Copyright, 1900,
By Tom Gallon.
Contents
| CHAPTER | PAGE | |
| I. | Wherein the Quick and the Dead Meet | [1] |
| II. | On the Track of a Shadow | [14] |
| III. | Betty Siggs Becomes Alarmed | [27] |
| IV. | A Sunday to be Remembered | [40] |
| V. | An Honest Sailor-man | [53] |
| VI. | At the Sign of “The Three Watermen” | [66] |
| VII. | Master and Servant | [80] |
| VIII. | Tells of Something Hidden in the Wood | [93] |
| IX. | A Summons from Shylock | [106] |
| X. | A Body from the River | [120] |
| XI. | Miss Vint Hears Voices | [133] |
| XII. | Wanted—A Dead Man! | [146] |
| XIII. | Inspector Tokely is Emphatic | [159] |
| XIV. | Betty Siggs Dreams a Dream | [173] |
| XV. | Shady ’un as a Moral Character | [186] |
| XVI. | Who Killed this Woman? | [199] |
| XVII. | Clara Finds a Lodging | [212] |
| XVIII. | A Chase in the Dark | [224] |
| XIX. | Haunted | [238] |
| XX. | Neptune to the Rescue | [252] |
| XXI. | Dr. Cripps is Incoherent | [265] |
| XXII. | Ogledon Plays his Last Card | [279] |
| XXIII. | Dandy Chater Comes from the Grave | [293] |
| XXIV. | A Race for a Life | [306] |
| XXV. | Going—Going—Gone! | [320] |
The Second Dandy Chater
CHAPTER I
WHEREIN THE QUICK AND THE DEAD MEET
If there is one place, in the wide world, more dreary and disconsolate-looking than another, on a gusty evening in March, it is that part of Essex which lies some twenty miles to the north of the Thames, and is bordered nowhere, so far as the eye can reach, by anything but flat and desolate marshlands, and by swampy roads and fields. For there, all the contrary winds of Heaven seem to meet, to play a grand game of buffets with themselves, and everything else which rises an inch or two above the ground; there, the very sun, if he happen to have shown his face at all during the day, sinks more sullenly than anywhere else, as though disgusted with the prospect, and glad to get to bed; there, the few travellers who have been so unwise, or so unfortunate, as to be left out of doors, are surly in consequence, and give but grudging greeting to any one they meet.
On just such an evening as this a solitary man, muffled to the eyes, fought a desperate battle with the various winds, something to his own discomfiture, and very much to the ruffling of his temper, on the way to the small village of Bamberton. The railway leaves off suddenly, some six miles from Bamberton, and the man who would visit that interesting spot must perforce pay for a fly at the Railway Inn, if he desire to enter the place with any ostentation, or must walk.