Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 17, 2025
"It is quite like old times and very pleasant old times, too to see you sitting at our breakfast-table, Dr. Jervis." With these gracious words and a friendly smile, Mrs. Hanshaw handed me my tea-cup. I bowed. "The highest pleasure of the altruist," I replied, "is in contemplating the good fortune of others." Mrs. Haldean laughed. "Thank you," she said. "You are quite unchanged, I perceive.
Haldean, turning suddenly to Thorndyke, seized both his hands, and for a moment I hoped that she was going to kiss him, too. But he was spared, and I have not yet recovered from the disappointment. Thorndyke was not a newspaper reader.
"You are very unjust to your niece, Mrs. Haldean," I ventured to protest. She halted, and faced me with an angry frown. "You don't understand!" she exclaimed. "You don't know, perhaps, that if my poor child is really dead, Lucy Haldean will be a rich woman, and may marry to-morrow if she chooses?" "I did not know that," I answered, "but if I had, I should have said the same."
Her sketching "kit," with which she was loaded, slipped from her grasp and rattled on to the floor, and she buried her face in her hands and sobbed hysterically. "And you have dared to come back without him?" exclaimed Mrs. Haldean. "I was getting exhausted. I came back for help," was the faint reply. "Of course she was exhausted," said Mrs. Hanshaw.
"I mean human in things that matter." "I think those things matter," I rejoined. "Consider, Mrs. Haldean, what would happen if my learned colleague were to be seen in wig and gown, walking towards the Law Courts in any posture other than the erect. It would be a public scandal." "Don't talk to him, Mabel," said Mrs. Hanshaw; "he is incorrigible.
Haldean and our hostess seated at the table, and both looked up at me expectantly. "Have you seen Lucy?" the former inquired. "No," I answered. "Hasn't she come back? I expected to find her here. She had left the wood when I passed just now." Mrs. Haldean knitted her brows anxiously. "It is very strange," she said, "and very thoughtless of her. Freddy will be famished."
"Good God, Lucy!" gasped Mrs. Haldean. "What has happened? And where is Freddy?" she added in a sterner tone. "He is lost!" replied Miss Haldean in a faint voice, and with a catch in her breath. "He strayed away while I was painting. I have searched the wood through, and called to him, and looked in all the meadows. Oh! where can he have gone?"
There was a lightning-like movement a shout a flash a bang a shower of falling plaster, and then the revolver came clattering down the stairs. The inspector and I rushed up, and in a moment the sharp click of the handcuffs told Mr. Percy Haldean that the game was really up.
Hanshaw's sister, a Mrs. Haldean, the widow of a wealthy Manchester cotton factor; the second was her niece by marriage, Miss Lucy Haldean, a very handsome and charming girl of twenty-three; while the third was no less a person than Master Fred, the only child of Mrs. Haldean, and a strapping boy of six.
At length her suspense became unbearable; she rose suddenly, announcing her intention of cycling up the road to look for the defaulters, but as she was moving towards the door, it burst open, and Lucy Haldean staggered into the room. Her appearance filled us with alarm. She was deadly pale, breathless, and wild-eyed; her dress was draggled and torn, and she trembled from head to foot.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking