Mystery & Detective Books

CHAPTER I In the year 1860, the reputation of Doctor Wybrow as a London physician reached its highest point. It was reported on good authority that he was in receipt of one of the largest incomes derived from the practice of medicine in modern times. One afternoon, towards the close of the London season, the Doctor had just taken his luncheon after a specially hard morning's work in his... more...

In choosing a few typical cases which illustrate the remarkable mental qualities of my friend, Sherlock Holmes, I have endeavoured, as far as possible, to select those which presented the minimum of sensationalism, while offering a fair field for his talents. It is, however, unfortunately impossible entirely to separate the sensational from the criminal, and a chronicler is left in the dilemma that he... more...

CHAPTER I Peter Brent sat nervously smoking in the library of his great house, Brent Rock. He was a man of about forty-five or -six—a typical, shrewd business man. Something, however, was evidently on his mind, for, though he tried to conceal it, he lacked the self-assurance that was habitually his before the world. A scowl clouded his face as the door of the library was flung open and he heard... more...

CHAPTER I. THE TWO POETS OF SAFFRON PARK THE suburb of Saffron Park lay on the sunset side of London, as red and ragged as a cloud of sunset. It was built of a bright brick throughout; its sky-line was fantastic, and even its ground plan was wild. It had been the outburst of a speculative builder, faintly tinged with art, who called its architecture sometimes Elizabethan and sometimes Queen Anne,... more...

CHAPTER I. AN INVITATION FOR TOM AND HUCK [Note: Strange as the incidents of this story are, theyare not inventions, but facts—even to the public confessionof the accused. I take them from an old-time Swedishcriminal trial, change the actors, and transfer the scenesto America. I have added some details, but only a couple ofthem are important ones. — M. T.] WELL, it was the next spring after me and... more...

THE LAW Mr. Maverick Narkom, Superintendent of Scotland Yard, sat before the litter of papers upon his desk. His brow was puckered, his fat face red with anxiety, and there was about him the air of one who has reached the end of his tether. He faced the man opposite, and fairly ground his teeth upon his lower lip. "Dash it, Cleek!" he said for the thirty-third time, "I don't know what... more...

It was in the spring when I at last found time from the hospital work to visit my friend, the old folk-lorist, in his country isolation, and I rather chuckled to myself, because in my bag I was taking down a book that utterly refuted all his tiresome pet theories of magic and the powers of the soul. These theories were many and various, and had often troubled me. In the first place, I scorned them for... more...

WAS it a specter? For days I could not answer this question. I am no believer in spiritual manifestations, yet—But let me tell my story. I was lodging with my wife on the first floor of a house in Twenty-seventh street. I had taken the apartments for three months, and we had already lived in them two and found them sufficiently comfortable. The back room we used as a bedroom, and while it... more...

CHAPTER I THE ONE-EYED MAN The very beginning of this affair, which involved me, before I was aware of it, in as much villainy and wickedness as ever man heard of, was, of course, that spring evening, now ten years ago, whereon I looked out of my mother's front parlour window in the main street of Berwick-upon-Tweed and saw, standing right before the house, a man who had a black patch over his... more...

CHAPTER I APPLEBORO "Now there was my cousin Eliza," Miss Sally Ruth Dexter once said to me, "who was forced to make her home for thirty years in Vienna! She married an attaché of the Austrian legation, you know; met him while she was visiting in Washington, and she was such a pretty girl and he was such a charming man that they fell in love with each other and got married. Afterward his... more...