Which Was the Murderer? / Robert Barr

Mrs. John Forder had no premonition of evil. When she heard the hall clock strike nine she was blithely singing about the house as she attended to her morning duties, and she little imagined that she was entering the darkest hour of her life, and that before the clock struck again overwhelming disaster would have fallen upon her. Her young husband was working in the garden, as was his habit each morning before going to his office. She expected him in every moment to make ready for his departure down town. She heard the click of the front gate, and a moment later some angry words. Alarmed, she was about to look through the parted curtains of the bay-window in front when the sharp crack of a revolver rang out, and she hastened to the door with a vague sinking fear at her heart. As she flung open the door she saw two things--first, her husband lying face downwards on the grass motionless, his right arm doubled under him; second, a man trying frantically to undo the fastening of the front gate, with a smoking pistol still in his hand.

The Warrior Maid of San Carlos / Robert Barr

The young naval officer came into this world with two eyes and two arms; he left it with but one of each--nevertheless the remaining eye was ever quick to see, and the remaining arm ever strong to seize. Even his blind eye became useful on one historic occasion. But the loss of eye or arm was as nothing to the continual loss of his heart, which often led him far afield in the finding of it. Vanquished when he met the women; invincible when he met the men; in truth, a most human hero, and so we all love Jack--the we, in this instant, as the old joke has it, embracing the women.

The Vengeance of the Dead / Robert Barr

It is a bad thing for a man to die with an unsatisfied thirst for revenge parching his soul. David Allen died, cursing Bernard Heaton and lawyer Grey; hating the lawyer who had won the case even more than the man who was to gain by the winning. Yet if cursing were to be done, David should rather have cursed his own stubbornness and stupidity.

The Understudy / Robert Barr

The Monarch in the Arabian story had an ointment which, put upon the right eye, enabled him to see through the walls of houses. If the Arabian despot had passed along a narrow street leading into a main thoroughfare of London, one night just before the clock struck twelve, he would have beheld, in a dingy back room of a large building, a very strange sight. He would have seen King Charles the First seated in friendly converse with none other than Oliver Cromwell.

Two Florentine Balconies / Robert Barr

Prince Padema sat desolately on his lofty balcony at Florence, and cursed things generally. Fate had indeed dealt hardly with the young man.

The Prince had been misled by the apparent reasonableness of the adage, that if you want a thing well done you should do it yourself. In committing a murder it is always advisable to have some one else to do it for you, but the Prince's plans had been several times interfered with by the cowardice or inefficiency of his emissaries, so on one unfortunate occasion he had determined to remove an objectionable man with his own hand, and realised then how easily mistakes may occur.

Transformation / Robert Barr

If you grind castor sugar with an equal quantity of chlorate of potash, the result is an innocent-looking white compound, sweet to the taste, and sometimes beneficial in the case of a sore throat. But if you dip a glass rod into a small quantity of sulphuric acid, and merely touch the harmless-appearing mixture with the wet end of the rod, the dish which contains it becomes instantly a roaring furnace of fire, vomiting forth a fountain of burning balls, and filling the room with a dense, black, suffocating cloud of smoke.

The Terrible Experience of Plodkins / Robert Barr

"Which--life or death? Tis a gambler's chance! Yet, unconcerned, we spin and dance, On the brittle thread of circumstance."

I understand that Plodkins is in the habit of referring sceptical listeners to me, and telling them that I will substantiate every word of his story. Now this is hardly fair of Plodkins. I can certainly corroborate part of what he says, and I can bear witness to the condition in which I found him after his ordeal was over. So I have thought it best, in order to set myself right with the public, to put down exactly what occurred. If I were asked whether or not I believe Plodkins' story myself, I would have to answer that sometimes I believe it, and sometimes I do not. Of course Plodkins will be offended when he reads this, but there are other things that I have to say about him which will perhaps enrage him still more; still they are the truth. For instance, Plodkins can hardly deny, and yet probably he will deny, that he was one of the most talented drinkers in America. I venture to say that every time he set foot in Liverpool coming East, or in New York going West, he was just on the verge of delirium tremens, because, being necessarily idle during the voyage, he did little else but drink and smoke. I never knew a man who could take so much liquor and show such small results. The fact was, that in the morning Plodkins was never at his best, because he was nearer sober then than at any other part of the day; but, after dinner, a more entertaining, genial, generous, kind-hearted man than Hiram Plodkins could not be found anywhere.

