The Professor's Mystery

At this point I believe I swore. At least I have no recollection of not doing so, and I should hardly have forgotten so eminent an act of virtue under such difficult circumstanc...

I lay for a moment half stunned, my face buried in the moist depths of the grass. It was as if Earth had been suddenly engulfed in a wandering star, as if all known and familiar...

There was nothing that I could ask, nothing that I could say, and aside from her thanks she was silent. So without a word I turned and helped the other woman to her feet, and st...

I paused at the gate and looked back. In the upper windows lights were showing behind the shades, and now and then a swift shadow passed across the pane. Yet the house was altog...

If I had been at my wits' end before, I was now beyond it, in such a chaos of puzzled anger that I could not even think reasonably, much less come to sensible conclusions. The I...

For a moment I did not know which feeling was apparent; surprise, anger, or a new and abominable sensation that combined the sense of personal injury with an intolerable sense o...

I went to bed with my natural pleasure in the unexpected surfeited into a baffled irritation. I was the more annoyed when the morning brought no answer to my note; nor did the a...

Very carefully, and wondering the while in a listless fashion why I should do so at all, I tore out the notice and put it carefully away in my pocketbook. I had the explanation...

We stood looking down upon her without speech. She was a tall, rather thin woman of about fifty; Irish by the look of her, and still with some share of earlier good looks. The h...

It was a matter of seconds. I vaulted over the spare tires into the chauffeur's seat, pulling the throttle open while I felt for my pedals; and as I did so, I heard the door of...

With that, all the strangeness of the day, all the feeling of moving in an unnatural world which had hung about me since the dawn, blew away like the shadow of smoke. It was a s...

"You're Mr. Crosby, I suppose," she said, with that elusive reminiscence of a brogue that may not be put into words. "Sure, I'm obliged to you. An awful weight I must have been."

She was sitting at the big dining-table before a treasury of bowls and vases, with a many-colored heap of cut flowers reflected from the polished wood and the drops and splashes...

The next few days passed by without event; and the absence of excitement was a welcome enough relief, even to me. Adventures in themselves are all very well, but I prefer mine u...

I sat down rather uncomfortably. We had all of us been made to look foolish, and I was here to bear the brunt of it alone. What had become of Reid, I did not know; but I was muc...

I glanced instinctively across at Mr. Tabor, to see if he had overheard; but he gave no sign of having done so. He stood with one broad hand slowly tightening and relaxing over...

"Sure it is." Maclean was thoroughly embarrassed and uncomfortable. "The way I work it out is, there's probably just enough in it somewhere for Carucci to build on. Maybe Reid d...

For a block or so I still felt a little queer and giddy; but air and movement soon set all to rights; and after a walk back to the Club and a comfortable bath, I felt as well as...

"Can't just now, Crosby." He motioned me away nervously. "Not possible. See you up in the country any time, and tell you all you want. Not here," and he moved toward the door.

For the next few days I think I must have been nearer to a nervous breakdown than I am ever likely to be again. All the strain and the anxiety of the whole summer seemed to fall...

I had my first good look at him while he moved deliberately past me and up to the door of the house: A man past middle age, in frock-coat and silk hat in spite of the season, he...

I did not sleep very much that night; but it was no longer the frustrate misery of indecision. I was done with all that, with beating myself aimlessly against blind bars and run...

After a few empty minutes, I went quietly out of the house, and at the end of the drive paused to look back over the sunlit lawn with its bright flower-beds and heavy trees. My...

It was a situation in which I felt that I needed counsel, and that of an expert order; so I made my way as fast as a taxicab could carry me to the home of Doctor Immanuel Paulus...

The morning came dark and stormy, with a September gale driving in from the Sound, and the trees lashing and tossing gustily through gray slants of rain. It was so dark that unt...

I think Lady clutched at my arm, but I can not remember. The one memory that remains to me of that moment is the face of Doctor Paulus. His color had turned from ivory to chalk,...