Out of a Labyrinth
I was returning from a fruitless mission and had stepped on board the eastward-bound train in anything but an enviable frame of mind, and no wonder! I, who prided myself upon my skill in my profession; I, who was counted by my chief the “best detective on the force, sir,”—had started, less than a week before, for a little farming settlement in one of the interior States, confident of my ability to unravel soon, and easily, a knotty problem.
I had taken every precaution to conceal my identity, and believed myself in a fair way to unveil the mystery that had brought grief and consternation into the midst of those comfortable, easy-going farmers; and I had been spotted at the very outset! I had been first warned, in a gentlemanly but anonymous fashion, to leave the neighborhood, and then, because I did not avail myself of the very first opportunity to decamp, had been shot from behind a hedge!
And this is how it happened:
Groveland, so-called, doubtless, because of the total absence of anything bearing closer resemblance to a grove than the thrifty orchards scattered here and there, is a thriving township, not a town.
Its inhabitants reside amid their farms, and, save the farm buildings, the low, rambling, sometimes picturesque farmhouses, or newer, more imposing, “improved” and often exquisitely ugly, white painted dwellings; the blacksmith shop, operated by a thrifty farmer and his hard-fisted sons; the post-office, kept in one corner of the “front room” by a sour-visaged old farmer’s wife; and the “district” school-house, then in a state of quiescence,—town institutions there were none in Groveland.
The nearest village, and that an exceedingly small one, was five miles west of Groveland’s western boundary line; and the nearest railroad town lay ten miles east of the eastern boundary.
So the Grovelanders were a community unto themselves and were seldom disturbed by a ripple from the outside world.
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Lawrence L. Lynch
Emily “Emma” Medora Murdock Lynch Van Deventer (January 16, 1853 – May 3, 1914) was an American mystery novelist who wrote under the name Lawrence L. Lynch.
Emily Medora Murdock was born on January 16, 1853, in Oswego, Illinois, the daughter of Charles L. Murdock, a lawyer and justice of the peace, and Emily A. (Holland) Murdock. She married Lawrence L. Lynch in 1877 and Dr. Abraham Van Deventer in 1887.
She took the name of her first husband as her pseudonym for nearly two dozen detective novels popular in the US and England. Most of her novels were set in Chicago, and Against Odds (1894) was set at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. Some of her heroes were traditionally male characters, such as Francis Ferrars, a Scotland Yard investigator who becomes a private detective in America. She was also noted for her independent female characters, such as the private detective Madeline Payne and Leonore Arymn, who strikes a woman batterer with a large mallet in Shadowed by Three. Emma Murdock Van Deventer died on 3 May 1914 in Oswego.
Bibliography
- Shadowed by Three aka A Woman’s Crime (1879)
- The Diamond Coterie (1884)
- Madeline Payne, the Detective’s Daughter (1884)
- Dangerous Ground; or, The Rival Detectives (1885)
- Out of a Labyrinth (1885)
- A Mountain Mystery: or, The Outlaws of the Rockies (1886)
- The Lost Witness; or, The Mystery of Leah Paget Laird (1890)
- Moina; or, Against the Mighty (1891)
- A Slender Clue; or, The Mystery of Mardi Gras (1891)
- A Dead Man’s Step (1893)
- Against Odds: A Romance of The Midway Plaisance (1894)
- No Proof (1895)
- The Last Stroke. A Detective Story (1896)
- The Unseen Hand (1898)
- High Stakes (1899)
- Under Fate’s Wheel (1901)
- The Woman Who Dared (1902)
- The Danger Line (1903)
- A Woman’s Tragedy; or, The Detective’s Task (1904)
- The Doverfields’ Diamonds (1906)
- Man and Master (1908)
- A Sealed Verdict (1910)
- A Blind Lead (1912)