PROLOGUE - CAST UP BY THE SEA A wild bleak-looking coast, with huge water-worn promontories jutting out into the sea, daring the tempestuous fury of the waves, which dashed furiously in sheets of seething foam against the iron rocks. Two of these headlands ran out for a considerable distance, and at the base of each, ragged cruel-looking rocks stretched still further out into the ocean until they entirely disappeared beneath the heaving waste of waters, and only the sudden line of white foam every now and then streaking the dark green waves betrayed their treacherous presence to the idle eye....

A man murdered -- shot through the heart In the quiet cathedral city of Beorminster, so unusual an event can only bring on dizzying excitement. Amateur detectives by the dozen gather on street corners to thrash out the problem -- and in public-houses, where they develop their most intricate theories over their beer. But now there appears in Beorminster the strangest figure: an elderly, weather-beaten man with the quick, alert eye of a fowl. For all he looks like a sailor, he calls himself a missionary -- saying he has labored these many years in the Lord's vineyard of the South Seas, and has...

Based on the sensational bestselling mystery novel by a young lawyer from New Zealand, the play "The Mystery of a Hansom Cab" was one of the most popular melodramas of its time. Originally produced in 1888, the play is regarded as one of the first detective stories for the stage and even included a detective who uses disguises several years before the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes. After its successful London engagement at the Princess's Theatre, the play toured the British provinces and became a staple of American stock companies will into the 20th Century.

Fergusson Wright Hume, known as Fergus Hume (1859 - 1932) was a prolific English novelist producing more than 100 novels and short stories. Finding that the novels of Emile Gaboriau were then very popular, he obtained and read a set of them and determined to write a novel of a similar kind. The result was the self-published novel The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (1886), which became a great success. Hume based his descriptions of poor urban life on his knowledge of Little Bourke Street. It eventually became the best selling mystery novel of the Victorian era. This novel inspired Arthur Conan Doyle...