



Produced by Suzanne Shell, Martin Pettit and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)






THE LAST STROKE

_A DETECTIVE STORY_

BY LAWRENCE L. LYNCH

(E. MURDOCH VAN DEVENTER)

_Author of_ "_No Proof_," "_Moina_," _&c., &c._

LONDON:
WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED,
WARWICK HOUSE, SALISBURY SQUARE, E.C.
NEW YORK AND MELBOURNE.




CONTENTS.


                              PAGE
CHAPTER I.
SOMETHING WRONG                  1

CHAPTER II.
FOUND                           12

CHAPTER III.
NEMESIS                         28

CHAPTER IV.
FERRARS                         39

CHAPTER V.
IN CONSULTATION                 52

CHAPTER VI.
"WHICH?"                        64

CHAPTER VII.
RENUNCIATION                    75

CHAPTER VIII.
TRICKERY                        90

CHAPTER IX.
A LETTER                       101

CHAPTER X.
THIS HELPS ME                  117

CHAPTER XI.
DETAILS                        127

CHAPTER XII.
"FERRISS-GRANT"                135

CHAPTER XIII.
THE "LAKE COUNTY HERALD"       148

CHAPTER XIV.
A GHOST                        157

CHAPTER XV.
REBELLION                      175

CHAPTER XVI.
"OUT OF REACH"                 185

CHAPTER XVII.
RUTH GLIDDEN                   196

CHAPTER XVIII.
SUDDEN FLITTINGS               208

CHAPTER XIX.
THROUGH THE MAIL               221

CHAPTER XX.
A WOMAN'S HEART                237

CHAPTER XXI.
"QUARRELSOME HARRY"            250

CHAPTER XXII.
IN NUMBER NINE                 269

CHAPTER XXIII.
TWO INTERVIEWS                 279

CHAPTER XXIV.
MRS. GASTON LATHAM             292

CHAPTER XXV.
THE LAST STROKE                301




THE LAST STROKE.




CHAPTER I.

SOMETHING WRONG.


It was a May morning in Glenville. Pretty, picturesque Glenville, low
lying by the lake shore, with the waters of the lake surging to meet it,
or coyly receding from it, on the one side, and the green-clad hills
rising gradually and gently on the other, ending in a belt of trees at
the very horizon's edge.

There is little movement in the quiet streets of the town at half-past
eight o'clock in the morning, save for the youngsters who, walking,
running, leaping, sauntering or waiting idly, one for another, are, or
should be, on their way to the school-house which stands upon the very
southernmost outskirts of the town, and a little way up the hilly
<DW72>, at a reasonably safe remove from the willow-fringed lake shore.

The Glenville school-house was one of the earliest public buildings
erected in the village, and it had been "located" in what was
confidently expected to be the centre of the place. But the new and
late-coming impetus, which had changed the hamlet of half a hundred
dwellings to one of twenty times that number, and made of it a quiet and
not too fashionable little summer resort, had carried the business of
the place northward, and its residences still farther north, thus
leaving this seat of learning aloof from, and quite above the newer
town, in isolated and lofty dignity, surrounded by trees; in the
outskirts, in fact, of a second belt of wood, which girdled the lake
shore, even as the further and loftier fringe of timber outlined the
hilltops at the edge of the eastern horizon and far away.

"Les call 'er the 'cademy?" suggested Elias Robbins, one of the builders
of the school-house, and an early settler of Glenville. "What's to
hinder?"

"Nothin'," declared John Rote, the village oracle. "'Twill sound
first-rate."

They were standing outside the building, just completed and resplendent
in two coats of yellow paint, and they were just from the labour of
putting in, "hangin'" the new bell.

All of masculine Glenville was present, and the other sex was not
without representation.

"Suits me down ter the ground!" commented a third citizen; and no doubt
it would have suited the majority, but when Parson Ryder was consulted,
he smiled genially and shook his head.

"It won't do, I'm afraid, Elias," he said. "We're only a village as yet,
you see, and we can't even dub it the High School, except from a
geographical point of view. However, we