The unknown seven

Standing in the dark doorway of a delicatessen shop, Kingdon Cole gazed, through the fog and drizzle of the October night, at a second-story window across the street. The brim o...

For a moment Cole forgot that he was in a building devoted to the pursuits of commerce. The room in which he stood, bordered by walls of paneled walnut, was worthy of a Fifth Av...

Five minutes passed. Cole could no longer control his restlessness. He got up from the chair and went gropingly across the heavily carpeted floor. His footsteps made scarcely a...

When he first went to work on the case of Reeves’ mysterious disappearance, Cole had been shown several photographs of the missing man. Along the numerous twistings of the trail...

To Cole’s rapt gaze the insane man presented a picture at once fearful and fascinating. Reeves was no longer looking at the keen-bladed knives, but now he was staring at the bla...

The sun was several hours high the following morning when Kingdon Cole jumped out of bed and, from force of habit, turned toward his bathroom. A glance into the mirror on the wh...

He left the physician’s office a poorer, but a wiser, man. The half hour had been well spent even though the interview had yielded little in the way of tangible results. Cole ha...

All evening Cole had felt a presentiment that his telephone was to ring. When it finally did ring, shortly after eleven o’clock, he knew, even before he lifted the receiver from...

For a time no one in the room moved. Cole was both amused and puzzled by the hostile glances leveled in his direction. The attitude of The Unknown Seven had changed from friendl...

The scream had ended with a certain grim abruptness that to the listeners could mean only one thing. It had seemed to stop in the middle; yet it had been punctuated with an omin...

The moon was shining through a silver-gray mist, giving the row of buildings a shadowy appearance. A fresh fragrance drifted out from the park, on the scarcely perceptible breez...

In stony silence Doctor Latham watched the bold move. As Cole opened the door, a diffident look came into his face. He toyed awkwardly with the pistol, looked dubiously at the b...

Just as the clock struck eleven, the following morning, Kingdon Cole emerged in a tingle and glow from his cold shower. He had retired shortly before dawn, so he had considered...

Cole’s conviction that he had found the building occupied by The Unknown Seven was a matter of instinct rather than reason. He felt that once before, and not so long ago, his fe...

With his fingers across his lips, Cole enjoined silence. His glance darted quickly over the floor, the ceiling and the walls. He moved hither and thither, looking behind desks a...

After dinner Cole looked the picture of a man whose faith in himself has received a staggering blow. He seemed to take the outcome of his ruse very much to heart. He moved gloom...

It was McKendrick, the young operative whom he had instructed to trace down the dictaphone wire. That had been only an hour ago, and already death had blotted out the whimsical...

Cole’s only response to Professor Carmody’s soft-spoken ultimatum was a smile. He knew that the scientist was the kind of foe who is the most dangerous when he uses his gentlest...

Very softly Cole crept up the stairs. On the ground floor he stopped for a moment and listened. A heavy silence seemed to hover over the entire house. He stole up another flight...

Cole nodded. For several minutes he had been watching the physician closely. It was as if a veil had been removed from one phase of Latham’s many-sided character. Cole looked th...

While Doctor Latham fastened the boat, Cole’s eyes swept the black masses of wooded hills that slanted upward at a sharp angle from the river bank. At the apex of the tallest pe...

Cole opened the door a trifle wider. The footfalls, furtive and hesitant, sounded as if several men were coming up the protesting stairs. He fancied there were many others below...

When, some thirty or forty minutes later, Cole opened his eyes and fingered his swollen jaw, he found himself sprawling in a chair in a strange room. In front of him stood Docto...

Cole turned to the window and verified his impression that the shutters were strong enough to bar their exit in that direction. For a few moments he stood there, listening to th...

Cole glanced about the room they had entered. Its sparse furnishings suggested that it had been arranged in haste. There were a desk and a telephone, hinting that it served as t...

“Gold! Gold!” The vibrant murmurs, edged with a triumphant and sinister note, echoed in Cole’s ears as he opened his eyes. The house was shivering with a slow, rhythmic tremor,...

“It worked,” Cole amplified, “because we were dealing with a logical mind, one that deals mainly with reason and fails to consider the human equation. We know that Englebreth me...

Silent as a shadow, Cole hurried down the hall, which seemed to extend endlessly in an undeviating direction. Believing it had once been used as an emergency exit he supposed it...