The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Grell Mystery, by Frank Froest

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Title: The Grell Mystery

Author: Frank Froest

Release Date: July 30, 2007 [EBook #22173]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE GRELL MYSTERY

BY FRANK FROEST

[Illustration: Publisher's logo]

NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS

COPYRIGHT, 1913,
BY FRANK FROEST

COPYRIGHT, 1914,
BY EDWARD J. CLODE

THE GRELL MYSTERY

CHAPTER I

Outside the St. Jermyn's Club the rain pelted pitilessly upon deserted
pavements. Mr. Robert Grell leaned his arms on the table and stared
steadily out through the steaming window-panes for a second. His
shoulders lifted in a shrug that was almost a shiver.

"It's a deuce of a night," he exclaimed with conviction.

There was a faint trace of accent in his voice--an almost imperceptible
drawl, such as might remain in the speech of an American who had
travelled widely and rubbed shoulders with all sorts and conditions of
men.

His companion lifted his eyebrows whimsically and nipped the end from a
cigar.

"It is," he agreed. "But the way you put it is more like plain Bob Grell
of the old days than the polished Mr. Robert Grell, social idol,
millionaire and diplomat, and winner of the greatest matrimonial prize
in London."

Grell tugged at his drooping iron-grey moustache. "That's all right," he
said. "This is not a meeting of the Royal Society. Here, in my own club,
I claim the right of every free-born citizen to condemn the weather--or
anything else--in any language I choose. Great Scott, Fairfield! You
don't expect me to wear my mantle all the time. I should explode if I
didn't have a safety valve."

Sir Ralph Fairfield nodded. He understood. For years the two had been
close friends, and in certain phases of temperament they were much
alike. Both had tasted deeply of the sweets and hardships of life. Both
had known the fierce wander-lust that drives men into strange places to
suffer hunger, thirst, hardship and death itself for the sheer love of
the game, and both ha