by Louis Joseph Vance

First Edition copyright 1907, Bobbs-Merrill Company Publishers, New York

Illustrated

Hardcover with olive green cloth-covered boards, gilt and black spine titling and a pictorial paper cover pasted on. Pictorial frontispiece referencing page 54, and four illustrations by Orson Lowell. 380 pages, no dust jacket, 5-1/4 x 7-3/4 inches.  

Fair to Poor condition overall.  Covers faded, rubbed/frayed with spots. Front hinge split and front flyleaf endsheet missing.  Light soil overall, slight spine sunning, bumped corners, with edgewear at the corners and the top/bottom of the spine.  A small piece of the pictorial cover has been torn away. Top edge dusty, all edges slightly soiled and spotted. Brown stains/spills on pages 207 to 219 and 286 to 297. Tanning to all pages.

In the novel, "Mad" Maitland discovers a woman's handprint in the dust on his desk...  in the ensuing days he encounters burglars, pushes a car from a creek, engages in some fisticuffs, meets an imposter, lies to the police, speeds through the New York streets, hotwires an elevator, gets in a shoot out. The novel became the basis for a 1924 silent mystery film directed by Jerome Storm with screenplay by Thomas Dixon Jr. (of Hardy Boys fame).