Mystery & Detective Books

Chapter I The voice of the clergyman intoned the last sad hope of humanity, the final prayer was said, and the mourners turned away, leaving Mrs. Turold to take her rest in a bleak Cornish churchyard among strangers, far from the place of her birth and kindred. The fact would not have troubled her if she had known. In life she had been a nonentity; in death she was not less. At least she could now mix... more...

CHAPTER I. ALMOST A RIOT. No, it was not an earthquake that happened in the city of Los Angeles, California, on that beautiful sun-shiny morning. It was just a tow-headed, cross-eyed youth shaking things up at the corner of Sixth and Main in an attempt to find his father. And not one corner of the cross streets was involved, but all four corners. The upheaval that followed this search for a missing... more...

PROLOGUE I The officer lying back in the home-made chair tilted the peak of his cap over his eyes and let his book slip gently to the ground. A few moments later, after various unavailing waves of the hand, he pulled out a handkerchief of striking design and carefully adjusted it over his face. Then, with his hands dug deep in his pockets to remove even a square inch of skin from the ubiquitous fly, he... more...

Bonnie Dundee stretched out a long and rather fine pair of legs, regarding the pattern of his dark-blue socks with distinct satisfaction; then he rested his black head against the rich upholstery of an armchair not at all intended for his use. His cheerful blue eyes turned at last—but not too long a last—to the small, upright figure seated at a typewriter desk in the corner of the office. "Good... more...

1 Henry, looking disgusted, as well he might, picked his way down the dark and dirty corkscrew stairway of the dilapidated fifteenth century house where he had rooms during the fourth (or possibly it was the fifth) Assembly of the League of Nations. The stairway, smelling of fish and worse, opened out on to a narrow cobbled alley that ran between lofty mediæval houses down from the Rue du Temple to... more...

DON QUIXOTE IN LONDON Simon Beecot was a country gentleman with a small income, a small estate and a mind considerably smaller than either. He dwelt at Wargrove in Essex and spent his idle hours—of which he possessed a daily and nightly twenty-four—in snarling at his faded wife and in snapping between whiles at his son. Mrs. Beecot, having been bullied into old age long before her time, accepted... more...

Chapter I. THE YELLOW POSTER "Oh, look there, Nan!" cried Bess Harley suddenly, as they turned into High Street from the avenue on which Tillbury's high school was situated. "Look where?" queried Nan Sherwood promptly. "Up in the air, down on the ground or all around?" and she carried out her speech in action, finally spinning about on one foot in a manner to shock the more... more...

FALCON'S NEST Thurwell Court, by Thurwell-on-the-Sea, lay bathed in the quiet freshness of an early morning. The dewdrops were still sparkling upon the terraced lawns like little globules of flashing silver, and the tumult of noisy songsters from the thick shrubberies alone broke the sweet silence. The peacocks strutting about the grey stone balcony and perched upon the worn balustrade were in... more...

CHAPTER I A WORRIED GIRL Four girls sat on four chairs, in four different corners of the room. They sat on the chairs because they were really too tired to stand longer, and the reason for the occupancy of the corners of the apartment was self-evident. There was no other available space. For the center of the chamber was littered to overflowing with trunks, suitcases and valises, in various stages of... more...

CHAPTER I. In Which We Begin Not to Understand It is not without a certain emotion that I begin to recount here the extraordinary adventures of Joseph Rouletabille. Down to the present time he had so firmly opposed my doing it that I had come to despair of ever publishing the most curious of police stories of the past fifteen years. I had even imagined that the public would never know the whole truth... more...