Dead Men's Money

The story is told in the First Person by Hugh Moneylaws, who is describing events that occurred ten years previously, when he was a twenty-one-year-old solicitor's clerk. At that point, Hugh lived with his widowed mother, a respectable woman who was forced to take in lodgers to make ends meet. Hugh was looking out of his mother's parlour window when he saw: 'Standing right before the house, a man who had a black patch over his left eye, an old plaid thrown loosely around his shoulders, and in his right hand a stout stick and an old-fashioned carpet-bag... Hugh keep an appointment For the loger and finds a something terrible awaiting him there. 'And I knew on the instant that this was the stain of blood, and I do not think I was surprised when, advancing a step or two further, I saw lying in the roadside grass at my feet, the still figure and white face of a man who, I knew with a sure and certain instinct, was not only dead but had been cruelly murdered.' Hugh summons the police but when he returns to his mother's house with the police officer, who wishes to question Smuth, they discover that he too is dead, lying in his bed. Hugh sets out to discover the truth and, supported by Maisie, his solicitor employer and other well-wishers, he soon discovers a complex and dangerous plot. Hugh survives many attempts on his life before he uncovers the truth.