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- Herausgeber: Musaicum Books
- Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
- Sprache: Englisch
In Richard Marsh's thrilling novel, 'The Chase of the Ruby,' readers are taken on a suspenseful journey filled with mystery and intrigue. Set in the backdrop of early 20th century England, Marsh weaves a narrative that keeps readers on the edge of their seats as they follow the protagonist on a quest to uncover the truth behind a valuable ruby. The book is characterized by its fast pace, intricate plot twists, and vivid descriptions that bring the story to life. Marsh's storytelling skills and attention to detail make 'The Chase of the Ruby' a captivating read for fans of the thriller genre. As an author known for his gripping mystery novels, Marsh's ability to create tension and suspense is evident throughout the book. His writing style draws readers in from the first page and keeps them engrossed until the very end. 'The Chase of the Ruby' is a must-read for anyone looking for a thrilling and engaging novel that will keep them guessing until the final reveal. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Seitenzahl: 235
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
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The Chase of the Ruby
(Thriller Novel)
Published by
Books
Table of Contents
Introduction
A glittering object moves through grasping hands and shadowed rooms, turning private desires into public risk as speed, secrecy, and moral uncertainty collide in a relentless contest of pursuit and escape.
Richard Marsh’s The Chase of the Ruby is a compact, high-velocity thriller from around the turn of the twentieth century, written by a British author best known for the sensational success of The Beetle. Rooted in the urban textures and social atmosphere of late Victorian and early Edwardian Britain, it channels the energy of popular crime fiction into a streamlined narrative of motion and pressure. Readers encounter a world where respectability and risk share a thin wall, and where the right jewel in the wrong place can reorder lives overnight.
The premise is disarmingly simple: a coveted ruby becomes the axis around which fortune seekers, hardened criminals, and representatives of the law revolve, their paths converging and diverging as the gem changes hands. Marsh builds the chase step by step, with close scrapes, sudden reversals, and decisions made in the breath between impulse and consequence. The novel maintains a spoiler-safe balance of revelation and restraint, presenting enough of the initial setup to orient the reader while withholding the secrets that give the later stages of the pursuit their bite.
The reading experience is brisk, scene-driven, and alert to atmosphere, with Marsh’s economy of description matched by a taste for theatrical turns that keep the pages turning. Tension builds through compressed encounters and smartly staged confrontations, punctuated by wry asides and moments of human calculation. The tone straddles menace and mischief, letting danger and opportunity coexist in the same corridor. Chapter endings nudge forward with quiet insistence, and the prose favors clarity over ornament, allowing the mechanics of plot and the friction between characters to carry the story’s charge.
At the heart of the book lie questions of value and values: what a rare object is worth, and what pursuing it may cost. Marsh explores how desire sharpens perception and clouds judgment, how chance can masquerade as fate, and how the masks of ordinary life can conceal appetites or fears that only a crisis reveals. The ruby functions as a mirror for those who seek it, reflecting greed, ambition, loyalty, and panic in turn. Trust proves provisional, reputation vulnerable, and the boundary between law and lawlessness thin and negotiable.
Although rooted in its era, the novel speaks to contemporary readers through its insights into velocity, uncertainty, and the precariousness of identity under pressure. It captures the way rumor races faster than reflection, the ease with which a story takes hold, and the difficulty of reclaiming control once events accelerate. Its portrait of crowded streets, quick calculations, and opportunistic alliances feels familiar in a world where attention, information, and advantage move quickly. The chase becomes both literal and metaphorical, a study in how people navigate risk when every choice may foreclose or create paths.
The Chase of the Ruby endures because it refines a now-classic pattern—the jewel caper turned moral inquiry—into an elegant machine for suspense and reflection. Marsh’s craftsmanship, his sensitivity to social surfaces, and his instinct for narrative propulsion make the book a touchstone for the evolution of the modern thriller. For readers today, it offers not only a gripping pursuit but also a lens on how objects gather stories, how stories gather people, and how people, in turn, reveal themselves when something dazzling seems almost within reach.
