Category: Crime, Thrillers and Mystery
I DON’T suppose it rained harder in the good town of Slopperton-on-the-Sloshy than it rained anywhere else. But it did rain. There was scarcely an umbrella in Slopperton that could hold its own against the rain that came pouring down that November afternoon, between the hours...
I DON’T suppose it rained harder in the good town of Slopperton-on-the-Sloshy than it rained anywhere else. But it did rain. There was scarcely an umbrella in Slopperton that co...
2. CHAPTER II.THE November night is darkest, foggiest, wettest, and windiest out on the open road that leads into Slopperton. A dreary road at the best of times, this Slopperton road, and dre...
3. CHAPTER III.MR. JABEZ NORTH had not his little room quite to himself at Dr. Tappenden’s. There are some penalties attendant even on being a good young man, and our friend Jabez sometimes fo...
4. CHAPTER IV.DAREDEVIL DICK hears the alarum at five o’clock, and leaves his couch very cautiously. He would like, before he leaves the house, to go to his mother’s door, if it were only to...
5. CHAPTER V.THE Sloshy is not a beautiful river, unless indeed mud is beautiful, for it is very muddy. The Sloshy is a disagreeable kind of compromise between a river and a canal. It is lik...
6. CHAPTER VI.THERE had not been since the last general election, when George Augustus Slashington, the Liberal member, had been returned against strong Conservative opposition, in a blaze of...
7. CHAPTER VII.THE dreary winter months pass by. Time, slow of foot to some, and fast of wing to others, is a very chameleon, such different accounts do different people give of him.
8. CHAPTER VIII.Never, perhaps, had that court been so crowded; never, perhaps, had there been so much anxiety felt in Slopperton for the result of any trial as was felt that day for the issue...
9. CHAPTER IX.THE first witness called was Richard’s mother. From one to another amidst the immense number of persons in that well-packed court-room there ran a murmur of compassion for that...
10. CHAPTER I.THE favourite, “Gallows,” having lost in the race with Richard Marwood, there was very little more interest felt in Slopperton about poor Daredevil Dick’s fate. It was known tha...
11. CHAPTER II.“Who isn’t Jim, grandmother? What do you mean? Here I am, back again; a bundle of aching bones, old rags, and empty pockets. I’ve done no good where I’ve been; so you needn’t as...
12. CHAPTER III.MR. JABEZ NORTH, being of such a truly benevolent character, came the next day to Blind Peter, full of kind and sympathetic inquiries for the sick man. For once in a way he offe...
13. CHAPTER IV.Poor Jim’s last sun sank to his rest upon such cloud-pillows of purple and red, and drew a curtain of such gorgeous colours round him in the western sky, as it would have very m...
14. CHAPTER V.Blue lightning-flashes lit up Blind Peter, and attendant thunder-claps shook him to his very foundation; while a violent shower of rain gave him such a washing-down of every fla...
15. CHAPTER VI.THE morning after the storm broke bright and clear, promising a hot summer’s day, but also promising a pleasant breeze to counterbalance the heat of the sun. This was the legacy...
16. CHAPTER VII.ON the very day on which Mr. Peters treated Kuppins and the “fondling” to tea and watercresses, Dr. Tappenden and Jane his daughter returned to their household gods at Slopperton.
17. CHAPTER I.PARIS!--City of fashion, pleasure, beauty, wealth, rank, talent, and indeed all the glories of the earth. City of palaces, in which La Vallière smiled, and Scarron sneered; unde...
18. CHAPTER II.EARLY the next morning a gentleman rings the bell of the porter’s lodge belonging to the mansion of the Marquis de Cevennes, and on seeing the porter addresses him thus--
19. CHAPTER III.HALF-PAST eleven from the great booming voice of Notre Dame the magnificent. Half-past eleven from every turret in the vast city of Paris. The musical tones of the timepiece ove...
20. CHAPTER IV.INSCRIBED on the card which the lounger leaves on the table of Mademoiselle de Cevennes, or Madame de Lancy, is the name of Raymond Marolles. The lounger, then, is Raymond Marol...
21. CHAPTER V.WHEN Monsieur Marolles offers his arm to lead Valerie de Cevennes back to the coach, it is accepted passively enough. Little matter now what new degradation she endures. Her pri...
22. CHAPTER VI.UPON a little table in the boudoir of the pavilion lay a letter. It was the first thing Valerie de Lancy beheld on entering the room, with Raymond Marolles by her side, half an...
23. CHAPTER VII.TWO hours after this interview in the pavilion Raymond Marolles is seated in his old place in the front row of the stalls. Several times during the prologue and the first act of...
