The Incident of the Arrest of Walter Raleigh and the Man with the Missing Forefinger

By Percy Andreæ and John Betancourt

Percy Andreae (18581924 was an English-American brewer and influential anti-prohibitionist during the early part of the 20th century. He was born inClapham,Londonto a German father, Carl Andre of Frankfurt, and an English mother, Emilie Sillem. During the 1890s, Andreae published short stories and novels, many of which first appeared inThe Windsor Magazine. His fiction drew on his roots, incorporating international mystery and suspense with adventure, set in the height of the Victorian era. The hero of The Emperors Detective series is a British man-for-hire who finds himself working for a very interesting employer, one who has no qualms about assigning him impossible cases.

Includes a new introduction by John Betancourt.

"The Incident of the Wife’s Double and the Tragedy at the Masked Ball" is the fifth of his The Emperor's Detective series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wildside Press
• Release date: Aug 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9781479461370

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Table of Contents

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

INTRODUCTION

THE INCIDENT OF THE ARREST OF WALTER RALEIGH AND THE MAN WITH THE MISSING FOREFINGER

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

Copyright © 2021 by Wildside Press LLC.

Introduction copyright © 2021 by John Betancourt

Language and punctuation has been modernized when necessary.

Originally published in The Windsor Magazine (1898).

INTRODUCTION

Percy Andreæ (1858–1924) was an English-American brewer and influential anti-prohibitionist during the early part of the 20th century. He was born in Clapham, London to a German father, Carl Andreæ of Frankfurt, and an English mother, Emilie Sillem. During the 1890s, Andreae published short stories and novels, many of which first appeared in The Windsor Magazine.

His fiction drew on his roots, incorporating international mystery and suspense with adventure, set in the height of the Victorian era. The hero of The Emperor’s Detective series is a British man-for-hire who finds himself working for a very interesting employer, one who has no qualms about assigning him impossible cases.

Andreæ immigrated to the United States in 1896. He settled in Cincinnati before moving to Chicago, becoming a U.S. citizen in 1914. Shortly after his immigration, Andreæ abandoned fiction writing for a career in brewing. He soon became involved in politics when the rising temperance movement threatened his livelihood. After the Anti-Saloon League made sweeping victories in the 1908 Ohio state elections, Andreae formed a resistance group, The National Association of Commerce and Labor, which fought temperance organizations on the national level. (It largely employed former state Senators and Representatives to further its work.) Andreæ died in Winnetka, Illinois, aged 65.

But back to our interests, his books include:

Stanhope of Chester: A Mystery (1894)

The Mask and the Man: A Novel (1894)

The Signora: A Tale (1895)

The Vanished Emperor (1896)

A Life at Stake (1902)

I am pleased to present the 6-part series The Emperor’s Detective which ran in The Windsor Magazine in 1898. Enjoy!

—John Betancourt

Cabin John, Maryland

THE INCIDENT OF THE ARREST OF WALTER RALEIGH AND THE MAN WITH THE MISSING FOREFINGER

PERCY ANDREÆ

I MAY puss over the next four-and-twenty hours of my life in silence. The reader, I fancy, will not he particularly concerned to hear anything I could say regarding the effect produced upon my mind by the terrible calamity of which I had been the unwilling cause, nor could I hope to do anything like justice to the subject.

Suffice it to say that I was dominated by a feeling of total callousness as to what the future might bring me, and that, could I have undone what was done by sacrificing every