Robert Barr

Titles in Fiction category:

• Face And The Mask, The

  Lurine, was pretty, petite, and eighteen. She had a nice situation at the Pharmacie de Siam, in the Rue St. Honore. She had no one dependent upon her, and all the money she earned was her own. Her dress was of cheap material perhaps, but it was cut and fitted with that daintiness o ...

• From Whose Bourne

  "My dear," said William Brenton to his wife, "do you think I shall be missed if I go upstairs for a while? I am not feeling at all well."

• Heralds of Fame, The

  Now, when each man's place in literature is so clearly defined, it seems ridiculous to state that there was a time when Kenan Buel thought J. Lawless Hodden a great novelist. One would have imagined that Buel's keen insight into human nature would have made such a mistake impossible, but ...

• In a Steamer Chair

  Mr. George Morris stood with his arms folded on the bulwarks of the steamship City of Buffalo, and gazed down into the water. All around him was the bustle and hurry of passengers embarking, with friends bidding good-bye. Among the throng, here and there, the hardworking men of the ...

• Jennie Baxter, Journalist

  Miss Jennie Baxter, with several final and dainty touches that put to rights her hat and dress--a little pull here and a pat there--regarded herself with some complacency in the large mirror that was set before her, as indeed she had every right to do, for she was an exceedingly pretty gi ...

• Midst of Alarms, In the

  In the marble-floored vestibule of the Metropolitan Grand Hotel in Buffalo, Professor Stillson Renmark stood and looked about him with the anxious manner of a person unused to the gaudy splendor of the modern American house of entertainment. The professor had paused halfway between the do ...

• One Day's Courtship

  John Trenton, artist, put the finishing touches to the letter he was writing, and then read it over to himself. It ran as follows:--

• Rock in the Baltic, A

  In the public room of the Sixth National Bank at Bar Harbor in Maine, Lieutenant Alan Drummond, H.M.S. "Consternation," stood aside to give precedence to a lady. The Lieutenant had visited the bank for the purpose of changing several crisp white Bank of England notes into the currency of ...

• Strong Arm, The

  The aged Emir Soldan sat in his tent and smiled; the crafty Oriental smile of an experienced man, deeply grounded in the wisdom of this world. He knew that there was incipient rebellion in his camp; that the young commanders under him thought their leader was becoming too old for the fray ...

• Sword Maker, The

  Considering the state of the imperial city of Frankfort, one would not expect to find such a gathering as was assembled in the Kaiser cellar of the Rheingold drinking tavern. Outside in the streets all was turbulence and disorder; a frenzy on the part of the populace taxing to the utmost ...

• Woman Intervenes, A

  The managing editor of the New York Argus sat at his desk with a deep frown on his face, looking out from under his shaggy eyebrows at the young man who had just thrown a huge fur overcoat on the back of one chair, while he sat down himself on another.

Titles in Short Stories category:

• "And the Rigour of the Game"    

  Old Mr. Saunders went home with bowed head and angry brow. He had not known that Dick was in the habit of coming in late, but he had now no doubt of the fact. He himself went to bed early and slept soundly, as a man with a good conscience is entitled to do. But the boy's mother must have ...

• "Gentlemen: The King!"    

  The room was large, but with a low ceiling, and at one end of the lengthy, broad apartment stood a gigantic fireplace, in which was heaped a pile of blazing logs, whose light, rather than that of several lanterns hanging from nails along the timbered walls, illuminated the faces of the tw ...

• "Out of Thun"

  I.--BESSIE'S BEHAVIOUR.

• Alpine Divorce, An    

  In some natures there are no half-tones; nothing but raw primary colours. John Bodman was a man who was always at one extreme or the other. This probably would have mattered little had he not married a wife whose nature was an exact duplicate of his own.

• Ambassador's Pigeons, The

  Haziddin, the ambassador, stood at the door of his tent and gazed down upon the famous city of Baalbek, seeing it now for the first time. The night before, he had encamped on the heights to the south of Baalbek, and had sent forward to that city, messengers to the Prince, carrying greetin ...

• Archbishop's Gift, The

  Arras, blacksmith and armourer, stood at the door of his hut in the valley of the Alf, a league or so from the Moselle, one summer evening. He was the most powerful man in all the Alf-thal, and few could lift the iron sledge-hammer he wielded as though it were a toy. Arras had twelve sons ...

