Explore "The Hangman's Knot" by Arthur Gask on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
One Sunday afternoon towards the end of September, about three months after the events recorded in the last chapter, two men were seated in the crowded winter-garden of the Hotel Metropole at Brighton. One of them was a journalist, attached to the London 'Daily Cry,' and the other, a rubber planter, home on holiday from the Federated Malay States. The latter was reading a Sunday newspaper, and presently he threw it down.
"Well, really," he remarked carelessly, "this dear old England of ours does not seem the law-abiding place it used to be, and certainly its police are not nearly as efficient as in days gone by." His voice rose a little. "Why, here have I been home not a couple of months until next week, and yet I can recall at least four unsolved murders, and also a mysterious disappearance that looks darned like foul-play, too." He held out the newspaper to his companion. "And here's another outrage, I see, reported this morning, some one shooting at Lord Cornwall's car yesterday at Barnstead, and a bullet going through the window. What the devil was that done for, I wonder?"