Synopsis
The Chase of the Ruby, a thriller novel by Richard Marsh, opens with a sudden entanglement around a coveted gemstone whose very name suggests peril and temptation. A respectable man, drawn by chance into the orbit of the ruby, finds his ordinary routine overturned when a chain of furtive encounters, unsettling messages, and grasping hands makes him custodian, witness, or suspect by turns. Marsh establishes a bustling urban backdrop in which anonymity enables crime as readily as it protects the innocent. From the outset, pace and uncertainty dominate, and the object at the story’s center exerts a magnetic pull that distorts judgment and tests character.
Early episodes pivot on possession and pursuit. Under pressure from shady visitors and threatened by unseen watchers, the protagonist tries to decide whether to surrender the jewel, conceal it, or discover its rightful claimant. Each route seems dangerous. Marsh threads narrow escapes with comic friction, placing his lead between officious landlords, inquisitive acquaintances, and intruders who are bold one moment and furtive the next. Misdirection abounds: packages are not what they seem, identities blur at doors and stairwells, and every small misstep risks inviting a fresh attempt to wrest the ruby away.
As the chase expands, hints of the ruby’s backstory surface through fragments of testimony and rumor. The gem appears to be entangled with earlier wrongdoing and a trail of bad luck, giving even the honest characters cause to question how far they should go in handling it. The law takes notice, though official attention provides no simple refuge; suspicion travels quickly, and conflicting statements proliferate. Marsh cultivates an atmosphere in which certainty is rare. To move forward, the central figures must weigh the dangers of confiding in strangers against the perils of acting alone in a crowded, watchful city.
Reversals multiply. At crucial moments, the jewel slips from one grasp to another by theft, bargaining, or sheer accident, turning the narrative into a brisk alternation of confidence and panic. Marsh’s set pieces lean on disguises, locked doors, and unlikely hiding places, yet the tone never abandons everyday detail; society calls continue, meals are interrupted, and ordinary errands become fraught. Allies emerge, though their reliability is never assured, and the protagonist must learn to read motives in half-light. The effect is a steady tightening of the net around everyone who comes close to the ruby.
Behind the opportunists stands a more calculating opponent who seems to anticipate moves before they are made. Traps are laid with plausible deniability, and the threat of being framed becomes as dangerous as outright violence. The hero’s judgment is tested by flattering confidences and overriding fear, and a resourceful confidant proves crucial in outmaneuvering plots that exploit gaps between classes and the facades of respectability. Marsh probes how public image and private intent collide, showing how a celebrated object can license deception and make ordinary courtesies into tactical gambits.
The pursuit accelerates toward a concentrated reckoning where competing claims and concealed histories are forced into the open. Marsh orchestrates converging paths so that questions about the ruby’s origin, its legitimate ownership, and the true scope of the crimes linked to it cannot be deferred. In the tense exchanges that follow, courage and clear thinking matter as much as physical daring, and the intervention of authority takes on ambiguous meaning. Outcomes hinge on who can separate truth from expedient story under pressure, while the final arrangements concerning the jewel and its pursuers remain closely held until the close.
Beyond its immediate suspense, The Chase of the Ruby endures as a taut study of desire, risk, and the fluid boundaries between respectability and criminality in modern urban life. Marsh’s swift pacing, alternating menace with wry observation, showcases a form of popular fiction built on momentum, overlapping perspectives, and the magnetism of a single, dangerous object. The novel’s craft lies in how it keeps multiple possibilities alive without sacrificing clarity, inviting reflection on how easily people can be swept into schemes that promise fortune or safety. Its resonance rests in the unease it captures—and the ingenuity it rewards—without bluntly foreclosing its mysteries.