• Bromley Gibberts Story, The

  The room in which John Shorely edited the Weekly Sponge was not luxuriously furnished, but it was comfortable. A few pictures decorated the walls, mostly black and white drawings by artists who were so unfortunate as to be compelled to work for the Sponge on the cheap. Magaz ...

• Case of Fever, A

    "O, underneath the blood red sun,
    No bloodier deed was ever done!
    Nor fiercer retribution sought
    The hand that first red ruin wrought."

• Converted

  In the ample stone-paved courtyard of the Schloss Grunewald, with its mysterious bubbling spring in the centre, stood the Black Baron beside his restive horse, both equally eager to be away. Round the Baron were grouped his sixteen knights and their saddled chargers, all waiting the word ...

• Count Konrad's Courtship

  It was nearly midnight when Count Konrad von Hochstaden reached his castle on the Rhine, with a score of very tired and hungry men behind him. The warder at the gate of Schloss Hochstaden, after some cautious parley with the newcomers, joyously threw apart the two great iron- studded oake ...

• Count's Apology, The    

  There was a trace of impatience in his Lordship's bearing, and well there might be, for here was the Council of State in assemblage, yet their chairman was absent, and the nobles stood there helplessly, like a flock of sheep whose shepherd is missing. The chairman was the Count of Winneburg ...

• Deal on 'Chang, A

  It was in the days when drawing-rooms were dark, and filled with bric- a-brac. The darkness enabled the half-blinded visitor, coming in out of the bright light, to knock over gracefully a $200 vase that had come from Japan to meet disaster in New York.

• Dramatic Point, A

  In the bad days of Balmeceda, when Chili was rent in twain, and its capital was practically a besieged city, two actors walked together along the chief street of the place towards the one theatre that was then open. They belonged to a French dramatic company that would gladly have left Ch ...

• Dynamite Explosion, A

  Dupre sat at one of the round tables in the Cafe Vernon, with a glass of absinthe before him, which he sipped every now and again. He looked through the open door, out to the Boulevard, and saw passing back and forth with the regularity of a pendulum, a uniformed policeman. Dupre laughed ...

• Electrical Slip, An

  Public opinion had been triumphantly vindicated. The insanity plea had broken down, and Albert Prior was sentenced to be hanged by the neck until he was dead, and might the Lord have mercy on his soul. Everybody agreed that it was a righteous verdict, but now that he was sentenced they ad ...

• Exposure of Lord Stansford, The

  The large mansion of Louis Heckle, millionaire and dealer in gold mines, was illuminated from top to bottom. Carriages were arriving and departing, and guests were hurrying up the carpeted stair after passing under the canopy that stretched from the doorway to the edge of the street. A cr ...

• Hour and the Man, The    

  Prince Lotarno rose slowly to his feet, casting one malignant glance at the prisoner before him.

• Hour-Glass, The

  Bertram Eastford had intended to pass the shop of his old friend, the curiosity dealer, into whose pockets so much of his money had gone for trinkets gathered from all quarters of the globe. He knew it was weakness on his part, to select that street when he might have taken another, but h ...

• How the Captain Got His Steamer Out

    "On his own perticular well-wrought row,
    That he's straddled for ages--
    Learnt its lay and its gages--
    His style may seem queer, but permit him to know,
    The likeliest, sprightliest, manner to hoe."

• International Row, An

    "A simple child
    That lightly draws its breath,
    And feels its life in every limb,
    What should it know of----" kicking up a row
  
  (NOTE.--Only the last four words of the above poem are claimed as
  original.)

• Invitation, An

  The proud and warlike Archbishop Baldwin of Treves was well mounted, and, although the road by the margin of the river was in places bad, the august horseman nevertheless made good progress along it, for he had a long distance to travel before the sun went down. The way had been rudely co ...

• Ladies Man, A

    "Jest w'en we guess we've covered the trail
    So's no one can't foller, w'y then we fail
    W'en we feel safe hid. Nemesis, the cuss,
    Waltzes up with nary a warnin' nor fuss.
    Grins quiet like, and says, 'How d'y do,
    So glad we've met, I'm a-lookin' fer you'"

• Long Ladder, The

  Every fortress has one traitor within its walls; the Schloss Eltz had two. In this, curiously enough, lay its salvation; for as some Eastern poisons when mixed neutralise each other and form combined a harmless fluid, so did the two traitors unwittingly react, the one upon the other, to t ...

