My dear Gilbert, I dedicate this story to you. First: because the only really noble motive I had in writing it was the hope that you would enjoy it. Second: because I owe you a book in return for The ...

Between what matters and what seems to matter, how should the world we know judge wisely? When the scheming, indomitable brain of Sigsbee Manderson was scattered by a shot from an unknown hand, that w...

In the only comfortably furnished room in the offices of the Record, the telephone on Sir James Molloy’s table buzzed. Sir James made a motion with his pen, and Mr. Silver, his secretary, left his wor...

At about eight o’clock in the morning of the following day Mr. Nathaniel Burton Cupples stood on the veranda of the hotel at Marlstone. He was thinking about breakfast. In his case the colloquialism m...

A painter and the son of a painter, Philip Trent had while yet in his twenties achieved some reputation within the world of English art. Moreover, his pictures sold. An original, forcible talent and a...

There are moments in life, as one might think, when that which is within us, busy about its secret affair, lets escape into consciousness some hint of a fortunate thing ordained. Who does not know wha...

“Calvin C. Bunner, at your service,” amended the newcomer, with a touch of punctilio, as he removed an unlighted cigar from his mouth. He was used to finding Englishmen slow and ceremonious with stran...

The sea broke raging upon the foot of the cliff under a good breeze; the sun flooded the land with life from a dappled blue sky. In this perfection of English weather Trent, who had slept ill, went do...

The coroner, who fully realized that for that one day of his life as a provincial solicitor he was living in the gaze of the world, had resolved to be worthy of the fleeting eminence. He was a large m...

“Come in!” called Trent. Mr. Cupples entered his sitting-room at the hotel. It was the early evening of the day on which the coroner’s jury, without leaving the box, had pronounced the expected denunc...

Mrs. Manderson stood at the window of her sitting-room at White Gables gazing out upon a wavering landscape of fine rain and mist. The weather had broken as it seldom does in that part in June. White ...

My Dear Molloy:⁠—This is in case I don’t find you at your office. I have found out who killed Manderson, as this dispatch will show. This was my problem; yours is to decide what use to make of it. It ...

“I am returning the cheque you sent for what I did on the Manderson case,” Trent wrote to Sir James Molloy from Munich, whither he had gone immediately after handing in at the Record office a brief di...

The following two months were a period in Trent’s life that he has never since remembered without shuddering. He met Mrs. Manderson half a dozen times, and each time her cool friendliness, a nicely ca...

“If you insist,” Trent said, “I suppose you will have your way. But I had much rather write it when I am not with you. However, if I must, bring me a tablet whiter than a star, or hand of hymning ange...

An old oaken desk with a deep body stood by the window in a room that overlooked St. James’s Park from a height. The room was large, furnished and decorated by someone who had brought taste to the wor...

“What was that you said about our having an appointment at half-past seven?” asked Mr. Cupples as the two came out of the great gateway of the pile of flats. “Have we such an appointment?” “Certainly ...