To my dear Uncle and Aunt Count and Countess Wass of Czege in remembrance inhabited by the noble little nation of the sea of many happy days spent in Transylvania October, 1908....

The man in the corner pushed aside his glass, and leant across the table. “Mysteries!” he commented. “There is no such thing as a mystery in connection with any crime, provided intelligence is brought...

The man in the corner had finished his glass of milk. His watery blue eyes looked across at Miss Polly Burton’s eager little face, from which all traces of severity had now been chased away by an obvi...

The man in the corner cocked his funny thin head on one side and looked at Polly; then he took up his beloved bit of string and deliberately untied every knot he had made in it. When it was quite smoo...

Whether Miss Polly Burton really did expect to see the man in the corner that Saturday afternoon, ’twere difficult to say; certain it is that when she found her way to the table close by the window an...

“Now I must tell you,” continued the man in the corner, “that after I had read the account of the double robbery, which appeared in the early afternoon papers, I set to work and had a good think⁠—yes!...

“The tramp was missing,” continued the man in the corner, “and Mr. Francis Howard tried to find the missing tramp. Going round to the front, and seeing the lights at No. 26 still in, he called upon Mr...

The man in the corner looked quite cheerful that morning; he had had two glasses of milk and had even gone to the extravagance of an extra cheesecake. Polly knew that he was itching to talk police and...

“The police, it appears, instinctively feeling that some mystery lurked round the death of the bookmaker and his supposed murderer’s quiet protestations of innocence, had taken a very considerable amo...

The man in the corner called for another glass of milk, and drank it down slowly before he resumed: “Now Lord Arthur lives mostly abroad,” he said. “His poor, suffering wife died the day after he was ...

It was all very well for Mr. Richard Frobisher (of the London Mail) to cut up rough about it. Polly did not altogether blame him. She liked him all the better for that frank outburst of manlike ill-te...

“Did you ever see Mr. Errington, the gentleman so closely connected with the mysterious death on the Underground Railway?” asked the man in the corner as he placed one or two of his little snapshot ph...

“A title⁠—a foreign title, I mean⁠—is always very useful for purposes of swindles and frauds,” remarked the man in the corner to Polly one day. “The cleverest robberies of modern times were perpetrate...

“Yes, left severely alone,” continued the man in the corner with a sarcastic chuckle. “So severely alone, in fact, that one quarter of an hour after another passed by and still the magnificent police ...

The man in the corner had not enjoyed his lunch. Miss Polly Burton could see that he had something on his mind, for, even before he began to talk that morning, he was fidgeting with his bit of string,...

“Little more than a fortnight after that, Edith Crawford was duly committed to stand her trial before the High Court of Justiciary. She had pleaded ‘Not Guilty’ at the pleading diet, and her defence w...

“There is no doubt,” continued the man in the corner, “that what little sympathy the young girl’s terrible position had aroused in the public mind had died out the moment that David Graham left the wi...

There was a moment’s silence, for Polly did not reply immediately, and he went on making impossible knots in his bit of string. Then she said quietly⁠— “I think that I agree with those English people ...

“That question of motive is a very difficult and complicated one at times,” said the man in the corner, leisurely pulling off a huge pair of flaming dog-skin gloves from his meagre fingers. “I have kn...

“By the time the public had been able to think over James Fairbairn’s evidence, a certain disquietude and unrest had begun to make itself felt both in the bank itself and among those of our detective ...

“It was close on six weeks before the doctor at last allowed his patient to attend to the grave business which had prostrated him for so long. “In the meantime, among the many people who directly or i...

“I always thought that the history of that forged will was about as interesting as any I had read,” said the man in the corner that day. He had been silent for some time, and was meditatively sorting ...

“The facts that transpired in connection with this extraordinary case were sufficiently mysterious to puzzle everybody. As I told you before, all Mr. Brooks’ friends never quite grasped the idea that ...

“Two days later the police applied for a warrant for the arrest of Mr. Percival Brooks on a charge of forgery. “The Crown prosecuted, and Mr. Brooks had again the support of Mr. Oranmore, the eminent ...

“Do you care for the seaside?” asked the man in the corner when he had finished his lunch. “I don’t mean the seaside at Ostend or Trouville, but honest English seaside with nigger minstrels, three-shi...

“I really don’t know,” continued the man in the corner blandly, “what it was that interested me in the case from the very first. Certainly it had nothing very out of the way or mysterious about it, bu...

“I can assure you that the situation was quite dramatic,” continued the man in the corner, whilst his funny, claw-like hands took up a bit of string with renewed feverishness. “In answer to further qu...

“Tell me what you think of it,” said the man in the corner, seeing that Polly remained silent and puzzled. “Well,” she replied dubiously, “I suppose that the so-called Armand de la Tremouille’s story ...

By this time Miss Polly Burton had become quite accustomed to her extraordinary vis-á-vis in the corner. He was always there, when she arrived, in the selfsame corner, dressed in one of his remarkable...

“Now at first sight the murder in the Regent’s Park appeared both to police and public as one of those silly, clumsy crimes, obviously the work of a novice, and absolutely purposeless, seeing that it ...

“Yes,” interrupted Polly eagerly, since, for once, her acumen had been at least as sharp as his, “but suspicion of that horrible crime only shifted its taint from one friend to another, and, of course...

The man in the corner rubbed his chin thoughtfully, and looked out upon the busy street below. “I suppose,” he said, “there is some truth in the saying that Providence watches over bankrupts, kittens,...

“The central figure in the coroner’s court that day was undoubtedly the Earl of Brockelsby in deep black, which contrasted strongly with his florid complexion and fair hair. Sir Marmaduke Ingersoll, h...

The man in the corner blinked across at Polly with his funny mild blue eyes. “No wonder you are puzzled,” he continued, “so was everybody in the court that day, everyone save myself. I alone could see...

Miss Polly Burton had had many an argument with Mr. Richard Frobisher about that old man in the corner, who seemed far more interesting and deucedly more mysterious than any of the crimes over which h...

“At first there was only talk of a terrible accident, the result of some inexplicable carelessness which perhaps the evidence at the inquest would help to elucidate. “Medical assistance came too late;...

He had paused, absorbed in meditation. The young girl also was silent. Some memory too vague as yet to take a definite form was persistently haunting her⁠—one thought was hammering away in her brain, ...