A Baffling Quest Author:Richard Dowling General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1891 Original Publisher: United States Book Company Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com wh... more »ere you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER III. A VISITOR FROM THE HALL, In a very few minutes Arthur Longton was standing before Mrs. Gort in the dim dining-room of his lodgings. The fog of the day before had disappeared, but the light of morning was still scant and thin. " Is this news true ? " said he, his face pale, his eyes contracted in dismay. "There's no doubt about it, Mr. Longton. Although seven o'clock has not long gone, the affair is all over the town. Isn't it horrible ? " said the woman, looking round her apprehensively. "Appalling. But tell me what you have heard," said Longton, moving uneasily about the room. He was a man of medium height, with powerful, compact figure, broad shoulders, and a steady, leisurely gait; his eyes were full, bright blue ; his forehead white and low and firm ; his nose aquiline ; his chin large and square, and scarcely bearing out the promise of intellectual delicacy of the forehead ; his mouth was full-lipped and wonderfully mobile ; his light-brown hair curled in close rings on his head. He wore neither whiskers nor beard. Heavy brown mustaches drooped over his lips. His clear white brows were knitted as he waited for Mrs. Gort's answer. " It was the milkman told me," said she, a dark thin, keen-looking woman of fifty or sixty. " He said news came to town very early this morning that the hall had been broken into last night by thieves, and the body of Sir Andrew carried away for a reward, it is supposed. Theybelieve the notion was started in the mind of whoever did it by that case in America some time ago." " I remember the case." He wa...« less