Historical Context
In the closing years of the Victorian era, Richard Marsh—pseudonym of Richard Bernard Heldmann—contributed prolifically to Britain’s booming market for popular fiction. Best known for the bestseller The Beetle (1897), he also wrote thrillers centered on crime, pursuit, and urban mystery. The Chase of the Ruby, a jewel‑theft narrative, belongs to that milieu: fast-moving plots set in contemporary urban Britain, especially London, written for magazine and book audiences hungry for sensation. The period’s expanding literacy, cheap editions, and mass-circulation weeklies created a wide readership for such tales. Marsh wrote as London modernized rapidly, providing a dynamic backdrop of crowded streets, burgeoning suburbs, and conspicuous displays of wealth.
London’s policing and legal institutions frame the atmosphere of Marsh’s thrillers. The Metropolitan Police had been established in 1829, and its Criminal Investigation Department (CID) created in 1878 following corruption scandals, professionalizing detective work. In 1890, the force moved its headquarters to the new “New Scotland Yard” on the Victoria Embankment, a symbol of modern law enforcement. The Old Bailey continued as the central criminal court, while local magistrates oversaw preliminary hearings. This bureaucratic landscape—uniformed patrols, plain‑clothes detectives, and formal procedures—supplied recognizable touchstones for readers and lent plausibility to stories of stolen property, suspects on the run, and the state’s methods of pursuit.
Technological change made late‑nineteenth‑century chases believable and exciting. Britain’s dense railway network allowed rapid movement between London neighborhoods and provincial towns, with timetables guiding both criminals and pursuers. The world’s first deep‑level electric underground line, the City and South London Railway, opened in 1890, and the Central London Railway followed in 1900, shrinking distances in the capital. Telegraphy enabled quick long‑distance communication; telephones, introduced in the 1880s, were increasingly available in businesses and affluent homes. Police used photography and “rogues’ galleries,” while anthropometric identification (the Bertillon system) was discussed internationally. Fingerprinting would be formally adopted at Scotland Yard in 1901, just after the Victorian era.
Mass journalism shaped crime’s public image and the narrative techniques writers employed. The “New Journalism” associated with editors like W. T. Stead emphasized vivid reporting and sensational headlines. Daily newspapers such as the Daily Mail (founded 1896) popularized crime stories and human‑interest angles. Illustrated monthly magazines—most famously the Strand Magazine, which began publishing Sherlock Holmes stories in 1891—accustomed readers to episodic suspense and deductive showmanship. The collapse of the expensive three‑volume novel in the mid‑1890s and the rise of single‑volume editions and magazine serialization lowered costs and widened audiences. Marsh’s thrillers benefited from these channels, mixing cliffhangers, urban detail, and topical references recognizable to general readers.
High‑profile crimes in the 1870s–1890s fed fascination with master criminals and the machinery of detection. The 1888 Whitechapel murders galvanized debate about policing, surveillance, and the dangers of the metropolis. International jewel and art thefts—emblematized by the exploits of Adam Worth, whose 1876 theft of Gainsborough’s Duchess of Devonshire became legendary—circulated in the press and true‑crime literature. Fiction responded with rival models of criminality and justice: Arthur Conan Doyle’s consulting detective (from 1887) and, slightly later, E. W. Hornung’s gentleman‑thief A. J. Raffles (first stories 1898). Marsh wrote into this competitive field, where clever ruses, disguises, and the staging of identity were standard fare.
Britain’s imperial reach underpinned late‑Victorian fascination with precious stones. After the Third Anglo‑Burmese War (1885) and annexation of Upper Burma, the famed Mogok Stone Tract—source of high‑quality rubies—came under British control, and Burmese gems flowed through imperial trade networks. London’s Hatton Garden had developed as the city’s jewelry and diamond‑cutting district, linking colonial supply to metropolitan luxury markets. Exhibitions and royal displays—from the Crystal Palace traditions to the Colonial and Indian Exhibition of 1886—showcased “exotic” materials alongside imperial spectacle. Stories about stolen jewels, therefore, invoked tangible circuits of empire, possession, and status that readers associated with wealth, risk, and international intrigue.
