A Strange Disappearance

Anna Katharine Green

Description

After a young sewing girl goes missing from a Manhattan residence, the alarmed housekeeper calls the police. Bachelor and owner Mr. Holman Blake denies any knowledge of the girl, while blood found on the windowsill and the girl's belongings remaining intact lead the investigator to believe there is more to this story than is being let on. The second book in Green's detective series featuring Mr. Gryce, “A Strange Disappearance” (1880) is a riveting page-turner brimming with intrigue not to be missed by fans of classic detective fiction. Anna Katharine Green (1846–1935) was an American novelist and poet. Among the first writers of detective fiction in America, she is considered to be the “mother” of the genre for her legally-accurate and well-thought-out plots. Contents include: “A Novel Case”, “A Few Points”, “The Contents of a Bureau Drawer”, “Thompson's Story”, “A New York Belle”, “A Bit of Calico”, “The House at the Granby Cross Roads”, “A Word Overheard”, “A Few Golden Hairs”, “The Secret of Mr. Blake's Studio”, etc. Other notable works by this author include: “The Leavenworth Case” (1878), “One of My Sons” (1901), and “The Circular Study” (1900). Read & Co. Classics is proudly republishing this vintage detective novel now in a brand new edition complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author.

Informations

• Publié par: Read Books Ltd.
• Date de parution: 16 février 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781473364660
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE
By
ANNA KATHARINE GREEN

First published in 1880



Copyright © 2020 Read & Co. Classics
This edition is published by Read & Co. Classics, an imprint of Read & Co.
This book is copyright and may not be reproduced or copied in any way without the express permission of the publisher in writing.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Read & Co. is part of Read Books Ltd. For more information visit www.readandcobooks.co.uk


Contents
Anna Kat harine Green
CHAPTER I
A NOVEL CASE
CHAPTER II
A FEW POINTS
CHAPTER III
THE CONTENTS OF A B UREAU DRAWER
CHAPTER IV
THOM PSON’S STORY
CHAPTER V
A NE W YORK BELLE
CHAPTER VI
A B IT OF CALICO
CHAPTER VII
THE HOUSE AT THE GRANBY CROSS ROADS
CHAPTER VIII
A WO RD OVERHEARD
CHAPTER IX
A FEW GOLDEN HAIRS
CHAPTER X
THE SECRET OF MR. BL AKE’S STUDIO
CHAPTER XI
LUTTRA
CHAPTER XII
A WOMAN’S LOVE
C HAPTER XIII
A MAN’S HEART
CHAPTER XIV
MRS. DANIELS
CHAPTER XV
A CONFAB
CHAPTER XVI
THE MARK OF T HE RED CROSS
CHAPTER XVII
THE CAPTURE
CH APTER XVIII
L OVE AND DUTY
CHAPTER XIX
EXPLANATIONS
CHAPTER XX
THE BOND THAT UNITES



Anna Katharine Green
Anna Katharine Green was born in Brooklyn, New York, USA in 1846. She aspired to be a writer from a young age, and corresponded with Ralph Waldo Emerson during her late teens. When her poetry failed to gain recognition, Green produced her first and best-known novel, The Leavenworth Case (1878). Praised by Wilkie Collins, the novel was year's bestseller, establishing Green's reputation.
Green went on to publish around forty books, including A Strange Disappearance (1880), Hand and Ring (1883), The Mill Mystery (1886), Behind Closed Doors (1888), Forsaken Inn (1890), Marked "Personal" (1893), Miss Hurd: An Enigma (1894), The Doctor, His Wife, and the Clock (1895), The Affair Next Door (1897), Lost Man's Lane (1898), Agatha Webb (1899), The Circular Study (1900), The Filigree Ball (1903), The House in the Mist (1905), The Millionaire Baby (1905), The Woman in the Alcove (1906), The Sword of Damocles (1909), The House of the Whispering Pines (1910), Initials Only (1911), Dark Hollow (1914), The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow (1917), The Step on the S tair (1923).
Green wrote at a time when fiction, and especially crime fiction, was dominated by men. However, she is now credited with shaping detective fiction into its classic form, and developing the trope of the recurring detective. Her main character was detective Ebenezer Gryce of the New York Metropolitan Police Force. In three novels, he is assisted by the spinster Amelia Butterworth – the prototype for Miss Marple, Miss Silver and other literary creations. Green also invented the 'girl detective' with the character of Violet Strange, a debutante with a secret life as a sleuth. She died in 1935 in Buffalo, New Yo rk, aged 88.



