased, and in the silence she thought she heard her stretched nerves cracking one by one. Soon--ver...

The Fortescue Gold Mine was five miles away from Trelevan, in the heart of wild, barren country, through which the sound of its great crushing machines whirred perpetually like...

"I want you to take us to the billiard-room," she said to Fletcher. "There's a great match on. I've heard a lot of men talking about it. And I adore watching billiards. I'm sure...

It had been a hot day at the Law Courts, but a faint breeze had sprung up with the later hours, blowing softly over the river. It caught the tassel of the blind by which Field s...

Piet Cradock spent nearly the whole of that long evening leaning against a doorpost watching his wife dancing with Jerry Lister. They were the best-matched couple in the room, a...

"Oh, my dear!" gasped Adela. "I've had the most terrifying adventure. I thought I should never see you again. The men are all on strike, and they've sworn to kill Fletcher Hill,...

On account of its comparative proximity to the gold mine, Trelevan, though of no great size, was a busy place. Dot had stayed at the hotel there with her brother on one or two o...

Three weeks after her wedding, Nan Cradock awoke to the amazing discovery that she was a rich woman; how rich it took her some time to realise, and when it did dawn upon her she...

A loud sniff expressive of grave misgiving succeeded the remark. The speaker--one of a knot of village women--edged herself a little further forward to look up the long strip of...

She spoke resolutely, and her face was resolute also; its young lines were for the moment almost grim. She stood in the doorway of the stable, watching her brother rub down the...

It was very dark over the moors. The solitary lights of a cab crawling almost at a foot pace along the lonely road shone like a will-o'-the-wisp through the snow. It had been sn...

Jack looked in vain for any sign of elation on his friend's face when he entered. He read nothing but grim determination. Dot's demeanour also was scarcely reassuring. She seeme...

The two girls left the billiard-room, shepherded by Fletcher, almost before the tumult had subsided. It seemed to Dot that he was anxious about something and desirous to get the...

She made a sharp movement that was almost a gesture of protest. Then she turned and drew the door softly shut behind her. Robin came and pressed close to her, as if he divined t...

The doctor, whom she had known from her earliest infancy, was bending over her, and she smiled her recognition of him, though with a dawning uneasiness. Vague shapes were floati...

In silence he lifted her and laid her again upon the bed. His touch was perfectly gentle, but there was no kindness in it, no warmth of any sort. And Nan turned her face into th...

Through a labyrinth of many passages he led her, over ground that was often rough and slimy with that sound of running water in their ears, sometimes near, sometimes distant, bu...

No pleasure-boats or craft of any sort put out from Silverstrand that afternoon. The wind eventually blew away the clouds and revealed a foaming, sunlit sea. But the waves were...

In the safe haven of her own room Violet recovered somewhat. Field left her in the charge of her maid, but the latter she very quickly dismissed. She sat before the fire clad in...

That life could possibly return to a normal course after that amazing night would have seemed to Dot preposterous but for the extremely practical attitude adopted by Fletcher Hi...

Adela Burton was laying the cloth for supper, and looking somewhat severe over the process. She was usually cheerful at that hour of the day, for it brought her husband back fro...

She ran home through the moonlight, bareheaded, whistling as carelessly as a boy. Night and day were the same thing to her in the place in which she had lived all her life. Ther...

To Mona fell the task of making preparation for Nan's departure, for Nan herself did not raise a finger to that end. Three days only remained to her of the old free life--three...

The hoofs drew rapidly nearer, dropping from a canter to a quick trot that ended in a clattering walk on the stones of the yard. Through the open window Dot heard the heavy thud...

The letter from Piet Cradock was not again referred to by either Nan or her father. The latter answered it in his own way after the lapse of a few weeks. He was of a peaceable,...

In the midst of the running tide of joke and banter Violet sat as one apart. Now and then she joined spasmodically in the general merriment, but often she did not know what she...

In the midst of a darkness that could be felt Fletcher Hill stood, grimly motionless, waiting. He knew that strong-room, had likened it to a condemned cell every time he had ent...

The air was keen and salt. He paused on the well-worn stone wall and turned his face to the spray. A hundred memories were at work in his brain, and the relief of solitude was u...

He ought to have been in good spirits. Life on the moors suited him. The shooting was excellent, the hospitality beyond reproach. But yet he was not satisfied. People had wholly...

The sea was very quiet, only broken by an occasional long swell that drove them southward like driftwood. Merefleet, who had been persuaded to quit the harbour against his bette...

There was no wandering alone on the quay for Merefleet that night. It was very warm and he sat on the terrace with his American friend. Far away over at New Silverstrand, a band...

It very greatly astonished Burleigh Wentworth, who after his acquittal had drifted down to Cowes for rest and refreshment before the advent of the crowd. He had not seen Lady Vi...

It was about a week after this conversation that Merefleet, invited by Seton, joined his two friends at _table d'hôte_ at their table. The suggestion came from Mab, he strongly...

Before the sun set they were sighted by the cruiser returning to her anchorage outside the little fishing-harbour. Mab, worn out by hunger and exposure, had slipped back to her...

He found her sitting in a great arm-chair at one end of the empty billiard-room. She did not rise to meet him. He thought she looked tired out and frightened.

The smile on the beautiful face developed into a wicked little gleam of amusement. "That's so, I daresay," said the high voice. "But you see, I wasn't consulted. I've just got t...

Nan made no complaint of the cooking, but she ate next to nothing, to the grief of his hospitable soul. She was tired, of course, but there was something in her manner that he c...

A high laugh rang with a note of childlike merriment from the far end of the coffee-room as Bernard Merefleet, who was generally considered a bear on account of his retiring dis...

Nan was ever quick in all her ways, and it was very seldom that she was disconcerted. Between the moment of her reaching the top step and that in which she entered the hall, she...

Merefleet looked up from his paper as he heard the words. They were seated at the next table at lunch, his American friend and her excessively English cousin. Merefleet noticed...

Nan was the first to free herself from the nightmare paralysis that bound her. Swiftly, as though in answer to a sudden inner urging, she moved forward. She almost pushed past J...

His American friend stood above him, clad in the white linen costume she always wore for boating. She looked very enchanting and very childlike. Merefleet who had seen her last...

"Isn't he a monster?" said Mab, as she sat before the kitchen fire in Quiller's humble dwelling with Mrs. Quiller's three months' old baby in her arms. "I guess he'd fetch a pri...

"Is this the gentleman as was to come and see me? Come in, sir. Come in! My old eyes ain't so sharp as they used to be, but I can see a many things yet."

For many, many seconds after his departure she lay without breathing, exactly as he had left her, listening, listening with all the strength that remained to her for the sounds...

It was some time later that Merefleet entered the smoking-room to satisfy a certain curiosity which had taken possession of him. He looked round the room as he sat down, and alm...

The trial of Burleigh Wentworth for forgery was one of the sensations of the season. A fashionable crowd went day after day to the stifling Court to watch its progress. The man...

A fortnight passed away and Merefleet was still at the hotel at Old Silverstrand. Mab was there also, the idol of the fisher-folk, and an unfailing source of interest and admira...

Violet was in her room ready dressed for dinner that evening, when there came a knock upon her door. She was seated at a writing-table in a corner scribbling a note, but she cov...

Men said that Bernard Merefleet, the gold-king, was curiously changed when once more he went among them. Something of the old grimness which had earned for him his _sobriquet_ y...

The water was barely up to her knees, but she stumbled among slippery stones as she fled round the corner of the boat-house, and twice she nearly fell. There were reeds growing...