Project Gutenberg 2025-05-19 Public domain in the USA. 253 Freeman, R. Austin (Richard Austin) 1862 1943 Freeman, Richard Austin The blue scarab $aNew York :$bDodd, Mead and Company, $c1924. The blue scarab -- The case of the white foot-prints -- The New Jersey sphinx -- The touchstone -- A fisher of men -- The stolen ingots -- The funeral pyre. an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer The blue scarab by R. Austin Freeman is a collection of detective stories written in the early 20th century. The cases follow the medico-legal sleuth Dr. John Thorndyke and his colleague-narrator Dr. Jervis as they solve curious crimes with forensic science, precise observation, and ingenious reasoning. Expect rational puzzles tinged with antiquarian lore, family secrets, and cryptic clues. The opening of this collection presents two cases. First, a rural robbery draws Thorndyke into the Blowgrave family’s legend of a vanished uncle and lost jewels: a deed-box is stolen during a decoy fire, its contents mysteriously returned except for a blue scarab; using the scarab’s “hieroglyphs,” Thorndyke deciphers English directions, corrects for compass variation, and locates a buried skeleton and a chest of gems, while unmasking a grasping cousin as the thief via typewriter and fingerprint clues. Next, an apparent suicide at a Margate boarding house turns suspicious when Jervis and a local doctor find white paint footprints of a barefoot intruder with no little toes and signs of entry by a stack-pipe; Jervis reasons toward a northern, possibly seafaring suspect (frost-bite or ergot past), with a Swedish visitor and the absent colonial-police husband as potential leads. After a tussle with the police over evidence, Jervis brings his photographs and deductions to London, where he and Thorndyke prepare a fuller, independent investigation. (This is an automatically generated summary.) https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/101864207 20250512134512freeman 1924 US Reading ease score: 71.4 (7th grade). Fairly easy to read. en London (England) -- Fiction Thorndyke, Doctor (Fictitious character) -- Fiction Physicians -- Fiction Detective and mystery stories, English PR Text Category: Short Stories Category: Crime, Thrillers and Mystery Category: British Literature 442954 2025-07-30T06:45:23.015753 text/html 419938 2025-05-19T10:53:29 text/html 888685 2025-07-30T06:45:28.178766 application/epub+zip 895108 2025-07-30T06:45:23.808815 application/epub+zip 228231 2025-07-30T06:45:23.376778 application/epub+zip 1016032 2025-07-30T06:45:31.828732 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 998401 2025-07-30T06:45:27.751811 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 417632 2025-07-30T06:45:22.058810 text/plain; charset=us-ascii 397907 2025-05-19T10:53:29 text/plain; charset=us-ascii 14724 2025-07-30T06:45:31.971737 application/rdf+xml 10453 2025-07-30T06:45:23.518800 image/jpeg 2296 2025-07-30T06:45:23.449792 image/jpeg 900258 2025-07-30T06:45:23.067831 application/octet-stream application/zip Archives containing the RDF files for *all* our books can be downloaded at https://book.klll.cc/wiki/Gutenberg:Feeds#The_Complete_Project_Gutenberg_Catalog en.wikipedia