Fin‑de‑siècle social change broadened the roles available to women and reshaped domestic norms reflected in popular fiction. The Married Women’s Property Acts (1870 and 1882) expanded married women’s financial autonomy; clerical and retail employment for women grew, and typewriting opened office work to female clerks. Organized suffrage activity intensified, with the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies formed in 1897. Fiction of the period often featured resourceful women who navigated urban spaces, newspaper publicity, and legal constraints. Marsh frequently wrote capable heroines and ambiguous femme‑fatale figures, aligning his work with contemporary debates about respectability, independence, and the interpretive risks posed by appearances and performance.
The Chase of the Ruby channels the late‑Victorian metropolis’s energies: rapid transport, instantaneous news, and the opacity of crowds. Its jewel‑centered plot engages with imperial commodities and the social capital attached to owning them, while its cat‑and‑mouse structure tests the reach of modern policing and bureaucratic order. The novel’s reliance on misdirection, impersonation, and contested evidence echoes an era negotiating new media, new sciences of identification, and widening social mobility. By dramatizing the scramble for a gem, Marsh reflects contemporary anxieties about greed, status, and security, offering a brisk entertainment that implicitly surveys the institutions and networks sustaining Britain at century’s end.
The Chase of the Ruby (Thriller Novel)
CHAPTER IGHOSTS IN AFRICA
'Upon my word, this is--' He hesitated, then chose another form of words with which to conclude his sentence. 'This is extraordinary.'
He allowed the paper to flutter from between his fingers, stood staring at nothing, then, stooping, picked up the sheet of blue post from where it had fallen at his feet.
'Extraordinary!' he repeated.
He regarded it and handled it as if it had been some uncanny thing--though, on the face of it, it was nothing of the kind. It was a formal letter addressed to 'Guy Holland, Esq., 37A Craven Street, W.C.' It began 'Dear Sir,' and ended 'Yr. obedt. servant, SAML. COLLYER.' Between the beginning and the end it informed him that his uncle, George Burton, had died at Nice on February 23, and that the writer would feel obliged if he would call upon him at his earliest possible convenience.
'I wonder if I saw him die?' Mr Holland knit his brows as he asked himself the question. 'How could I, when I was in Mashonaland[1] and he was in Nice? Absurd!'
He laughed, as it has been written, 'hollowly'; the laugh of uneasiness rather than mirth.
Then he went and saw the lady.
She was waiting on a seat by a certain piece of water in Regent's Park. She must have had eyes behind, because, although she was sitting with her back to him, directly he stepped upon the grass she sprang up, and, as if she had been observing him all the time, went to him at something very like a run. He advanced at quick step. They met in the middle of the grass plot, contrary to regulations, which forbid people to walk upon the grass. They each gave two hands, and that with an air which suggested that if that had not been a public place they would have given each other something else as well.
'Guy!' she exclaimed. 'I thought you were the other side of the world. What a time you've been!'
'Coming from the other side of the world? or from Craven Street? It is some distance from Craven Street to Regent's Park.'
'You are in Craven Street, are you? What's it mean? You're looking well--sort of coppery colour; it suits you.'
'That's the air of the veldt; it burnishes a man's skin. You're looking sweet. I say, it's awfully hard lines that I can't kiss you. Mayn't I--just a little one?'
'In broad daylight, in Regent's Park, with a hundred pairs of eyes observing us from Hamilton Terrace? Thank you; some other day. When I had your note--what a note! "Meet me at the old place at noon"--I wondered who I was to meet, you or your ghost. As a matter of fact, I had a most important engagement--just at noon; but I put it off on purpose to come and see.'
'That was very dear of you. I'm not my ghost, I'm me.'
'But--Guy, have you made your fortune? You didn't seem as if you were going to make it at quite such a rate when you wrote last.'
He shook his head.
'Came back with less in my pockets than when I left.'
'Then--what does it mean?'
'My uncle's dead.'
'Mr Burton?'
He nodded.
'Has he left you his money? Oh, Guy!'
'As to that, I can't say. At present I know nothing. The fact is, Letty, it's--it's a queer business. You won't laugh?'
'What at?'
'Well'--he held out an envelope--'if I hadn't found this letter awaiting me telling me of the old man's death, I should have accused myself of softening of the brain, or something of the kind. As it is, I believe I've had a vision.'
