Near the northern end of Lake Michigan, where the bluff-bowed ore-carriers and the big, low-lying, wheat-laden steel freighters from Lake Superior push out from the Straits of Mackinac and dispute the right of way, in the island divided channel, with the white-and-gold, electric lighted, wireless equipped passenger steamers bound for Detroit and Buffalo, there is a copse of pine and hemlock back from the shingly beach. From this copse—dark, blue, primeval, silent at most times as when the Great Manitou ruled his inland waters—there comes at time of storm a sound like the booming of an old Indian drum. This drum beat, so the tradition says, whenever the lake took a life; and, as a sign perhaps that it is still the Manitou who rules the waters in spite of all the commerce of the cities, the drum still beats its roll for every ship lost on the lake, one...
On a January afternoon, as darkness was beginning to gather, the “gang” sat around the stove in the Company store at Fort Enterprise discussing that inexhaustible question, the probable arrival of the mail. The big lofty store, with its glass front, its electric lights, its stock of expensive goods set forth on varnished shelves, suggested a city emporium rather than the Company’s most north-westerly post, nearly a thousand miles from civilization; but human energy accomplishes seeming miracles in the North as elsewhere, and John Gaviller the trader was above all an energetic man. Throughout the entire North they point with pride to Gaviller’s flour mill, his big steamboat, his great yellow clap-boarded house—two storeys and attic, and a fence of palings around it! Why, at Fort Enterprise they even have a sidewalk, the only one north of fifty-five! “I don’t see why Hairy Ben can’t come down,” said Doc Giddings—Doc...
“No. I mean the girl in black. The one leading the pom.” “By jove! Yes. She’s uncommonly smart, isn’t she?” “Her friend isn’t half bad-looking, either?” “I don’t think so very much of her, Raife. But Southport at this time of year is always full of pretty girls.” “Not one of them can compare with the girl in black—she’s ripping!” declared Raife Remington, a tall, well-set up, dark-haired, hatless undergraduate, who, in grey flannels, was walking beside his college chum, Edward Mutimer, at whose father’s house he was staying during the vac. Both were at Trinity, Cambridge, and both, being in their last year, were reading hard for their degrees. Each morning in those warm August days by the summer sea they came out for a stroll on the seafront; bright with movement and gaiety, taking an airing before settling down to their studies for the day. On this particular...
There is a well-known French restaurant in the "Tenderloin" district which provides its patrons with small but elegantly appointed private dining-rooms. The restaurant occupies a corner house; and, though its reputation is not strictly first-class in some respects, its cook is an artist, and its wine cellar as good as the best. It has two entrances, and the one on the side street is not well lighted at night. At half-past seven o'clock one evening Nick Carter was standing about fifty yards from this side door. The detective had shadowed a man to a house on the side street, and was waiting for him to come out. The case was a robbery of no great importance, but Nick had taken it to oblige a personal friend, who wished to have the business managed quietly. This affair would not be worth mentioning, except that it led Nick to one of the...
"Will you give me a glass of water, please?" A ragged, bearded tramp stood before the door of a cottage near the outskirts of a country village, and propounded this question to a pretty girl who stood in the door. "In a moment." The girl disappeared, soon returning with a pitcher. She went to the pump near, and soon had the pitcher running over with sparkling water. "I will bring a cup." "Needn't mind." The tramp lifted the pitcher and quaffed the water as though he enjoyed it. His eyes were not pleasant as he turned them keenly on the pretty face of the girl. "Folks at home?" "No." "All alone, eh?" "Yes; but Ransom will be around soon—my brother." The eyes of the tramp glittered. He seemed to delight in reading the fresh young face before him. "Nobody at home, eh?" he grunted. "Mebbe I'd better go in and...
The back streets surrounding Hatton Garden, in the City of London, do not form at the best of times a cheerful or inspiring prospect. Narrow and mean, and flanked with ugly, sordid-looking buildings grimy from exposure to the smoke and fogs of the town and drab from the want of fresh paint, they can hardly fail to strike discouragement into the heart of any one eager for the uplift of our twentieth century civilisation. But if on a day of cheerful sunshine the outlook is thus melancholy, it was vastly more so at ten o’clock on a certain dreary evening in mid-November. A watery moon, only partially visible through a damp mist, lit up pallidly the squalid, shuttered fronts of the houses. The air was cold and raw, and the pavements showed dark from a fine rain which had fallen some time earlier, but which had now ceased. Few were...
