William Le Queux: 261 books

A ROMANCE! It is a curious story, full of exciting adventures, extraordinary discoveries, and mysteries amazing. Strange, too, that I, Richard Scarsmere, who, when at school hated geography as bitterly as I did algebraic problems, should even now, while just out of my teens, be thus enabled to write...

"Really, it's the most extraordinary story of London life that I've ever heard," Phrida Shand declared, leaning forward in her chair, clasping her small white hands as, with her elbows upon the table-à-deux, she looked at me with her wondrous dark eyes across the bowl of red tulips between us.

So strange, indeed, were all the circumstances, and so startling the adventures that befell me in my search after truth, that until to-day I have hesitated to relate the narrative, which is as extraordinary as it is unique in the history of any living man. If it were not for the fact that a certain...

Three Inquisitive Men. The fifteenth of January, 1907, fell on a Tuesday. I have good cause to remember it. In this narrative of startling fact there is little that concerns myself. It is mostly of the doings of others—strange doings though they were, and stranger still, perhaps, that I should be their...

Excerpt: 'To that estimable body of men, the Berkshire Constabulary, the motive of the assassination of Nelly Bridson and the identity of her assassin remain still a mystery, as they will for ever.'

I spent a miserable night. I went to bed early, and lay awake till daybreak. The hideous nightmare of the green ray kept me awake for many nights to come. The General agreed with me that we must waste no time, and it was arranged that we should take Myra up to London the next day.

The scene was Dean Street, Soho, and this story opens on a snowy winter night in the January of 1888. The modern improvements of Shaftesbury Avenue were as yet unmade, and the foreign district of London had still to be opened up. A cold north wind was blowing on the few pedestrians whom necessity, or...

Let me gaze down the vista of the tristful past. Ah! there are things that cannot be uttered; there are scenes that still entrance me, and incidents so unexpected and terrible that they cause me even now to hold my breath in horror. The prologue of this extraordinary drama of London life was enacted three years ago; its astounding dénouement occurred quite recently.

Over a “Gasper.” “To-morrow? To-morrow, my dear Claude! Why, there may not be a to-morrow for you—or for me, when it comes to that—eh?” “Yes. You’re quite right, old son,” was my cheerful reply. “I’m quite aware that these experiments are confoundedly dangerous—and, besides, there...

The Stranger in Manchester. “Dead! And he’s carried his secret with him to his grave!” “Never!” “But he has. Look! His jaw has dropped. Can’t you see the change, man!” “Then he’s carried out his threat after all

Very early on a July morning in 1919 Constable Brown was on his beat in Kensington, in the immediate neighbourhood of Cathcart Square. Cathcart Square was an old-fashioned backwater of this highly respectable suburb. It had not been built on any regular lines. Small, narrow houses nestled comfortably...

I do not think anyone who has studied the progress of the War with care and patience can deny that, during the past few months, a mighty change has come over the aspect of the great struggle. A year ago, when I wrote “Britain’s Deadly Peril,” the fortunes of the Allies appeared to be at the lowest...