Milne. (Methuen. 6s, net.)
Mr. Milne has been trying his Muse ovey so many fences—essay, drama, fiction, poetry, humour—that he was bound to write.a detective story some day; and it is a-pleasure to be able to say that it is as finished a product in its line as one might have expected from so fastidious a craftsman. More than that, one perceives in it the true lust of the problemsmaker—that strange passion which heaps up mountains for itself! to scale, and pursues intricacy for its own sake. In the mystery of the murder of Robbert Ablett one finds something of the pleasure ' with which one contemplates a delicate and complicated piece of machinery: everything slips so neatly into its place; every device and adjustment is sq cleverly contrived; and the final solution comes with an inevitableness, and yet an unexpectedness,.that has almost the effect of humour. And, as a detective, we like Anthony Gillingham a great deal better than the depressing crowd of magnet-eyed, heavy-browed, impossibly mesmeriz gentlemen who mostly inhabit this region, Only the merest indication can, in fairness, be given of the story. Mr. Mark Ablett lives at the Red House with his cousin and scere-: tary, Cayley. At breakfast Mark receives a letter from his brother Robert, something of a ne'er-do-weel, who is calling from Australia that afternoon. Robert calls, is shown by the maid (after a few uncouth remarks from the visitor) into the empty study, and is presently found shot through the head after what is, presumably, a quarrel between the two. brothers. Mark is not to be found—has, presumably, bolted.. Then follow discoveries' of underground passages, of a love affairs, of mysterious parcels in a lake, of a, dozen things pulling the reader's suspicious one way and another. Finally, a torn poster of an amateur theatrical entertainment, and the murder is out. We suspect that Mr. Milne had read Mr. Storer Clouston's simon" before writing "The Red House Mystery," but the two stories need" not fear jeomparison; if anything, Mr.
Milne has the more ingenious solution of the two. It is a plea-gute, too, to have a detective story lin which the characters are human beings, and not dummies to be "moved hither and thither with all the expressiveness and differentiation of pawns on a chessboard.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.