The Postmaster's Daughter

John Menzies Grant, having breakfasted, filled his pipe, lit it, and strolled out bare-headed into the garden. The month was June, that glorious rose-month which gladdened Engla...

“It will help me a lot, sir,” he said, “if you tell me now what you know about this matter. If, as seems more than likely, murder has been done, I don’t want to lose a minute in...

Thus, it befell that Grant was not worried by officialdom until long after his housekeeper and her daughter had recovered from the shock of learning that they were, in a sense,...

Grant stared again at the card. A tiny silver bell seemed to tinkle a sort of warning in a recess of his brain. The name was not engraved in copper-plate, but printed in heavy t...

Ingerman was a shrewder judge of human nature than the village chemist. As well try to stem the flowing tide as stop tongues from wagging when such a theme offered.

Grant, though in a fume of hot anger, had the good sense to choke back the first impetuous reprimand trembling on his lips. In fact, wrath quickly subsided into blank incredulit...

The coroner, a Knoleworth solicitor named Belcher, prided himself on conducting this _cause célèbre_ with as little ostentation as he would have displayed over an ordinary inqui...

“Ah, those Greeks!” he said sadly. “They simply can’t go straight. This brand of Turk used to be made of a tobacco grown on a slope above Salonica. A strip of sun-baked soil bui...

Several minutes had elapsed between the two unexpected visits. During those minutes a somewhat acrimonious discussion broke out in the dining-room. Bates went to reassure his wi...

Next morning, after a long conference with Superintendent Fowler, from which, to his great chagrin, P. C. Robinson was excluded, Furneaux went to the post office, dispatched an...

About the time Furneaux was whisked past _The Hollies_ in Superintendent Fowler’s dogcart, Grant and Hart were finishing luncheon, and planning a long walk to the sea. Grant wou...

Winter had identified Bates at the first glance. The letters in the man’s hand, too, showed his errand, so, while the gardener was climbing the hill, the detective slipped into...

Winter, being a cheerful cynic, had not erred when he appealed to that love of mystery which, especially if it is spiced with a hint of harmless intrigue, is innate in every fem...

The sun, transmuted into Greenwich time, exercised an extraordinary influence on the seemingly humdrum life of Steynholme that day. A few minutes after three o’clock—just too la...

Shortly before noon on Monday occurred two events destined to assume a paramount importance in the affair which was wringing the withers of Steynholme. As in the histories of bo...

The lawn front of _The Hollies_ was not visible from the upper story of the Hare and Hounds owing to a clump of pines which had found foothold on the cliff, but, through the gap...

No word bearing on the main topic in these men’s minds was said during dinner. Grant was attentive to his guests, but markedly silent, almost distrait. Two such talkers as Hart...

Winter looked anxious. Both he and his colleague knew well when to drop the good-natured banter they delighted in. They were face to face now with issues of life and death, dark...