By GORDON HOLMES A MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE THE ARNCLIFFE PUZZLE THE LATE TENANT BY FORCE OF CIRCUMSTANCES THE DE BERCY AFFAIR TTHE HOUSE OF SILENCE Osborne came whispering Frontispiece Copyright, 1910 By EDWARD J. CLODE Entered at Stationers' Hall CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. Some Phases of the Problem 1 II. Darkness 16 III. A Change of Address 31 IV. The New Life 51 V. The Missing Blade 66 VI. To Tormouth 88 VII. At Tormouth 107 VIII. At the Sun-dial 126 IX. The Letter 148 X. The Diary, and Rosali

CHIEF INSPECTOR WINTER sat in his private office at New Scotland Yard, while a constable in uniform, bare-headed, stood near the door in the alert attitude of one who awaits the nod of a superior. Nevertheless, Mr. Winter, half-turning from a desk littered with documents, eyed the man as though he had just said something outrageous, something so opposed to the tenets of the Police Manual that the Chief Commissioner alone could deal with the offense. "Have you been to Mr. Furneaux's residence?" h

Winter felt at once relieved and displeased. Twice during the hour had his authority been disregarded. He was willing to ignore Clarke's method of doling out important facts because such was the man's secretive nature. But Furneaux! The urgent messages sent to every place where they might reach him, each and all summoned him to Scotland Yard without the slightest reference to the Feldisham Mansions crime. It was with a stiff upper lip, therefore, that the Chief Inspector acknowledged the salute

On the morning after the inquest on Rose de Bercy, the most miserable young man in London, in his own estimation, was Mr. Rupert Glendinning Osborne. Though utterly downcast and disconsolate, he was in excellent health, and might have eaten well of the good things on his breakfast table had he not thoughtlessly opened a newspaper while stirring his coffee. Under other circumstances, he might have laughed at the atrocious photograph which depicted "Mr. Rupert Osborne arriving at the coroner's cou

No sooner did Rupert begin to consider ways and means of adopting Winter's suggestion than he encountered difficulties. "Pack a kit-bag, jump into a cab, and bury yourself in some seaside town" might be the best of counsel; but it was administered in tabloid form; when analyzed, the ingredients became formidable. For instance, the Chief Inspector had apparently not allowed for the fact that a man in Osborne's station would certainly carry his name or initials on his clothing, linen, and portmant

On that same morning of the meeting on the sands at Tormouth, Inspector Clarke, walking southward down St. Martin's Lane toward Scotland Yard, had a shock. Clarke was hardly at the moment in his best mood, for to the natural vinegar of his temperament a drop of lemon, or of gall, had been added within the last few days. That morning at breakfast he had explained matters with a sour mouth to Mrs. Clarke. "Oh, it was all a made-up job between Winter and Furneaux, and I was only put on to the Anarc

"An absinthe!" "A packet of Caporal!" "Un bock pour vous, m'sieur?" "A vodka!" A frowsy waiter was hurrying through some such jangle of loud voices from the "comrades" scattered among the tables set in a back room in a very back street of Soho. The hour was two in the morning, and the light in that Anarchist Club was murky and blurred. Only one gas-jet on the wall lit the room, and that struggled but feebly through the cigarette smoke that choked the air like a fog—air that was foul and close as

Furneaux reached Tormouth about three in the afternoon, and went boldly to the Swan Hotel, since he was unknown by sight to Osborne. It was an old-fashioned place, with a bar opening out of the vestibule, and the first person that met his eye was of interest to him—a man sitting in the bar-parlor, who had "Neapolitan" written all over him—a face that Furneaux had already marked in Soho. He did not know the stranger's name, but he would have wagered a large sum that this queer visitor to Tormouth

The messenger of evil had waited twenty minutes by the side of the sun-dial, when he saw a lady come round the corner from the front of the house, and saunter towards him. Moonlight lay weltering on the white walks of the terrace, on the whiter slabs of stone, on the water of the basin, on the surface of the lake eastward where the lowest of the terraces curved into the parkland that the wavelets lapped on. It weltered, too, on the lady's hair, deftly coiled and twisted into the coiffure of a Gr

