Freddie Rooke gazed coldly at the breakfast-table. Through a gleaming eye-glass he inspected the revolting object which Barker, his faithful man, had placed on a plate before him. "Barker!" His voice had a ring of pain. "Sir?" "What's this?" "Poached egg, sir." Freddie averted his eyes with a silent shudder. "It looks just like an old aunt of mine," he said. "Remove it!"

Through the curtained windows of the furnished flat which Mrs. Horace Hignett had rented for her stay in New York, rays of golden sunlight peeped in like the foremost spies of some advancing army. It was a fine summer morning. The hands of the Dutch clock in the hall pointed to thirteen minutes past nine; those of the ormolu clock in the sitting-room to eleven minutes past ten; those of the carriage clock on the bookshelf to fourteen minutes to six. In other words, it was exactly eight; and Mrs. Hignett acknowledged the fact by moving her head on the pillow, opening her eyes, and sitting up...

Freddie Rooke gazed coldly at the breakfast-table. Through a gleaming eye-glass he inspected the revolting object which Barker, his faithful man, had placed on a plate before him. "Barker!" His voice had a ring of pain. "Sir?" "What's this?" "Poached egg, sir." Freddie averted his eyes with a silent shudder. "It looks just like an old aunt of mine," he said. "Remove it!"

Through the curtained windows of the furnished flat which Mrs. Horace Hignett had rented for her stay in New York, rays of golden sunlight peeped in like the foremost spies of some advancing army. It was a fine summer morning. The hands of the Dutch clock in the hall pointed to thirteen minutes past nine; those of the ormolu clock in the sitting-room to eleven minutes past ten; those of the carriage clock on the bookshelf to fourteen minutes to six. In other words, it was exactly eight; and Mrs. Hignett acknowledged the fact by moving her head on the pillow, opening her eyes, and sitting up...

Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (October 15, 1881 - February 14, 1975) was an English comic writer who has enjoyed enormous popular success for more than seventy years. Wodehouse was an acknowledged master of English prose, admired both by contemporaries like Hilaire Belloc, Evelyn Waugh and Rudyard Kipling and by modern writers like Douglas Adams, Salman Rushdie, Christopher Hitchens and Terry Pratchett. Sean OCasey famously called him "English literatures performing flea", a description that Wodehouse said he believed was "meant to be complimentary", and which he used as the title of a...

The man in the street would not have known it, but a great crisis was imminent in New York journalism. Everything seemed much as usual in the city. The cars ran blithely on Broadway. Newsboys shouted "Wux-try!" into the ears of nervous pedestrians with their usual Caruso-like vim. Society passed up and down Fifth Avenue in its automobiles, and was there a furrow of anxiety upon Societys brow? None. At a thousand street corners a thousand policemen preserved their air of massive superiority to the things of this world. Not one of them showed the least sign of perturbation. Nevertheless,...

The sunshine of a fair Spring morning fell graciously on London town. Out in Piccadilly its heartening warmth seemed to infuse into traffic and pedestrians alike a novel jauntiness, so that bus drivers jested and even the lips of chauffeurs uncurled into not unkindly smiles. Policemen whistled at their posts-clerks, on their way to work; beggars approached the task of trying to persuade perfect strangers to bear the burden of their maintenance with that optimistic vim which makes all the difference. It was one of those happy mornings. At nine o'clock precisely the door of Number Seven...

Theres a divinity that shapes our ends. Consider the case of Henry Pifield Rice, detective. I must explain Henry early, to avoid disappointment. If I simply said he was a detective, and let it go at that, I should be obtaining the readers interest under false pretences. He was really only a sort of detective, a species of sleuth. At Staffords International Investigation Bureau, in the Strand, where he was employed, they did not require him to solve mysteries which had baffled the police. He had never measured a footprint in his life, and what he did not know about bloodstains would have...

'Where have I seen that face before?' said a voice. Tony Graham looked up from his bag. 'Hullo, Allen, ' he said, 'what the dickens are you up here for?' 'I was rather thinking of doing a little boxing. If you've no objection, of course.' 'But you ought to be on a bed of sickness, and that sort of thing. I heard you'd crocked yourself.' 'So I did. Nothing much, though. Trod on myself during a game of fives, and twisted my ankle a bit.' 'In for the middles, of course?' 'Yes.' 'So am I.' 'Yes, so I saw in the Sportsman. It says you weigh eleven-three.'