One rainy morning in April, Luther Trant sat alone in his office. On his wrist as he bent closely over a heap of typewritten pages spread before him on his desk, a small instrument in continual motion ticked like a watch. It was for him an hour of idleness; he was reading fiction. And, with his passion for making visible and recording the workings of the mind, he was taking a permanent record of his feelings as he read. The instrument strapped on Trant’s arm was called a sphygmograph. It carried a small steel rod which pressed tightly on his wrist artery. This rod, rising and falling with each rush of the blood wave through the artery, transmitted its motion to a system of small levers. These levers operated a pencil point, which touched the surface of a revolving drum. Trant had adjusted around this drum a strip of smoked...
The school of St. Margaret's Hospital was fortunate in its lecturer on Medical Jurisprudence, or Forensic Medicine, as it is sometimes described. At some schools the lecturer on this subject is appointed apparently for the reason that he lacks the qualifications to lecture on any other. But with us it was very different: John Thorndyke was not only an enthusiast, a man of profound learning and great reputation, but he was an exceptional teacher, lively and fascinating in style and of endless resources. Every remarkable case that had ever been recorded he appeared to have at his fingers' ends; every fact—chemical, physical, biological, or even historical—that could in any way be twisted into a medico-legal significance, was pressed into his service; and his own varied and curious experiences seemed as inexhaustible as the widow's cruse. One of his favourite devices for giving life and interest to a rather dry subject...
John Charles Dent, the author of the following remarkable stories, was born in Kendal, Westmorland, England, in 1841. His parents emigrated to Canada shortly after that event, bringing with them, of course, the youth who was afterwards to become the Canadian author and historian. Mr. Dent received his primary education in Canadian schools, and afterwards studied law, becoming in due course a member of the Upper Canada Bar. He only practised for a few years. He found the profession profitable enough but uncongenial—as it could not well help being, in an obscure Canadian, village, twenty years ago—and very probably he was already cherishing ambitious dreams of literary labors, which he was eager to begin in the world's literary centre, London. He accordingly relinquished his practice as soon as he felt himself in a position to do so, and went to England. He had not miscalculated his powers, as too many...
NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY STREET & SMITH CORPORATION COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY JOHN LANE COMPANY Blakeney , A. J. R. Norfolk ....
On the first Sunday in the month of August, 1815, at ten o’clock precisely—as on every Sunday morning—the sacristan of the parish church at Sairmeuse sounded the three strokes of the bell which warn the faithful that the priest is ascending the steps of the altar to celebrate high mass. The church was already more than half full, and from every side little groups of peasants were hurrying into the church-yard. The women were all in their bravest attire, with cunning little fichus crossed upon their breasts, broad-striped, brightly colored skirts, and large white coifs. Being as economical as they were coquettish, they came barefooted, bringing their shoes in their hands, but put them on reverentially before entering the house of God. But few of the men entered the church. They remained outside to talk, seating themselves in the porch, or standing about the yard, in the shade of the...
“True, O my people,” continued the autocrat, with well-feigned reverence. “May our great Chief, El Mahdi, drink of the stream Al-Cawthar, whiter than milk or silver, and more odoriferous than musk, with as many cups set around it as there are stars in the firmament, of which water whosoever drinketh will thirst no more for ever. May he wander through the groves of Jannat-al-Ferdaws with the glorious Hur-al-oyun, whose dark eyes are a pleasure to beholders, and whose pavilions are as hollow pearls.” Then, after the people had given vent to loud acclamations, he repeated, in a loud voice, two long prayers from the Korân, followed by the khutba for days of the Jihad, “Praise be to Allah, the One Merciful, who is the best of helpers; for we say, verily, help us against the Infidel people. He who is dissatisfied with the licentious, we ask Him, ‘Do help us...
The day began well. The breakfast rolls were crisper than usual, the butter was sweeter, and never had Diane's slender white hands poured out more delicious coffee. Jack Clare was in the highest spirits as he embraced his wife and sallied forth into the Boulevard St. Germain, with a flat, square parcel wrapped in brown paper under his arm. From the window of the entresol Diane waved a coquettish farewell. "Remember, in an hour," she called down to him. "I shall be ready by then, Jack, and waiting. We will lunch at Bignon's—" "And drive in the Bois, and wind up with a jolly evening," he interrupted, throwing a kiss. "I will hasten back, dear one. Be sure that you put on your prettiest frock, and the jacket with the ermine trimming." It was a clear and frosty January morning, in the year 1892, and the streets of Paris were...
Kearn Thode mounted his pinto and rode out of the courtyard of the Baggott Hotel and down the Calle Rivera under a seething tropic sun. Limasito's principal street was well-nigh deserted in the lethargy of the noon-day siesta, but the flower-market was a riotous blaze of color in the glistening white plaza, from which radiated broad vistas of fantastically painted adobe and soberer concrete, ending in a soft green blur. The young petroleum engineer had pictured a ten-year-old boom town in the Mexican oil belt as a wilderness of rough shacks and board sidewalks, with possibly a dancehall or two and an open-air movie as the only attractions, and the thriving little city had proved a welcome surprise. "Limasito," he mused. "That means 'Little Lemon.' Wonder who tacked that name to this burg? Peach of a town, I call it." A long, low adobe house, tinted a screaming blue which...
