Mystery Part IV

Beauty and Danger...

Here is the next post of Jayne Barnard's "The Evil Eye of Africa."

The first post is here.
A list of all the characters is here.

You can get all the posts by clicking on the mystery tag.

Keep your sightglass full, your firebox trimmed and your water iced.
KJ

"The Evil Eye of Africa"
By Jayne Barnard

A Guess-the-Murderer Mystery in Two Acts

Act I: The Headlines Thicken

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The Social Steamer

July 22, 1898

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AMERICAN HEIRESS BADGERED FOR BATTY BARON’S BILLS

Mrs. Medusa Midas-White in her parlour at Claridge’s Hotel. Following the discovery of the abandoned Jules Verne, the expeditionary airship of Baron von Boddy, Mrs. Midas-White, the only surviving heir to Atlantic Airship Industries in New Jersey, America, and now resident in Claridge’s Hotel, London, is being urgently billed by merchants who supplied the missing adventurer’s expedition in search of Nubian treasures. Mrs. White’s patronage of Baron von Boddy was widely known in England, and doubtless contributed to the merchants’ willingness to advance goods to the latter. On being informed the baron had not paid his bills before departure, her shock seemed genuine. How much the heiress had already advanced in support of Boddy’s latest whacky dream is unknown. A few inquiries would have revealed the venturesome baron’s English investors were long since embittered by his unfruitful quests for legendary treasures.

Notable detective Hercule Hornblower is on the case.   Mrs. White dispatched a notable British detective, Hercule Hornblower, to Egypt in hopes of determining whether Boddy found the treasure and, if so, where she might lay claim to her contractually guaranteed portion of the trove. “If I must, I will take my money stick by brick from his property in Cornwall,” she said, frowning severely. “I am going there immediately to make sure it is not tampered with until I’ve got my pound of flesh.”

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