The Seven Secrets

"As a recounter of stories of mingled mystery and adventure, Mr. William Le Queux is certainly among the best living writers."--The Athenæum.

"It is interesting that Queen Alexandra is a great reader of novels of mystery and adventure, and that she is one of Mr. Le Queux's most ardent admirers. Long ago, when his 'Zoraida' was issued, she gave an order to a well-known Piccadilly bookseller for all Mr. Le Queux's books, past and future, and an early copy of each of that writer's books reaches her."--The Queen.

"The name of William Le Queux is well known to novel-readers as that of one who can weave the most wonderful mysteries and elaborate the most thrilling plots that are to be met with in the fiction of to-day. His books are read with the avidity of intense curiosity, for the string of events described are of the kind that demand attention until the end is reached and everything made clear."--Literary World.

"Mr. William Le Queux's name is favourably known to all readers of sensational fiction. He elaborates the most wonderful plots, and holds his reader breathless to the end, for it is only quite at the end that light is allowed to break through the entanglement of circumstance, or the perplexities brought about by the shock of temperament."--Daily News.

"Mr. William Le Queux's novels are one of my chief foibles. I can always read his stories greedily, and 'Free Lancers' should buy his books."--Mr. CLEMENT SCOTT in the Free Lance.

Crown 8vo, 6s.

THE UNDER-SECRETARY. Third Edition.

THE GAMBLERS. Second Edition.

OF ROYAL BLOOD. Third Edition.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER PAGE

I. INTRODUCES AMBLER JEVONS 9

II. "A VERY UGLY SECRET" 15

III. THE COURTENAYS 20

IV. A NIGHT CALL 27

V. DISCLOSES A MYSTERY 33

VI. IN WHICH I MAKE A DISCOVERY 43

VII. THE MAN SHORT AND HIS STORY 54

VIII. AMBLER JEVONS IS INQUISITIVE 65

IX. SHADOWS 76

X. WHICH PUZZLES THE DOCTORS 87

XI. CONCERNS MY PRIVATE AFFAIRS 98

XII. I RECEIVE A VISITOR 109

XIII. MY LOVE 119

XIV. IS DISTINCTLY CURIOUS 128

XV. I AM CALLED FOR CONSULTATION 139

XVI. REVEALS AN ASTOUNDING FACT 150

XVII. DISCUSSES SEVERAL MATTERS 162

XVIII. WORDS OF THE DEAD 173

XIX. JEVONS GROWS MYSTERIOUS 183

XX. MY NEW PATIENT 194

XXI. WOMAN'S WILES 203

XXII. A MESSAGE 215

XXIII. THE MYSTERY OF MARY 226

XXIV. ETHELWYNN IS SILENT 236

XXV. FORMS A BEWILDERING ENIGMA 249

XXVI. AMBLER JEVONS IS BUSY 256

XXVII. MR. LANE'S ROMANCE 274

XXVIII. "POOR MRS. COURTENAY!" 281

XXIX. THE POLICE ARE AT FAULT 290

XXX. SIR BERNARD'S DECISION 298

XXXI. CONTAINS THE PLAIN TRUTH 306

THE SEVEN SECRETS.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCES AMBLER JEVONS.

"Ah! You don't take the matter at all seriously!" I observed, a trifle annoyed.

"Why should I?" asked my friend, Ambler Jevons, with a deep pull at his well-coloured briar. "What you've told me shows quite plainly that you have in the first place viewed one little circumstance with suspicion, then brooded over it until it has become magnified and now occupies your whole mind. Take my advice, old chap, and think nothing more about it. Why should you make yourself miserable for no earthly reason? You're a rising man--hard up like most of us--but under old Eyton's wing you've got a brilliant future before you. Unlike myself, a mere nobody, struggling against the tide of adversity, you're already a long way up the medical ladder. If you climb straight you'll end with an appointment of Physician-in-Ordinary and a knighthood thrown in as makeweight. Old Macalister used to prophesy it, you remember, when we were up at Edinburgh. Therefore, I can't, for the life of me, discover any cause why you should allow yourself to have these touches of the blues--unless it's liver, or some other internal organ about which you know a lot more than I do. Why, man, you've got the whole world before you, and as for Ethelwynn----"