The Project Gutenberg EBook of No Hero, by E.W. Hornung

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Title: No Hero

Author: E.W. Hornung

Release Date: February 18, 2004 [EBook #11153]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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No Hero

By E.W. Hornung

1903

CONTENTS

Chapter

I. A Plenipotentiary

II. The Theatre of War

III. First Blood

IV. A Little Knowledge

V. A Marked Woman

VI. Out of Action

VII. Second Fiddle

VIII. Prayers and Parables

IX. Sub Judice

X. The Last Word

XI. The Lion's Mouth

XII. A Stern Chase

XIII. Number Three

No Hero

CHAPTER I

A PLENIPOTENTIARY

Has no writer ever dealt with the dramatic aspect of the unopened
envelope? I cannot recall such a passage in any of my authors, and yet
to my mind there is much matter for philosophy in what is always the
expressionless shell of a boundless possibility. Your friend may run
after you in the street, and you know at a glance whether his news is to
be good, bad, or indifferent; but in his handwriting on the
breakfast-table there is never a hint as to the nature of his
communication. Whether he has sustained a loss or an addition to his
family, whether he wants you to dine with him at the club or to lend him
ten pounds, his handwriting at least will be the same, unless, indeed,
he be offended, when he will generally indite your name with a studious
precision and a distant grace quite foreign to his ordinary caligraphy.

These reflections, trite enough as I know, are nevertheless inevitable
if one is to begin one's unheroic story in the modern manner, at the
latest possible point. That is clearly the point at which a waiter
brought me the fatal letter from Catherine Evers. Apart even from its
immediate consequences, the letter had a _prima facie_ interest, of no
ordinary kind, as the first for years from a once constant
correspondent. And so I sat studying the envelope with a curiosity too
piquant not to be enjoyed. What in the world could so obsolete a friend
find to say to one now? Six months earlier there had been a certain
opportunity for