22 chapters
11 hour read
Selected Chapters
22 chapters
CHAPTER I. A CONSCIENTIOUS ASS
CHAPTER I. A CONSCIENTIOUS ASS
Pocket Upton had come down late and panting, in spite of his daily exemption from first school, and the postcard on his plate had taken away his remaining modicum of breath. He could have wept over it in open hall, and would probably have done so in the subsequent seclusion of his own study, had not an obvious way out of his difficulty been bothering him by that time almost as much as the difficulty itself. For it was not a very honest way, and the unfortunate Pocket had been called “a conscient
27 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER II. A BOY ABOUT TOWN
CHAPTER II. A BOY ABOUT TOWN
The young Westminsters had not come in when Pocket finally cast up in St. John’s Wood Park. But their mother was at home, and she gave the boy a cup of tepid tea out of a silver tea-pot in the drawing-room. Mrs. Knaggs was a large lady who spoke her mind with much freedom, at all events to the young. She remarked how much Upton (so she addressed him) had altered; but her tone left Pocket in doubt as to whether any improvement was implied. She for one did not approve of his luncheon in Oxford Str
32 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER III. HIS PEOPLE
CHAPTER III. HIS PEOPLE
It so happened that his people in Leicestershire were thinking of him. They had been talking about him at the very time of the boy’s inconceivable meanderings in Hyde Park. And two of them were at it still. On a terrace outside lighted windows a powerful young fellow, in a butterfly collar and a corded smoking jacket, was walking up and down with a tall girl not unlike him in the face; but their faces were only to be seen in glimpses as they passed the drawing-room windows, and at not less regul
19 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER IV. A GRIM SAMARITAN
CHAPTER IV. A GRIM SAMARITAN
Though he afterwards remembered a shout as well, it actually was the sound of a shot that brought the boy to his senses in Hyde Park. He opened his eyes on a dazzle of broad daylight and sparkling grass. The air was strangely keen for the amount of sunshine, the sunshine curiously rarefied, and the grass swept grey where it did not sparkle. Pocket’s first sensation was an empty stomach, and his next a heavy head into which the puzzle of his position entered by laborious steps. He was not in bed.
21 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER V. THE GLASS EYE
CHAPTER V. THE GLASS EYE
Dr. Baumgartner produced a seasoned meerschaum, carved in the likeness of a most ferocious face, and put a pinch of dark tobacco through the turban into the bowl. “You see,” said he, “I must have my smoke like you! I can’t do without it either, though what is your misfortune is my own fault. So you are also a photographer!” he added, as the fumes of a mixture containing latakia spiced the morning air. “I am only a beginner,” responded Pocket, “but a very keen one.” “You don’t merely press the bu
25 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER VI. AN AWAKENING
CHAPTER VI. AN AWAKENING
It was a normal elderly gentleman, with certain simple habits, but no little distinction of address, who welcomed the schoolboy at his breakfast-table. The goblin inquisitor of Hyde Park had vanished with his hat and cloak. The excited empiric of the dark-room was a creature of that ruby light alone. Dr. Baumgartner was shaved and clad like other men, the iron-grey hair carefully brushed back from a lofty forehead, all traces of strong acids removed from his well-kept hands. There was a third pe
15 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER VII. BLOOD-GUILTY
CHAPTER VII. BLOOD-GUILTY
His overwhelming horror was not alleviated by a moment’s doubt. He marvelled rather that he had never guessed what he had done. The walking in his sleep, the shot that woke him, the first words of Dr. Baumgartner, his first swift action, and the warm pistol in his own unconscious hand: these burning memories spoke more eloquently than any words. They would have told their own tale at once, if only he had known the man was dead. Why had he been deceived? It was cruel, it was infamous, to have kep
29 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER VIII. POINTS OF VIEW
CHAPTER VIII. POINTS OF VIEW
On the following morning, the ominous Friday of this disastrous week, there was a letter for Mr. Upton on the breakfast-table down in Leicestershire. This circumstance was not so usual as it sounds, because Mr. Upton conducted all his correspondence from his office at the works. If you simply put the name of the village, as he did on his stationery, to the works it went; it was necessary to direct your letter to the hall if you wished it to be delivered there; and few there were who had anything
25 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER IX. MR. EUGENE THRUSH
CHAPTER IX. MR. EUGENE THRUSH
The remarkable Mr. Thrush was a duly qualified solicitor, who had never been the man for that orderly and circumscribed profession. The tide of events which had turned his talents into their present channel, was known to but few of his many boon companions, and much nonsense was talked about him and his first career. It was not the case (as anybody might have ascertained) that he had been struck off the rolls in connection with the first great scandal in which he was professionally concerned. No
38 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER X. SECOND THOUGHTS
CHAPTER X. SECOND THOUGHTS
Pocket had been dreaming again. What else could he expect? Waking, he felt that he had got off cheaply; that he might have been through the nightmare of battle, as described by one who had, and depicted in the engravings downstairs, instead of on a mercifully hazy visit to the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud’s. The trouble was that he had seen the one and not the other, and what he had seen continued to haunt him as he lay awake, but quite horribly when he fell back into a doze. There was n
19 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XI. ON PAROLE
CHAPTER XI. ON PAROLE
“So,” said Dr. Baumgartner, “you not only try to play me false, but you seize the first opportunity when my back is turned! Not only do you break your promise, but you break it with brutal violence to a young lady who has shown you nothing but kindness!” Pocket might have replied with justice that the young lady had brought the violence upon herself; but that would have made him out a greater cad than ever, in his own eyes at any rate. He preferred to defend his honour as best he could, which wa
26 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XII. HUNTING WITH THE HOUNDS
