The Mystery Queen

The Mystery Queen Fergus Hume
1912

Contents
I. A STRANGE VISITOR
II. A COMPLETE MYSTERY
III. DUTY BEFORE PLEASURE
IV. AN AMATEUR DETECTIVE
V. MUDDY WATER
VI. THE INVENTOR
VII. THE HERMIT LADIES
VIII. AVIATION
IX. MAHOMET'S COFFIN
X. ANOTHER MYSTERY
XI. ON THE TRAIL
XII. AN AMAZING ADVENTURE
XIII. A BOLD DETERMINATION
XIV. A BUSY AFTERNOON
XV. ABSOLUTE PROOF

XVI. DAN'S DIPLOMACY
XVII. AT BAY
XVIII. THE FLIGHT
XIX. TREACHERY
XX. QUEEN BEELZEBUB'S END
XXI. SUNSHINE
Chapter I.
A STRANGE VISITOR
"A penny for your thoughts, Dad," cried Lillian, suppressing a
school-girl desire to throw one of the nuts on her plate at her father and
rouse him from his brown study.
Sir Charles Moon looked up with a start, and drew his bushy grey
eye-brows together. "Some people would give more than that to know
them, my dear."
"What sort of people?" asked the young man who sat beside Lillian,
industriously cracking filberts for her consumption.
"Dangerous people," replied Sir Charles grimly, "very dangerous,
Dan."
Mrs. Bolstreath, fat, fair, and fifty, Lillian's paid companion and
chaperon, leaned back complacently. She had enjoyed an excellent
dinner: she was beautifully dressed: and shortly she would witness the
newest musical comedy; three very good reasons for her amiable
expression. "All people are dangerous to millionaires," she remarked,
pointing the compliment at her employer, 'since all people enjoy life
with wealth, and wish to get the millionaire's money honestly or
dishonestly."

"The people you mention have failed to get mine, Mrs. Bolstreath," was
the millionaire's dry response.
"Of course I speak generally and not of any particular person, Sir
Charles."
"I am aware of it," he answered, nodding; and showed a tendency to
relapse into his meditation, but that his daughter raised her price for
confession.
"A sixpence for your thoughts, Dad, a shilling--ten shillings--then one
pound, you insatiable person."
"My kingdom for an explicit statement," murmured Dan, laying aside
the crackers. "Lillian, my child, you must not eat any more nuts, or you
will be having indigestion."
"I believe Dad has indigestion already."
"Some people will have it very badly before I am done with them," said
Sir Charles, not echoing his daughter's laughter: then, to prevent further
questions being asked, he addressed himself to the young man. "How
are things going with you, Halliday?"
When Sir Charles asked questions thus stiffly, Dan knew that he was
not too well pleased, and guessed the reason, which had to do with
Lillian, and with Lillian's friendly attitude to a swain not overburdened
with money--to wit, his very own self--who replied diplomatically.
"Things are going up with me, sir, if you mean aeroplanes."
"Frivolous! Frivolous!" muttered the big man seriously; "as a
well-educated young man who wants money, you should aim at higher
things."
"He aims at the sun," said Lillian gaily, "how much higher do you
expect him to aim, Dad?"
"Aiming at the sun is he," said Moon heavily; "h'm! he'll be like that

classical chap, who flew too high and came smash."
"Do you mean Icarus or Phaeton, Sir Charles?" asked Mrs. Bolstreath,
who, having been a governess, prided herself upon exceptional
knowledge.
"I don't know which of the two; perhaps one, perhaps both. But he flew
in an aeroplane like Dan here, and came to grief."
"Oh!" Lillian turned distinctly pale. "I hope, Dan, you won't come to
grief."
Before the guest could reply, Sir Charles reassured his daughter.
"Naught was never in danger," he said, still grim and unsmiling, "don't
trouble, Lillian, my dear. Dan won't come to grief in that way, although
he may in another."
Lillian opened her blue eyes and stared while young Halliday grew
crimson and fiddled with the nutshells. "I don't know what you mean,
Dad?" said the girl after a puzzled pause.
"I think Dan does," rejoined her father, rising and pushing back his
chair slowly. He looked at his watch. "Seven-thirty; you have plenty of
time to see your play, which does not begin until nine," he added,
walking towards the door. "Mrs. Bolstreath, I should like to speak with
you."
"But, Dad--"
"My dear Lillian, I have no time to wait. There is an important
appointment at nine o'clock here, and afterwards I must go to the House.
Go and enjoy yourself, but don't--" here his stern grey eyes rested on
Dan's bent head in a significant way--"don't be foolish. Mrs.
Bolstreath," he beckoned, and left the room.
"Oh!" sighed the chaperon-governess-companion, for she was all three,
a kind of modern Cerberus, guarding the millionaire's child. "I thought
it would come to this!" and she also looked significantly at Halliday

before she vanished to join her employer.
Lillian stared at the closed door through which both her father and Mrs.
Bolstreath had passed, and then looked at Dan, sitting somewhat
disconsolately at the