A man stood irresolutely before the imposing portals of Cainbury House, a large office building let out to numerous small tenants, and harbouring, as the indicator on the tiled wall of the vestibule t...

“Assassin!” This was the cry which rang out in the stillness of the night, and aroused the interest of one inhabitant of Brakely Square who was awake. Mr. Gregory Farrington, a victim of insomnia, hea...

T. B. Smith sat alone in his office in Scotland Yard. Outside, the Embankment, the river, even the bulk of the Houses of Parliament were blotted out by the dense fog. For two days London had lain unde...

It was a bad night in London, not wild or turbulent, but swathed to the eyes like an Eastern woman in a soft grey garment of fog. It engulfed the walled canyons of the city, through which the traffic ...

The fog was still heavy, and the blurred streetlamps looked ghastly in the yellow mist, when the little newsboy messenger, the first half of his mission performed, struck briskly riverward to complete...

At precisely ten o’clock, as the curtain came reefing slowly down upon the first act of The Strand Girl, Lady Dinsmore turned with outstretched hand to greet the first of the two men who had just ente...

Two days later, at the stroke of ten, Frank Doughton sprang from his taxi in front of the office of the Evening Times. He stood for a moment, drawing in the fresh March air, sweet with the breath of a...

It was the morning after the recovery of Farrington’s body that T. B. Smith sat in his big study overlooking Brakely Square. He had finished his frugal breakfast, the tray had been taken away, and he ...

T. B. Smith came down to Great Bradley with only one object in view. He knew that the solution to the mystery, not only of Farrington’s disappearance, but possibly the identity of the mysterious Mr. F...

Count Poltavo, a busy man of affairs in these days, walked up the stairs of the big block of flats in which he had his modest dwelling with a little smile upon his lips and a sense of cheer in his hea...

“You want to see Mr. Moole?” Dr. Fall asked the visitor. “I wish to see Mr. Moole,” replied Poltavo. He stood at the door of the Secret House, and after a brief scrutiny the big-faced doctor admitted ...

The distant chime of Little Bradley church had struck one o’clock, when T. B. Smith stepped from the shadow of the hedge on the east side of the Secret House, and walked slowly toward the road. Two me...

Doris Gray was face to face with a dilemma. She stood in a tragic position; even now, she could not be sure that her guardian was dead. But dead or alive, he had left her a terrible problem, for terri...

As T. B. had said, Poltavo had returned from his brief sojourn in Great Bradley, and emerged into society a new and more radiant being than ever he had been before. There had always been some doubt as...

In the rectory at Great Bradley, Lady Constance Dex arose from a sleepless night to confront her placid brother at the breakfast table. The Reverend Jeremiah Bangley, a stout and easy man, who spent a...

The morning of Doris Gray’s wedding dawned fair and bright, and she sat by the window which overlooked the gardens in Brakely Square, her hands clasped across her knees, her mind in a very tangle of c...

T. B. Smith was playing a round of golf at Walton Heath, when the news was telephoned through to him. He left immediately for town, and picked up Ela at luncheon at the Fritz Hotel, where the detectiv...

It was three days after the exchange of letters that Count Poltavo, in the rough tweeds of a country gentleman⁠—a garb which hardly suited his figure or presence⁠—strolled carelessly across the downs,...

Farrington and Dr. Fall were closeted together in the latter’s office. Something had happened, which was responsible for the gloom on the face of the usually imperturbable doctor, and for the red rage...

T. B. Smith’s inspection of the Secret House had yielded nothing satisfactory; he had not expected that it would; he was perfectly satisfied that the keen, shrewd brains which dominated the ménage wou...

There was a group of police officers about the gates of the Secret House as the car bearing Ela and the woman came flying up. The detective leapt out. “They have taken T. B.,” he said. He addressed a ...

Splits: detectives. ↩...