Mystery & Detective Books

It was hard to judge Jeff Rand's age from his appearance; he was certainly over thirty and considerably under fifty. He looked hard and fit, like a man who could be a serviceable friend or a particularly unpleasant enemy. Women instinctively suspected that he would make a most satisfying lover. One might have taken him for a successful lawyer (he had studied law, years ago), or a military officer... more...

CHAPTER I JOHN GRANGER OF MURDER POINT John Granger, agent on the Last Chance River in the interests of Garnier, Parwin, and Wrath, independent traders in the territory of Keewatin, sat alone in his store at Murder Point. He sat upon an upturned box, with an empty pipe between his lips. In the middle of the room stood an iron stove which blazed red hot; through the single window, toward which he faced,... more...

"Number 481 is no better, doctor," said the head-warder, in a slightly reproachful accent, looking in round the corner of my door. "Confound 481" I responded from behind the pages of the Australian Sketcher. "And 61 says his tubes are paining him. Couldn't you do anything for him?" "He is a walking drug-shop," said I. "He has the whole British pharmacopaæ... 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...

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...

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...

NEVER-FAIL BLAKE I Blake, the Second Deputy, raised his gloomy hound's eyes as the door opened and a woman stepped in. Then he dropped them again. "Hello, Elsie!" he said, without looking at her. The woman stood a moment staring at him. Then she advanced thoughtfully toward his table desk. "Hello, Jim!" she answered, as she sank into the empty chair at the desk end. The rustling of... more...

THE GREY ENVELOPE Catherine Brace walked slowly from the mantel-piece to the open window and back again. Within the last hour she had done that many times, always to halt before the mantel and gaze at the oblong, grey envelope that leaned against the clock. Evidently, she regarded it as a powerful agency. An observer would have perceived that she saw tremendous things come out of it—and that she... more...

CHAPTER I Andrew Tallente stepped out of the quaint little train on to the flower-bedecked platform of this Devonshire hamlet amongst the hills, to receive a surprise so immeasurable that for a moment he could do nothing but gaze silently at the tall, ungainly figure whose unpleasant smile betrayed the fact that this meeting was not altogether accidental so far as he was concerned. "Miller!" he... more...

CHAPTER I. DUDIE DUNNE PLAYS A GREAT TRICK TO RUN DOWN A CRIMINAL—AS SIMPLE JOHN HE APPEARS INNOCENT, BUT WHEN HIS MASK GOES OFF THE "FUR FLIES." "Oh, fellers, look at this! he's strayed or stolen; let's go for him." A group of little toughs were gathered at a street corner in a low locality in the city of New York when a dude of the first water with the regular Anglo step... more...