The skeleton key

Some few years ago, in the month of September, I happened to be kicking my heels in Paris, awaiting the arrival there of my friend Hugo Kennett. We had both been due from the so...

It might have been somewhere near the anniversary of my first meeting with the Baron when I came upon him again--in London this time. I had been lunching at Simpson’s in the Str...

Wildshott, the Hampshire seat of the Kennetts, stands off the Winton-Sarum road, at a distance of some six miles from the former, and some three and a half from the sporting tow...

I seemed conscious somehow, at dinner on the night of our arrival, of a feeling of electricity in the domestic atmosphere. Having no clue, such as the later course of events cam...

We were three guns--Hugo, myself, and a young local landowner, Sir Francis Orsden, of Audley, whom I had met before and liked. He was a good fellow, though considered effeminate...

Le Sage, in the course of a pleasant little drive with Audrey, asked innumerable questions and answered none. This idiosyncrasy of his greatly amused the young lady, who was by...

I confess that the man’s communication, coming on the top of my concern for my friend, fairly, in the first moment of it, took me aghast. The state in which I had found Hugh, th...

Jake was a boy of imagination, though one would never have thought it to look at his jolly rubicund face and small sturdy form. The very gaiters on his stout calves, spruce and...

The Bit and Halter was seething with excitement. Its landlord, Joe Harris, selected foreman of the jury about to sit on the poor remains of that which, five days earlier, had be...

The inquest was over, the provisional verdict delivered, and all that remained for the time being was to put the poor subject of it straightway to rest under the leafless trees...

On the day following the Inquest, the plot thickened. It became really entertaining. One did not know whether to appear the more scandalised or amused. On the one hand there was...

I was still in this resolved mood, when something happened one night which confirmed my worst suspicions, showing me how faithfully I had weighed and measured the character of t...

Wednesday of the third week following the Inquest was appointed for the magisterial inquiry, and during the interval Sergeant Ridgway was busily occupied, presumably in accumula...

The Magistrates assembled to hear the case were four in number, two of them being local magnates and personal friends of Sir Calvin, who was accorded a seat on the Bench. They t...

The morning of the inquiry found M. le Baron in Paris, in his old rooms at the Montesquieu. He was in very good spirits, smiling and buoyant, and not at all conscience-smitten o...

Who that was present at that scene could ever forget its anguish and pathos? Its fierce dramatic intensity will remain for all time indelibly seared on my soul. Could I believe...

Audrey had been starting for a walk when detained by the interview recorded in the last chapter. She left it burning with indignation and passionate resentment. That this man co...

I had a long and interesting interview with Sir Calvin’s lawyers, when I used the occasion to unburden my mind of some of the misgivings which had been disturbing it. I spoke th...

Sergeant Ridgway, turning up punctually to his appointment, was shown into Sir Calvin’s study, where he found, not his former employer, but the Baron Le Sage, seated alone. Char...

Sir Francis Orsden and the Baron Le Sage walked slowly up the kitchen garden together. It was a windless autumn morning, such serene and gracious weather as had prevailed now fo...

Miss Kennett, still in process of qualifying herself for a musician, was at work on Czerny’s fifth exercise, which, like the _pons asinorum_ of an earlier strategist, could pres...