To My Friend Bernard E. Bishop...

Commenting upon one of my earlier novels, in respect of which I had claimed to have been careful to adhere to common probabilities and to have made use only of really practicable methods of investigat...

As I look back through the years of my association with John Thorndyke, I am able to recall a wealth of adventures and strange experiences such as falls to the lot of very few men who pass their lives...

As I entered the Temple by the Tudor Street gate the aspect of the place smote my senses with an air of agreeable familiarity. Here had I spent many a delightful hour when working with Thorndyke at th...

The attitude of the suspicious man tends to generate in others the kind of conduct that seems to justify his suspicions. In most of us there lurks a certain strain of mischief which trustfulness disar...

I rose on the following morning still possessed by the determination to make some oportunity during the day to call on Thorndyke and take his advice on the now urgent question as to what I was to do. ...

My arrival at Thorndyke’s chambers was not unexpected, having been heralded by a premonitory postcard. The “oak” was open and an application of the little brass knocker of the inner door immediately p...

Having made the above proposition, Thorndyke placed a fresh slip of paper on the blotting pad on his knee and looked inquiringly at Mr. Marchmont; who, in his turn, sighed and looked at the bundle of ...

The surprise which Thorndyke’s proceedings usually occasioned, especially to lawyers, was principally due, I think, to my friend’s habit of viewing occurrences from an unusual standpoint. He did not l...

As Thorndyke and I arrived at the main gateway of the Temple and he swung round into the narrow lane, it was suddenly borne in on me that I had made no arrangements for the night. Events had followed ...

Half-past nine on the following morning found us spinning along the Albert Embankment in a hansom to the pleasant tinkle of the horse’s bell. Thorndyke appeared to be in high spirits, though the full ...

The omnibus of those days was a leisurely vehicle. Its ordinary pace was a rather sluggish trot, and in a thickly populated thoroughfare its speed was further reduced by frequent stoppages. Bearing th...

One of the conditions of medical practice is the capability of transferring one’s attention at a moment’s notice from one set of circumstances to another equally important but entirely unrelated. At e...

The state of mind which Thorndyke had advised me to cultivate was one that did not come easily. However much I endeavoured to shuffle the facts of the Blackmore case, there was one which inevitably tu...

As soon as I was alone, I commenced my investigations with a rather desperate hope of eliciting some startling and unsuspected facts. I opened the drawer and taking from it the two pieces of reed and ...

The information supplied by Mr. Samuel Wilkins, so far from dispelling the cloud of mystery that hung over the Blackmore case, only enveloped it in deeper obscurity, so far as I was concerned. The new...

We had not been back in our chambers more than a few minutes when the little brass knocker on the inner door rattled out its summons. Thorndyke himself opened the door, and, finding our three expected...

“You may have wondered,” Thorndyke commenced, when he had poured out the coffee and handed round the cups, “what induced me to undertake the minute investigation of so apparently simple and straightfo...