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72 pages

English

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This tightly plotted mystery from E. W. Hornung tells the tale of Mr. Cazalet. Though he appears to be a globe-trotting adventurer without a care in the world, his past holds a dark secret -- and he'll go to the ends of the earth to seek revenge. But when the object of his hatred turns up dead, Cazalet drops everything to figure out the identity of the murderer.

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Publié par	The Floating Press
Date de parution	01 juillet 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781776581450
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0134€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

THE THOUSANDTH WOMAN
* * *
E. W. HORNUNG

*
The Thousandth Woman First published in 1913 Epub ISBN 978-1-77658-145-0 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77658-146-7 © 2013 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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I - A Small World II - Second Sight III - In the Train IV - Down the River V - An Untimely Visitor VI - Voluntary Service VII - After Michelangelo VIII - Finger-Prints IX - Fair Warning X - The Week of Their Lives XI - In Country and in Town XII - The Thousandth Man XIII - Quid Pro Quo XIV - Faith Unfaithful XV - The Person Unknown
I - A Small World
*
Cazalet sat up so suddenly that his head hit the woodwork over the upperberth. His own voice still rang in his startled ears. He wondered howmuch he had said, and how far it could have carried above the throb ofthe liner's screws and the mighty pounding of the water against herplates. Then his assembling senses coupled the light in the cabin withhis own clear recollection of having switched it off before turningover. And then he remembered how he had been left behind at Naples, andrejoined the Kaiser Fritz at Genoa, only to find that he no longer hada cabin to himself.
A sniff assured Cazalet that he was neither alone at the moment nor yetthe only one awake; he pulled back the swaying curtain, which he hadtaken to keeping drawn at night; and there on the settee, with thethinnest of cigarettes between his muscular fingers, sat a man with astrong blue chin and the quizzical solemnity of an animated sphinx.
It was his cabin companion, an American named Hilton Toye, and Cazaletaddressed him with nervous familiarity.
"I say! Have I been talking in my sleep?"
"Why, yes!" replied Hilton Toye, and broke into a smile that made ahuman being of him.
Cazalet forced a responsive grin, as he reached for his own cigarettes."What did I say?" he asked, with an amused curiosity at variance withhis shaking hand and shining forehead.
Toye took him in from crown to fingertips, with something deep behindhis kindly smile. "I judge," said he, "you were dreaming of some dramayou've been seeing ashore, Mr. Cazalet."
"Dreaming!" said Cazalet, wiping his face. "It was a nightmare! I musthave turned in too soon after dinner. But I should like to know what Isaid."
"I can tell you word for word. You said, 'Henry Craven—dead!' and thenyou said, 'Dead—dead—Henry Craven!' as if you'd got to have it bothways to make sure."
"It's true," said Cazalet, shuddering. "I saw him lying dead, in mydream."
Hilton Toye took a gold watch from his waistcoat pocket. "Thirteenminutes to one in the morning," he said, "and now it's Septembereighteenth. Take a note of that, Mr. Cazalet. It may be another case ofsecond sight for your psychical research society."
"I don't care if it is." Cazalet was smoking furiously.
"Meaning it was no great friend you dreamed was dead?"
"No friend at all, dead or alive!"
"I'm kind of wondering," said Toye, winding his watch up slowly, "ifhe's by way of being a friend of mine. I know a Henry Craven over inEngland. Lives along the river, down Kingston way, in a big house."
"Called Uplands?"
"Yes, sir! That's the man. Little world, isn't it?"
The man in the upper berth had to hold on as his curtains swung clear;the man tilted back on the settee, all attention all the time, was morethan ever an effective foil to him. Without the kindly smile that wentas quickly as it came, Hilton Toye was somber, subtle and demure.Cazalet, on the other hand, was of sanguine complexion and impetuouslooks. He was tanned a rich bronze about the middle of the face, but itbroke off across his forehead like the coloring of a meerschaum pipe.Both men were in their early prime, and each stood roughly for his raceand type: the traveled American who knows the world, and the elementalBritisher who has made some one loose end of it his own.
"I thought of my Henry Craven," continued Toye, "as soon as ever youcame out with yours. But it seemed a kind of ordinary name. I mighthave known it was the same if I'd recollected the name of his firm.Isn't it Craven & Cazalet, the stockbrokers, down in Tokenhouse Yard?"
"That's it," said Cazalet bitterly. "But there have been none of us init since my father died ten years ago."
"But you're Henry Craven's old partner's son?"
"I'm his only son."
"Then no wonder you dream about Henry Craven," cried Toye, "and nowonder it wouldn't break your heart if your dream came true."
"It wouldn't," said Cazalet through his teeth. "He wasn't a white man tome or mine—whatever you may have found him."
"Oh! I don't claim to like him a lot," said Toye.
"But you seem to know a good deal about him?"
"I had a little place near his one summer. I know only what I heard downthere."
"What did you hear?" asked Cazalet. "I've been away ten years, eversince the crash that ruined everybody but the man at the bottom of thewhole thing. It would be a kindness to tell me what you heard."
"Well, I guess you've said it yourself right now. That man seems to havebeggared everybody all around except himself; that's how I make it out,"said Hilton Toye.
"He did worse," said Cazalet through his teeth. "He killed my poorfather; he banished me to the wilds of Australia; and he sent a betterman than himself to prison for fourteen years!"
Toye opened his dark eyes for once. "Is that so? No. I never heardthat," said he.
"You hear it now. He did all that, indirectly, and I don't care whohears me say so. I didn't realize it at the time. I was too young, andthe whole thing laid me out too flat; but I know it now, and I've knownit long enough. It was worse than a crash. It was a scandal. That waswhat finished us off, all but Henry Craven! There'd been a giganticswindle—special investments recommended by the firm, bogus certificatesand all the rest of it. We were all to blame, of course. My poor fatherought never to have been a business man at all; he should have been apoet. Even I—I was only a youngster in the office, but I ought to haveknown what was going on. But Henry Craven did know. He was in it up tothe neck, though a fellow called Scruton did the actual job. Scrutongot fourteen years—and Craven got our old house on the river!"
"And feathered it pretty well!" said Toye, nodding. "Yes, I did hearthat. And I can tell you they don't think any better of him, in theneighborhood, for going to live right there. But how did he stop theother man's mouth, and—how do you know?"
"Never mind how I know," said Cazalet. "Scruton was a friend of mine,though an older man; he was good to me, though he was a wrong 'unhimself. He paid for it—paid for two—that I can say! But he wasengaged to Ethel Craven at the time, was going to be taken intopartnership on their marriage, and you can put two and two together foryourself."
"Did she wait for him?"
"About as long as you'd expect of the breed! She was her father'sdaughter. I wonder you didn't come across her and her husband!"
"I didn't see so much of the Craven crowd," replied Hilton Toye. "Iwasn't stuck on them either. Say, Cazalet, I wouldn't be that old manwhen Scruton comes out, would you?"
But Cazalet showed that he could hold his tongue when he liked, and hisgrim look was not so legible as some that had come and gone before. Thisone stuck until Toye produced a big flask from his grip, and the talkshifted to less painful ground. It was the last night in the Bay ofBiscay, and Cazalet told how he had been in it a fortnight on his wayout by sailing-vessel. He even told it with considerable humor, and hitoff sundry passengers of ten years ago as though they had been aboardthe German boat that night; for he had gifts of anecdote and verbalportraiture, and in their unpremeditated cups Toye drew him out aboutthe bush until the shadows passed for minutes from the red-brick facewith the white-brick forehead.
"I remember thinking I would dig for gold," said Cazalet. "That's all Iknew about Australia; that and bushrangers and dust-storms andbush-fires! But you can have adventures of sorts if you go far enoughup-country for 'em; it still pays you to know how to use your fists outthere. I didn't, but I was picking it up before I'd been out threemonths, and in six I was as ready as anybody to take off my coat. Iremember once at a bush shanty they dished up such fruity chops that Isaid I'd fight the cook if they'd send him up; and I'm blowed if itwasn't a fellow I'd been at school with and worshiped as no end of aswell at games! Potts his name was, old Venus Potts, the best lookingchap in the school among other things; and there he was, cooking carrionat twenty-five bob a week! Instead of fighting we joined forces, got aburr-cutting job on a good station, then a better one over shearing, andafter that I wormed my way in as bookkeeper, and my pal became one ofthe head overseers. Now we're our own bosses with a share in the show,and the owner comes up only once a year to see how things are looking."
"I hope he had a daughter," said Toye, "and that you're going to marryher, if you haven't yet?"
Cazalet laughed, but the shadow had returned. "No. I left that to mypal," he said. " He did that all right!"
"Then I advise you to go and do likewise," rejoined his new friend witha geniality impossible to take amiss. "I shouldn't wonder, now, ifthere's some girl you left behind you."
Cazalet shook his head. "None who would look on herself in that light,"he interrupted. It was all he said, but once more Toye w