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Chapter 1: What happens when the young man waits for his sweetheart?
The Mystery of the Semi-Detached by Edith Nesbitt
He was waiting for her. He'd been waiting an hour and a half in a dusty suburban lane, with a row of big elms on one side and some eligible building sites on the other, and far away to the southwest, the twinkling yellow lights of the Crystal Palace. It was not quite like a country lane, for it had a pavement and lampposts, but it was not a bad place for a meeting all the same.
And farther up, towards the cemetery, it was really quite rural and almost pretty, especially in the twilight. But twilight had long deepened into the night, and still he waited. He loved her, and he was engaged to be married to her, with a complete disapproval of every reasonable person who had been consulted.
And this half-clandestine meeting was to-night to take the place of the grudgingly sanctioned weekly interview. because a certain rich uncle was visiting at her house and her mother was not the woman to acknowledge to a moneyed uncle who might go off any day a match so deeply ineligible as hers with him so he waited for her and the chill of an unusually severe may evening entered into his bones
The policeman passed him with a surly response to his good night.
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Chapter 2: Why does the young man enter the open door of the house?
The bicyclists went by him like grey ghosts with foghorns, and it was nearly ten o'clock, and she had not come. He shrugged his shoulders and turned towards his lodgings. His road led him by her house, a desirable, commodious, semi-detached, and he walked slowly as he neared it. She might even now be coming out, but she was not.
there was no sign of movement about the house no sign of life no lights even in the windows and her people were not early people he paused by the gate wondering Then he noticed that the front door was open wide, and the street-clamp shone a little way into the dark hall. There was something about all this that did not please him, that scared him a little, indeed.
The house had a gloomy and deserted air. It was obviously impossible that it harboured a rich uncle. The old man must have left early, in which case—
Chapter 3: What shocking discovery does the young man make upstairs?
He walked up the path of patent-glazed tiles and listened. No sign of life. He passed into the hall. There was no light anywhere. Where was everybody, and why was the front door open? There was no one in the drawing-room, the dining-room, and the study, nine feet by seven, were equally blank. Everyone was out, evidently.
But the unpleasant sense that he was, perhaps, not the first casual visitor to walk through that open door impelled him to look through the house before he went away and closed it after him. So he went upstairs. And at the door of the first bedroom he came to, he struck a wax match, as he had done in the sitting room.
Chapter 4: How does the young man's experience lead to a police investigation?
Even as he did so, he felt that he was not alone, and he was prepared to see something, but for what he saw, he was not prepared. for what he saw lay on the bed in a white loose gown, and it was his sweetheart, and its throat was cut from ear to ear.
he doesn't know what happened then nor how he got downstairs and into the street but he got out somehow and the policeman found him in a fit under the lamp-post at the corner of the street he couldn't speak when they picked him up and he passed the night in the police cells because the policeman had seen plenty of drunken men before but never one in a fit
The next morning he was better, though still very white and shaky, but the tale he told the magistrate was convincing, and they sent a couple of constables with him to her house. There was no crowd about it, as he had fancied there would be, and the blinds were not down.
as he stood dazed in front of the door it opened and she came out he held on to the door-post for support she's all right you see said the constable who had found him under the lamp i told you he was drunk but you would know best
When he was alone with her he told her not all, for that would not bear telling, but how he had come into the commodious semi-detached, and how he had found a door open and the lights out, and that he had been into that long back room facing the stairs and had seen something. In even trying to hint at which he turned sick and broke down and had to have a brandy given him.
but my dearest she said i dare say the house was dark for we were all at the crystal palace with my uncle and no doubt the door was open for the maids will run out if they are left but you could not have been in that room because i locked it when i came away and the key was in my pocket i dressed in a hurry and i left all my odds and ends lying about I know, he said.
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Chapter 5: What explanation does the young woman provide for the mysterious events?
I saw a green scarf on a chair and some long brown gloves and little hairpins and ribbons and a prayer book and a lace handkerchief on the dressing table. Why, I even noticed the almanac on the mantelpiece. October 21st. At least it couldn't be that, because this is May. And yet it was. "'Your almanac is at October 21st, isn't it?' "'No, of course it isn't,' she said, smiling rather anxiously.
"'But all the other things were just as you say. "'You must have had a dream or a vision or something.' He was a very ordinary, commonplace, city young man, and he didn't believe in visions.
Chapter 6: What is the significance of the almanac dated October 21st?
But he never rested day or night till he got his sweetheart and the mother away from that commodious semi-detached, and settled them in a quite distant suburb. In the course of the removal he incidentally married her, and the mother went on living with them.
his nerves must have been a good bit shaken because he was very queer for a long time and was always inquiring if any one had taken the desirable semi-detached and when an old stockbroker with a family took it he went the length of calling on the old gentleman and imploring him by all that he held dear not to live in that fatal house why said the stockbroker not unnaturally
and then he got so vague and confused between trying to tell why and trying not to tell why that the stockbroker showed him out and thanked his god that he was not such a fool as to allow a lunatic to stand in the way of his taking that really remarkably cheap and desirable semi-detached residence
Now, the curious and quite inexplicable part of this story is that when she came down to breakfast on the morning of the 22nd of October, she found him looking like death. with the morning paper in his hand.
He caught hers, he couldn't speak, and pointed to the paper, and there she read that on the night of the 21st a young lady, the stockbroker's daughter, had been found with her throat cut from ear to ear on the bed in the long back bedroom facing the stairs of that desirable semi-detached.
I'm not going to do an analysis of this story because I've been busy. But this is going to be a good time for me to remind you to subscribe to my channel on YouTube. Even if you're not on YouTube, go to YouTube, search for the Classic Ghost Stories podcast and hit subscribe because I need to get over 100,000 so I get a thing.
I get a thing, the silver thing with an arrow on one and I can put it on my wall and I really want one. So please, go on, please. It would really make my day. Thank you.
Everybody dies, don't they? Let some come back. Isn't that so? You tried to get into the locked drawer today, didn't you? How do the dead come back, mother? What's the secret?
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