Fiction Books

THE PERUVIAN DAGGER "There's something weird and mysterious about the robbery, Kennedy. They took the very thing I treasure most of all, an ancient Peruvian dagger." Professor Allan Norton was very much excited as he dropped intoCraig's laboratory early that forenoon. Norton, I may say, was one of the younger members of the faculty, like Kennedy. Already, however, he had made for... more...

Once upon a time in beautiful Virginia there lived a little boy named Robert Edward Lee. It was in the days before the Civil War when, if we may believe all we hear, all the women were charming, and all the men were gentlemen. The boy's father was one of the most gallant of the gentlemen, for he was Light Horse Harry of Revolutionary War fame. He it was who said of Washington, "First in war,... more...

A SELECTION FROM THE LETTERS OF HORACE WALPOLE. VOLUME II. MADAME DE BOUFFLERS AT STRAWBERRY—THE FRENCH OPINION OF THE ENGLISH CHARACTER—RICHARDSON'S NOVELS—MADAME DE BEAUMONT. TO SIR HORACE MANN. ARLINGTON STREET, Dec. 20, 1764. … My journey to Paris is fixed for some time in February, where I hear I may expect to find Madame de Boufflers, Princess of Conti. Her husband is just dead; and... more...

CHAPTER I. A COACHING ADVENTURE. Had any of the boys in the lower forms of Eton in the year 1808, been asked who were the most popular boys of their own age, they would have been almost sure to have answered, without the slightest hesitation, Tom and Peter Scudamore, and yet it is probable that no two boys were more often in disgrace. It was not that they were idle, upon the contrary, both were fairly... more...

"I suspected him from the first," said Miss Gould, with some irritation, to her lodger. She spoke with irritation because of the amused smile of the lodger. He bowed with the grace that characterized all his lazy movements. "He looked very much like that Tom Waters that I had at the Reformed Drunkards' League last year. I even thought he was Tom—" "I do not know Tom?"... more...

ommitting a perfect murder is a simple matter. Drive out some night to a lonely road, find a single person walking along out of sight of anyone else, offer him a ride, knife him, and go home. In such a crime, there's no reason to connect killer and victim—no motive, no clue, no suspect. To achieve the perfect murder of a man's own wife, however, is a different matter. For obvious reasons,... more...

I Moncrief House, Panley Common. Scholastic establishment for the sons of gentlemen, etc. Panley Common, viewed from the back windows of Moncrief House, is a tract of grass, furze and rushes, stretching away to the western horizon. One wet spring afternoon the sky was full of broken clouds, and the common was swept by their shadows, between which patches of green and yellow gorse were bright in the... more...

CHAPTER I. THE LUMBER KINGDOM Perhaps the real history of the rise of the lumber industry in the Pacific Northwest will never be written. It will not be set down in these pages. A fragment—vividly illustrative of the whole, yet only a fragment—is all that is reproduced herein. But if that true history be written, it will tell no tales of "self-made men" who toiled in the woods and mills... more...

CHAPTER I "WHO SPEAKS?" David Steel dropped his eyes from the mirror and shuddered as a man who sees his own soul bared for the first time. And yet the mirror was in itself a thing of artistic beauty—engraved Florentine glass in a frame of deep old Flemish oak. The novelist had purchased it in Bruges, and now it stood as a joy and a thing of beauty against the full red wall over the... more...

he call on the TV-phone came right in the middle of my shaving. They have orders not to call me before breakfast for anything less than a national calamity. I pressed "Accept," too startled to take the lather from my face. "Hi, Gyp," George Kelly said to me from the screen. "Hurry it up, boy." He made no reference to my appearance on his screen. "Quit draggin' your... more...