The looker-on: A romance of journalistic London

About this book

The looker-on by William Le Queux is a novel written in the early 20th century. Set amid “journalistic London,” it blends newsroom realism, romance, and a tightening conspiracy around a murdered girl, an empty suburban house, and a clandestine telegraph tap. It follows reporter Victor Keene, his celebrated colleague Julian Little, Inspector Whitlock, and rising music-hall star Daisy Marvin as professional secrets and private loyalties collide.

The opening of the novel introduces Victor and Julian debating sensational news-making before Victor outlines the Barnes case: a constable enters a long-empty house at dawn, finds a makeshift living room, a telegraph instrument secretly tapping a trunk line, a beautiful young woman shot dead, and another woman who, arrested, later commits suicide with prussic acid. Inspector Whitlock keeps the wire-tap quiet and brings Victor into the investigation; they trace a cleverly concealed lead onto the Portsmouth line and learn the victim likely lived there in secret for months. Back at the house they find a Greek-brand cigarette, a hidden cupboard with a suitcase full of telegraph tape, and—privately—Victor’s own miniature portrait; then a forged “Central News” telegram to a Plymouth paper eerily predicts these finds and points them to a tin box buried under a yew, which they dig up to reveal a cheap gold watch, a child’s blue beads, a German note from “Erna” to “Carl,” a triangular plan, and a birth certificate for Francis Douglas Drayton. The inquest is adjourned, Julian suddenly departs for Servia after meeting the detective, and Daisy—Victor’s secret love—turns pale on reading Julian’s note before composing herself and going onstage, leaving Victor devoted but newly suspicious.