Showing posts with label 1910s. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1910s. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

The Mansion of Mystery Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective, by Chester K Steele

Margaret Langmore found her father stretched lifeless in an armchair. He was either choked or smothered to death, or poisoned. Margaret was so horrified she ran from the room screaming wildly. Her shrieks brought the servant to the spot, and a minute later two of the neighbors, Mrs. Bardon and her son Alfred, came over from next door. Alfred Bardon is a physician, and, thinking there might still be a spark of life in Mr. Langmore, did all he possibly could to resuscitate the gentleman. The servant girl ran upstairs to find some drugs for him and in the upper hallway stumbled over the dead body of Mrs. Langmore. She had died in the same manner as her husband.

Read it here

The Diamond Cross Mystery Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story by Chester K. Steele

The fog from outside seemed to have penetrated into the jewelry shop. It swirled about the gleaming showcases, reflected from the cut glass, danced away from the silver cups, broke into points of light from the times of forks, became broad splotches on the blades of knives, and, perchance, made its way through the cracks into the safe, where it bathed the diamonds, the rubies, the sapphires, the aqua marines, the pearls, the jades, and the bloodstones in a white mist. The bloodstones—

Strange that James Darcy should have thought of them as he looked at the rain outside, heard its drip, drip, drip on the windows, and saw the fog and swirls of mist inside and without the store. Strange and—

First, as he gazed at the prostrate body—the horrid red blotch like a gay ribbon in the white hair—he thought the small, insistent sound which seemed to fill the room was the beating of her heart. Then, as he listened, his ears attuned with fear, he knew it was the ticking of the watch in the hand of the dead woman.

Read it here