canal

The battle in the meadowlands of the Euphrates was over, but not the slaughter. On that bloody field where the Caliph of Bagdad and his Turkish allies had broken the onrushing power of Doubeys ibn Sadaka of Hilla and the desert, the steel-clad bodies lay strewn like the drift of a storm. The great canal men called the Nile, which connected the Euphrates with the distant Tigris, was choked with the...

Phillip Romilly is a poor art teacher in London, half-starved, both mentally and physically. His cousin, Douglas, has everything and even buys Beatrice, Philip’s fiancée. He strangles Douglas, throws him in the canal, and assumes his identity. Douglas had booked passage to America for the next day, so after a pleasant sea voyage Phillip arrives at the Waldorf Hotel in New York as Douglas Romilly. Philip’s...

The creek between the canal and the river flows under Lady’s Stairs, a crazy wooden house inhabited by Li Yoseph – known to the police as a smuggler. The neighborhood suspects he is rich, and knows he is mad. Inspector Bradley is out to break a drug-smuggling gang which operates from an old house overhanging the Thames; the gang is headed by a criminal called Mark McGill. The disappearance of young...