The Lock and Key Library

Three doolies are carried into a storm-beaten Indian bungalow—and vanish. Then, from the empty room next door, comes the unmistakable whir of a billiard ball.

Julian Hawthorne’s collection brings together mystery and detective stories by writers including Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Conan Doyle and Wilkie Collins. Its opening tale unfolds on the lonely roads of India, where travelers take shelter in old, ill-kept dâk-bungalows—and local ghost lore is best treated with respect. Kipling’s unnamed narrator has spent night after night in such places without meeting a ghost. At Katmal, amid rattling palms, a babbling servant and doors that open onto silence, he finally hears something he cannot explain. What—or who—has entered the next room?

With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world.

Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.