42 chapters
5 hour read
Selected Chapters
42 chapters
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER I
“WELL,” said Comyns, “I can’t see for the life of me what makes you want to linger on in this benighted hole.” “There are a great many things in this world we can’t see,” replied Hellier. They were standing on the pier at Boulogne, the Folkstone boat was just departing, the east wind was blowing, and over the cold, early spring day the clouds drifted, grey as the cygnet’s feather. Without wishing to paraphrase or parody a famous author, one may say that if one goes over to Boulogne and stands lo
4 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER II
HE came through the town and up the Grand Rue. When he reached the ramparts he took a seat, despite the nipping east wind. He looked at his watch. Just about this hour every day it was the custom of Madame de Warens and her niece to take a walk on the ramparts. It seemed the only fixed thing, except meals, in their desolate lives, this walk every day on the ramparts. Hellier would meet them there. It was a sort of tacit appointment. No person, unless they were curiously blind, could fail to see
2 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER III
THEY left the ramparts and returned to the hotel. She left him in the hall for a moment, and then returned, and asked him to follow her. He followed her to a door on the first floor landing; she opened it, and led him into a sitting-room, where in an armchair beside a blazing wood fire sat old Madame de Warens muffled up in a light shawl, with a novel open upon her lap, asleep. It was no ordinary hotel sitting-room, this daintily upholstered room. It had, in fact, been entirely redecorated by a
4 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER IV
IT was in the year 1600, or thereabouts, that the family of Gyde first took its place in the history of Cumberland. A family may be likened to a thistle; plant it here or there, and, if left, it grows and flourishes, it casts its spores, like thistle-down on the wind of chance, and the spores blown here or there fade or flourish, as the case may be. The wind of chance in the year 1600, blew Sir John Gyde to the wilds of Cumberland, from the original home of the family in Pembrokeshire. How splen
5 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER V
STANDING on Gamblesby Fell you can see Throstle Hall away to the right, its gables and the smoke of its chimneys above the tall elm trees, and the great sweep of park surrounding it. Gazing straight before one the eye travels over pasture-land and corn-field, farm and village, to the far dim valley of the Eden beyond, and far beyond, the hills of Cumberland stand like the ramparts of a world dominated by the Saddle Back. Carlisle to the right, twenty miles away, shows a tracery of smoke against
4 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VI
HE struck into the high road. A frost had set in with the evening, the road was like metal, and the sound of the horse’s hoofs rang upon the air like the sound of a trip-hammer on anvil. A detour of several miles brought him to the main avenue gate of the Hall. A groom was waiting at the steps of the house; he took the horse, which was lathered with foam, and the horseman, without a word, went up the steps. He entered a large galleried hall, hung with armour and trophies of the chase; a great fi
3 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VII
THE next morning’s post brought some fifty or so letters to Throstle Hall, forwarded on from London. Letters from Russia, letters from Japan, letters from Paris, Constantinople and Madrid; bills, circulars, lottery announcements, touting letters, begging letters, letters from lunatics, financiers, friends, politicians and enemies. It was a post the receipt of which would have driven an ordinary man to distraction, but it did not distract Sir Anthony Gyde. He reviewed them sitting up in bed propp
3 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER VIII
SKIRLE Cottage lies tucked away in a hollow of Blencarn Fell. The fells, as I have before indicated, are one great sweep of low hills facing the west; they are continuous and almost unbroken yet by the local custom they are divided into sections, each with a name of its own. Blencarn Fell, so called, perhaps, from the village of Blencarn at its foot, is as wild and, perhaps, in summer, as lovely as any other part of the Pennine Range. Skirle Cottage, lying in a depression of it, was as far remov
4 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER IX
SIR ANTHONY GYDE was a fearless horseman, but a somewhat timid motorist, as motorists go. He drove carefully, rarely exceeding fifteen miles an hour. To-day, however, he cast his timidity aside. He was lucky to-day, for on these roads of Cumberland it is nothing to meet with a flock of five hundred sheep or so, or a string of farm carts, each drawn by a horse terrified of motor-cars, as most of the farm horses of Cumberland still are. It was ten minutes to four when he reached Throstle Hall. The
2 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER X
TWICE during the journey to London Leloir entered the compartment where Sir Anthony was, once bringing him tea, and again, just after leaving Normanton, bringing him the evening papers. One of the dining-car attendants, who was a friend of Leloir’s, afterwards deposed that there was something very strange about the man’s manner. “He looked startled and white,” ran his deposition, “looked like a man who had seen a ghost. I’ve known him a year, met him first on the run to Carlisle, then I met him
3 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XI
IT was after ten the next morning that Raymond, the butler, made the discovery. Knocking at the door of Sir Anthony’s room and receiving no answer, he opened it, and found the body of the valet. Had Raymond, instead of calling in the policeman on point duty at the corner, telephoned instead to New Scotland Yard, he would have found coming, as a reply, neither Inspector Alanson or Fairchild, both being away on duty. He would have found a much younger man acting as their locum tenens. A clean-shav
