The Starvel Hollow Tragedy quotes

Her dress was of the plainest, and in the fashion of three years earlier. Though scrupulously neat, it was worn threadbare. Her shoes were cracked and her stockings showed careful darns.

For Ruth Averill was an orphan, dependent on the bounty of her uncle, Simon Averill, for every penny. And Simon Averill was a miser.

Ruth was born in Southern France, and she had dim recollections of a land of sun and warmth, of jolly people and bright colours.

On crossing the shoulder he had glanced down as usual into the curious circular dell, and had instantly been overwhelmed with incredulous amazement.

There were the trees, the thin, stunted pines which surrounded the old house, but⁠—the house was gone!

The long line of slated roof which had stood out above the trees had absolutely vanished. No trace remained.

The landlord also approved of Oxley.

Oxley would have his joke, if he was to be hung for it the next minute, but he was a very sound man and a good lawyer.

If you had Oxley on your side he would make a keen fight for you, and for all his jokes and his breezy manner he wouldn’t give nothing away. Oxley was well liked and he deserved it.

His interest keenly aroused, he set to work in his careful, methodical way to check over all the fragments he could find. As he did so something very like excitement took possession of him.

There were no fragments of notes! Every single piece that bore any marking was newspaper!

What, he asked, himself, could this portend? What other than robbery? And if robbery, then murder! Murder and arson! Could Tarkington and the Chief Constable be right, after all? Certainly, after this discovery he couldn’t drop the investigation until he had made sure.

If these conclusions could be sustained it unquestionably meant that French was on to one of the most dastardly and terrible crimes of the century.

He felt the sudden thrill of the hunter who comes across the fresh spoor of some dangerous wild beast.

But he did not disclose his feelings. Instead he kept his own counsel, simply reporting to headquarters that the case seemed suspicious and that he was remaining on to make further inquiries.

“You got that paper from Roper—somehow, didn’t you?” The man was speaking eagerly now. “

Even after he’s dead his evil genius remains.

”

His brain at such times seemed more active than normally, and more than one of his toughest problems had been solved during the hours of darkness.

It was true that he frequently reached conclusions which in the sober light of day appeared fantastic and had to be abandoned, but valuable ideas had come so often that when up against a really difficult case he had thankfully welcomed a sleepless night in the hope of what it might bring forth.

On this occasion, when he had employed all the conventional aids to slumber without effect, he turned his attention to the one problem in the Starvel Hollow tragedy which up to now had baffled him: the cause of Roper’s fate.

“Strange enough and tragic enough, I admit,” he answered, “but such coincidences are not infrequent.

It is my experience that coincidences which would be deemed too remarkable for a novel constantly occur in real life.

”

“That’s true, and you can imagine anyone taking the risk. If he wins his whole trouble is over, while if he loses he is little the worse.

He may as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.

But you haven’t told me how the case is getting on.”

Kent resumed his digging. For some minutes he worked, and then he straightened himself and looked at French wonderingly.

“Lord save us!” he exclaimed in awed tones. “It’s uncommon like a human corpse.”

“Nonsense!” French answered sharply. “It couldn’t be anything of the kind. Get on and open it and then you’ll know.”

“

No; the correction of an error is always progress.

But I’m not denying,” Major Valentine went on with a whimsical smile, “that there is still something left to be cleared up.”

Do you see what I’m getting at, French?

Their story shows too much imagination for their intelligences as described by Marshall, and therefore I am disposed to accept it.

”

“I should say undoubtedly.” Mitchell sat for a moment drumming with his fingers on his desk and looking thoughtfully out of the window. “You think the whole thing’s unlikely, do you? Perhaps you are right. And yet I don’t know.

I think I can imagine circumstances in which a man might be very anxious to get rid of thirty-nine wedding rings.

And what’s more, to throw them over the parapet of the Tower Bridge at 8:30 in the evening seems to me a jolly good way of getting rid of them. How would you have done it, French?”

But he had made an error, and French smiled grimly as he thought of it.

He had given an address to Dashwood and Munce. A bad, a fatal error!

A trip to Edinburgh for French, and Master John Roper’s career would meet with a sudden check. And with that the Starvel Hollow crime would be avenged and French—he hoped against hope—would come in for his reward.

The guard whistled and waved his green lamp, the coaches began to glide slowly away, the dull rumble swelled up and died away, and in a second or two some rapidly dwindling red lights were all that were left of the train.

French was almost speechless from chagrin.

Had his plan failed? Was it possible that Roper had been one too many for him? Had the man suspected a plant and kept away from the station?