MYSTERY & REVENGE Collection - The Cold Blooded Vengeance Thrillers: 10 Books in One Volume

This carefully crafted ebook: 'MYSTERY & REVENGE Collection - The Cold Blooded Vengeance Thrillers: 10 Books in One Volume' is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents:
The Evil Shepherd
The Ill-laid Scheme of Mr. Ambrose Weare
The Avenger
The Wicked Marquis
The Long Arm of Mannister
The Turning Wheel
The Sovereign in the Gutter
The Lost Ambassador
Jacob's Ladder
The Ghosts of Society
E. Phillips Oppenheim, the Prince of Storytellers (1866-1946) was an internationally renowned author of mystery and espionage thrillers. His novels and short stories have all the elements of blood-racing adventure and intrigue and are precursors of modern-day spy fictions.

This carefully crafted ebook: 'MYSTERY & REVENGE Collection - The Cold Blooded Vengeance Thrillers: 10 Books in One Volume' is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents:
The Evil Shepherd
The Ill-laid Scheme of Mr. Ambrose Weare
The Avenger
The Wicked Marquis
The Long Arm of Mannister
The Turning Wheel
The Sovereign in the Gutter
The Lost Ambassador
Jacob's Ladder
The Ghosts of Society
E. Phillips Oppenheim, the Prince of Storytellers (1866-1946) was an internationally renowned author of mystery and espionage thrillers. His novels and short stories have all the elements of blood-racing adventure and intrigue and are precursors of modern-day spy fictions.

Zusammenfassung
This carefully crafted ebook: "MYSTERY & REVENGE Collection - The Cold Blooded Vengeance Thrillers: 10 Books in One Volume" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents:
 The Evil Shepherd
 The Ill-laid Scheme of Mr. Ambrose Weare
 The Avenger
 The Wicked Marquis
 The Long Arm of Mannister
 The Turning Wheel
 The Sovereign in the Gutter
 The Lost Ambassador
 Jacob's Ladder
 The Ghosts of Society
 E. Phillips Oppenheim, the Prince of Storytellers (1866-1946) was an internationally renowned author of mystery and espionage thrillers. His novels and short stories have all the elements of blood-racing adventure and intrigue and are precursors of modern-day spy fictions.

Leseprobe
CHAPTER VI
Table of Contents

The three diners lingered for only a short time over their dessert. Afterwards, they passed together into a very delightful library on the other side of the round, stone-paved hall. Hilditch excused himself for a moment.

"I have some cigars which I keep in my dressing-room," he explained, "and which I am anxious for you to try. There is an electric stove there and I can regulate the temperature."

He departed, closing the door behind him. Francis came a little further into the room. His hostess, who had subsided into an easy-chair and was holding a screen between her face and the fire, motioned him to, seat himself opposite. He did so without words. He felt curiously and ridiculously tongue-tied. He fell to studying the woman instead of attempting the banality of pointless speech. From the smooth gloss of her burnished hair, to the daintiness of her low, black brocaded shoes, she represented, so far as her physical and outward self were concerned, absolute perfection. No ornament was amiss, no line or curve of her figure other than perfectly graceful. Yet even the fire's glow which she had seemed to dread brought no flush of colour to her cheeks. Her appearance of complete lifelessness remained. It was as though some sort of crust had formed about her being, a condition which her very physical perfection seemed to render the more incomprehensible.

"You are surprised to see me here living with my husband, after what I told you yesterday afternoon?" she said calmly, breaking at last the silence which had reigned between them.

"I am," he admitted.

"It seems unnatural to you, I suppose?"

"Entirely."

"You still believe all that I told you?"

"I must."

She looked at the door and raised her head a little, as though either listening or adjudging the time before her husband would return. Then she glanced across at him once more.

"Hatred," she said, "does not always drive away. Sometimes it attracts. Sometimes the person who hates can scarcely bear the other out of his sight. That is where hate and love are somewhat alike."

The room was warm but Francis was conscious of shivering. She raised her finger warningly. It seemed typical of the woman, somehow, that the message could not be conveyed by any glance or gesture.

"He is coming," she whispered.

Oliver Hilditch reappeared, carrying cigars wrapped in gold foil which he had brought with him from Cuba, the tobacco of which was a revelation to his guest. The two men smoked and sipped their coffee and brandy. The woman sat with half-closed eyes. It was obvious that Hilditch was still in the mood for speech.

"I will tell you, Mr. Ledsam," he said, "why I am so happy to have you here this evening. In the first place, I desire to tender you once more my thanks for your very brilliant efforts on my behalf. The very fact that I am able to offer you hospitality at all is without a doubt due to these."

"I only did what I was paid to do," Francis insisted, a little harshly. "You must remember that these things come in the day's work with us."

His host nodded.

"Naturally," he murmured. "There was another reason, too, why I was anxious to meet you, Mr. Ledsam," he continued. "You have gathered already that I am something of a crank. I have a profound detestation of all sentimentality and affected morals. It is a relief to me to come into contact with a man who is free from that bourgeois incubus to modern enterprise-a conscience."

"Is that your estimate of me?" Francis asked.

"Why not? You practise your profession in the criminal courts, do you not?"

"That is well-known," was the brief reply.

"What measure of conscience can a man have," Oliver Hilditch argued blandly, "who pleads for the innocent and guilty alike with the same simulated fervour? Confess, now, Mr. Ledsam