Chapter Iv. Richard Marwood Lights His Pipe. Chapter V
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The Collected Works of M. E. BRADDON (1835-1915) Contents The Novels Three Times Dead (1860) Lady Audley’s Secret (1862) Captain of the Vulture (1863) Aurora Floyd (1863) John Marchmont’s Legacy (1863) The Doctor’s Wife (1864) Henry Dunbar (1864) Birds of Prey (1867) Charlotte’s Inheritance (1868) Run to Earth (1868) Fenton’s Quest (1871) The Lovels of Arden (1872) A Strange World (1875) The Cloven Foot (1879) Vixen (1879) Mount Royal (1882) Phantom Fortune (1883) The Golden Calf (1883) Wyllard’s Weird (1885) Mohawks (1886) Gerard (1891) All along the River (1893) London Pride (1896) His Darling Sin (1899) The Infidel (1900) Beyond These Voices (1910) Mary (1916) The Children’s Book The Christmas Hirelings (1894) The Shorter Fiction Ralph the Bailiff and Other Tales (1862) Milly Darrell (1873) Flower and Weed, and Other Tales (1884) The Short Stories List of Short Stories in Chronological Order List of Short Stories in Alphabetical Order The Play Marjorie Daw (1885) The Memoir My First Novel: ‘The Trail of the Serpent’ (1897) The Delphi Classics Catalogue © Delphi Classics 2020 Version 2 The Collected Works of M. E. BRADDON By Delphi Classics, 2020 COPYRIGHT Collected Works of M. E. Braddon First published in the United Kingdom in 2013 by Delphi Classics. © Delphi Classics, 2020. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published. Delphi Classics is an imprint of Delphi Publishing Ltd Hastings, East Sussex United Kingdom Contact: [email protected] www.delphiclassics.com From classic detective masterpieces to edge-of-your-seat mysteries, explore the Delphi Classics range of exciting Thrillers… Browse our most popular Thrillers here… The Novels Frith Street, Soho Square, London — Braddon’s birthplace Braddon’s brother, the Australian politician Sir Edward Nicholas Coventry Braddon, 18th Premier of Tasmania Three Times Dead (1860) OR, THE TRAIL OF THE SERPENT This novel was first published in 1860, while Mary Elizabeth Braddon was working as an actress in order to help support herself and her mother. It was published in 27 weekly instalments by the Yorkshire publisher C. R. Empson. The sensation thriller (the forerunner of the modern crime or mystery genre) had been popularised by Wilkie Collins with his publication of The Woman in White (1859) and Empson’s serial text added no less than three exclamation marks to the title, to emphasise the novel’s sensational plot. The Trail of the Serpent is the later (and now better known title) of the novel and the one under which it subsequently appeared in volume form. The story involves ‘Daredevil Dick’, who is wrongfully accused of murder, leaving the suspicious Mr. Peters to clear his name and discover the truth. In the late nineteenth-century, sensational or melodramatic ‘page-turners’ were re-marketed for a mass-audience; these so-called ‘yellowbacks’ had lurid yellow covers and were typically sold cheaply at railway bookstalls. Most of Braddon’s novels were reprinted in this format, as shown in the above example. CONTENTS BOOK THE FIRST. A RESPECTABLE YOUNG MAN. CHAPTER I. THE GOOD SCHOOLMASTER. CHAPTER II. GOOD FOR NOTHING. CHAPTER III. THE USHER WASHES HIS HANDS. CHAPTER IV. RICHARD MARWOOD LIGHTS HIS PIPE. CHAPTER V. THE HEALING WATERS. CHAPTER VI. TWO CORONER’S INQUESTS. CHAPTER VII. THE DUMB DETECTIVE A PHILANTHROPIST. CHAPTER VIII SEVEN LETTERS ON THE DIRTY ALPHABET. CHAPTER IX. “MAD, GENTLEMEN OF THE JURY.” BOOK THE SECOND. A CLEARANCE OF ALL SCORES. CHAPTER I. BLIND PETER. CHAPTER II. LIKE AND UNLIKE. CHAPTER III. A GOLDEN SECRET. CHAPTER IV. JIM LOOKS OVER THE BRINK OF THE TERRIBLE GULF. CHAPTER V. MIDNIGHT BY THE SLOPPERTON CLOCKS. CHAPTER VI. THE QUIET FIGURE ON THE HEATH. CHAPTER VII. THE USHER RESIGNS HIS SITUATION. BOOK THE THIRD. HOLY INSTITUTION. CHAPTER I. THE VALUE OF AN OPERA-GLASS. CHAPTER II. WORKING IN THE DARK. CHAPTER III. THE WRONG FOOTSTEP. CHAPTER IV. OCULAR DEMONSTRATION. CHAPTER V. THE KING OF SPADES. CHAPTER VI. A GLASS OF WINE. CHAPTER VII. THE LAST ACT OF LUCRETIA BORGIA. CHAPTER VIII. BAD DREAMS AND A WORSE WAKING. CHAPTER IX. A MARRIAGE IN HIGH LIFE. CHAPTER X. ANIMAL MAGNETISM. BOOK THE FOURTH. NAPOLEON THE GREAT. CHAPTER I. THE BOY FROM SLOPPERTON. CHAPTER II. MR. AUGUSTUS DARLEY AND MR. JOSEPH PETERS GO OUT FISHING. CHAPTER III. THE EMPEROR BIDS ADIEU TO ELBA. CHAPTER IV. JOY AND HAPPINESS FOR EVERYBODY. CHAPTER V. THE CHEROKEES TAKE AN OATH. CHAPTER VI. MR. PETERS RELATES HOW HE THOUGHT HE HAD A CLUE, AND HOW HE LOST