The Great Skene Mystery by Bernard Capes — Read

It was on a dreary wet morning, laden with the very spirit of depression, that I led my little party of three across the fields to the Lone Farm. We had talked, or slept, out the night at the "Black Dog" in Market Grazing; and now, in grim fulfilment of the purpose which had brought us so far, were advancing to the assault of the inner abode of that mystery, whose final ramification had ended for us under the waterfall in far-away Piedmont. We numbered, besides myself, Mr Shapter and the two detectives. Johnny and Geoletti had stopped by the way in London, to provide us with the necessary correspondents in that prescriptive centre to all such operations.

We had hardly rested in our flight back from the Continent, since the finding of the inquest held upon those pitiful remains had supplied us with the _argumentum ad rem_ for procuring the extradition of Mr Mark Dalston; but, quick as we had travelled, the news of our presumptive mission had preceded us. For many reasons we should have preferred for the present to have throttled all journalistic gossip; but where was the lethal spot to be found in that myriad-necked Hydra? The story, or a travesty of it, leaked out and ran faster than we could, and was threatening us already, on our arrival in London, with a most undesired fame. The absurdest surmises were rife; the most ingenious inventions drawn upon to provide them. I have no time nor patience to stop and retail a fraction of the nonsense talked by the newspapers.