He flung open a drawer and took from it a heavy dagger in a sheath with blood-stains upon it. On the blade were engraved the words, "Blut und Ehre!"Frank Everett was a rising young press attaché at the British Embassy in Paris - until he was found dead in his Rue St. Georges apartment, a knife wound to the throat. Was it a political assassination, a crime passionnel, or possibly even suicide?The foreign office call in the redoubtable Detective Inspector Rich...

"There's one thing which I daresay you noticed—that pair of slippers half kicked under the bath were of men's size.""Yes, I noticed that, too, and they were sprinkled with blood."A man went calmly about his work while his wife lay dead in the house. After he is arrested and accused of the murder, doubt is cast regarding his guilt. Richardson is assigned the case.Richardson delves into the murdered woman's strange background, and becomes convinced that the law ...

"I'm writing to you about the death of Mr. Dearborn. You bet the murderer's laughing up his sleeve now that he's got away with it."An inquest is held in South Devon on the death of a man apparently killed in a motor accident on Dartmoor: the verdict is "Death from misadventure." But soon afterwards Scotland Yard and the Devon Chief Constable receive anonymous letters alleging that the verdict was wrong; that the death was caused by blows inflicted by a person, or persons, u...

The D.D.I. recognized him and smiled. "That was a great case you brought us. You'll be interested to hear that it is a case of mur-r-der!"For eight years Basil Thomson headed the famous C.I.D., New Scotland Yard. He knew the Yard inside out. Now in this tale of mystery and detection we are taken behind the scenes. We are shown the greatest detection machine in the world in motion, and see how the Yard tracked down its man.Stand, then, with young P.C. Richardson on th...

None of the other guests could explain what she was doing in Crooked Lane during the night…Beautiful Margaret Gask, guest at Scudamore Hall, was shot to death on the driveway of the estate. The mink coat that she should have been wearing turned out to be the first clue Scotland Yard had to work on. Then a man she knew, a receiver of stolen goods, turns up dead. Soon more shady characters are drawn into the story: receivers, jewel thieves, confidence men and convict...

In the hall he found the body of his maidservant, Helen Dunn, aged about fifty, lying on the floor near the telephone. She had bled profusely from a wound in the head and her body was cold.Richardson's second case begins with a murder and robbery at a quiet house in Laburnum Road, and goes on to include an escaped parrot and a seemingly perfect crime which threatened a scandal to shock all England.Follow with Detective-Sergeant Richardson the fantastic story of an an...

"The late Miss Clynes, sir? How dreadful. It must have been very sudden.""It was."Naomi Clynes was found dead, her head in the gas-oven. She left a suicide note, but Richardson, newly promoted to the rank of Inspector in the C.I.D., soon has cause to think this is a case of murder. With scarcely a clue beyond a postmark and a postage stamp, treasured by the deceased, he succeeds in bringing home the crime to a person whom no one would have suspected....

"What are you looking for, sir?" he said."Bloodstains."Scotland Yard is concerned with the murderer, or murderers, of the mysterious Bernard Pitt. The dead man is discovered with a false identity, courtesy of the many forged papers and documents found with him.The trail leads to France, where we discover why a French milliner chose to ride in a laundry basket, why the two American men are so interested in their wives' hat trimmings, and why it is so difficult ...

First World War espionage was a fascinating and dangerous affair, spawning widespread paranoia in its clandestine wake. The hysteria of the age, stoked by those within the British establishment who sought to manipulate popular panic, meant there was no shortage of suspects. Exaggerated claims were rife: some 80,000 Germans were supposedly hidden all over Britain, just waiting for an impending (and imagined) invasion. No one could be trusted... Against this backdrop, as head of Scotland Yar...

THE INGRAINED love of personal liberty inherent in the British people and their distrust in giving additional power to their governments made Great Britain one of the slowest countries in the world to institute police. Jurists were far in advance of public opinion. Jeremy Bentham (1747-1832) considered police necessary as a method of precaution to prevent crimes and calamities as well as to correct and cure them. Blackstone in his Commentaries (1765) wrote, "By public police and economy I ...

MY READERS WILL be divided between those who think that I have not told enough, that I have told too much and that I had better have told nothing at all. I bow my head to them all.The list of those to whom my thanks are due is too long to set out in a preface. It would include the names of my admirable staff, of sailors, soldiers and civilians of many countries besides our own in almost every walk of life and even of a few of our late enemies. No drama, no film story yet written has...

A BIG Sunbeam touring car was crawling along the concrete road of one of the new building estates bordering on Ealing. Its occupants were gazing at the fronts of the houses on either side of the road.“I must explain that Christine is still under the spell of this new craze for modern houses, replete with all the gadgets which become your own property as soon as you have paid the first instalment to the building society,” said Herbert Mitchell to his friend Jim Milsom, who had undert...