The Gloved Hand

The Marathon Mystery The Holladay Case That Affair at Elizabeth Affairs of State At Odds with the Regent Cadets of Gascony The Path of Honor A Soldier of Virginia The Heritage The Quest for the Rose of Sharon The Girl with the Blue Sailor The Mystery of the Boule Cabinet The Gloved Hand



I was genuinely tired when I got back to the office, that Wednesday afternoon, for it had been a trying day—the last of the series of trying days which had marked the progress of the Minturn case; and my feeling of depression was increased by the fact that our victory had not been nearly so complete as I had hoped it would be. Besides, there was the heat; always, during the past ten days, there had been the heat, unprecedented for June, with the thermometer climbing higher and higher and breaking a new record every day.
As I threw off coat and hat and dropped into the chair before my desk, I could see the heat-waves quivering up past the open windows from the fiery street below. I turned away and closed my eyes, and tried to evoke a vision of white surf falling upon the beach, of tall trees swaying in the breeze, of a brook dropping gently between green banks.
Fountains that frisk and sprinkle The moss they overspill; Pools that the breezes crinkle, ...
and then I stopped, for the door had opened. I unclosed my eyes to see the office-boy gazing at me in astonishment. He was a well-trained boy, and recovered himself in an instant.
Your mail, sir, he said, laid it at my elbow, and went out.
I turned to the letters with an interest the reverse of lively. The words of Henley's ballade were still running through my head—