The Riddle of the Night

In the closed and curtained library General Raynor paced up and down, silent, anxious, alone, his nerves raw, his face haggard, his eyes brightening with expectancy every time a...

The distance between the gates of Gleer Cottage and the porch wherein lay the body of the dead keeper was by no means a short one, but at the first sound of Dollops's voice the...

"I thought at first that it was torn from my own dress," she said frankly, looking up at him, "for, as it happens, I was wearing a pink dress, but not quite of this shade. I wil...

It had but just gone midnight when the car slowed down before the house in Clarges Street. Here in company with his faithful henchman, Dollops, and attended upon by an elderly h...

Geoffrey Clavering's reply to Lady Katharine's staggering question was given so promptly that one might have been tempted to believe he had expected it and prepared himself for...

"My boy?" Sir Philip Clavering made answer, in a wrung voice, a voice that clearly showed where all his thoughts were, and that he had had ears for nothing, care for nothing, he...

Cleek's knuckles had no more than touched the panel before he became aware of a singular and most significant circumstance. A faint "snick" sounded upon the other side of the do...

Cleek covered the distance between the wall angle and the door of the Grange in a fraction over a minute, and he had neither heard any one nor seen any one on the way. He went u...

It would not be overstating the case if one were to say that Cleek's mind was absolutely in a whirl when he closed the door of the dining-room behind him and stood alone in the...

Young Raynor was not in the smallest degree upset at sight of the thing. He was mildly surprised, and expressed it by a low, soft whistle as he reached out his hand and took up...

"The Lady in Pink, eh?" he said cheerily. "You know more than your prayers, I'm afraid, Hamer. Now what in the world made you think he'd be calling on her last night, eh?"

It was half-past eleven on the night of Wednesday, April 14th, when the well-known red limousine of Mr. Maverick Narkom, superintendent of Scotland Yard, came abruptly to the he...

Cleek was conscious of a sense of keen disappointment at this piece of intelligence, it so completely upset all his calculation. Hitherto, the bits of the puzzle had fitted nice...

That the nocturnal visitor would prove to be Lady Clavering Cleek had not the smallest shadow of a doubt, although he marvelled much at her temerity in venturing into the ground...

A minute more and Cleek was in the house--in the presence of Hammond and Petrie--and Narkom had introduced him as "Monsieur Georges de Lesparre, a distinguished French criminolo...

Mrs. Raynor positively jumped as the premonitory knock trembled on the door before Johnston the butler opened it and entered. Ordinarily she was but little given to "nerves" and...

The delay, trifling though it was, occasioned by the smashing of the tobacco jar and the discovery of the photograph, served to interfere with the smooth progress of events, as...

Before Mr. Narkom could ask any questions, the sound of excited voices and hasty footsteps coming up the drive and making toward the lonely house drove all other thoughts from h...

"I suppose you understand that this is a pretty high-handed sort of proceeding?" began young Clavering agitatedly, half indignantly. "Even the processes of the law have their li...

"Yes, certainly I will," said Geoff instantly. "If there's nothing more than that behind it, I'll give you my word of honour and go this moment if you want me to do so."

Meanwhile Mr. Narkom and his zealous assistants had rushed wildly on, coming forth at last from the old railway arch into the narrow lane without so much as catching a glimpse o...

Geoff did not reply; he could not. As if the sight of that slow-moving figure, linked with the realization which had now come upon him, had wrought a curious numbing effect upon...

Cleek stood a moment holding the burnt label between his thumb and forefinger and regarding it silently, his face a blank as far as any expression of his feelings was concerned....

The arrival of Mrs. Raynor and the General upon the scene, with Harry Raynor in their wake, gave a different atmosphere, so to speak, to Cleek's thoughts, and he threw himself,...

Ailsa caught her breath with a faint, little, sobbing sigh at this, and even if the moon had not chosen just then to slip out from the screen of the enveloping clouds and throw...

His rugged old face wore a look of deep anxiety, as though the exciting scene through which he had so recently passed bore heavily upon his spirits, despite Cleek's attempt to a...

It was one o'clock when Mr. Maverick Narkom, pacing uneasily up and down the narrow strip of turf just outside the boundary wall of Wuthering Grange, saw the door at the wall an...

It was not a man's foot that made that soft noise; his trained ear recognized that fact at once. A woman, eh? What woman would be coming here at this time when all the ladies of...

The circumstance was something of a shock to him. Up to this moment he had looked upon young Raynor as being merely a selfish, irresponsible wastrel, not as something vicious, s...

Once the affair had been reported to the local police, news of the tragedy spread over the neighbourhood with amazing velocity, and by nine o'clock next morning there wasn't a s...

"Yes," he continued, "what I call a regular facer for me. I was swindled into going away by a forged letter, which I swear he wrote himself. Recollect, don't you, that when you...

Seine and lay in the morgue awaiting identification; Margot went thrice to see it before it went into the trench with others that were set down in the records as unknown.