Excerpt from Captain Gardiner of the International PoliceIT was on one of the hottest nights of that unusually hot September that Mrs. Thornton gave a dance. The moist, lifeless air enveloped the earth like a heavy cloak and even the carefully shaded lights failed to conceal the lines of heat-weariness in the jaded faces of the guests. To Evelyn Thornton, in whose honour the affair was ostensibly held, the feverish rooms presently became unbearable, and abandoning the arduous duties of hostess to her mother and her younger and more energetic sister Mabel, she took refuge in the darkness of the small easterly veranda overlooking the beach. Light mist wreaths dimmed the splendid moonlight and gave a ghostly quality to the scene which transformed the indistinct line of the breakwater and its lighthouse into a monster of gigantic dimensions, gazing seaward with a baleful blood-red eye, and made of the common place tramp steamer labouring southward down the coast a veritable Flying Dutchman.Oh, bother! Exclaimed Evelyn crossly believe that it's hotter out here than it is inside.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.