The Mystery of the Downs

THE MYSTERY OF THE DOWNS
BY THE SAME AUTHORS
THE HAMPSTEAD MYSTERY
“The care with which the story is written, the complicated plot and the clash of the different practices of man-hunters lift it out of the common run of mystery tales and make it an absorbing book.”
Philadelphia Press.
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
By WATSON & REES AUTHORS OF “THE HAMPSTEAD MYSTERY,” ETC.
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY LONDON: JOHN LANE, The BODLEY HEAD TORONTO: S.B. GUNDY MCMXVIII
Copyright, 1918, by JOHN LANE COMPANY Press of J. J. Little & Ives Company New York, U.S.A.
THE MYSTERY OF THE DOWNS
The storm had descended swiftly, sweeping in suddenly from the sea, driving across the downs to the hills at high speed, blotting out the faint rays of a crescent moon and hiding the country-side beneath a pall of blackness, which was forked at intervals by flashes of lightning.
The darkness was so impenetrable, and the fury of the storm so fierce, that Harry Marsland pulled his hat well over his eyes and bent over his horse’s neck to shield his face from the driving rain, trusting to the animal’s sagacity and sure-footedness to take him safely down the cliff road in the darkness, where a slip might plunge them into the breakers which he could hear roaring at the foot of the cliffs.