7 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XII
BOB LEWTHWAITE, the child who had watched Sir Anthony Gyde entering and leaving Skirle Cottage, was of a venturesome disposition. He feared few things except “boggles.” He feared Klein a bit, but not nearly so much as the other children of the village. The fact of Sir Anthony’s visit to the cottage stirred his rustic imagination, and a great inspiration came to him to do as young Britten had done, peep through the window. He came down the fell side towards the cottage, half undecided in his mind
2 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIII
“SO,” said Freyberger, when this detailed description of the affair had been given to him by his Chief, “it is briefly this: Gyde was being blackmailed by this man; he called on him, murdered him, and cut off his head, put it in a bag, came to London with the bag and slipped out of his London house, carrying with him his jewels. It is an extraordinarily strange case.” “It seems clear enough.” “Not to me, sir—excuse me for saying so.” The Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department had long ha
3 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XIV
FREYBERGER once told me that he often admired the fictional detective, because of the ingenuity of his maker; but that the method of Lecocq, Sherlock Holmes and Co., had a great defect if used in the pursuit of a master criminal. “You see,” said he, “that in a case like this you are not following the traces of feet, but the working of a brain. Now the common criminal may be taken by the methods of a Sherlock Holmes. The good Sherlock sees mud of a certain character on a man’s boots, and conclude
4 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XV
IT was now half-past one. He knew that the Chief would be at luncheon, so he determined to have luncheon himself before returning to the Yard. He turned into Blanchard’s in Beak Street. During the meal he did not think once of the case. He knew the advantage of allowing a problem to cool itself, and he had the power of detaching his mind from any business on hand and attaching it to another affair; especially when the other affair was of an edible nature. He was a frank gourmet. When he had fini
12 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVI
THE cab drew up at the address in Old Compton Street given by Freyberger to the driver. It was a small shop, filled with antiques, old china, statuettes, renovated pictures. Here the art of Japan drew a sword or flirted a fan at you; the Middle Ages spoke through the mouthpiece of a battle-dented morion. Behind the counter, in the midst of his treasures, mostly spurious, sat the owner of the shop I. Antonides, smoking a cigarette and apparently lost in reverie. An old man, a very old man, was An
20 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVII
DR GUSTAVUS MURRELL lived in Sackville Street, Piccadilly. He was a man of private means, and he possessed a medical practice that brought him in about a thousand a year. One of those pleasant practices, where the lowest fee for looking at a tongue is a guinea, and for an operation fifty. He was a tall, well-groomed, handsome man of forty-five or so, with a jovial blue eye and a hearty manner. You never would have imagined that one of the chief hobbies of this healthy and happy-looking individua
17 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XVIII
FREYBERGER was up betimes next morning, and having called at the Yard and found his chief not yet arrived, and no further news concerning the Gyde case, he betook himself to Old Compton Street, Soho. In Old Compton Street you may buy a French newspaper or a German sausage. You can get anything in an Italian way, from a pound of macaroni to a knife in your back, if you know the right way to look for it. It is a street of many nations and its kerb is trodden by all sorts of celebrities, from the n
15 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XIX
FREYBERGER left the bank and betook himself to the Yard, there to report proceedings. Again he felt himself a step nearer this mysterious personage, whose subtle and sinister processes he was slowly exposing to the light of day, or rather to the light of reason. Not one, of all the things he had discovered, would give in itself a clue. Collectively, they were perplexing. But they had given to Freyberger this great advantage, he was beginning to follow his adversary’s process of reasoning. Their
4 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XX
FREYBERGER was now virtually in charge of the case. He had forty-eight hours before him. He felt about the case just as an engineer feels about some delicate piece of mechanism, which has not yet been put in position, and which any jar or shock may destroy. He shuddered to think of the brutal method of a dragnet search being applied to the Gyde case. It would be like chasing a moth with a pair of tongs. A million to one the thing will not be caught and a certainty that if caught it will be ruine
13 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXI
HE returned the big volume of press cuttings to their shelf, put on his hat and overcoat, lit a cigar, and left the house, taking his way to the Yard. The chief was away and Inspector Dennison was on duty. “Well, Freyberger,” said the inspector, “and how’s the case going on?” “Oh, fairly well,” said the other, “as far as I am concerned. I have struck, I believe, an important development. I want a man sent to Paris to-night, it’s urgent, you can act in the absence of the chief?” “Yes.” “We have h
2 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXII
