The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Man Who Fell Through the Earth, by Carolyn Wells

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Title: The Man Who Fell Through the Earth

Author: Carolyn Wells

Release Date: February 13, 2014 [eBook #44872]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAN WHO FELL THROUGH THE EARTH***

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THE MAN
WHO FELL THROUGH
THE EARTH

BY
CAROLYN WELLS
Author of “The Room With the Tassels,” “Faulkner’s Folly,” etc.

NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

Copyright, 1919,
By George H. Doran Company
Printed in the United States of America

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
TO
BLANCHE CLARK
APOSTLE OF THE
FINE ART
OF
FRIENDSHIP

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Moving Shadow-Shapes 11

II. Jenny’s Version 27

III. The Elevator 42

IV. The Black Squall 58

V. Olive Raynor 74

VI. Clews 90

VII. Hudson’s Errand 107

VIII. The Man Who Fell Through The Earth 122

IX. The Man in Boston 138

X. Penny Wise and Zizi 153

XI. Case Rivers 169

XII. The Link 185

XIII. Olive’s Adventure 203

XIV. Where is Manning? 216

XV. Wise’s Pipe Dream 232

XVI. The Snowflake 248

XVII. Zizi’s Hunch 264

XVIII. Clear as Crystal 280

THE MAN WHO FELL
THROUGH THE
EARTH

CHAPTER I
Moving Shadow-Shapes

One of the occasions when I experienced “that grand and glorious feeling” was when my law business had achieved proportions that justified my removal from my old office to new and more commodious quarters. I selected a somewhat pretentious building on Madison Avenue between Thirtieth and Fortieth Streets, and it was a red-letter day for me when I moved into my pleasant rooms on its top floor.

The Puritan Trust Company occupied all of the ground floor and there were also some of the private offices of that institution on the top floor, as well as a few offices to be let.

My rooms were well located and delightfully light, and I furnished them with care, selecting chairs and desks of a dignified type, and rugs of appropriately quiet coloring. I also selected my stenographer with care, and Norah MacCormack was a red-haired piece of perfection. If she had a weakness, it was for reading detective stories, but I condoned that, for in my hammocky moods I, too, dipped into the tangled-web school of fiction.

And, without undue conceit, I felt that I could give most specimens of the genus Sherlock cards and spades and beat them at their own game of deduction. I practiced it on Norah sometimes. She would bring me a veil or glove of some friend of hers, and I would try to deduce the friend’s traits of character. My successes and failures were about fifty-fifty, but Norah thought I improved with practice, and, anyway, it exercised my intelligence.

I had failed to pass examination for the army, because of a defect, negligible, it seemed to me, in my eyesight. I was deeply disappointed, but as the