A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE
CHAPTER I
A NOVEL CASE
“Talking of sudden disappearances the one you mention of Hannah in that Leavenworth case of ours, is not the only remarkable one which has come under my direct notice. Indeed, I know of another that in some respects, at least, surpasses that in points of interest, and if you will promise not to inquire into the real names of the parties concerned, as the affair is a secret, I will relate you my experience re garding it.”
The speaker was Q, the rising young detective, universally acknowledged by us of the force as the most astute man for mysterious and unprecedented cases, then in the bureau, always and of course excepting Mr. Gryce; and such a statement from him could not but arouse our deepest curiosity. Drawing up, then, to the stove around which we were sitting in lazy enjoyment of one of those off-hours so dear to a detective’s heart, we gave with alacrity the required promise; and settling himself back with the satisfied air of a man who has a good story to tell that does not entirely lack certain points redounding to his own credi t, he began:
I was one Sunday morning loitering at the — Precinct Station, when the door opened and a respectable-looking middle-aged woman came in, whose agitated air at once attracted my attention. Going up to her, I asked her what she wanted.
“A detective,” she replied, glancing cautiously about on the faces of the various men scattered through the room. “I don’t wish anything said about it, but a girl disappeared from our house last night, and”—she stopped here, her emotion seeming to choke her—“and I want some one to look her up,” she went on at last with the most inten se emphasis.
“A girl? what kind of a girl; and what house do you mean when you say our house?”
She looked at me keenly before replying. “You are a young man,” said she; “isn’t there some one here more responsible than yourself that I c an talk to?”
I shrugged my shoulders and beckoned to Mr. Gryce who was just then passing. She at once seemed to put confidence in him. Drawing him aside, she whispered a few low eager words which I could not hear. He listened nonchalantly for a moment but suddenly made a move which I knew indicated strong and surprised interest, though from his face—but you know what Gryce’s face is. I was about to walk off, convinced he had got hold of something he would prefer to manage himself, when the Superintend ent came in.
“Where is Gryce?” asked he; “tell him I want him.”
Mr. Gryce heard him and hastened forward. As he passed me, he whispered, “Take a man and go with this woman; look into matters and send me word if you want me; I will be here for two hours.”
I did not need a second permission. Beckoning to Harris, I reapproached the woman. “Where do you come from,” said I, “I am to go back with you and investigate the affai r it seems.”
“Did he say so?” she asked, pointing to Mr. Gryce who now stood with his back to us busily talking with the Sup erintendent.
I nodded, and she at once moved towards the door. “I come from No.— Second Avenue: Mr. Blake’s house,” she whispered, uttering a name so well known, I at once understood Mr. Gryce’s movement of sudden interest “A girl—one who sewed for us—disappeared last night in a way to alarm us very much. She was taken from her room—” “Yes,” she cried vehemently, seeing my look of sarcastic incredulity, “taken from her room; she never went of her own accord; and she must be found if I spend every dollar of the pittance I have laid up in the bank against my old age.”
Her manner was so intense, her tone so marked and her words so vehement, I at once and naturally asked if the girl was a relative of hers that she felt her abductio n so keenly.
“No,” she replied, “not a relative, but,” she went on, looking every way but in my face, “a very dear friend—a—a—protegee, I think they call it, of mine; I—I—She must be found,” she again reiterated.
We were by this time in the street.
“Nothing must be said about it,” she now whispered, catching me by the arm. “I told him so,” nodding back to the building from which we had just issued, “and he promised secrecy. It can be done without folks knowing anything about it , can’t it?”
“Wha t?” I asked.
“Findin g the girl.”
“Well,” said I, “we can tell you better about that when we know a few more of the facts. What is the girl’s name and what makes you think she didn’t go out of the house-door of her own accord?”
“Why, why, everything. She wasn’t the person to do it; then the looks of her room, and—They all got out of the window,” she cried suddenly, “and went away by the side gate into —— Street.”
“They? Who do you me an by they?”
“Why, whoever they were who carri ed her off.”
I could not suppress the “bah!” that rose to my lips. Mr. Gryce might have been able to, but I a m not Gryce.
“You don’t believe,” said she, “that she was c arried off?”
“Well, no,” said I, “not in the sens e you mean.”
She gave another nod back to the police station now a block or so distant. “He did’nt seem to doubt it at all.”
I laughed. “Did you tell him you thought she had been taken off i n this way?”
“Yes, and he said, ‘Very likely.’ And well he might, for I heard the men talking in her room, and—”
“You heard men talking in her room—when?”
“O, it must have been as late as half-past twelve. I had been asleep and the noise they made whisperin g, woke me.”
“Wait,” I said, “tell me where her room is, hers and yours.”
“Hers is the third story back, mine the front one on the same floor.”
“Who are you?” I now inquired. “What position do you occupy in Mr. Bla ke’s house?”
“I am the h ouse