THE MAN WITH TWO LEFT FEET

CONTENTS


BILL THE BLOODHOUND

EXTRICATING YOUNG GUSSIE

WILTON'S HOLIDAY

THE MIXER--I

THE MIXER--II

CROWNED HEADS

AT GEISENHEIMER'S

THE MAKING OF MAC'S

ONE TOUCH OF NATURE

BLACK FOR LUCK

THE ROMANCE OF AN UGLY POLICEMAN

A SEA OF TROUBLES

THE MAN WITH TWO LEFT FEET




BILL THE BLOODHOUND


There's a divinity that shapes our ends. Consider the case of Henry
Pifield Rice, detective.

I must explain Henry early, to avoid disappointment. If I simply said
he was a detective, and let it go at that, I should be obtaining the
reader's interest under false pretences. He was really only a sort of
detective, a species of sleuth. At Stafford's International
Investigation Bureau, in the Strand, where he was employed, they did
not require him to solve mysteries which had baffled the police. He had
never measured a footprint in his life, and what he did not know about
bloodstains would have filled a library. The sort of job they gave
Henry was to stand outside a restaurant in the rain, and note what time
someone inside left it. In short, it is not 'Pifield Rice,
Investigator. No. 1.--The Adventure of the Maharajah's Ruby' that I
submit to your notice, but the unsensational doings of a quite
commonplace young man, variously known to his comrades at the Bureau as
'Fathead', 'That blighter what's-his-name', and 'Here, you!'

Henry lived in a boarding-house in Guildford Street. One day a new girl
came to the boarding-house, and sat next to Henry at meals. Her name
was Alice Weston. She was small and quiet, and rather pretty. They got
on splendidly. Their conversation, at first confined to the weather and
the moving-pictures, rapidly became more intimate. Henry was surprised
to find that she was on the stage, in the chorus. Previous chorus-girls
at the boarding-house had been of a more pronounced type--good girls,
but noisy, and apt to wear beauty-spots. Alice Weston was different.