000			03453cam a22003733u 4500
001			78643
003			UtSlPG
005			20260610134826.0
006			m
007			cr n
008			260607r20261923utu|||||o|||||||||||||| d
010			_a24019326
040			_aUtSlPG
041		7	_aen _2iso639-1
050		4	_aPS
100	1		_aStagg, Clinton H. _q(Clinton Holland), _d1888-1916
245	1	0	_aThornley Colton
264		1	_aSalt Lake City, UT : _bProject Gutenberg, _c2026
300			_a1 online resource : _bmultiple file formats
336			_atext _btxt _2rdacontent
337			_acomputer _bc _2rdamedia
338			_aonline resource _bcr _2rdacarrier
500			_aRelease date is 2026-05-09
505	0		_aThe keyboard of silence -- Unto the third generation -- The money machines -- The flying death -- The thousand facets of fire -- The gilded glove -- The ringing goblets -- The eye of the Seven Devils.
508			_aTim Miller and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
520			_a"Thornley Colton" by Clinton H. Stagg is a collection of detective stories written in the early 20th century. It centers on a brilliant blind problem-solver, Thornley Colton, whose acute senses and cool logic unravel intricate crimes with the help of his loyal secretary, Sydney Thames. The cases blend high society settings with clever criminal schemes, emphasizing psychological insight, misdirection, and tightly worked details. The opening of the book introduces Colton in a fashionable restaurant, where his poise and uncanny awareness foreshadow a coming crime involving a banker, Norris, the opera singer Rhoda Richmond, and a vice-president, Simpson, newly wed to a supposed deaf-mute. When half a million in negotiable bonds vanish from the Berkley Trust, police fix on Norris and Rhoda, even catching her at a South American liner after a mysterious phone summons. Colton methodically widens the lens: he calls in the alarm-company men, questions two elderly watchmen, notes a telltale dusting of sulfur by the safe, and traces a timid “scrubwoman” to a tenement—uncovering quills used for cocaine snuffing. In a staged confrontation, his boy assistant Shrimp delivers a collapsing vaudeville female impersonator—Simpson’s “wife”—and Colton produces the bonds, waterproofed in an ice bag and hidden in a pail of dirty mop water; Simpson is exposed as the calculating thief. The second story begins with a glittering society reception abruptly halted when Dorothy Raelton is found unconscious beside an opium set; press frenzy follows, and Dorothy, despairing, confesses to paying blackmail with her replaced diamond necklace. Colton, rethinking the scene, realizes she isn’t an opium smoker—she doesn’t even know how to “cook” the pill and the bedroom door was locked from the outside—pointing to a deliberate framing and a more sinister blackmail plot that he resolves to pursue. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
534			_pOriginally published: _cNew York: G. Howard Watt, 1923
653			_aNew York (N.Y.) -- Fiction
653			_aDetective and mystery stories, American
653			_aPrivate investigators -- Fiction
653			_aBlind -- Fiction
856	4		_uhttps://archive.org/details/thornleycoltonbl00stag/mode/2up
856	4	0	_uhttps://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78643
999			_c119361 _d119361