Genre Mystery & Crime. Page - 16

and wife, I should think," he said thoughtfully, "yet one never can tell!"Involuntarily they all three glanced towards the man. He was well preserved and his little imperial and short grey moustache were trimmed with military precision, yet his hair was almost white, and his age could scarcely be less than sixty. In his way he was quite as interesting as the girl. His eyes, underneath his thick brows, were dark and clear, and his features were strong and delicately shaped. His

sort of thing?" he asked. "Just say the word, if they give you trouble or cheek, and I'll have them kicked out whoever they are, from the manager downwards.""Oh, thank you," she said hurriedly, "everybody is most polite and nice." She held out her hand. "I am afraid I must go now. A--a friend is waiting for me." "One minute, Miss White." He licked his lips, and there was an unaccustomed embarrassment in his manner. "Maybe you'll come

n the others! Now, Count, you are a card-player. When the other fellow has all the trumps, it saves time to throw down your hand.""What has all this talk to do with the jewel of which you spoke?" "Gently, Count. Restrain that eager mind! Let me get to the points in my own humdrum fashion. I have all this against you; but, above all, I have a clear case against both you and your fighting bully in the case of the Crown diamond." "Indeed!" "I have the cabman

his is very painful--very painful and terrible," said Mr. Scott Eccles in a querulous voice, "but it is really uncommonly hard on me. I had nothing to do with my host going off upon a nocturnal excursion and meeting so sad an end. How do I come to be mixed up with the case?""Very simply, sir," Inspector Baynes answered. "The only document found in the pocket of the deceased was a letter from you saying that you would be with him on the night of his death. It was

"Is he really an anarchist, then?" she asked. "Only in that sense I speak of," replied Syme; "or if you prefer it, in that nonsense." She drew her broad brows together and said abruptly-- "He wouldn't really use--bombs or that sort of thing?" Syme broke into a great laugh, that seemed too large for his slight and somewhat dandified figure. "Good Lord, no!" he said, "that has to be done anonymously." And at that the corners of her own

er than beautiful, perhaps. Her face was lesschildish than when she had gone away; there was, in certain of herexpressions, an almost alarming maturity. But perhaps that wasfatigue."I couldn't have had Castle, mother. I didn't need anything. I'vebeen very happy, really, and very busy." "You have been very vague lately about your work." Lily faced her mother squarely. "I didn't think you'd much like having me do it, and I thought itwould drive grandfather crazy."

nstantly. A single grain of gimlet-dust, for example, would have been as obvious as an apple. Any disorder in the gluing, any unusual gaping in the joints, would have sufficed to insure detection.""I presume you looked to the mirrors, between the boards and the plates, and you probed the beds and the bedclothes, as well as the curtains and carpets." "That of course; and when we had absolutely completed every particle of the furniture in this way, then we examined the house

I certainly expected that you would do so. You did look up; and I was now assured that I had correctly followed your steps. But in that bitter tirade upon Chantilly, which appeared in yesterday's 'Musée,' the satirist, making some disgraceful allusions to the cobbler s change of name upon assuming the buskin, quoted a Latin line about which we have often conversed. I mean the linePerdidit antiquum litera sonum. I had told you that this was in reference to Orion, formerly written Urion; and,

actice in ourneighborhood.""I know you did, sir," I replied. "But what was a poor travelingportrait-painter like my husband, who lives by taking likenessesfirst in one place and then in another, to do? Our bread dependedon his using his eyes, at the very time when you warned him tolet them have a rest." "Have you no other resources? No money but the money Mr. Kerbycan get by portrait-painting?" asked the doctor. "None," I answered, with a sinking at

"That he desired to conceal his handwriting.""But why? What can it matter to him that his landlady shouldhave a word of his writing? Still, it may be as you say. Then,again, why such laconic messages?" "I cannot imagine." "It opens a pleasing field for intelligent speculation. The wordsare written with a broad-pointed, violet-tinted pencil of a notunusual pattern. You will observe that the paper is torn away atthe side here after the printing was done, so that