The Old Battle Ax / Dark Power [Paperback]

#Editor of Stark House Press.#Raymond Chandler once called her "the top suspense writer of them all." Born in Brooklyn in 1889, Holding married British diplomat George E. Holding in 1913 and together they traveled widely in South America and the Caribbean before settling in Bermuda for awhile. She published 25 novels in her lifetime--19 of them mysteries-and a wide variety of short stories. She died in 1955.#Two classic novels of suspense from the author whom Raymond Chandler called "the top suspense writer of them all."Mrs. Herriott stood behind the barrier among a little crowd of people, all facing toward the pier that stretched before them vast and dim and strangely quiet. For some time the passengers had been coming down the gangway, but they stayed there, far away; there was no bustle, no stir.But it's not really-queer, Mrs. Herriott told herself. Naturally, with that horrible war in Europe, there must be all sorts of new rules and regulations. She herself had had some experience with that; she was not allowed a dock pass, no one would even tell her when the ship was expected. It was Silas who had found that out, in some way of his own, and he had driven her in to New York, just in time. If it hadn't been for Silas, she thought, there'd have been no one here to meet Madge. Think of coming home after twenty-five years and finding no one. . . .She had taken pains with her appearance today; a tall, slight woman, drooping forward a little from the waist, with fine gray eyes, dark-lashed, and abundant dark hair threaded with gray; there was an absent-minded jauntiness about her in her belted blue suit and her new three-cornered hat. I don't want Madge to be disappointed in me, she thought, Only, naturally I've changed a great deal.But she had no picture in her mind of how she had looked twenty-five years ago, and she did not really know quite how she looked now, at fifty. She was simply Mrs. Herriott, and nobody looked at her particularly. Madge ló!