Fatal fingers

"Fatal fingers" by William Le Queux is a mystery novel written in the early 20th century. It launches a tale of hidden identity and high-stakes secrecy in London, centering on the reclusive collector Richard Goodrick, the eminent Sir George Ravenscourt, and the quick-witted Maidee Lambton, with a shadowy priest and a determined Scotland Yard man in pursuit. Poison, disguises, and a suppressed manuscript drive a plot where loyalty and reputation collide with murder. The opening of the novel shows Goodrick—long thought dead by the world—refusing Ravenscourt’s enormous bribe for a secret, then meeting a nervous Italian priest at Victoria. That same night Ravenscourt is found dying in his library with a tiny poisoned puncture and begs that a paper he was writing be burned; instead, police read his unfinished note admitting he had offered £50,000 to Goodrick for a secret tied to a great dead statesman. Detectives hurry to Pimlico and find Goodrick murdered in the same fashion, conceal both cases behind staged “suicides,” and quietly probe clues: Goodrick’s disguises, an urgent telegram, and the vanished priest. Meanwhile Maidee slips to a shabby South London lodging to consult her enigmatic “Uncle John,” uncannily like Goodrick, and agrees to help him learn what was in Ravenscourt’s paper as the inquests proceed and key facts are deliberately withheld from the public.

Fatal fingers, by William Le Queux. Republished by OpenStories from Project Gutenberg eBook #77320.