'A vision! You? Guy, fancy your discovering that there are visions about.'
'You're laughing at me now.'
'I'm doing nothing of the kind. How can you say such a thing? I'm the soul of gravity. Do I ever laugh?'
As a matter of fact, there was a twinkle in her eyes even as she spoke, which he perceived.
'All right; laugh it out. I don't mind. All I can say is that it's gospel truth, and seems queer enough to me, though I daresay it's extremely comic to anybody else.'
'What seems comic? You haven't said a word.'
'Let's find a seat, and I'll say a good many.'
They found a seat--not the one she had been sitting on, but one which was sheltered by a tree. It was, perhaps, because it was in the shade that they temporarily ignored the fact that they were yet in Regent's Park. They were still pretty close together when he began to tell his tale.
'On the 23rd of February I had had a long day in the open. It was broiling hot, and in the evening I was glad to get back under cover. As I sat at my tent door, too tired even to smoke, I saw, right in front of me, my uncle.'
'Your uncle? Mr Burton? Where was this?'
'Perhaps three hundred miles north of Buluwayo.'
'But--what was your uncle doing there?'
'I told you it was a queer business, and so it was. Let me try to explain. Straight in front of where I was sitting the plain stretched for heaven knows how many miles right away to the horizon. There were no buildings; scarcely a bush or a tree was to be seen; just the monotonous level ground. All at once I perceived, certainly within a hundred feet of where I was, a flight of steps.'
'A flight of steps?'
'Well, I had a sort of general idea that there was a building in connection, but my eyes were fixed upon the steps. I seemed to know them. There was a wide open door at top. I felt that I was well acquainted with what was on the other side of that door. On the steps my uncle was standing. Mind, I saw him as well as I see you, and, thank goodness, I can see you pretty well. I can't tell you what he wore, because I'm no hand at describing clothes; but I've an impression that he had on a suit of tweeds and a bowler hat. He was apparently lounging on the steps, watching the passers-by. He did not see me--of that I was sure. On a sudden someone else came towards him up the steps. He was a stranger to me, though I think I should know him if I saw him again. He was taller than my uncle, and, I imagine, younger. Anyhow, he was altogether a bigger and a stronger man. He had a walking stick in his hand, with a horn handle. Directly he got within reach, without, so far as I could judge, uttering a word of warning, with this stick he struck my uncle with all his force across the face. I suspect that my uncle had seen him coming before I did, and, for reasons of his own, had stuck to what he deemed his post of vantage on the steps, being unwilling to go and meet him, and ashamed to run away. That he was not so taken aback by the suddenness of the attack as I was I felt persuaded. He put out his hand to guard himself, and, I fancy, at the last moment was disposed to turn tail and flee. But it was too late. The blow got home. He staggered back and would have fallen had not the stranger gripped him with his left hand, and commenced to belabour him with the stick which he held with his right. People came streaming out of the open door above and up the steps from the street. My uncle made not the faintest attempt at resistance. When the people came close enough to hamper the free action of his arm, the stranger, giving his victim a push, sent him head foremost down the steps. In an instant the whole thing vanished.'
Mr Holland ceased. The lady had been regarding him with wide-open grey eyes.
'Guy!' she said.
'Wasn't it odd?'
'Odd? You must have been dreaming.'
'I was as wide awake as you are. It was a mirage, or vision, or something of the kind[1q]. The queerest part of it was that it was so amazingly real, and so near. When the thing had gone I kept asking myself why I hadn't jumped up and interfered. I could have got there in a dozen strides.'
'Then what happened?'
'I sat for a long time half dazed, half expecting the thing to come again, or to continue from the point at which it had left off. Then I went and told a man with whom I was chumming what I'd seen. He said the sun had got into my eyes, advised me to have a drink--made fun of it altogether. But I knew better; and, as it turned out, I was haunted by my uncle all through the night.'
'Awake or sleeping?'
