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 - I had urged him to destroy, and that his impressions of dread while there were so great, though he had neither heard nor seen anything, that 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 trapdoor,...
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 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 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 33 - ... be found wanting among large bodies of men; that he had heard it was so in workhouses, in the police force, even in that last desperate resource, the army; and that he knew it was so, more or less, in any great railway staff. He had been, when young (if I could believe it, sitting in that hut - he scarcely could), a student of natural philosophy, and had attended lectures; but he had run wild, misused his opportunities, gone down, and never risen again. He had no complaint to offer about that....
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...
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 66 - ... considered wealthy, and who had one child of about six years old. A month after the marriage, the body of this brother was found in the Thames, near London Bridge; there seemed some marks of violence about his throat, but they were not deemed sufficient to warrant the inquest in any other verdict than that of "found drowned.
Page 48 - ... of superstitious fancy. Accordingly, about half-past nine, I put the book into my pocket, and strolled leisurely towards the haunted house. I took with me a...

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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