title: Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle
author:  Daniel Stashower 
description: Despite (or because of) the tremendous success of his <a href="/exec/obidos/search-handle-url?index=books&amp;field-keywords=holmes%20sherlock">Sherlock Holmes stories</a>, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle always tended to play down their value and importance in his life. Just before his death in 1930, he drew a memorable sketch of his life's work. Conan Doyle portrayed events from his life as a series of packing cases being loaded onto a wagon and pulled by a flea-bitten workhorse. Perhaps the heaviest case of all, notes Daniel Stashower in his fascinating biography <i>Teller of Tales</i>, is the one that reads "Sherlock Holmes."
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  ![cover](cover.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **THE NIGHT DRIFTER**
  
  
  **SUSAN CARROLL**
  
  
  An Ivy Book
  
  
  Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group
  
  
  Copyright © 1999 by Susan Coppula
  
  
  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 99-99-66535
  
  
  ISBN 0-449-00585-2
  
  
  ## Prologue
  
  
  It was the kind of night when anything could happen.
  
  
  Magic. Moonlight. The sea roaring like a dragon, breathing a soft mist that
  was slowly enveloping the land. The stalwart figure who drifted along the
  rocky shoreline materialized like an apparition in his glinting chain mail and
  dark tunic. A ghostly knight from King Arthur’s court who had wandered into
  the nineteenth century by mistake and couldn’t quite find his way back to
  Camelot.
  
  
  But Lance St. Leger was merely a man attired in the costume he had worn to the
  Midsummer’s Eve fest and had not yet troubled to remove. He had far weightier
  matters on his mind.
  
  
  He scanned the dark and silent beach ahead of him, his face anxious and tense.
  He was possessed of strong, handso