HELLIER’S chambers in Clifford’s Inn were a part of the past. So was the staircase that led to them. Generations of lawyers and rats and the fogs of two hundred or so Novembers had left their traces on wall and ceiling, on floors that sagged, and stairs that groaned, and doors that jammed, and chimneys that smoked. On windy nights one heard all sorts of quaint arguments in the chimney and behind the wainscoting. Steps of defunct lawyers sounded in the passage outside and sitting by the flickerin
6 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIII
ON the day after that upon which Freyberger had telephoned to the Paris police requesting a personal interview with Mademoiselle Lefarge, London awoke to find itself effaced by fog. Mrs Hussey, the old woman who stole Hellier’s tea and whisky and coal, made his bed, lit his fire, and attended generally to his wants and discomforts, had set the breakfast things out for him, placed his eggs and bacon in the fender to keep warm, and his letters by his plate. Having attended to these duties she had
2 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXIV
FREYBERGER, also, had received a telegram that morning, or, at least, the Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department had received it and communicated its contents to him. “You can take the case entirely into your own hands, Freyberger,” he said. “You have certainly done well in it heretofore, the connexion between the two crimes seems to me almost made out, should the Paris people identify the portrait we have sent them as that of the supposedly murdered man, Müller, the connexion will be ma
3 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER XXV
HE returned to his rooms. The man who would command events must be able to command sleep. This, at least, Freyberger was able to do. He cast himself upon his bed, closed his eyes and was immediately lost in oblivion. At half-past four he awoke, made himself some coffee, lit a cigar and fell, for a moment, into meditation. There was one point wanting to him in the case before it stood absolutely four square and to his satisfaction. That point was the proof that the bust of Sir Anthony Gyde was by
5 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXVI
CHAPTER XXVI
AT seven o’clock precisely, Freyberger drove up to the Langham. Mademoiselle Lefarge had given instructions that anyone who called was to be shown up. Freyberger followed a waiter up the softly carpeted stairs; at the door of a room on the first landing the man stopped. “Whom shall I say, sir?” “Mr Gustave Freyberger.” The waiter opened the door and the detective found himself in the presence of three people. An old lady with white hair, a young woman whom he recognized by instinct as Mademoisel
15 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXVII
CHAPTER XXVII
IN the entrance hall of the Langham Freyberger drew a long, black, poisonous-looking cheroot from his pocket and lit it. Then he buttoned his overcoat and prepared to depart. He felt jubilant. The whole of the pieces of the puzzle had fallen into their places under the influence of his intellect, and now this new sidelight had pointed at the possible road to the absolute and final move, which would allow him to place his hand upon the creator of the puzzle, and say: “You are mine.” He was just g
3 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXVIII
CHAPTER XXVIII
IF Hellier could only have seen into the consciousness of our friend Freyberger, he would have admitted that the latter, although a professional detective, had an open mind, and was not entirely bound up in self-conceit. Freyberger, as in duty bound, took a cab and made as fast as a London cab-horse could carry him, through London traffic, towards the Yard. At the Yard the Chief was just getting into his motor-car, when he saw Freyberger he beckoned to him. “Come with me,” he said, “I am going o
9 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXIX
CHAPTER XXIX
WHEN Hellier opened his paper next morning, he read the following head-lines: He read the report hurriedly through, then he read it slowly, dwelling on all the details. After his prediction to Freyberger the night before, this thing came horribly pat; it had been happening, perhaps, just as he was talking to the detective. He felt the triumph of the man who has prophesied and whose prophecy has come true. The only thing that troubled him was the description of the murderer: “Tall man, with black
7 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXX
CHAPTER XXX
FREYBERGER had slept scarcely three hours during the night, yet he looked quite fresh. He had done a tremendous lot of work in the way of putting out nets. He had as complete a list as could be obtained of the lodging-houses in the neighbourhood, every early morning coffee stall in Kensington and Bayswater had been kept under surveillance, also the newspaper shops. The tube stations at Notting Hill Gate, Holland Park, Shepherd’s Bush, and Queen’s Road, Bayswater, had been watched, and the result
16 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXXI
CHAPTER XXXI
THERE was some coal in the coal-box and a bundle of wood in the grate. The weather was chilly and a fire would have been very acceptable, but the flicker of it when dusk was drawing on might have been observed from outside. So he determined to do without a fire. He would also be condemned to fast, for the remains of food upon the table he could not touch. One does not eat where a leper has fed, or an unclean beast. He had his pipe with him, however, and plenty of tobacco. Time wore on and dusk f
4 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXXII
CHAPTER XXXII
“MY GOD!” said Freyberger. “ You! ” “Let me get up,” said the other. “Yes, it is I; we have both been mistaken it seems.” Freyberger said nothing, but rose to his feet and flung the extinguished match away. They were again in darkness, but the detective did not strike another light. For a moment he was too angry for speech. Certain in his own mind that he was dealing with Klein, triumphant at having captured him, his feelings may be imagined when he found beneath him, not the criminal for whom h
