The Mystery of Murray Davenport

បMystery of Murray Davenport [with accents]

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Title: The Mystery of Murray Davenport A Story of New York at the Present Day
Author: Robert Neilson Stephens
Release Date: October, 2005 [EBook #9185] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on September 12, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE MYSTERY OF MURRAY DAVENPORT
A Story of New York at the Present Day By
Robert Neilson Stephens
1903

Works of Robert Neilson Stephens
An Enemy to the King
The Continental Dragoon
The Road to Paris
A Gentleman Player
Philip Winwood
Captain Ravenshaw
The Mystery of Murray Davenport

[Illustration: "'DO YOU KNOW WHAT A "JONAH" IS?'"]

CONTENTS
I. MR. LARCHER GOES OUT IN THE RAIN
II. ONE OUT OF SUITS WITH FORTUNE
III. A READY-MONEY MAN
IV. AN UNPROFITABLE CHILD
V. A LODGING BY THE RIVER
VI. THE NAME OF ONE TURL COMES UP
VII. MYSTERY BEGINS
VIII. MR. LARCHER INQUIRES
IX. MR. BUD'S DARK HALLWAY
X. A NEW ACQUAINTANCE
XI. FLORENCE DECLARES HER ALLEGIANCE
XII. LARCHER PUTS THIS AND THAT TOGETHER
XIII. MR. TURL WITH HIS BACK TO THE WALL
XIV. A STRANGE DESIGN
XV. TURL'S NARRATIVE CONTINUED
XVI. AFTER THE DISCLOSURE
XVII. BAGLEY SHINES OUT
XVIII. FLORENCE

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
"'DO YOU KNOW WHAT A "JONAH" IS?'"
"THE PLAY BECAME THE PROPERTY OF BAGLEY"
"'I'M AFRAID IT'S A CASE OF MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE'"
"'YOU'RE QUITE WELCOME TO THE USE OF MY AUTOMOBILE'"
"TURL, HAVING TAKEN A MOMENT'S PRELIMINARY THOUGHT, BEGAN HIS ACCOUNT"
"'GOOD EVENING, MR. MURRAY DAVENPORT! HOW ABOUT MY BUNCH OF MONEY?'"

THE MYSTERY OF MURRAY DAVENPORT

CHAPTER I
.
MR. LARCHER GOES OUT IN THE RAIN
The night set in with heavy and unceasing rain, and, though the month was August, winter itself could not have made the streets less inviting than they looked to Thomas Larcher. Having dined at the caterer's in the basement, and got the damp of the afternoon removed from his clothes and dried out of his skin, he stood at his window and gazed down at the reflections of the lights on the watery asphalt. The few people he saw were hastening laboriously under umbrellas which guided torrents down their backs and left their legs and feet open to the pour. Clean and dry in his dressing-gown and slippers, Mr. Larcher turned toward his easy chair and oaken bookcase, and thanked his stars that no engagement called him forth. On such a night there was indeed no place like home, limited though home was to a second-story "bed sitting-room" in a house of "furnished rooms to let" on a crosstown street traversing the part of New York dominated by the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.
Mr. Larcher, who was a blue-eyed young man of medium size and medium appearance every way, with a smooth shaven, clear-skinned face whereon sat good nature overlaid with self-esteem, spread himself in his chair, and made ready for content. Just then there was a knock at his door, and a negro boy servant shambled in with a telegram.
"Who the deuce--?" began Mr. Larcher, with irritation; but when he opened the message he appeared to have his breath taken away by joyous surprise. "Can I call?" he said, aloud. "Well, rather!" He let his book drop forgotten, and bestirred himself in swift preparation to go out. The telegram read merely:
"In town over night. Can you call Savoy at once? EDNA."
The state of Mr. Larcher's feelings toward the person named Edna has already been deduced by the reader. It was a state which made the young man plunge into the weather with gladness, dash to Sixth Avenue with no sense of the rain's discomfort, mentally check off the streets with impatience as he sat in a north-bound car, and finally cover with flying feet the long block to the Savoy Hotel. Wet but radiant, he was, after due announcement, shown into the drawing-room of a suite, where he was kept waiting, alone with his thumping heart, for ten minutes. At the end of that time a young lady came in with a swish from the