Paris. Shipping business, police techniques, investigative procedures, feature in this alibi puzzle plot.
Merriman was asleep, and the quiet movement of the other did not awaken him. But Hilliard was in no frame of mind for repose. He was too much thrilled by the adventure through which he had passed, and the discovery which he had made. He therefore put away the idea of sleep...
JOHN’S WOOD It was one of Inspector French’s most constant grumbles that a man in his position was never off duty. He might come home after a hard day’s work looking forward to a long, lazy, delightful evening with a pipe and a book, and before he had finished supper some development at headquart...
Again and again he had noticed that confidence and self-satisfaction were more often than not the prelude to disaster. The converse did not in his experience obtain so frequently, but occasionally a period of depression and a sense of failure did seem to end in a real step forward. It was so on t...
Morrison was normally a clerk in the firm’s head office in Lower Regent Street. Usually he spent his time arranging for other people the enthralling journeys he so much longed to take himself. He was well acquainted with the world, and particularly with Europe, in what might be called a theoretic...
For some reason he had been unable to sleep on that night on which he had completed his proof that the Whymper incident had been engineered by Roper. French, as a rule, was a sound sleeper: he was usually too tired on getting to bed to be anything else. But on the rare occasions when he remained ...
A deposit of fifty pounds was required to clinch the bargain, the balance being handed over before occupation. It would take a few days, he was told, to get the legal business through, but he could move in directly the money was paid. The seven hundred pounds for the house...
What was to be his next move? Rack his brains as he might, he couldn’t think of any line which he had not already explored. Worried beyond measure, he sat smoking in his room, where he had lit the gas fire, gazing vacantly into space and pondering on the eternal problem of...