DRINK THE GREEN WATER (or) Young Caldwell's Toe

N.Y.: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1948. 1st ed. Light wear along edges, else near fine gold cloth hardback in dust jacket worn at edges, darkened at spine and with a few chips, small piece out at rear. ...Sultan,. Sultan & Sultan, Counselors at Law was the mustiest and most dignified of New York law firms. Its only earthly representative was Wm Sultan, an old young man of extreme decorum who busied himself with the preparation of his uncle's Life & Letters. Only in one respect did the offices of Sultan, Sultan & Sultan differ from the other aged and decorous offices which were its neighbors, and that was Sultan's Harem (though the phrase would have horrified Wm). The Harem was Sultan's office staff which Wm had chosen with unconscious, yet certainly unerring, taste. There was Roberts, the. blonde receptionist, an athletic girl with a strong will and a demure way with callers which was a business asset and a complete fraud; Kelly, the brunette secretary, who had a sardonic affection for her employer and, whether he knew it or not, more than her share of grey matter; and .Morgan, the red-headed file clerk, who was unpredictable in everything including filing. All three were pretty, gay, irrepressible-and bored to death with the Life & Letters. They wanted excitement and, most of all, a livelier Wm Sultan. They got both, along with several murders, in the affair of Young Caldwell's Toe. Wm Sultan, happy though he was among the dusty letters and dustier legal phrases, wasn't the dry fellow he appeared to be. When he sniffed a mystery in the stilted correspondence of Charles Silliman and its connection with Young Caldwell's Toe, he set to work. When tottering Henry Harrison Perdue, reading one of the Silliman letters, expired at his desk, and when shortly thereafter, Wm himself received a heavy and totally unexpected blow on the back of the head, he grew all the more determined. At Greenwater, a summer place of faded elegance on Long Island, Wm Sultan met the possible heirs to the Silliman fortune; and there, too, he met murder. Courteous and dignified as ever, Wm took things in hand and proved himself a Man of Action--to the delight of the Harem. For, of course, he hadn't escaped them when a mystery was brewing; unasked, and even in disguise, they arrived at Greenwater and rushed into the fray in peculiar and hilarious ways. Not in a long time has crime been tackled by so attractive and entertaining a team of sleuths as Wm Sultan and his Harem. The story of their first case crackles with good dialogue and moves through deceptive complications with suspense and high comedy. . First Edition. Hard Cover. Near Fine/Very Good. Book.