'Awake. I couldn't sleep. I was haunted by a feeling that he was dying. The stranger had not killed him; but in consequence of the thrashing he had received he was struggling with death, and kept calling out to me to come to him; and I couldn't.'
'Poor Guy!'
The lady softly stroked the hand of his which she held between her two.
'I wondered if I was on the verge of an attack of illness or going mad, or what, though personally I felt as fit as a fiddle all the time, with my senses as much about me as they are now. I kept hearing him call out, over and over again, "Guy, Guy!" in the voice I knew so well and wasn't particularly fond of. There was something else which he kept repeating.'
'What was that?'
'"The ruby."'
'The ruby?'
'I haven't a notion of what he meant or what the whole thing meant, but at least a dozen times that night I heard him referring to a ruby,--the ruby, he called it. Long and seemingly involved sentences I heard him utter, but the only two words I could distinguish were those two--"the ruby"; and, as I have said, those two I heard him pronounce certainly a dozen times. And in the morning I was conscious of an absolute conviction that he was dead.'
'How very strange.'
'I'm not one of your clever chaps, so I don't pretend to be able to suggest a sufficient explanation, but the entire business reminds me of what I've heard about second sight. Although in the body I was out there on the veldt I seemed to know and see what was taking place heaven knows how many thousand miles away. In spite of the persuasion which was borne in upon me that he was dead, every day, and sometimes all day, I heard him calling out to me, "Guy, Guy!" and every now and then, "The ruby!" It was as if he were imploring me to come to him.'
'So you came.'
'So I came. The truth is I couldn't stand it any longer. I should have gone off my head if I had had much more of it. I was good for nothing, my nerves were all anyhow, everyone was laughing at me. So I slipped off by myself without a word to a creature; got down to Cape Town, found a boat just starting, and was off on it at once. Directly the boat was away the haunting stopped. My nerves were all right in an instant. I told myself I was an ass; that I ought to have wired or written, or done something sensible. Since, however, it was too late I tried to make the best of things. I ran up to London so soon as we reached port, meaning, if it turned out that my imagination had made a fool of me, to go straight back without breathing a word to anyone of my ever having come.'
'Not even to me?'
'Not even to you. You wouldn't have liked me to turn up with nothing but a bee in my bonnet.'
'So long as you turned up, I shouldn't have cared for forty thousand bees. The idea!'
'That's very sweet of you. As it happened, no sooner did I appear at my old quarters than Mrs Flickers produced a letter which had arrived for me--she did not know how long ago, and which she had not known what to do with. It turned out to be an intimation from Collyer that that my uncle had died on the 23rd of February, the very day on which, out on the veldt, I had seen him assaulted by that unknown individual upon that flight of steps.'
'Guy, is this a ghost story you have been telling me? I don't want to be absurd, but it really does look as if it were a case of the hand of destiny.'
'I don't know about the hand of destiny, but it does look as if it were a case of something.'
'I shouldn't be surprised if, after all, the old reprobate has left you some of his money.'
'Nor I. Oh, Letty, if he has! We'll be married on Monday.'
'As this is Friday, couldn't you make it Sunday? Monday seems such a long way off. My dear Guy, first of all interview Mr Samuel Collyer. Then you'll learn the worst.'
'I am going to. Of course I had to see you first--'
'Of course.'
'But I wired to him that I'd call this afternoon.'
'Then call.'
And Mr Holland called.
CHAPTER IITHE QUEST ORDAINED
Mr Collyer's offices were in Pump Court, first floor front. Mr Samuel Collyer was a somewhat short and pursy gentleman of about fifty years of age, with a clean-shaven face, and a manner which gave such a varying complexion to the words he used as to cause it sometimes to be very difficult to make out exactly what it was he meant; an extremely useful manner for a solicitor to have. As with alert, swinging stride Mr Holland entered, Mr Collyer rose, greeting him with his usual stolid air, as if he had just looked in from across the road, instead of from the wilds of Africa.
'Good morning, Mr Guy. You're looking very brown.'
'Yes, I--I'm feeling very brown.'