OR The Man Who Defied Nick Carter By NICHOLAS CARTER Author of “The Taxicab Riddle,” “Nick Carter’s Last Card,” “Bandits of the Air,” etc. STREET & SMITH PUBLICATIONS INCORPORATED 79-89 Seventh Avenue, New York Copyright, 1910 By STREET & SMITH A Stolen Name All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian. Printed in the U.S.A. A STOLEN NAME. Bare-Faced Jimmy, so-called gentleman crook, expert cracksman, and a master criminal in any department of the underworld to which he cared to devote his attention, leaned backward in his chair until it tilted against the wall behind him, blew a cloud of Perfecto smoke ceilingward, and remarked: “It will be the easiest thing in the world, Juno. If the objective point were a fortune—even a moderate one; if the thing contemplated included the theft of a single dollar, in cash or in estate, it would be different;...
At a little station in one of the gulf states, where the east and west trains leave and pick up a few passengers daily, there met in the summer of 1888 two men who since they are to appear frequently in this record, are worthy of description. One who alighted from the west-bound train was about 29 years of age. Tall and slender, he wore the usual four-button cutaway coat, with vest and trousers to match, which, despite its inappropriateness in such a climate, was the dress of the young city man of the south, in obedience to the fashion set by the northern metropolis. His small feet were incased in neat half-moroccos, and his head protected by the regulation derby of that year. There was an inch of white cuffs visible upon his wrists, held with silver link buttons, and an inch and a half of standing collar, points...
THE PREFACE OF TIMOTHY McSHANUS, JOURNALIST. It would have been at the Fancy Fair and Fête at Kensington Town Hall that my friend, Dr. Fabos, first met Miss Fordibras. Very well do I recollect that he paid the price of it for the honourable company of the Goldsmith Club. “McShanus,” said he, “if there’s anyone knows his way to a good supper, ’tis yourself and no other. Lead forth to the masquerade, and I follow. Spare no expense, McShanus. Your friends are my friends. I would have this a memorable night—the last I may be in London for many a year.” There were seven of us who took him at his word and got into the cab together. You must know that he had paid for a little dinner at the Goldsmith Club already, and never a man who did not justice to his handsome hospitality. The night was clear,...
Clouds hung low over the city, gray and dismal. The shining metal thruway partially reflected their somber visage. A few vehicles scurried nervously through the city. Keller turned away from the window dismally. His conscience was bothering him, and it affected his every movement. Looking over his humbly furnished office, he entertained the thought, not for the first time, that he should change jobs if he wanted to eat. A buzz sounded—the intercom system. That would be Sally, his secretary. It was a mystery what she would want. Usually she never bothered him except in case of an emergency, and the last client Keller had had dropped his case three months ago. Apparently it was another customer, unlikely as it seemed. Keller heard voices outside, Sally's irritated and protesting, and a nervous baritone. Abruptly the door opened, disclosing a rugged, bushy-haired C-3 (average intelligence and advanced extra-sensory perception, but unexercised),...
by Author of "Elusive Isabel," "The Thinking Machine," etc. Illustrated by Herman Pfeifer Indianapolis The Bobbs-Merrill Company Publishers 1909 [Frontispiece] There were thirty or forty personally addressed letters, the daily heritage of the head of a great business establishment; and a plain, yellow-wrapped package about the size of a cigarette-box, some three inches long, two inches wide and one inch deep. It was neatly tied with thin scarlet twine, and innocent of markings except for the superscription in a precise, copperplate hand, and the smudge of the postmark across the ten-cent stamp in the upper right-hand corner. The imprint of the cancellation, faintly decipherable, showed that the package had been mailed at the Madison Square substation at half-past seven o'clock of the previous evening. Mr. Harry Latham, president and active head of the H. Latham Company, manufacturing jewelers in Fifth Avenue, found the letters and the package on his desk...
Mr. Gryce was melancholy. He had attained that period in life when the spirits flag and enthusiasm needs a constant spur, and of late there had been a lack of special excitement, and he felt dull and superannuated. He was even contemplating resigning his position on the force and retiring to the little farm he had bought for himself in Westchester; and this in itself did not tend to cheerfulness, for he was one to whom action was a necessity and the exercise of his mental faculties more inspiring than any possible advantage which might accrue to him from their use. But he was not destined to carry out this impulse yet. For just at the height of his secret dissatisfaction there came a telephone message to Headquarters which roused the old man to something like his former vigor and gave to the close of this gray fall day an...