The King of Diamonds: A Tale of Mystery and Adventure

Оглавление

Tracy Louis. The King of Diamonds: A Tale of Mystery and Adventure

CHAPTER I. No. 3, Johnson's Mews

CHAPTER II. On the Edge of the Precipice

CHAPTER III. What the Meteor Contained

CHAPTER IV. Isaacstein

CHAPTER V. Perplexing a Magistrate

CHAPTER VI. A Game of Hazard

CHAPTER VII. A Business Transaction

CHAPTER VIII. The Transition

CHAPTER IX. A Decisive Battle

CHAPTER X. A Step Higher

CHAPTER XI. In Clover

CHAPTER XII. The Close of One Epoch

CHAPTER XIII. After Long Years

CHAPTER XIV. An Adventure

CHAPTER XV. A Face From the Past

CHAPTER XVI. The Master Fiend

CHAPTER XVII. The Inmates of the Grange House

CHAPTER XVIII "Revenge is Mine; I Will Repay."

CHAPTER XIX. Philip Anson Redivivus

CHAPTER XX. Nemesis

CHAPTER XXI. The Rescue

CHAPTER XXII. A Settlement of Old Scores

Отрывок из книги

On Friday evening, March 19th, a thunderstorm of unusual violence broke over London. It was notably peculiar in certain of its aspects. The weather was cold and showery, a typical day of the March equinox. Under such conditions barometric pressure remains fixed rather than variable, yet many whose business or hobby it is to record such facts observed a rapid shrinkage of the mercury column between the hours of six and seven. A deluge of rain fell for many minutes, and was followed, about 7.30 P. M., by a mad turmoil of thunder and an astounding electrical display not often witnessed beyond the confines of the giant mountain ranges of the world.

So violent and unnerving was the outburst that the social life of London was paralyzed for the hour. Theater parties, diners in the fashionable restaurants, the greater millions anxious to get away from offices and shops, those eager alike to enter and leave the charmed circle of the four-mile radius, were ruthlessly bidden to wait while the awesome forces of nature made mad racket in the streets. All horseflesh was afraid. The drivers of cabs and omnibuses were unable to make progress. They had sufficient ado to restrain their maddened animals from adding the havoc of blind charges through the streets to the general confusion caused by the warring elements. Telegraph and telephone wires became not only useless but dangerous, and the suburban train service was consequently plunged into a tangle from which it was not extricated until midnight.

.....

Each night he crept back to the poor tenement in Johnson's Mews, his bleak "home" amidst the solitude of empty stables and warehouses. The keeper of a coffee stall, touched one night by his woe-begone appearance, gave him some half-dried coffee grounds in a paper, together with a handful of crusts.

"Put 'arf that in a pint of water," he said, looking critically at the soddened mess of coffee, "an' when it comes to a bile let it settle. It'll surprise you to find 'ow grateful an' comfortin' it tastes on a cold night. As for the crusts, if you bake 'em over the fire, they're just as good as the rusks you buy in tins."

.....