The Secret of Headlam Height (A Classic Short Story of Detective Max Carrados)

By Ernest Bramah

This early work by Ernest Bramah was originally published in 1927 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introduction. 'The Secret of Headlam Height' is a classic case of espionage for super sleuth Max Carrados. Ernest Bramah Smith was born was near Manchester in 1868. He was a poor student, and dropped out of the Manchester Grammar School when sixteen years old to go into the farming business. Bramah found commercial and critical success with his first novel, The Wallet of Kai Lung, but it was his later stories of detective Max Carrados that assured him lasting fame.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Jan 18, 2016
• ISBN: 9781473378827

Ernest Bramah

Ernest Bramah (1868–1942) was an English author of detective fiction.

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The Secret of Headlam Height

By

Ernest Bramah

Copyright © 2013 Read Books Ltd.

This book is copyright and may not be

reproduced or copied in any way without

the express permission of the publisher in writing

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Ernest Bramah

Ernest Bramah Smith was born was near Manchester in 1868. He was a poor student, and dropped out of the Manchester Grammar School when sixteen years old to go into the farming business. During his late teens, he began to contribute short stories and vignettes to the Birmingham News. A few years later, he moved to London’s Grub Street - famous for its concentration of impoverished ‘hack writers’ – and eventually became editor of a number of journals.

Bramah found commercial and critical success with his first novel, The Wallet of Kai Lung, in 1900. The character of Kai Lang – a travelling storyteller in China – went on to feature in a number of his works, many of which featured fantasy elements such as dragons and gods, and utilised an idiosyncratic form of Mandarin English. Something of a recluse, Bramah also wrote political science fiction – in fact, his 1907 novel The Secret of the League was acknowledged by George Orwell as a forerunner to his famous novel Nineteen Eighty-Four – and even tried his hand at detective fiction. At the height of his fame, Bramah’s mystery tales, featuring the blind detective Max Carrados, appeared alongside Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories in the Strand Magazine, even occasionally outselling them. Bramah died in 1942, aged 74.

The Secret of Headlam Height

Parkinson, the unquenchable stickler for decorum, paused after receiving the general instructions for the day just long enough to create a sense of hesitation. Mr Carrados, merely concerned with an after-breakfast cigarette, divined the position with his usual unerring instinct.

‘Yes, Parkinson,’ he remarked encouragingly; ‘is there anything going on?’

A clumsily-folded newspaper enabled the punctilious attendant to salve his conscience as he returned slowly to the table. He shook out the printed sheets into a more orderly arrangement by way of covering the irregularity.

‘I understand, sir,’ he replied in the perfectly controlled respectful voice that accorded with his deliberate actions ‘I understand that this morning’s foreign intelligence is of a disquieting nature.’

The blind man’s hand went unfalteringly to an open copy of The Times lying by him and there a single deft finger touched off the headlines with easy certainty.

‘On the Brink of War. Threatened German Mobilization,’ he read aloud. ‘The Duty of Great Britain. Yes, I don’t think that disquieting over-states the position.’

‘No, sir. So I gathered from what I had already heard. That is why I thought it better to speak to you about a trifling incident that has come under my notice, sir.’

‘Quite right,’ assented Mr Carrados. ‘Well?’

‘It was at the Museum here, sir—a very instructive establishment in Market Square. I had gone there in order to settle a small matter in dispute between Herbert and myself affecting the distinction between shrimps and prawns. I had always been under the impression that prawns were unusually well-grown shrimps, but I find that I was mistaken. I was directed to the cases of preserved fish by a gentleman with a cut across his cheek. Subsequently I learned from the hall-keeper, to whom I spoke about