Author: admin5929
Read Chapter #8: The Coming of the Black Stone “Nonsense!” said the official from the Admiralty. Sir Walter got up and left the room while we looked blankly at the table. He came back in ten minutes with a long face. “I have spoken to Alloa,” he said. “Had him out of bed—very grumpy. He went straight home after Mulross’s dinner.” “But it’s madness,” broke in General Winstanley. “Do you mean to tell me that that man came here and sat beside me for the best part of half an hour and that I didn’t detect the imposture? Alloa must…
Read Chapter #7: The Dry-Fly Fisherman I came down to breakfast next morning, after eight hours of blessed dreamless sleep, to find Sir Walter decoding a telegram in the midst of muffins and marmalade. His fresh rosiness of yesterday seemed a thought tarnished. “I had a busy hour on the telephone after you went to bed,” he said. “I got my Chief to speak to the First Lord and the Secretary for War, and they are bringing Royer over a day sooner. This wire clinches it. He will be in London at five. Odd that the code word for a Sous-chef…
Read Chapter #6: The Adventure of the Bald Archaeologist I sat down on a hill-top and took stock of my position. I wasn’t feeling very happy, for my natural thankfulness at my escape was clouded by my severe bodily discomfort. Those lentonite fumes had fairly poisoned me, and the baking hours on the dovecot hadn’t helped matters. I had a crushing headache, and felt as sick as a cat. Also my shoulder was in a bad way. At first I thought it was only a bruise, but it seemed to be swelling, and I had no use of my left…
Read Chapter #5: The Adventure of the Spectacled Roadman I spent the night on a shelf of the hillside, in the lee of a boulder where the heather grew long and soft. It was a cold business, for I had neither coat nor waistcoat. These were in Mr Turnbull’s keeping, as was Scudder’s little book, my watch and—worst of all—my pipe and tobacco pouch. Only my money accompanied me in my belt, and about half a pound of ginger biscuits in my trousers pocket. I supped off half those biscuits, and by worming myself deep into the heather got some…
Read Chapter #4: The Adventure of the Radical Candidate I sat down on the very crest of the pass and took stock of my position. Behind me was the road climbing through a long cleft in the hills, which was the upper glen of some notable river. In front was a flat space of maybe a mile, all pitted with bog-holes and rough with tussocks, and then beyond it the road fell steeply down another glen to a plain whose blue dimness melted into the distance. To left and right were round-shouldered green hills as smooth as pancakes, but to…
Read Chapter #3: The Adventure of the Literary Innkeeper You may picture me driving that 40 h.p. car for all she was worth over the crisp moor roads on that shining May morning; glancing back at first over my shoulder, and looking anxiously to the next turning; then driving with a vague eye, just wide enough awake to keep on the highway. For I was thinking desperately of what I had found in Scudder’s pocket-book. The little man had told me a pack of lies. All his yarns about the Balkans and the Jew-Anarchists and the Foreign Office Conference were…
Read Chapter #2: The Milkman Sets Out on his Travels I had a solemn time travelling north that day. It was fine May weather, with the hawthorn flowering on every hedge, and I asked myself why, when I was still a free man, I had stayed on in London and not got the good of this heavenly country. I didn’t dare face the restaurant car, but I got a luncheon-basket at Leeds and shared it with the fat woman. Also I got the morning’s papers, with news about starters for the Derby and the beginning of the cricket season, and…
Read Chapter #1: The Man Who Died I sat down in an armchair and felt very sick. That lasted for maybe five minutes, and was succeeded by a fit of the horrors. The poor staring white face on the floor was more than I could bear, and I managed to get a table-cloth and cover it. Then I staggered to a cupboard, found the brandy and swallowed several mouthfuls. I had seen men die violently before; indeed I had killed a few myself in the Matabele War; but this cold-blooded indoor business was different. Still I managed to pull myself…
I returned from the City about three o’clock on that May afternoon pretty well disgusted with life. I had been three months in the Old Country, and was fed up with it. If anyone had told me a year ago that I would have been feeling like that I should have laughed at him; but there was the fact. The weather made me liverish, the talk of the ordinary Englishman made me sick. I couldn’t get enough exercise, and the amusements of London seemed as flat as soda-water that has been standing in the sun. “Richard Hannay,” I kept telling…
A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below. The man’s hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled his neck. It was attached to a stout cross-timber above his head and the slack fell to the level of his knees. Some loose boards laid upon the ties supporting the rails of the railway supplied a footing for him and his executioners—two private soldiers of the Federal army, directed by a sergeant who in civil life may have been a deputy sheriff. At…