The Lock and Key Library: Classic Old Time English Mysteries

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Julian Hawthorne
Cosimo, Inc., Jun 1, 2007 - Fiction - 372 pages
Large Format for easy reading. a collection of both detective, occultism and magic short stories and articles. Arthur Train, David P. Abbott, Andrew Lang, M. Robert-Houdin and Hereward Carrington contribute.

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Contents

CHARLES DICKENS 181270
9
BULWERLYTTON 180373
42
The Incantation
70
THOMAS DE QUINCEY 17851859
106
CHARLES ROBERT MATURIN 17821824
161
LAURENCE STERNE 171368
203
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 181163
214
ANONYMOUS
248
Copyright

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Page 68 - ... he was eager to have the walls bared and the floors removed as I had suggested. He had engaged persons for the work, and would commence any day I would name. The day was accordingly fixed. I repaired to the haunted house — we went into the blind dreary room, took up the skirting, and then the floors. Under the rafters, covered with rubbish, was found a trap-door, quite large enough to admit a man. It was closely nailed down, with clamps and rivets of iron. On removing these we descended into...
Page 68 - There was a chest of drawers against the wall, in which we found, half -rotted away, old-fashioned articles of a man's dress, such as might have been worn eighty or a hundred years ago by a gentleman of some rank — costly steel buckles and buttons, like those yet worn in court-dresses, a handsome court sword — in a waistcoat which had once been rich with gold-lace, but which was now blackened and foul with damp, we found five guineas, a few silver coins, and an ivory ticket, probably for some...
Page 52 - I sprang up, seizing the revolver with the one hand, the dagger with the other : I was not willing that my weapons should share the fate of the watch. Thus armed, I looked round the floor — no sign of the watch. Three slow, loud, distinct knocks were now heard at the bed-head; my servant called out, "Is that you, Sir?" " No ; be on your guard !" The dog now roused himself and sat on his haunches, his ears moving quickly backward and forward.
Page 59 - ... beheld by the naked eye. As the shapes were without symmetry, so their movements were without order. In their very vagrancies there was no sport : they came round me and round, thicker and faster and swifter, swarming over my head, crawling over my right arm, which was out-stretched in involuntary command against all evil beings. Sometimes I felt myself touched, but not by them ; invisible hands touched me. Once I felt the clutch as of cold soft fingers at my throat. I was still equally conscious...
Page 34 - He wished me good night, and held up his light. I walked by the side of the down Line of rails (with a very disagreeable sensation of a train coming behind me) until I found the path. It was easier to mount than to descend, and I got back to my inn without any adventure. Punctual to my appointment, I placed my foot on the first notch of the zigzag next night, as the distant clocks were striking eleven. He was waiting for me at the bottom, with his white light on. " I have not called out," I said,...
Page 214 - I should have looked upon it now, as one of the illusions of an imagination which is eternally misleading me, had not the old man, as soon as the dance ended, said, that this was their constant way; and that all his life long he had made it a rule, after supper was over, to call out his family to dance and rejoice; believing, he said, that a chearful and contented mind was the best sort of thanks to heaven that an illiterate peasant could pay Or a learned prelate either, said I.
Page 37 - This," he said, again laying his hand upon my arm and glancing over his shoulder with hollow eyes, "was just a year ago. Six or seven months passed, and I had recovered from the surprise and shock, when one morning, as the day was breaking, I, standing at the door, looked towards the red light, and saw the spectre again." He stopped with a fixed look at me. "Did it cry out?
Page 42 - Ah! it was a dreadful time, sir. I never left off calling to him. I put this arm before my eyes, not to see, and I waved this arm to the last; but it was no use.
Page 70 - The liquid was spilled; the saucer was broken; the compass rolled to the end of the room, and at that instant the walls shook to and fro, as if a giant had swayed and rocked them. The two workmen were so frightened that they ran up the ladder by which we had descended from the trapdoor; but seeing that nothing more happened, they were easily induced to return. Meanwhile I had opened the tablet: it was bound in plain red leather, with a silver clasp; it contained but one sheet of thick vellum, and...

About the author (2007)

Julian Hawthorne was born on June 22, 1846. He was an American writer and journalist, the son of novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne and Sophia Peabody. He wrote numerous poems, novels, short stories, mystery/detective fiction, essays, travel books, biographies and histories. Hawthorne entered Harvard in 1863, but did not graduate. He studied civil engineering in America and Germany and was engineer in the New York City Dock Department. He spent 10 years abroad, and on his return edited his father's unfinished Dr. Grimshawe's Secret (1883). While in Europe he wrote the novels: Bressant (1873); Idolatry (1874); Garth (1874); Archibald Malmaison (1879); and Sebastian Strome (1880). Hawthorne also wrote a critique of his father's novel The Scarlet Letter that was published in The Atlantic Monthly in April 1886. He died in 1934 at age 88.

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