Gordon Holmes has a happy method in the way he talks to his readers. He takes something for granted instead of spinning out to a fine point every single idea.He gives us two diametrically opposite characters in his two detectives—the Scotland Yard man and the amateur. Then he gives his readers the same clues the detectives have in Lady Dyke's disappearance.No reader can resist the subtle invitation to speculate as to what has happened and is going to happen. It is a most involved tangle.
Bruce read:
"I opened your message. Alice not here. I have not seen her for over a week. What do you mean by wire? Am coming to town at once.--EDITH."
The baronet's pale face and strained voice betrayed the significance of the thought underlying the simple question.
"What do you make of it, Claude?"
Bruce, too, was very grave. "The thing looks queer," he said; "though the explanation may be trifling. Come, I will help you. Let us reach your house. It is the natural centre for inquiries."
They hailed a hansom and whirled off to Portman Square. They did not say much. Each man felt that the affair might not end so happily and satisfactorily as he hoped.
INSPECTOR WHITE
Lady Dyke had disappeared.
Whether dead or alive, and if alive, whether detained by force or absent of her own unfettered volition, this handsome and well-known leader of Society had vanished utterly from the moment when Cl
A British Lady steps onto a train and disappears. Is she dead? Run away? Complicated by false identities and British Victorian era fear of scandal. Not bad, but would have been better if author was French!
