The Holmes-Dracula File Fred Saberhagen (feel good fiction books txt) 📖

Chandler of the Thames Police, that on Saturday evening he saw accused struggling in the Thames near Waterloo-bridge. On getting her out of the water she told him, “I have had but one glass of port wine, and I jumped from the bridge because I was tired of life.” Mr. Hall, the Court missionary, informed the magistrate that prisoner told him she had been unfortunate in her employment and had got very low down and despondent. On his advice she promised to apply to the Ladies’ Theatrical Guild ...

St. Marylebone FEMALE PROTECTION SOCIETY, 157-9, Marylebone-road, NW. This Society seeks to rescue young women who up to the time of their fall have borne a good character. Those with infants are assisted from a special fund. CONTRIBUTIONS are earnestly solicited.

(I could envision a dedicated corps, perhaps neatly uniformed, standing guard with boats and ropes and life-preservers, below all the bridges of the Thames. But neither I nor Baby Hagar had seen them there, and I understood that my vision must fall short of the truth somehow.)

ELLDVIAN’S UNIVERSAL EMBROCATION “THE ONLY GENUINE RUB ON THE MARKET”

National Society for Checking the Abuses of Public Advertising  ...

DU BARRY’S REVALENTA ARABICA FOOD

“It has cured me of 9 years’ constipation, declared beyond cure by the best physicians, and given me new life, health, and happiness. —A. Spadaro, Merchant, Alexandria, Egypt.”

THE SEXAGENARY OF PHONOGRAPHY ...

  (This proved to be not as interesting an article as my first glance at the headline led me to hope.)

THE COAL MINERS’ STRIKE IN AMERICA …

PEARS’ SOAP ...

WAGES IN THE COTTON INDUSTRY—The replies from cotton manufacturers in Blackburn, Burnley, and Preston as to a proposed reduction in weavers’ wages of 10 per cent., &c., were returnable yesterday, but the committee will not consider them finally or seriously until next Friday ...

HUNYADI JANOS the BEST and SAFEST NATURAL APERIENT ... free from defects incidental to many other Hungarian Bitter Waters ...

(That friend and ally of my breathing days, Janos Hunyadi, voivode of Transylvania and later ruler of all Hungary, would have found these waters bitter to his taste indeed.)

COMPETITION for WORD to ADVERTISE a GINGER ALE— “G.S.C.” begs to notify competitors that it has not been possible to settle this matter yet, and requests any who may have an opportunity of disposing of their word in another direction to do so. The result will be advertised as soon as a decision is come to.

CHESS

THE INTERNATIONAL CONGRESSS IN BERLIN

 The 4th round in the chess tournament was begun this morning. M. Tschigorin played against Mr. Blackburne, but, losing his queen through oversight, gave up after 25 moves...

MERRY WEATHER’S latest Domestic Novelty is their PATENT PORTABLE ELECTRIC FIRE ENGINE for Corridors of Mansions and Institutions having Electric Light, by the utilization of the Electric Current to actuate the fire pump.

SALVATION ARMY... there are baths, hot and cold, at all our shelters, and they are largely used... all are not admitted who apply...W. BRAMWELL BOOTH

(I blessed my good fortune that I had somehow qualified in my hour of need, and reminded myself to send a large, anonymous donation when I again possessed the means.)

BICYCLE POLO at CRYSTAL PALACE

This new game is played without mallets...

Steamers from Panama are now given clean bills of health, and are no longer subject to quarantine in Equatorian and Peruvian ports...

NATIONAL TRUSS SOCIETY for the RELIEF of the RUPTURED POOR...

... at WORSHIP-STREET, a sturdy little boy, very ragged and barefooted, was charged by a school attendance officer with wandering and with not being under proper guardianship... there seems to be a large floating population increasing constantly...

... the Dreyfus affair is assuming larger proportions...

IT IS A FACT!

THAT MUCH MEAT EATING produces muscular rheumatism, gout, severe pains in the limbs and joints, cold extremities, clamminess, weak circulation, Migraine (headache) AND oftentimes corpulence. People say ‘the blood is the life’, but such a statement is nonsense...

(Indeed?)

THE PLAGUE IN INDIA—A minimum quarantine of six days is being enforced against all 2nd and 3rd class arrivals by rail at Bombay from plague—infected areas... four more Europeans attacked by plague were admitted to hospital at Poona yesterday...

THE GREAT HORSELESS CARRIAGE CO., LTD ...

(I had heard fragments of information concerning such machines, but had yet to see one.)

BARNUM & BAILEY—Greatest show on Earth—Opening in Great Olympia...

THE DIAMOND JUBILEE LACE SHIRT...

FOUND—A very large traveler’s trunk, locked, of fine heavy leather, and Continental manufacture. The owner may have same by identifying the name attached …

   I read that last item through twice, then stood up, folding my paper. It seemed that perhaps the bitch-goddess was going to smile on me again; and high time, too, I thought.

That night as soon as dusk had fallen I was at the given address in Westminster, having meanwhile spent some of my last coins purchasing a better hat, one which even Monsieur Corday of Paris and Vienna need not feel ashamed of wearing.

   The sturdy, middle-aged woman who answered the door was polite enough, but very firm in her refusal to let me enter. She remained unimpressed by what I considered my most ingratiating smile. I would have to return in the morning, she said, when the party who had found the trunk—no, she did not know where or how it had been found—would probably be in.

   Two hours after a gloomy sunrise, I was back. The same stolid woman ushered me upstairs to a somewhat exotic sitting-room, in one corner of which sat a great trunk, unmistakably mine—it was fashioned of thick brown leather, and massive as a coffin, though not so distinctively shaped.

   A glance told me that the name-tag had been removed, but the lid was still tightly closed, and the great box appeared to be undamaged. Scarcely had the landlady departed, leaving me in a chair to await my benefactor, when I was on my feet again and bending over my