I am of course prepared to admit that there are prettier places on the face of this earth of ours than Singapore; there are, however, I venture to assert, few that are more interesting, and certainly none that can afford a better study of human life and character. There, if you are so disposed, you may consider the subject of British Rule on the one hand, and the various aspects of the Chinese question on the other. If you are a student of languages you will be able to hear half the tongues of t

It has often struck me as being a remarkable circumstance that, in nine cases out of ten, a man's success in life is not found in the career he originally chose for himself, but in another and totally different one. That mysterious power, "force of circumstances," is doubtless responsible for this, and no better illustration for my argument could be found than my own case. I believe my father intended that I should follow the medical profession, while my mother hoped I would enter the Church. My

All business London, and a good many other people besides, must remember the famous United Empire Bank Fraud. Bonds had been stolen and negotiated, vast sums of money were discovered to be missing, and the manager and one of the directors were absent also. So cleverly had the affair been worked, and so flaring were the defalcations, that had it not been for the public-spirited behaviour and generosity of two of the directors, the position of the bank would have been most seriously compromised, i

Towards the middle of the morning I was sitting in my office, awaiting the coming of a prominent New York detective, with whom I had an appointment, when my clerk entered to inform me that a lady was in the outer office, and desired to see me if I could spare her a few minutes. "Who is she?" I inquired. "Find out that, and also her business." "Her name is Kitwater," the man replied, when he returned after a moment's absence, "but she declines to state her business to any one but yourself, sir."

It would be a truism to declare that human nature is about as complicated a piece of machinery as could be found in the human world. And yet I do not know why it should be considered so. All things and all men do not run in grooves. A man to be a criminal need not be hopelessly bad in every other sense. I have met murderers who did not possess sufficient nerve to kill a rabbit, burglars who would rob a poor man of all his possessions in the world, and yet would not despoil a little child of a ha

I must confess that the discovery I had made behind St. Martin's church, and which I described at the end of the previous chapter, had proved too much for me. What possible reason could Mr. Bayley have for wanting to rid himself of me? Only the morning before he had been anxious to secure my services in the interests of his Company, and now here he was hiring a couple of ruffians to prevent me from doing my work, if not to take my life. When I reached my hotel again, and went to bed, I lay awake

I flatter myself that I am a man who is not easily disconcerted, but for the second time that day I was completely taken aback. I had watched that cab so closely, had followed its progress so carefully, that it seemed impossible Hayle could have escaped from it. Yet there was the fact, apparent to all the world, that he had got away. I looked from the cab to the cabman and then at my own driver, who had descended from his perch and was standing beside me. "Well, I wouldn't have believed it," I s

When I reached the charming little Surrey village of Bishopstowe, I could see that it bore out Kitwater's description of it. A prettier little place could scarcely have been discovered, with its tree-shaded high-road, its cluster of thatched cottages, its blacksmith's shop, rustic inn with the signboard on a high post before the door, and last but not least, the quaint little church standing some hundred yards back from the main road, and approached from the lych-gate by an avenue of limes. "Her

Unlike so many of my countrymen I am prepared to state that I detest the French capital. I always make my visits to it as brief as possible, then, my business completed, off I fly again, seeming to breathe more freely when I am outside its boundaries. I don't know why this should be so, for I have always been treated with the utmost courtesy and consideration by its inhabitants, particularly by those members of the French Detective Force with whom I have been brought in contact. On this visit I

At the moment that I saw Hayle enter my room, you might, as the saying goes, have knocked me down with a feather. Of all that could possibly have happened, this was surely the most unexpected! The man had endeavoured to get me out of his way in London, he had played all sorts of tricks upon me in order to put me off the scent, he had bolted from England because he knew I was searching for him, yet here he was deliberately seeking me out, and of his own free will putting his head into the lion's

If you could have travelled the world at that moment, from north to south, and from east to west, I believe you would have found it difficult to discover a man who felt as foolish as I did when I entered the gloomy dwelling-place as Hayle's prisoner. To say that I was mortified by the advantage he had obtained over me would not express my feelings in the least. To think that I, George Fairfax, who had the reputation of being so difficult a man to trick, should have allowed myself to fall into su

It was in the early afternoon following our leaving Paris that we reached Naples. By this time, in spite of our endeavours to prevent it, Miss Kitwater was quite tired out. She certainly pretended not to be, but it was difficult, if not impossible, for her to conceal the fact. Immediately on arrival we conveyed her to the best hotel, of the proprietor of which, Leglosse had already made inquiries, in order to find out whether or not Hayle had taken up his abode there. It was with relief that we