A Society for the Reformation of Poker Players / Robert Barr

"O Unseen Hand that ever makes and deals us, And plays our game! That now obscures and then to light reveals us, Serves blanks of fame How vain our shuffling, bluff and weak pretending! Tis Thou alone can name the final ending"

The seductive game of poker is one that I do not understand. I do not care to understand it, because it cannot be played without the putting up of a good deal of the coin of the realm, and although I have nothing to say against betting, my own theory of conduct in the matter is this, that I want no man's money which I do not earn, and I do not want any man to get my money unless he earns it. So it happens, in the matter of cards, I content myself with Eucre and other games which do not require the wagering of money.

Share and Share Alike / Robert Barr

"The quick must haste to vengeance taste, For time is on his head; But he can wait at the door of fate, Though the stay be long and the hour be late-- The dead."

Melville Hardlock stood in the centre of the room with his feet wide apart and his hands in his trousers pockets, a characteristic attitude of his. He gave a quick glance at the door, and saw with relief that the key was in the lock, and that the bolt prevented anybody coming in unexpectedly. Then he gazed once more at the body of his friend, which lay in such a helpless-looking attitude upon the floor. He looked at the body with a feeling of mild curiosity, and wondered what there was about the lines of the figure on the floor that so certainly betokened death rather than sleep, even though the face was turned away from him. He thought, perhaps, it might be the hand with its back to the floor and its palm towards the ceiling; there was a certain look of hopelessness about that. He resolved to investigate the subject some time when he had leisure. Then his thoughts turned towards the subject of murder. It was so easy to kill, he felt no pride in having been able to accomplish that much. But it was not everybody who could escape the consequences of his crime. It required an acute brain to plan after events so that shrewd detectives would be baffled. There was a complacent conceit about Melville Hardlock, which was as much a part of him as his intense selfishness, and this conceit led him to believe that the future path he had outlined for himself would not be followed by justice.

The Shadow of the Greenback / Robert Barr

Hickory Sam needed but one quality to be perfect. He should have been an arrant coward. He was a blustering braggart, always boasting of the men he had slain, and the odds he had contended against; filled with stories of his own valour, but alas! he shot straight, and rarely missed his mark, unless he was drunker than usual. It would have been delightful to tell how this unmitigated ruffian had been "held up" by some innocent tenderfoot from the East, and made to dance at the muzzle of a quite new and daintily ornamented revolver, for the loud-mouthed blowhard seemed just the man to flinch when real danger confronted him; but, sad to say, there was nothing of the white feather about Hickory Sam, for he feared neither man, nor gun, nor any combination of them. He was as ready to fight a dozen as one, and once had actually "held up" the United States army at Fort Concho, beating a masterly retreat backwards with his face to the foe, holding a troop in check with his two seven-shooters that seemed to point in every direction at once, making every man in the company feel, with a shiver up his back, that he individually was "covered," and would be the first to drop if firing actually began.

The Purser's Story / Robert Barr

"O Mother-nature, kind in touch and tone. Act as we may, thou clearest to thine own"

I don't know that I should tell this story.

When the purser related it to me I know it was his intention to write it out for a magazine. In fact he had written it, and I understand that a noted American magazine had offered to publish it, but I have watched that magazine for over three years and I have not yet seen the purser's story in it. I am sorry that I did not write the story at the time; then perhaps I should have caught the exquisite peculiarities of the purser's way of telling it. I find myself gradually forgetting the story and I write it now in case I shall forget it, and then be harassed all through after life by the remembrance of the forgetting.

Purification / Robert Barr

Eugene Caspilier sat at one of the metal tables of the Cafe Egalite, allowing the water from the carafe to filter slowly through a lump of sugar and a perforated spoon into his glass of absinthe. It was not an expression of discontent that was to be seen on the face of Caspilier, but rather a fleeting shade of unhappiness which showed he was a man to whom the world was being unkind. On the opposite side of the little round table sat his friend and sympathising companion, Henri Lacour. He sipped his absinthe slowly, as absinthe should be sipped, and it was evident that he was deeply concerned with the problem that confronted his comrade.

