The porcelain mask

One of the village taxis, a sorry, disreputable affair, with noisily clattering fenders, dashed bumpily along the rural highway and turned with precarious suddenness into the dr...

Relic of the horse-and-carriage days was the Gilmore stable, with living quarters for the now obsolete coachman and footman. Kirklan Gilmore, that he might have more detachment...

Entirely unaware that she had been observed, Helen Gilmore slipped furtively into the dark, musty vestibule of the ugly house. There were those unpleasant odors which accumulate...

Returning from New York on the five o'clock train, Kirklan Gilmore stood for a minute or so on the station platform, looking along the assembled line of cars in which thoughtful...

The next morning, after a sleepless night, found Gilmore haggard and hollow-eyed. There were moments when his wife's persistent denials almost convinced him that it was all a ho...

There can be nothing so dismal as pretended gayety, nothing so mirthless as hollow, empty laughter. After that startling encounter between Victor Sarbella and Helen Gilmore, bot...

Not for a moment did Don Haskins doubt that Helen Gilmore--legally Helen Haskins, by grace of an unsundered legal tie previously knotted--would "come through" with the thousand...

The wife of Kirklan Gilmore was not literary, had not even any tendencies in that direction; no literary qualifications had been required for her employment as a typist in Atchi...

The butler at Greenacres occupied a small room on the ground floor near the kitchen. He had been asleep for some time when the ringing of the doorbell sounded, a loud jangling i...

"Your wife has been murdered sir," repeated the butler, with growing conviction of his sudden theory. "I am not a detective, but I am sure, were it suicide, the door here would...

The butler hurried stumblingly down the steps to admit Doctor Bushnell, who had been the Gilmore family physician for almost a dozen years; he swung open the door, as the doctor...

The local police authority in the village of Ardmore was vested in the person of Mr. Hamilton Griggs, who held the office of constable, and whose most important duty was the enf...

Awaiting the arrival of the constable, Doctor Bushnell was still in the den of the Greenacres house, while across from him Kirklan Gilmore sat, like a man dazed, in one of the g...

As Doctor Bushnell unlocked the door and snapped on the lights, the constable was close upon his heels, staring at the lounge with its sheet-shrouded burden. From beneath the ed...

No longer was Wiggly Price an interloper, an unwelcome intruder facing eviction; for, instead of asking for facts, he was supplying facts, and extremely vital facts they seemed...

As Constable Griggs, proud as a pouter pigeon, departed with his prisoner, Doctor Bushnell replaced the sheet over the face of the dead woman, but not until he had looked again...

Hint of the physician's disturbed thoughts must have shown in his face, for Wiggly Price gave him a keen, curious look, which seemed to increase the former's discomfiture; he da...

The Ardmore jail was located in the basement of Borough Hall, and, since it was but a place of temporary detention until prisoners could be removed to the county seat, it consis...

The constable and Wiggly had left the basement, and Griggs was almost apoplectic with anger. He glared at the reporter with indignant disgust and, as they entered the room used...

While Sergeant Tish's identification of the murder gun, as the same automatic pistol that Don Haskins had taken from his unconscious person the previous afternoon, plus the cert...

The three men left the little police car where it stood and walked the remaining few yards to the house. Bates saw their coming; as a matter of fact, he had from within noticed...

There is no drama greater than the drama of life. The actors are more than often thrust into rôles that are not of their choosing, and they respond to cues that they do not reco...

With the breath wheezing noisily through his parted lips, which were twisted back so that his clenched teeth were bared, Don Haskins leaned tensely against the wall of the store...

Stunned and sick from the paralyzing impact of Haskins' bullet, Sergeant Tish did not realize that his own shot had found an even more vital mark; he had failed to see the trick...

The doctor had found Constable Griggs' injury worse than he had anticipated, for Haskins had struck a vicious blow with the doorknob wickedly concealed within the toe of his soc...

Presently Tish and Wiggly Price were once more within the room where Helen Gilmore had met death, again seeking from the mute furnishings some vital clew that previous examinati...

For all of his asserted confidence, which bordered upon boasting, Wiggly Price realized that he had a hard nut to crack. Swinging out of the library and Sergeant Tish's presence...

Along the ribbon-smooth road Doctor Bushnell shot the car at a lively clip; one couldn't blame him, of course, for thinking of his private practice, and one of his patients had...

The young assistant district attorney and Doctor Bushnell had indeed reduced the double inquest to a cut-and-dried formality, and the proceeding was heading swiftly toward its a...

The room was tensely silent, as Kirklan Gilmore made his way slowly to the front of the room and, with a shaking hand, took the glass of water that rested upon the coroner's tab...