Stroke of One

Many trails of amorous adventure had been carelessly left behind by the famous Sir Henry Polstur as he explored the world. But what led to his death was that trail which stretched from San Francisco's Chinatown to a fashionable French watering place, thence to his native Devon village. The discovery of his body in the belfry of the ancient local church completely mystified his neighbors, and apparently baffled Scotland Yard. But as the search proceeded, one man after another appeared to have ample motive for murder -- a mysterious cultured Chinaman, an affronted American business man, an outraged English schoolmaster, and an ambitious young doctor. The suspense of the story grows until the final solution is reached. Mr. Walling has in this novel given us of his best. But he has done better than write an intriguing detective story. He has again done what Dorothy Canfield praised in *Murder at the Keyhole*, and has created delightfully lawless, well-bred people, one of them a girl as charming as she is incorrigible, characters who make the reader truly interested in what happens to them.