J J Connington

The Dangerfield Talisman J J Connington

In the first place, there was the Dangerfield Talisman, an ancient golden armlet set with diamonds and valued at fifty thousand pounds-an unguarded treasure which, although stolen more than once, always came back. In the second place, there was the Dangerfield secret. Old Rollo Dangerfield gave a house party and one night during a wild thunderstorm the armlet vanished. The owner did not seem upset, convinced that within seven days, at the outside, it would be back. The last thief had been found on the grounds dead of heart failure with the Talisman in his hand. Determined to investigate among themselves, however, the guests in so doing unearthed the most bewildering complications. The mystery of this ingenious story fairly pulls you from your easy chair to your desk that you may with pencil and paper figure out who were in the house and what their respective alibis amounted to. There is in the working out of the plot some decidedly clever detective work with many novel twists, and a chess problem thrown in. It may truly be called a mystery within a mystery. The Dangerfield Talisman was published in 1926.