Excerpt from A Tragic Mystery: From the Diary of Inspector Byrnes The wine shop or restaurant was built of wood, and was only two stories In height. It was bounded on one side by a large edifice of brick, and on the other by an old lumber-yard, crowded with piles of tim ber and heaps of junk and rubbish, and separated from the street by a high fence. An old-fashioned stoop decorated the front of the building, and be hinda ramshackle balcony jutted over the yard. The array of bottles and framed signs in the Shop window was enriched with some garlands of dusty and faded greenery, the relics of Christmas orna mentation for the period at which this story be gins was' the week between Christmas and New Years. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.