IT. BOOK THE FIFTH. THE DUMB DETECTIVE. CHAPTER I. THE COUNT DE MAROLLES AT HOME. CHAPTER II. MR. PETERS SEES A GHOST. CHAPTER III. THE CHEROKEES MARK THEIR MAN. CHAPTER IV. THE CAPTAIN, THE CHEMIST, AND THE LASCAR. CHAPTER V. THE NEW MILKMAN IN PARK LANE. CHAPTER VI. SIGNOR MOSQUETTI RELATES AN ADVENTURE. CHAPTER VII. THE GOLDEN SECRET IS TOLD, AND THE GOLDEN BOWL IS BROKEN. CHAPTER VIII. ONE STEP FURTHER ON THE RIGHT TRACK. CHAPTER IX. CAPTAIN LANSDOWN OVERHEARS A CONVERSATION WHICH APPEARS TO INTEREST HIM. BOOK THE SIXTH. ON THE TRACK. CHAPTER I. FATHER AND SON. CHAPTER II. RAYMOND DE MAROLLES SHOWS HIMSELF BETTER THAN ALL BOW STREET. CHAPTER III. THE LEFT-HANDED SMASHER MAKES HIS MARK. CHAPTER IV. WHAT THEY FIND IN THE ROOM IN WHICH THE MURDER WAS COMMITTED. CHAPTER V. MR. PETERS DECIDES ON A STRANGE STEP, AND ARRESTS THE DEAD. CHAPTER VI. THE END OF THE DARK ROAD. CHAPTER THE LAST. FAREWELL TO ENGLAND. Opening of the serial An illustration from the original serial BOOK THE FIRST. A RESPECTABLE YOUNG MAN. CHAPTER I. THE GOOD SCHOOLMASTER. I DON’T SUPPOSE it rained harder in the good town of Slopperton-on-the-Sloshy than it rained anywhere else. But it did rain. There was scarcely an umbrella in Slopperton that could hold its own against the rain that came pouring down that November afternoon, between the hours of four and five. Every gutter in High Street, Slopperton; every gutter in Broad Street (which was of course the narrowest street); in New Street (which by the same rule was the oldest street); in East Street, West Street, Blue Dragon Street, and Windmill Street; every gutter in every one of these thoroughfares was a little Niagara, with a maelstrom at the corner, down which such small craft as bits of orange-peel, old boots and shoes, scraps of paper, and fragments of rag were absorbed — as better ships have been in the great northern whirlpool. That dingy stream, the Sloshy, was swollen into a kind of dirty Mississippi, and the graceful coal-barges which adorned its bosom were stripped of the clothes-lines and fluttering linen which usually were to be seen on their decks. A bad, determined, black-minded November day. A day on which the fog shaped itself into a demon, and lurked behind men’s shoulders, whispering into their ears, “Cut your throat! — you know you’ve got a razor, and can’t shave with it, because you’ve been drinking and your hand shakes; one little gash under the left ear, and the business is done. It’s the best thing you can do. It is, really.” A day on which the rain, the monotonous ceaseless persevering rain, has a voice as it comes down, and says, “Don’t you think you could go melancholy mad? Look at me; be good enough to watch me for a couple of hours or so, and think, while you watch me, of the girl who jilted you ten years ago; and of what a much better man you would be to-day if she had only loved you truly. Oh, I think, if you’ll only be so good as watch me, you might really contrive to go mad.” Then again the wind. What does the wind say, as it comes cutting through the dark passage, and stabbing you, like a coward as it is, in the back, just between the shoulders — what does it say? Why, it whistles in your ear a reminder of the little bottle of laudanum you’ve got upstairs, which you had for your toothache last week, and never used. A foggy wet windy November day. A bad day — a dangerous day. Keep us from bad thoughts to-day, and keep us out of the Police Reports next week. Give us a glass of something hot and strong, and a bit of something nice for supper, and bear with us a little this day; for if the strings of yonder piano — an instrument fashioned on mechanical principles by mortal hands — if they are depressed and slackened by the influence of damp and fog, how do we know that there may not be some string in this more critical instrument, the human mind, not made on mechanical principles or by mortal hands, a little out of order on this bad November day? But of course bad influences can only come to bad men; and of course he must be a very bad man whose spirits go up and down with every fluctuation of the weather- glass. Virtuous people no doubt are virtuous always; and by no chance, or change, or trial, or temptation, can they ever become other than virtuous. Therefore why should a wet day or a dark day depress, them? No; they look out of the windows at houseless men and women and fatherless and motherless children wet through to the skin, and thank Heaven that they are not as other men: like good Christians, punctual rate- payers, and unflinching church-goers as they are.