24. CHAPTER VIII.THE sudden and melancholy death of Gaston de Lancy caused a considerable sensation throughout Paris; more especially as it was attributed by many to poison. By whom administered...
25. CHAPTER IX.A MONTH from the time at which this interview took place, everyone worth speaking of in Paris is busy talking of a singular marriage about to be celebrated in that smaller and u...
26. CHAPTER X.NEARLY a month has passed since this strange marriage, and Monsieur Blurosset is seated at his little green-covered table, the lamp-light falling full upon the outspread pack of...
27. CHAPTER I.In a small room a few feet square, in the County Lunatic Asylum, fourteen miles from the town of Slopperton, with no human being’s companionship but that of a grumpy old deaf ke...
28. CHAPTER II.A LONG period of incessant rains had by no means improved the natural beauties of the Sloshy; nor had it in any manner enhanced the advantages attending a residence on the banks...
29. CHAPTER III.ON this same day, but at a later hour in the afternoon, Richard Marwood, better known as the Emperor Napoleon, joined the inmates of the county asylum in their daily exercise in...
30. CHAPTER IV.WHETHER the drags reached the county asylum in time to be of any service is still a mystery; but Mr. Joseph Peters arrived with the punt at the boat-builder’s yard in the dusk o...
31. CHAPTER V.THE cab stops in a narrow street in the neighbourhood of Drury Lane, before the door of a small public-house, which announces itself, in tarnished gilt letters on a dirty board,...
32. CHAPTER VI.A WEEK after the meeting of the Cherokees Richard Marwood received his mother, in a small furnished house he had taken in Spring Gardens. Mrs. Marwood, possessed of the entire f...
33. CHAPTER I.THE denizens of Friar Street and such localities, being in the habit of waking in the morning to the odour of melted tallow and boiling soap, and of going to sleep at night with...
34. CHAPTER II.MR. PETERS, pensioned off by Richard’s mother with an income of a hundred pounds a year, has taken and furnished for himself a small house in a very small square not far from Mr...
35. CHAPTER III.HER Majesty’s Theatre is peculiarly brilliant this evening. Diamonds and beauty, in tier above tier, look out from the amber-curtained boxes. The stalls are full, and the pit is...
36. CHAPTER IV.IN the drawing-room of a house in a small street leading out of Regent Street are assembled, the morning after this opera-house rencontre, three people. It is almost difficult t...
37. CHAPTER V.THE post of kitchenmaid in the household of the Count de Marolles is no unimportant one, and Mrs. Moper is accounted a person of some consequence in the servants’ hall. The Fren...
38. CHAPTER VI.ON the evening which follows the very afternoon during which Richard Marwood made his first and only essay in the milk-trade, the Count and Countess de Marolles attend a musical...
39. CHAPTER VII.THE new tiger, or, as he is called in the kitchen, the “tempory tiger,” takes his place, on the morning after Lady Londersdon’s Wednesday, behind the Count de Marolles’ cab, as...
40. CHAPTER VIII.IT is not a very romantic locality to which we must now conduct the reader, being neither more nor less than the shop and surgery of Mr. Augustus Darley; which temple of the hea...
41. CHAPTER IX.LAURENT BLUROSSET was a sort of rage at the West-end of London. What did they seek, these weary denizens of the West-end, but excitement? Excitement! No matter how obtained. If...
42. CHAPTER I.THREE days have passed since the interview of Valerie with Laurent Blurosset, and Raymond de Marolles paces up and down his study in Park Lane. He is not going to the bank to-da...
43. CHAPTER II.“AND so, Monsieur de Marolles,” said the Marquis, as Raymond closed the door on the group in the hall, and the two gentlemen were left entirely alone, “and so you have--by what...
44. CHAPTER III.“IT is a palpable and humiliating proof of the decadence of the glories of white-cliffed Albion and her lion-hearted children,” said the sporting correspondent of the _Liverpool...
45. CHAPTER IV.AT the time that the arrest of the Count de Marolles was taking place, Mr. Joseph Peters was absent from London, being employed upon some mission of a delicate and secret nature...
46. CHAPTER V.WHILE Mr. Peters, assisted by Richard’s sincere friend, the young surgeon, made the visit above described, Daredevil Dick counted the hours in London. It was essential to the su...
47. CHAPTER VI.ONCE more Slopperton-on-the-Sloshy rang with a subject dismissed from the public mind eight years ago, and now revived with a great deal more excitement and discussion than ever...
48. CHAPTER VII.SCARCELY had Slopperton subsided in some degree from the excitement into which it had been thrown by the trial and suicide of Raymond de Marolles, when it was again astir with n...