2 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXXIII
CHAPTER XXXIII
HELLIER returned, slowly and sadly, to the High Street. Assured in his own mind that Klein inhabited the house in St Ann’s Road, hopeless of any help from Freyberger, whom he had put down as a self-conceited man of not very luminous intelligence, he had undertaken the desperate venture of going himself to the house, tackling the occupant if he were at home, and if he were absent exploring the place. He had provided himself with a powerful chisel to prise the verandah door open. He had not to use
4 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXXIV
CHAPTER XXXIV
FREYBERGER remained at his post all that night. It was the bitterest experience he had ever known. Without food, without fire, without light, half worn out from his struggle with Hellier and depressed by the result, the chance of the capture of Klein reduced to the barest possible, he still remained on guard, watchful and ready to spring. With the full light of day he left the place, bearing with him the only scrap of evidence that could be any use, that is to say, the small valise containing th
3 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXXV
CHAPTER XXXV
TIME passed, and April came to London, lighting the crocuses like little lamps along the borders of the parks. Nothing could have been kindlier than her coming or more cruel than her going, for it froze hard during the last few days of her month; buds were brought to untimely ruin and the ice on the ponds was sufficiently thick almost for skating. But the first of May broke cloudless and warm, the herald of three weeks of perfect weather. Mademoiselle Lefarge had gone back to France, and Hellier
3 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXXVI
CHAPTER XXXVI
IT was May 9, the day after that on which Mr Davis, away up in Cumberland, had seen what he had seen upon the road to Blencarn. It had been a glorious day, but the beauty of the weather did not appeal to Freyberger. The Gyde case had hit him badly; after all his researches and calculations, after all the energy he had spent upon it, it had slipped away and left him. He had proved so much, yet he had done so little. That is perhaps the most exasperating thing about detective work. You have your c
4 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXXVII
CHAPTER XXXVII
A QUARTER of an hour later he was standing in the presence of his superior. “Good evening, Freyberger,” said the chief. “Good evening, sir.” “There is an express to Birmingham from Paddington at a quarter past midnight.” “Yes, sir.” “I want you to catch it.” “The train stops at Reading.” “So I believe, sir.” “You must get out at Reading and spend the night there. I want you early on the spot to-morrow morning. A murder has been committed.” “At Reading?” “No, at Sonning.” “The village of Sonning-
2 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXXVII
CHAPTER XXXVII
HE caught the Birmingham express that leaves Paddington at 12.15, and arrived at Reading nine minutes after one. Here he took a bed at the Vastern Hotel, and went to sleep. At eight o’clock the next morning he was in consultation with the Chief of the Berkshire Constabulary. “It is a most extraordinary case,” said that gentleman. “Of course, it can be nothing else but the work of a lunatic. The body was found at three o’clock yesterday in a turnip field, close to the river. The man had no enemie
13 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXXIX
CHAPTER XXXIX
“WHERE do you live?” asked Freyberger when they were on the road. “We shall pass the place, and I will show you,” replied the other. They turned to the left towards the village and walked for a moment in silence. The stranger, despite his age and apparent infirmity, walked with a brisk step. Freyberger did not lag behind. Then this conversation began between them, Freyberger speaking first: “So you have had a murder here?” “Is that so?” “It is so, and I have come down here to arrest the murderer
2 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XL
CHAPTER XL
WHEN he awoke it was with a sensation of pain extending all over his body. He was lying on the tiled floor of a small room, which was evidently the kitchen and living room of a labourer’s cottage. A door wide open showed the glimpse of a garden gone to ruin and overgrown with a monstrous growth of weeds. By the door, holding a spade in one hand, stood Klein. Freyberger tried to move, but failed. His body was absolutely rigid. From the nape of his neck to his heels ran a board, to which he was sp
2 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XLI
CHAPTER XLI
THAT night in London the Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department sat in his office. It required ten minutes to midnight, and he had just laid down his pen after several hours’ hard work over official correspondence and reports. The Goldberg case was still exercising the public mind, and several editors were asking the world from editorial easy chairs what the police were paid for. The night was warm, and through the open window came vague and fugitive sounds from the city that never sleep
10 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XLII
CHAPTER XLII
NEXT evening, at nine o’clock, Hellier called at the Langham. Mademoiselle Lefarge, who had come to England in response to a telegram, was waiting for him. “Well?” she asked, as she held both of his hands in hers. “It is done,” said Hellier. “To-morrow your father’s name will be cleared in the sight of all men. You have suffered and waited a long, long time, but yesterday you were avenged.” Throstle Hall, up in Cumberland, still lies empty, waiting a tenant, for Sir Anthony’s heir, a distant cou
41 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter