William Le Queux

A mystery set in fin de si cle London. An elderly man is murdered and suspicion falls on his young widow. But then things get very complicated and lies and clues abound...

A young woman is murdered at Kemsley's flat. Kemsley has disappeared. Royle discovers that his fianc was in Kemsley's flat at the time of the murder and is hiding something...

Sant of the Secret Service: Some Revelations of Spies and Spying By William Le Queux

Her Majesty's Minister By William Le Queux

Spies of the Kaiser: Plotting the Downfall of England By William Le Queux

A mystery set in fin de si cle London. An elderly man is murdered and suspicion falls on his young widow. But then things get very complicated and lies and clues abound...

"And he died mysteriously?" "The doctors certified that he died from natural causes--heart failure." "That is what the world believes, of course. His death was a nation's loss, and the truth was hushed up. But you, Phil Poland, know it. Upon the floor was found something--a cigar--eh?" "Nothing very extraordinary in that, surely? He died while smoking." "Yes," said the bald-headed man, bending towards the other and lowering his voice into a harsh whisper. "He died while smoking a cigar--a cigar that had been poisoned You know it well enough. What's the use of trying to affect ignorance--_with me_ " "Well?" asked Philip Poland after a brief pause, his brows knit darkly and his face drawn and pale. "Well, I merely wish to recall that somewhat unpleasant fact, and to tell you that I know the truth," said the other with slow deliberation, his eyes fixed upon the man seated opposite him. "Why recall unpleasant facts?" asked Poland, with a faint attempt to smile. "I never do."

The Veiled Man By William Le Queux "Being an Account of the Risks and Adventures of Sidi Ahamadou, Sheikh of the Azjar Marauders of the Great Sahara."

"... Herr Strantz, the German engineer, a dark-haired, round-faced, middle-aged man, came forward, and, recognising the pair as visitors of the previous day, greeted them warmly in rather imperfect English, and bowed them into where, ranged on a long table, the whole length of the left-hand wall, stood a great quantity of mysterious-looking electrical appliances with a tangle of connecting wires, while below the tables stood a row of fully fifty large batteries, such as are used in telegraph work. On the table, amid that bewildering assortment of queer-looking instruments, all scrupulously clean and highly polished, were two small brass lamps burning behind a long, narrow strip of transparent celluloid whereon was marked a minute gauge. On the edge of the table, before these lamps, was a switch, with black ebonite handle. As the two Englishmen entered, the German's eyes caught the small, round brass clock and noted that it was time to make the test-every five minutes, night and day, while the cable was in process of completion..."

"... He greeted me pleasantly, standing with his hands thrust into the pockets of his shabby black overcoat, while, returning his salutation, I straightened myself, wondering what had brought him there, and whether he wished to hire a car. I had known him by sight for a couple of years or more as he passed up and down before my house, but we had not often spoken. Truth to tell, his movements seemed rather erratic and his shabbiness very marked, yet at times he appeared quite spruce and smart, and his absences were so frequent that my wife and I had grown to regard him with considerable suspicion. In the suburbs of London one doesn't mix easily with one's neighbours. "Can I speak to you privately, Mr Holford?" he asked, with a slight hesitancy and a glance at my chauffeur Dick, who at that moment had his hand in the gear-box..."

" ...] At first glance Bernard Boyne, as he stood there in his shirt-sleeves, was an excellent type of the steady, reliable insurance agent, with no soul above "proposals" and "premiums." They constituted his sole aim in life, now that his "dear wife" was dead. Nobody suspected the man who so piously passed round the bag in St. George the Martyr on Sundays to be a man of mystery. Nobody, indeed, would ever have dreamed that the active man in question would be placing cheques to his account of such value as seven thousand odd pounds. "I wonder how long I shall remain here?" he whispered to himself. "I wonder what all these good people would say if they but knew-eh? If they knew But, happily, they don't know " He chuckled to himself. He was silent for a moment as he crossed to rearrange the dusty old ...]."

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 down this record of a perilous journey through a land known only by name to geographers, a vast region wherein no stranger had ever before set foot. The face of the earth is well explored now-a-days, yet it has remained for me to discover and traverse one of the very few unknown countries, and to give the bald-headed old fogies of the Royal Geographical Society a lesson in the science that I once abominated. I have witnessed with my own eyes the mysteries of Mo. I have seen the Great White Queen