The Mardi Gras Mystery Classic Reprint

Excerpt from The Mardi Gras Mystery He had much the air of a clerk. His feat ures were thin and unremarkable; his pale eyes constantly wore an expression of won dering aloofness, as though he saw around him much that he vainly tried to understand. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

The Mardi Gras Mystery is a mystery novel by author H. Bedford-Jones. Ever since the first ball of the year by the Twelfth Night Club, the Midnight Masquer, as he was termed, had held New Orleans gripped in terror, fascination, and vivid interest with his holdups and subsequent robbery of partygoers. Until a month previous to the week of Mardi Gras he had operated rarely; he had robbed with a stark and inelegant forcefulness, a brutality. Suddenly his methods changed—he appeared and transacted his business with a romantic courtesy, a daredevil gaiety; his robberies became bizarre and extraordinary. But the Midnight Masquer now fears that the wealthy lawyer and astute chess player, Jachin Fell might be on to him and he moves to protect his secret...

The Mardi Gras Mystery is the 81st book in the Nancy Drew series. Set in New Orleans at Mardi Gras, it concerns a mysterious art theft. In The Mardi Gras Mystery, Nancy's boyfriend, Ned Nickerson, is invited to spend the vacation with Brian Seaton, an Emerson College friend. On their way to the Seaton Mansion, Brian stops at Warren Tyler's house to pick up his father, Bartholomew Seaton, and at the same time shows Ned a portrait of his late mother, Danielle Seaton, by the famous artist Lucien Beaulieu. The painting is in the possession of Mr. Tyler since he found it in a barn he bought.

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But now the deep silence became unnatural and sinister. What had happened? Surely, Ben Chacherre had not been arrested and taken away in such silence! Why had the voices so abruptly ceased? Vaguely uneasy, startled by the prolongation of that intense stillness, Gramont rose to his feet and peered among the trees. The two speakers seemed to have departed; he could descry nobody in sight. A step to one side gave Gramont a view of the land adjoining the Ledanois place. This was cleared of all brush, and under some immense oaks to the far left he had a glimpse of a large summer cottage, boarded up and apparently deserted.