Mystery and Crime Mumford, Ethel Watts: Out of the Ashes. V1. 8 Oct 2009

[crutledge]

Ethel Watts Mumford (1876 or 78? - 1940) was a U.S. author, a New Yorker. "Mumford" came from her first husband (married 1894-1901). She remarried in 1906 and for a time wrote under the name "Ethel Watts Mumford Grant," adding her second husband's name, but eventually reverted to "Ethel Watts Mumford" as a byline.

Excerpt
Marcus Gard sat at his library table apparently in rapt contemplation of a pair of sixteenth century bronze inkwells, strange twisted shapes, half man, half beast, bearing in their breasts twin black pools. But his thoughts were far from their grotesque beauty—centered on vast schemes of destruction and reconstruction. The room was still, so quiet, in spite of its proximity to the crowded life of Fifth Avenue, that one divined its steel construction and the doubled and trebled casing of its many windows. The walls, hung with green Genoese velvet, met a carved and coffered ceiling, and touched the upper shelf of the breast-high bookcases that lined the walls. No picture broke the simple unity of color. Here and there a Donatello bronze silhouetted a slim shape, or a Florentine portrait bust smiled with veiled meaning from the quiet shadows. The shelves were rich in books in splendid bindings, gems of ancient workmanship or modern luxury, for the Great Man had the instinct of the masterpiece.

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