Two days later, not Britain alone, but no small part of the two hemispheres, was stirred to the depths by the adjourned inquest on the Feldisham Mansions crime. Nevertheless, though there were sensations in plenty, the public felt vaguely a sense of incompleteness in the process, and of dissatisfaction with the result. The police seemed to be both unready and unconvinced; no one was quite sincere in anything that was said; the authorities were swayed by some afterthought; in popular phrase, they

Strange as a process of nature is the way in which events, themselves unimportant, work into one another to produce some foredestined result that shall astonish the world. The sudden appearance of Inspector Clarke before Pauline Dessaulx at the front door of Mrs. Marsh's lodgings produced by its shock a thorough upset in the girl's moral and physical being. And in Clarke himself that diary of Rose de Bercy which Pauline handed him produced a hilarity, an almost drunken levity of mind, the result

When Rosalind's contemptuous eyes abandoned that silent interchange of looks, they fell upon the envelope in Hylda Prout's hand, nor could she help noticing that round the flap it was clumsily stained with gum. Yet Osborne had written her saying that it had been unopened.... The other woman stepped to the door of the cab. "Miss Marsh?" she inquired, with an assumed lack of knowledge that was insolent in itself. "Yes." "Mr. Osborne left this for you, if you called." "Thank you." The business was

Next morning, just as the clock was striking eight, Osborne was rising from his bed after a night of unrest when Jenkins rapped at the door and came in, deferential and calm. "Mrs. Marsh below to see you, sir," he announced. Osborne blinked and stared with the air of a man not thoroughly awake, though it was his mind, not his body, that was torpid. "Mrs.," he said, "not Miss?" "No, sir, Mrs." "I'll be there in five minutes," he hissed with a fierce arousing of his faculties, and never before had

When Inspector Winter returned to his office from the cemetery he sat at his desk, gazing at the two daggers before him, and awaiting the coming of Clarke, from whom he expected to receive a full report of an interview with Pauline Dessaulx in connection with the disappearance of Rosalind. There lay that long sought-for Saracen dagger at last: and Furneaux had it, had been caught burying it in the grave of her who had been killed by it. Was not this fact, added to the fact that Furneaux was seen

As Furneaux and Osborne were being driven rapidly to Poland Street, bent on the speedy release of Rosalind, Inspector Winter, for his part, was seeking for Furneaux in a fury of haste, eager to arrest his colleague before the latter could arrest Osborne. At the same time Clarke, determined to bring matters to a climax by arresting Janoc, was lurking about a corner of Old Compton Street, every moment expecting the passing of his quarry. Each man was acting without a warrant. The police are empowe

Winter was far too strong a man to remain long buried in the pit of humiliation into which Furneaux, aided unwittingly by Clarke, had cast him. The sounds of Furneaux's jaunty footsteps had barely died away before he shoved aside the papers on which he had been engaged previously, and reached across the table for a box of cigars. He took one, and shoved the box towards Clarke, whose face was still glistening in evidence of his rush from Marlborough Street police-station. "Here, you crack-pate!"

Some tears, some tea, a bath, a change of clothing—where is the woman who will not vie with the Phœnix under such conditions, especially if she be sound in mind and limb? An hour after her arrival at Porchester Gardens, Rosalind was herself again, a somewhat pale and thin Rosalind, to be sure, but each moment regaining vigor, each moment taking huge strides back to the normal. Of course, her ordered thoughts dwelt more and more with Osborne, but with clear thinking came a species of confusion th

It was a scared and worried-looking Jenkins who admitted Hylda Prout and the two detectives to Osborne's flat in Clarges Street, Mayfair. These comings and goings of police officers were disconcerting, to put it mildly, and an event had happened but a few minutes earlier which had sorely ruffled his usually placid acceptance of life as it presented itself. Still, the one dominant thought in his mind was anxiety in his master's behalf, and, faithful to its promptings, he behaved like an automaton

Passages in italics were indicated by _underscores_. Passages in bold were indicated by =equal signs=. Small caps were replaced with ALL CAPS. Throughout the document, the œ ligature was replaced with "oe". Throughout the dialogues, there were words used to mimic accents of the speakers. Those words were retained as-is. The illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up paragraphs and so that they are next to the text they illustrate. Errors in punctuations and inconsistent hyphenati