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A Sister’s Vengeance


It was between the lights on a gloomy December afternoon. I was the sole occupant of the smoking-room of a “Literary and Artistic Club” which faces the Thames. I flung fresh coal on the gloomy embers, and stirred them till they sent up a blaze of light that drove the ghosts out of the shadowy corners, and then picked up a paper haphazard from the table, to dawdle over it till the waiter lighted the gas or some human being wandered in to keep me company. It was an American paper. Some visitor to the club had left it behind him, accidentally. I turned the pages listlessly, until suddenly my attention was arrested by a paragraph headed “Extraordinary Crime.” It was the story of the robbery of a body of a lady from its grave. The whole affair was shrouded in mystery. On the 14th of the month there died in an American city the beautiful wife of an Englishman traveling for pleasure. In the same paper which contained this paragraph I found under the heading of “Cradle, Altar, Tomb,” the following: “On the 14th instRead More