Over the Stelvio Pass / Robert Barr

There is no question about it, Tina Lenz was a flirt, as she had a perfect right to be, living as she did on the romantic shores of Como, celebrated in song, story, and drama as the lover's blue lake. Tina had many admirers, and it was just like her perversity to favor the one to whom her father most objected. Pietro, as the father truly said, was a beggarly Italian driver, glad of the few francs he got from the travellers he took over the humble Maloga to the Engadine, or over the elevated Stelvio to the Tyrol, the lowest and the highest passes in Europe. It was a sad blow to the hopes as well as the family pride of old Lenz when Tina defiantly announced her preference for the driver of the Zweispanner. Old Lenz came of a long and distinguished line of Swiss hotel-keepers, noted for the success with which they squeezed the last attainable centime from the reluctant traveller. It was bad enough that he had no son to inherit his justly celebrated hotel (pension rates for a stay of not less than eight days), but he hoped for a son-in-law, preferably of Swiss extraction, to whom he might, in his old age, hand over the lucrative profession of deferentially skinning the wealthy Englishman. And now Tina had deliberately chosen a reckless, unstable Italian who would, in a short time, scatter to the winds the careful accumulation of years.

Not According to the Code / Robert Barr

Even a stranger to the big town walking for the first time through London, sees on the sides of the houses many names with which he has long been familiar. His precognition has cost the firms those names represent much money in advertising. The stranger has had the names before him for years in newspapers and magazines, on the hoardings and boards by the railway side, paying little heed to them at the time; yet they have been indelibly impressed on his brain, and when he wishes soap or pills his lips almost automatically frame the words most familiar to them. Thus are the lavish sums spent in advertising justified, and thus are many excellent publications made possible.

My Stowaway / Robert Barr

"Ye can play yer jokes on Nature, An' play 'em slick, She'll grin a grin, but, landsakes, friend, Look out fer the kick!"

One night about eleven o'clock I stood at the stern of that fine Atlantic steamship, the City of Venice, which was ploughing its way through the darkness towards America. I leaned on the rounded bulwark and enjoyed a smoke as I gazed on the luminous trail the wheel was making in the quiet sea. Some one touched me on the shoulder, saying, "Beg pardon, sir;" and, on straightening up, I saw in the dim light a man whom at first I took to be one of the steerage passengers. I thought he wanted to get past me, for the room was rather restricted in the passage between the aft wheelhouse and the stern, and I moved aside. The man looked hurriedly to one side and then the other and, approaching, said in a whisper, "I'm starving, sir!"

Mrs. Tremain / Robert Barr

"And Woman, wit a flaming torch Sings heedless, in a powder-- Her careless smiles they warp and scorch Man's heart, as fire the pine Cuts keener than the thrust of lance Her glance"

The trouble about this story is that it really has no ending. Taking an ocean voyage is something like picking up an interesting novel, and reading a chapter in the middle of it. The passenger on a big steamer gets glimpses of other people's lives, but he doesn't know what the beginning was, nor what the ending will be.

A Modern Samson / Robert Barr

A little more and Jean Rasteaux would have been a giant. Brittany men are small as a rule, but Jean was an exception. He was a powerful young fellow who, up to the time he was compelled to enter the army, had spent his life in dragging heavy nets over the sides of a boat. He knew the Brittany coast, rugged and indented as it is, as well as he knew the road from the little cafe on the square to the dwelling of his father on the hillside overlooking the sea. Never before had he been out of sound of the waves. He was a man who, like Herve Riel, might have saved the fleet, but France, with the usual good sense of officialism, sent this man of the coast into the mountains, and Jean Rasteaux became a soldier in the Alpine Corps. If he stood on the highest mountain peak, Jean might look over illimitable wastes of snow, but he could catch neither sound nor sight of the sea.

Miss McMillan / Robert Barr

"Come hop, come skip, fair children all, Old Father Time is in the hall. He'll take you on his knee, and stroke Your golden hair to silver bright, Your rosy cheeks to wrinkles white"

In the saloon of the fine Transatlantic liner the Climatus, two long tables extend from the piano at one end to the bookcase at the other end of the ample dining-room.

The Man Who Was Not On the Passenger List / Robert Barr

"The well-sworn Lie, franked to the world with all The circumstance of proof, Cringes abashed, and sneaks along the wall At the first sight of Truth."

The Long Ladder / Robert Barr

Every fortress has one traitor within its walls; the Schloss Eltz had two. In this, curiously enough, lay its salvation; for as some Eastern poisons when mixed neutralise each other and form combined a harmless fluid, so did the two traitors unwittingly react, the one upon the other, to the lasting glory of Schloss Eltz, which has never been captured to this day.