Ernest William Hornung

“ It was warm, yet delightfully keen at thirty miles an hour; clear as crystal within rifle-shot, and deliciously hazy in the distance; the bronze upon the trees seldom warming to a premature red, often lapsing into the liquid greens of midsummer; but all the way an autumnal smear of silver in the sunlight. Dollar divided his mind between a sensuous savoring of the heavenly country, and more or less romantic speculations on the case in store. Some people's notions of a crime doctor's functions were so much wider even than his own ”

“ The little new landing was like a gridiron over a flickering glare from the well beneath. Dollar flung his full length on the brink—hung dangling from the armpits—hung lashing out for the ladder like a boy on a horizontal bar with a mattress just underneath. ”

“ And here were the shavings, all nicely swept together, and the matches spilled at the last moment; as Dollar put them back into the box, his finger-tips ached for all they might have learned from that which they held—for the whole truth about the guilty hand which had let the match-box fall.
It was the whole truth, too, that he was seeking next upon his knees, in the rubble down between the joists; some fresh fact, still inconceivable as a concrete discovery, that he hoped against hope to find and to set against the facts beyond dispute. Facts could not lie, but they might exaggerate ”

“ Dollar's feelings flew back into his face; she read them with a smile that made him wince, by its cynical resemblance to one or two that still enriched his dreams.
"You think I'm as bad as any of them," she divined aloud.
"I think the crime of arson is worse than most crimes," he made sturdy answer, standing up to the little body with the strangest difficulty, as though he were the culprit and she the man. "It's a thing absolutely nothing on earth can possibly excuse. ”

“ Dale-Bulmer," said Lady Vera, with an explosive little sigh.
"I am; and for that I'm to have a house like this burned to the ground; and you ladies think that's the way to advance your cause, to prove your value to the State! Well, I suppose you know your own business best. It's no use reasoning with you; but it really is enough to set one off, after what I caught you doing down-stairs." ”

“ He led the way into a broad central corridor, choked with ladders and builders' tools, pipes and tubing, curtain-rods, and a stack of boards; but a model of order compared with the chaos visible through an open door at which he paused. Here were more bare joists than navigable floor, and a forest of scaffolding therefrom to the crisscrossed plaster ceiling. "Look you here!" said the man from Australia, and pointed to a heap of shavings on a remnant of the floor. ”

“ But the man with the stronger will seemed perfectly sincere in his further asservations that there were features in the case which he wanted to study for his own private and professional ends; that he honestly believed, they had no more to fear from their friends the enemy, but that somebody ought to remain on guard, that he was the obvious man. All this rang true enough; and but for Dollar's strange anxiety in the matter, and Dale-Bulmer's sudden discovery that he squinted, the plan might have gained earlier acceptance than it did. ”

“ I come from that enlightened land, where Labor runs the show and Women have the Vote. In fact," the big man added, with the fat chuckle heard over the telephone, "that's precisely why I have come from Australia—as I was fool enough to say the other night at a meeting in these parts. But I seem to have jumped out of the frying-pan into the fire."
"I'm sorry to hear that," observed Dollar, with polite forbearance.
"Well, not quite into the fire, as it happens," said Dale-Bulmer, chuckling again in his noble neck. "Come inside, and you'll see." ”

“ An excited personage, who might have been just outside the window, was expeditiously appeased in monosyllables. And Dollar returned with an appetite to what had been set before him.
"Send Bobby round to the garage, Barton, to order the car at once. He can tell Albert I shall be ready as soon as he is, but to take his headlights and fill up with petrol." This was repeated with paternal severity in the wings. "Now, Barton, my little red road-book, and see if you can find Pax Monktons in the wilds of Surrey. It can't be more than a hamlet. ”

“ But it was not his best manner; it was almost as unrepresentative as the calm self-centered way in which the released prisoner spent the last minutes looking for her gloves, and, when she failed to find them, held out her bare hand with a brazen air of innocence, and no more thanks than would have become a parting guest. ”

“ This afternoon he was prepared to do almost anything for next to nothing: and after twenty sedentary miles he was on his legs as often as not in the next two or three, asking his way at likely lodges, or from strolling bands of shaven yokels, all Sunday collars and cigarettes.
"Pax Monktons Chase?" at last said one who seemed to have heard the name before. "Straight as ever you can go, and the first lodge on the left. But there's no one there."
"No one there!" echoed Dollar. "Do you mean the place is empty?" ”

“ Dollar was much taken with the humor and simplicity of his address and bearing. A smart chauffeur waited with a plutocratic car in the sweep of the drive. And there was no third sign of life about the place.
"Awfully good of you to come," said Dale-Bulmer, with apologetic warmth. "I thought you might, from what I'd heard of you, and you seemed to jump at it when I rang you up. I haven't known anybody take so kindly to a trip since I left the bush."
"An Australian?" asked the doctor, with all a doctor's readiness to make talk ”