The "urgent call"-the instant, peremptory summons to professional duty-is an experience that appertains to the medical rather than the legal practitioner, and I had supposed, when I abandoned the clinical side of my profession in favour of the forensic, that henceforth I should know it no more; that the interrupted meal, the broken leisure, and the jangle of the night-bell, were things of the past; but in practice it was otherwise. The medical jurist is, so to speak, on the borderland of the two professions, and exposed to the vicissitudes of each calling, and so it happened from time to time...

It was nearly nine o'clock. The noisy little clock on the mantelpiece announced the fact, and, by its frantic ticking, seemed as anxious as I to get the consultation hours over. I glanced wistfully at my mud-splashed boots and wondered if I might yet venture to assume the slippers that peeped coyly from under the shabby sofa. I even allowed my thoughts to wander to the pipe that reposed in my coat pocket. Another minute and I could turn down the surgery gas and shut the outer door. The fussy little clock gave a sort of preliminary cough or hiccup, as if it should say: "Ahem ladies and...

"Then as to the hair: it was, as I mentioned to you, circular in section, and of very large diameter. Now, I have examined many thousands of hairs, and the thickest that I have ever seen came from the heads of Japanese; but the hairs from this hat were as thick as any of them. But the hypothesis that the burglar was a Japanese received confirmation in various ways. Thus, he was short, though strong and active, and the Japanese are the shortest of the Mongol races, and very strong and active. "Then his remarkable skill in handling the powerful caretaker-a retired police-sergeant-suggested the...

Thorndyke stood looking up and down the platform with anxiety that increased as the time drew near for the departure of the train. "This is very unfortunate," he said, reluctantly stepping into an empty smoking compartment as the guard executed a flourish with his green flag. "I am afraid we have missed our friend." He closed the door, and, as the train began to move, thrust his head out of the window. "Now I wonder if that will be he," he continued. "If so, he has caught the train by the skin of his teeth, and is now in one of the rear compartments." The subject of Thorndyke's speculations...

-This classic mystery is revitalized with more than 20 pictures to highlight and enhance the readers experience. Dr. John Thorndyke is a British forensic investigator who gets involved in the disappearance of a man named Bellingham. This puzzling case involves a doctor, a pretty lady, and Egyptian antiquities. As one reviewer notes, "R. Austin Freeman is a wonderful writer - witty, engaging and urbane in the best Edwardian manner. At the same time, he writes about forensics and criminal law in a thoroughly modern fashion. Just as Dr. Thorndyke was a scientific detective, Freeman was a...

In writing the following story, the author has had in view no purpose other than that of affording entertainment to such readers as are interested in problems of crime and their solutions; and the story itself differs in no respect from others of its class, excepting in that an effort has been made to keep within the probabilities of ordinary life, both in the characters and in the incidents.

Commenting upon one of my earlier novels, in respect of which I had claimed to have been careful to adhere to common probabilities and to have made use only of really practicable methods of investigation, a critic remarked that this was of no consequence whatever, so long as the story was amusing.

There are, I suppose, few places even on the East Coast of England more lonely and remote than the village of Little Sundersley and the country that surrounds it. Far from any railway, and some miles distant from any considerable town, it remains an outpost of civilization, in which primitive manners and customs and old-world tradition linger on into an age that has elsewhere forgotten them. In the summer, it is true, a small contingent of visitors, adventurous in spirit, though mostly of sedate and solitary habits, make their appearance to swell its meagre population, and impart to the wide...

This classic mystery is revitalized with more than 20 pictures to highlight and enhance the readers experience. Dr. John Thorndyke is a British forensic investigator who gets involved in the disappearance of a man named Bellingham. This puzzling case involves a doctor, a pretty lady, and Egyptian antiquities. As one reviewer notes, "R. Austin Freeman is a wonderful writer - witty, engaging and urbane in the best Edwardian manner. At the same time, he writes about forensics and criminal law in a thoroughly modern fashion. Just as Dr. Thorndyke was a scientific detective, Freeman was a...

It is not without some misgivings that I at length make public the strange history communicated to me by my lamented friend Humphrey Challoner. The outlook of the narrator is so evidently abnormal, his ethical standards are so remote from those ordinarily current, that the chronicle of his life and actions may not only fail to secure the sympathy of the reader but may even excite a certain amount of moral repulsion. But by those who knew him, his generosity to the poor, and especially to those who struggled against undeserved misfortune, will be an ample set-off to his severity and even...