• Man Who was not on the Passenger List, The    

    "The well-sworn Lie, franked to the world with all
    The circumstance of proof,
    Cringes abashed, and sneaks along the wall
    At the first sight of Truth."

• Miss McMillan

    "Come hop, come skip, fair children all,
    Old Father Time is in the hall.
    He'll take you on his knee, and stroke
    Your golden hair to silver bright,
    Your rosy cheeks to wrinkles white"

• Modern Samson, A

  A little more and Jean Rasteaux would have been a giant. Brittany men are small as a rule, but Jean was an exception. He was a powerful young fellow who, up to the time he was compelled to enter the army, had spent his life in dragging heavy nets over the sides of a boat. He knew the Brit ...

• Mrs. Tremain

    "And Woman, wit a flaming torch
    Sings heedless, in a powder--
    Her careless smiles they warp and scorch
    Man's heart, as fire the pine
    Cuts keener than the thrust of lance
    Her glance"

• My Stowaway

    "Ye can play yer jokes on Nature,
    An' play 'em slick,
    She'll grin a grin, but, landsakes, friend,
    Look out fer the kick!"

• Not According to the Code

  Even a stranger to the big town walking for the first time through London, sees on the sides of the houses many names with which he has long been familiar. His precognition has cost the firms those names represent much money in advertising. The stranger has had the names before him for ye ...

• Over the Stelvio Pass

  There is no question about it, Tina Lenz was a flirt, as she had a perfect right to be, living as she did on the romantic shores of Como, celebrated in song, story, and drama as the lover's blue lake. Tina had many admirers, and it was just like her perversity to favor the one to whom her ...

• Purification

  Eugene Caspilier sat at one of the metal tables of the Cafe Egalite, allowing the water from the carafe to filter slowly through a lump of sugar and a perforated spoon into his glass of absinthe. It was not an expression of discontent that was to be seen on the face of Caspilier, but rath ...

• Purser's Story, The

    "O Mother-nature, kind in touch and tone.
    Act as we may, thou clearest to thine own"

• Shadow of the Greenback, The

  Hickory Sam needed but one quality to be perfect. He should have been an arrant coward. He was a blustering braggart, always boasting of the men he had slain, and the odds he had contended against; filled with stories of his own valour, but alas! he shot straight, and rarely missed his ma ...

• Share and Share Alike

    "The quick must haste to vengeance taste,
    For time is on his head;
    But he can wait at the door of fate,
    Though the stay be long and the hour be late--
    The dead."

• Society for the Reformation of Poker Players, A    

    "O Unseen Hand that ever makes and deals us,
    And plays our game!
    That now obscures and then to light reveals us,
    Serves blanks of fame
    How vain our shuffling, bluff and weak pretending!
    Tis Thou alone can name the final ending"

• Terrible Experience of Plodkins, The

    "Which--life or death? Tis a gambler's chance!
    Yet, unconcerned, we spin and dance,
    On the brittle thread of circumstance."

• Transformation

  If you grind castor sugar with an equal quantity of chlorate of potash, the result is an innocent-looking white compound, sweet to the taste, and sometimes beneficial in the case of a sore throat. But if you dip a glass rod into a small quantity of sulphuric acid, and merely touch the har ...

• Two Florentine Balconies

  Prince Padema sat desolately on his lofty balcony at Florence, and cursed things generally. Fate had indeed dealt hardly with the young man.

• Understudy, The

  The Monarch in the Arabian story had an ointment which, put upon the right eye, enabled him to see through the walls of houses. If the Arabian despot had passed along a narrow street leading into a main thoroughfare of London, one night just before the clock struck twelve, he would have b ...

• Vengeance of the Dead, The

  It is a bad thing for a man to die with an unsatisfied thirst for revenge parching his soul. David Allen died, cursing Bernard Heaton and lawyer Grey; hating the lawyer who had won the case even more than the man who was to gain by the winning. Yet if cursing were to be done, David should ...

• Warrior Maid of San Carlos, The

  The young naval officer came into this world with two eyes and two arms; he left it with but one of each--nevertheless the remaining eye was ever quick to see, and the remaining arm ever strong to seize. Even his blind eye became useful on one historic occasion. But the loss of eye or arm ...

• Which Was the Murderer?    

  Mrs. John Forder had no premonition of evil. When she heard the hall clock strike nine she was blithely singing about the house as she attended to her morning duties, and she little imagined that she was entering the darkest hour of her life, and that before the clock struck again overwhe ...