The atmosphere of the office that morning was a shade less genial than usual. We had all of us fought our way downtown through such a storm of wind, snow, slush, and sleet as is to be found nowhere save in mid-March New York, and our tempers had suffered accordingly. I had found a cab unobtainable, and there was, of course, the inevitable jam on the Elevated, with the trains many minutes behind the schedule. I was some half-hour late, in consequence, and when I entered the inner office, I was surprised to find Mr. Graham, our senior, already at his desk. He nodded good-morning a little...

The Wiles of Womankind Archibald Rushford, tall, lean, the embodiment of energy, stood at the window, hands in pockets, and stared disgustedly out at the dreary vista of sand-dunes and bathing-machines, closed in the distance by a stretch of gray sea mounting toward a horizon scarcely discernible through the drifting mist which hung above the water.

Twilight was at hand when the little steamer, slender as a greyhound, cast loose from the pier at Holyhead, made its way cautiously out past the breakwater, and then, gathering speed, headed away across the Irish Sea, straight toward the setting sun. The boat showed many evidences that the Irish Sea can be savage when it chooses. Everything movable about the decks was carefully lashed down; there were railings and knotted ropes everywhere to cling to; and in the saloon the table-racks were set ready at hand, as though they had just been used, and might be needed again at any moment. But, on...

"Let us have coffee on the terrace," Bloem suggested, and, as his companion nodded, lifted a finger to the waiter and gave the order. Both were a little sad, for this was their last meal together. Though they had known each other less than a fortnight, they had become fast friends. They had been thrown together by chance at the Surgical congress at Vienna, where Bloem, finding the American's German lame and halting, had constituted himself a sort of interpreter, and Stewart had reciprocated by polishing away some of the roughnesses and Teutonic involutions of Bloem's formal English.

"That seems to be all right, Lester," said Mr. Royce, and handed the papers back to me. "I'll be mighty glad when we get that off our hands." So, I knew, would the whole force of the office, for the case had been an unusually irritating one, tangling itself up in the most unexpected ways, until, with petitions and counter-petitions and answers and demurrers and what not, we were all heartily tired of it. I slipped the papers into an envelope and shot them into a pigeon-hole with a sigh of relief.

I was genuinely tired when I got back to the office, that Wednesday afternoon, for it had been a trying day-the last of the series of trying days which had marked the progress of the Minturn case; and my feeling of depression was increased by the fact that our victory had not been nearly so complete as I had hoped it would be. Besides, there was the heat; always, during the past ten days, there had been the heat, unprecedented for June, with the thermometer climbing higher and higher and breaking a new record every day.

"The Mystery of the Boule Cabinet" is not a French detective story, insasmuch as the scene is laid right in the heart of New York City; but it is worthy of the best French masters of detective fiction in its audacity of plot, in the logical and at the same time baffling manner in which the clues are unwound, in its astonishing turns and twists, its astounding denouement, and above all in its wonderful central figure, who is one of the few really great characters in detective fiction."