CHAPTER XII. HUNTING WITH THE HOUNDS
Eugene Thrush was a regular reader of the journal on which Dr. Baumgartner heaped heavy satire, its feats of compression, its genius for headlines, and the delicious expediency of all its views, which enabled its editorial column to face all ways and bow where it listed, in the universal joint of popularity, were points of irresistible appeal to a catholic and convivial sense of humour. He read the paper with his early cup of tea, and seldom without a fat internal chuckle between the sheets. Tha
29 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XIII. BOY AND GIRL
CHAPTER XIII. BOY AND GIRL
Pocket Upton was able to relieve his soul of one load that morning. Dr. Baumgartner had left the schoolboy to his soap and water, taking the newspaper with him; but apparently Pocket had followed him down in quicker time than the other anticipated. At any rate the little lady of the house was all alone in the dining-room, where Pocket found her boiling eggs on the gas-fire, and had her to himself for several seconds of which he wasted none. There was neither grace nor tact in what he said, and h
27 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XIV. BEFORE THE STORM
CHAPTER XIV. BEFORE THE STORM
Sunday in London has got itself a bad name among those who occasionally spend one at their hotel, and miss the band, their letters, and the theatre at night; but at Dr. Baumgartner’s there was little to distinguish the seventh day from the other six. The passover of the postman, that boon to residents and grievance of the traveller, was a normal condition in the dingy house of no address. More motor-horns were heard in the distance, and less heavy traffic; the sound of church bells came as well
15 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XV. A LIKELY STORY
CHAPTER XV. A LIKELY STORY
At that moment help was as far away as it had been near the day before, when Eugene Thrush was closeted in the doctor’s dining-room; for not only had Mr. Upton decamped for Leicestershire, without a word of warning to anybody, on the Saturday afternoon, but Thrush himself had followed by the only Sunday train. A bell was ringing for evening service when he landed in a market town which reversed the natural order by dozing all summer and waking up for the hunting season. And now the famous grass
32 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XVI. MALINGERING
CHAPTER XVI. MALINGERING
Pocket had put the fragments of his poor letter together again, and was still poring over those few detached and mutilated words, which were the very ones his tears had blotted, when there came a warning chink of tea-things on the stairs. He was just able to thrust the pieces back into his pocket, and to fling himself at full length on the bed, before Dr. Baumgartner entered with a tray. “There, my young fellow! This will make a man of you! Then we shall see you yourself again by supper-time.” “
32 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XVII. ON THE TRACK OF THE TRUTH
CHAPTER XVII. ON THE TRACK OF THE TRUTH
The unseen knuckles renewed their assault upon the dark-room door; and Pocket wavered between its Yale lock, which opened on this side with a mere twist of the handle, and the broken red window behind the drawn red blind. Escape that way was easy enough; and if ever one could take the streets in pyjamas and overcoat, with the rest of one’s clothes in a bundle under one’s arm, it was before six o’clock in the morning. But it was not a course that vanity encouraged in an excited schoolboy with rom
37 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XVIII. A THIRD CASE
CHAPTER XVIII. A THIRD CASE
In days to come, when the boy had schooled himself not to speak of these days, nor to let his mind dwell on their mystery and terror, it was as a day of dark hours and vivid moments that he remembered the one which Phillida and he began alone together in her uncle’s house. Those endless hours were either mercifully forgotten or else contracted to an endurable minimum; but the unforgettable moments would light themselves up in his memory without a detail missing. There was their first encounter a
28 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XIX. THE FOURTH CASE
CHAPTER XIX. THE FOURTH CASE
The boy and girl sat long and late in the open window at the back of the house. The room would have been in darkness but for a flood of moonlight pouring over them. The only light in the house was in the room above, and they only saw its glimmer on the garden when a casual cloud hid the moon; but once Pocket had crept out into the garden to steal a look at the lighted window itself; and what he saw was the shadow of a huge bent head smoking a huge bent pipe, and dense clouds of shadow floating u
23 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XX. WHAT THE THAMES GAVE UP
CHAPTER XX. WHAT THE THAMES GAVE UP
Phillida was prepared for anything when she beheld a motor-car at the gate, and the escaped schoolboy getting out with a grown man of shaggy and embarrassed aspect; but she was not prepared for the news they brought her. She was intensely shocked and shaken by it. Her grief and horror were not the less overwhelming for the shame and fear which they replaced in her mind. Yet she remained instinctively on her guard, and a passionate curiosity was the only emotion she permitted herself to express i
24 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXI. AFTER THE FAIR
CHAPTER XXI. AFTER THE FAIR
Mr. Upton was dumfoundered when the top-floor door in Glasshouse Street was opened before Eugene Thrush could insert his key; for it was the sombre Mullins who admitted the gentleman as though nothing had happened to him except a fairly recent shave. “I thought he was in prison?” exclaimed the ironmaster when the two were closeted. “Do you ever read your paper?” “I haven’t looked at one since Plymouth.” “Well, I howked him out first thing yesterday morning.” “ You did, Thrush?” “Why not? I had n
21 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXII. THE SECRET OF THE CAMERA
CHAPTER XXII. THE SECRET OF THE CAMERA
The camera had been placed upon a folded newspaper, for the better preservation of the hotel table-cloth. Its apertures were still choked with mud; beads of slime kept breaking out along the joints. And Phillida was still explaining to Pocket how the thing had come into her possession. “The rain was the greatest piece of luck, though another big slice was an iron gangway to the foreshore about a hundred yards up-stream. It was coming down so hard at the time that I couldn’t see another creature
2 hour read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter