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‘THE DETECTIVE STORY CLUB is a clearing house for the best detective and mystery stories chosen for you by a select committee of experts. Only the most ingenious crime stories will be published under the THE DETECTIVE STORY CLUB imprint. A special distinguishing stamp appears on the wrapper and title page of every THE DETECTIVE STORY CLUB book—the Man with the Gun. Always look for the Man with the Gun when buying a Crime book.’
Wm. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd., 1929
Now the Man with the Gun is back in this series of COLLINS CRIME CLUB reprints, and with him the chance to experience the classic books that influenced the Golden Age of crime fiction.
COLLINS CRIME CLUB
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
This Detective Club edition published 2019
First published in Great Britain by Ward Lock 1919
‘The Contents of the Coffin’ published in The Adventures of Archer Dawe (Sleuth-Hound) by Digby, Long & Co. 1909
Introduction © Nigel Moss 2019
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
J.S. Fletcher asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008283049
Ebook Edition © January 2019 ISBN: 9780008283056
Version: 2018-11-28
Contents
Copyright
Introduction
I. THE SCRAP OF GREY PAPER
II. HIS FIRST BRIEF
III. THE CLUE OF THE CAP
IV. THE ANGLO-ORIENT HOTEL
V. SPARGO WISHES TO SPECIALISE
VI. WITNESS TO A MEETING
VII. MR AYLMORE
VIII. THE MAN FROM THE SAFE DEPOSIT
IX. THE DEALER IN RARE STAMPS
X. THE LEATHER BOX
XI. MR AYLMORE IS QUESTIONED
XII. THE NEW WITNESS
XIII. UNDER SUSPICION
XIV. THE SILVER TICKET
XV. MARKET MILCASTER
XVI. THE ‘YELLOW DRAGON’
XVII. MR QUARTERPAGE HARKS BACK
XVIII. AN OLD NEWSPAPER
XIX. THE CHAMBERLAYNE STORY
XX. MAITLAND alias MARBURY
XXI. ARRESTED
XXII. THE BLANK PAST
XXIII. MISS BAYLIS
XXIV. MOTHER GUTCH
XXV. REVELATIONS
XXVI. STILL SILENT
XXVII. MR ELPHICK’S CHAMBERS
XXVIII. OF PROVED IDENTITY
XXIX. THE CLOSED DOORS
XXX. REVELATION
XXXI. THE PENITENT WINDOW-CLEANER
XXXII. THE CONTENTS OF THE COFFIN
XXXIII. FORESTALLED
XXXIV. THE WHIP HAND
XXXV. MYERST EXPLAINS
XXXVI. THE FINAL TELEGRAM
THE CONTENTS OF THE COFFIN
The Detective Story Club
About the Publisher
THE year 2019 marks the centenary of The Middle Temple Murder by J.S. Fletcher (1863–1935), first published in 1919 in the UK (Ward Lock) and US (Knopf). Well received by literary critics on both continents, it attracted lavish praise from US President Woodrow Wilson as the best detective story he had read. The book quickly became a bestseller, especially in the US, where Fletcher was even heralded as the literary successor to Arthur Conan Doyle, and it later entered the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone list of landmark mysteries. Though Fletcher was already an established author, he was now propelled to literary fame and commercial success, and during the 1920s and early 1930s his vast output was rivalled only by Edgar Wallace and E. Phillips Oppenheim. His influence contributed significantly to the growth in popularity, social acceptance and respectability of crime fiction and was of historical importance to the genre.
Joseph Smith Fletcher was born in 1863 in Halifax. His father, a clergyman and keen bibliophile, died when Fletcher was still a baby, and he was raised by his maternal grandmother on her farm in Yorkshire. A semi-invalid for much of his youth, Fletcher’s formal education did not begin until his mid-teens. However, he developed a passionate enjoyment for reading prose and poetry at a young age, particularly the great adventure stories of Fenimore Cooper, Captain Marryat, Walter Scott and Jules Verne, and by age 16 claimed to have read over two thousand books. This was reflected in the hugely fertile imagination and wordsmith skills displayed in Fletcher’s fictional writings. Before turning age 17, Fletcher had published his first collection of poetry.
After completing his schooling in Wakefield, Fletcher moved to London to study law. He attended fraud and murder trials and gained an in-depth knowledge of criminal law, useful for his later detective fiction. But plans to become a barrister were abandoned in favour of journalism, and by age 20 he was