Armadale

Front Cover
General Books LLC, 2010 - Fiction - 492 pages
Excerpt: ...cross-examine the cabman." The cabman proved to be immovable. Charged with mistaking the place, he pointed to the empty shop window. "I don't know what you may have seen, gentlemen," he remarked; "but there's the only shop window I ever saw with nothing at all inside it. That fixed the place in my mind at the time, and I know it again when I see it." Charged with mistaking the person or the day, or the house at which he had taken the person up, the cabman proved to be still unassailable. The servant who fetched him was marked as a girl well known on the stand. The day was marked as the unluckiest working-day he had had since the first of the year; and the lady was marked as having had her money ready at the right moment (which not one elderly lady in a hundred usually had), and having paid him his fare on demand without disputing it (which not one elderly lady in a hundred usually did). "Take my number, gentlemen," concluded the cabman, "and pay me for my time; and what I've said to you, I'll swear to anywhere." Pedgift made a note in his pocket-book of the man's number. Having added to it the name of the street, and the names on the two brass plates, he quietly opened the cab door. "We are quite in the dark, thus far," he said. "Suppose we grope our way back to the hotel?" He spoke and looked more seriously than usual The mere fact of "Mrs. Mandeville's" having changed her lodging without telling any one where she was going, and without leaving any address at which letters could be forwarded to her

About the author (2010)

Born in London, the son of artist William Collins, Wilkie Collins was educated at Highbury and spent four years in Italy with his parents. Upon his return to England, he worked first in business and then law, but eventually turned to literature. Collins created the crime novel of intricate plot and baffling mystery. The Woman in White (1860) was his first success, followed in 1863 by his masterpiece The Moonstone. Both novels demonstrate Collins' fascination with psychological portraiture and sensationalistic complication. Other books include The Haunted Hotel (1875), Antonia (1850), and Heart and Science (1883). Collins was a close friend of Charles Dickens and collaborated with him. His mastery of plot influenced Dickens, and he was influenced by Dickens's mastery of character.

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