Lady Raytham drew aside the long velvet curtains and looked down into Berkeley Square. It was half-past four o’clock on a cheerless February evening. Rain and sleet were falling, and a thin yellow mis...

Druze had come in noiselessly at the door and stood, hand clasping hand. His face was strangely pale; as he spoke his right cheek twitched spasmodically. “Yes?” “Will your ladyship see Miss Leslie Mau...

Leslie Maughan came striding briskly along the Thames Embankment. It was a bitterly cold night, and the nutria coat was not proof against the icy northerner which was blowing. The man who walked by he...

Mr. Coldwell peered down into the girl’s face. “Let me get this right,” he said slowly. “Druze will be killed⁠—if he is killed⁠—because he does not like children?” Leslie Maughan nodded. “I know you h...

“104, Severall Street, “Lambeth. “Dear Miss Maughan, “I have lodgings at the above address, and, in spite of the neighbourhood, they are very comfortable, though my landlady is certainly the most unpr...

In a few words she told her companion. For his part, he was too worried about her presence to comprehend fully. “You had better get into the car, Leslie. Driver, take Miss Maughan⁠—” “I’ll stay here,”...

“How did you know he was dead?” asked Leslie again. “Who told you?” “I⁠—I heard.” Her voice was hardly more than a whisper. “Who told you? Nobody knows but the inspector and I, and I have come straigh...

It was two o’clock when a taxicab stopped in Severall Street, Lambeth, and a very weary girl alighted. The detective whom she had asked by telephone should meet her was waiting at the corner of the st...

Druze⁠—a woman! It was incredible⁠—almost impossible! Yet that shrewd old man would not have jested with her. She dragged herself up the stairs, her limp body aching for rest, her mind very wide awake...

“Druze was illiterate, but, like all illiterate people, had acquired a certain form of culture and was very clever to conceal this misfortune. I think, in fact I know, she had the schooling of an aver...

Greta Gurden occupied an apartment on the first floor of a house in Portman Crescent. Hers was one of those artistic little flats that reflected every taste but her own. She slept in a red lacquer bed...

Peter Dawlish found it very difficult to concentrate his mind upon his work, and although his task was purely mechanical he stopped from time to time and allowed his thoughts to wander; and inevitably...

Mrs. Greta Gurden seldom permitted herself the luxury of brooding upon her injuries. She was no philosopher, and it was sheer necessity which made her disregard the irritations, petty and great, of li...

“I can’t believe it.” Leslie stared at the inspector. “His own mother charged him? How monstrous!” Mr. Coldwell had reached an age where it was almost impossible to surprise him. “Queer, isn’t it? But...

Lady Raytham had begun a letter to her husband when the district messenger arrived with Leslie’s note. His lordship, in his aimless way, had gone on to Bombay, and was suffering from an old trouble of...

At that moment Greta Gurden’s bedroom reeked with the pungent scent of frying sausages that wafted in from the little gas-ring in her “dining-hall.” When Greta was her own provider, she was economical...

Demoniacal, terrifying, she towered above the frightened woman, and Greta cowered and held up her hand as though to ward off a blow. “Get on the telephone, quick, and tell him he needn’t come. Invent ...

Children⁠—little Elizabeth and that unseen boy of his⁠—! Peter Dawlish walked up and down his cramped room, his hands in his pockets, an unlighted cigarette between his lips. The hopelessness of it al...

As the car moved off, a man came running across the road, stepped lightly on to the footboard, and wriggled his way to a place beside the driver. The car was held up outside the Hippodrome, but only f...

It seemed to Peter Dawlish that he had been unconscious for an eternity when he turned over on his back with a groan and felt carefully towards his damaged head. His face was wet and sticky, and when ...

It was not often that Mrs. Donald Dawlish made a call at any hour of the day; the appearance in Berkeley Square of her big Rolls was something of an event. But at eleven o’clock at night⁠ ⁠… “Mrs. Daw...

“I’m sorry to have brought you down to this very unpretentious little flat of mine,” said Leslie, “but I have discovered in myself some of the qualities of a showman, and really and truly most of the ...

“Nose”⁠—i.e., police informer. ↩ Nine months. ↩...