It was an ancient diary in a faded leather cover. The writing was fine and delicate, and the ink yellow with age. Sir Henry Marquis turned the pages slowly and with care for the pa...
In choosing a few typical cases which illustrate the remarkable mental qualities of my friend, Sherlock Holmes, I have endeavoured, as far as possible, to select those which presen...
A RIDDLE I remained at the gate of the hotel for some time, looking at everyone who passed by, and forming conjectures upon them, till my attention got fixed upon a single object,...
I. To Sherlock Holmes she is always THE woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not...
I To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not t...
Marguerite de Therelles was dying. Although but fifty-six, she seemed like seventy-five at least. She panted, paler than the sheets, shaken by dreadful shiverings, her face convuls...
She was one of those pretty and charming girls who are sometimes, as if by a mistake of destiny, born in a family of clerks. She had no dowry, no expectations, no means of being kn...
The next Mystery Story is like no other in these volumes. The editor's defense lies in the plea that Laurence Sterne is not like other writers of English. He is certainly one of th...
"A LADY to see you, sir." I looked up and was at once impressed by the grace and beauty of the person thus introduced to me. "Is there anything I can do to serve you?" I asked, ris...
Before me sits the Chinese--my friend who, when the hurlyburly's done, spins me out the hours with narratives of ancient Yellowland. His name is Fuey Fong, and he speaks to me thus...
"Alas, monsieur, in spite of our fine courtesies, the conception of justice by one race must always seem outlandish to another!" It was on the terrace of Sir Henry Marquis' villa a...
"Halloa! Below there!" When he heard a voice thus calling to him, he was standing at the door of his box, with a flag in his hand, furled round its short pole. One would have thoug...
It is now a fair number of years back since the loss of the famous Stanway Cameo made its sensation, and the only person who had the least interest in keeping the real facts of the...
"Oh, sir, save him if you can--save my poor nephew! I know he is innocent!" The little old lady sank back in her chair, gazing up at Commissioner von Riedau with tear-dimmed eyes f...
IT was the night that Mona Meeks, the dressmaker, told him she didn't love him. He couldn't believe it at first, because he had so long been accustomed to the idea that she did, an...
The ingenuity and perseverance of the fraternity of swindlers is only equaled by the gullibility and patience of their dupes. During the flush times that followed the war, immense...
The talk had run on treasure. I could not sleep and my friends had dropped in. I had the big South room on the second floor of the Hotel de Paris. It looks down on the Casino and t...
On glancing over my notes of the seventy odd cases in which I have during the last eight years studied the methods of my friend Sherlock Holmes, I find many tragic, some comic, a l...
Monsieur Pierre Agenor de Vargnes, the Examining Magistrate, was the exact opposite of a practical joker. He was dignity, staidness, correctness personified. As a sedate man, he wa...
I It was with a little alarm and a good deal of pleasurable excitement that I looked forward to my first grown-up visit to Mervyn Grange. I had been there several times as a child,...
On the 29th of July, 1835, Kasper Boeck, a shepherd of the little village of Hirschwiller, with his large felt hat tipped back, his wallet of stringy sackcloth hanging at his hip,...
THERE was only one possible ob- jection to the drawing-room, and that was the occasional presence of Miss Carew; and only one pos- sible objection to Miss Carew. And that was, that...
_A work (says the author) which performs more than it promises._ Voltaire never heard of a "detective story"; and yet he wrote the first in modern literature, so clever as to be a...
A PARABLE[1] [1] Another clergyman in New England, Mr. Joseph Moody, of York, Maine, made himself remarkable by the same eccentricity that is here related of the Reverend Mr. Hoope...
It was a mystery to me, but not to the other doctors. They took, as was natural, the worst possible view of the matter, and accepted the only solution which the facts seem to warra...
"One more! just one more well paying affair, and I promise to stop; really and truly to stop." "But, Puss, why one more? You have earned the amount you set for yourself,--or very n...
Setoc, charmed with the happy issue of this affair, made his slave his intimate friend. He had now conceived as great esteem for him as ever the King of Babylon had done; and Zadig...
Respected Sir,--On the twenty-seventh of February I was sent, on business connected with the stables at Maison Rouge, to the city of Metz. On the public promenade I met a magnifice...
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE In the latter part of the last century, there lived a man of science--an eminent proficient in every branch of natural philosophy--who, not long before our stor...
When the Devil rides on your chest, remember the chamar. --Native Proverb. Once upon a time some people in India made a new heaven and a new earth out of broken teacups, a missing...