The master criminal

THE MASTER CRIMINAL
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Five or seven? It won't matter much, will it?
G. SIDNEY PATERNOSTER
Author of The Cruise of the Conquistador, The Lady of the Blue Motor, The Motor Pirate, etc.
ILLUSTRATED BY CHARLES JOHNSON POST
NEW YORK THE CUPPLES & LEON CO. PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY G. SIDNEY PATERNOSTER
All Rights Reserved
The night was of velvety blackness—one of those soft, warm, dark nights of June when the southwest wind rolls a cloud-curtain over the stars, when the air is heavy with unshed rain, when lamps burn dully, and when a nameless oppression broods over the face of the land.
Seated at an open casement looking out into the London night was a woman. Her hands grasped each other over her knee with a tense grip which gave the lie to the calm of her face. Hers was a face to which in repose Rossetti would have woven an adoring sonnet, though not as to another lazy, laughing, languid Jenny, fond of a kiss, and fond of a guinea, but a sonnet of purity and peace. Yet if the sonnet had been written, and the woman had read, the full scarlet lips which seemed to have gathered into them all the colour from her face, would have parted in scornful laughter.
Her eyes, a part of the night into which they gazed, had dull shadows beneath them, painted there by weariness, yet she still sat motionless in a strained attitude of expectation.