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About the author: Carolyn Wells (1862-1942) was married to Hadwin Houghton, the heir of the Houghton-Mifflin publishing empire. Like Mary Roberts Rinehart, being in a publishing family created an easy pipeline for getting her works into print. She wrote a total of more than 170 books. See this Wikipedia article.
Major characters (Dunbar family in bold):
Bruce Dunbar, the millionaire
Anna Forrest, Bruce's niece
Jake Wood, Anna's boyfriend
Doris Ralston, Bruce's niece
Steve Ralston, Doris' husband
Barbara Corbin, Bruce's niece, a widow
Clive Rankin, Barbara's boyfriend
Emory Dunbar, Bruce's nephew
The house staff:
Philip Crowe, valet
---- Hatton, butler
Eliza Hatton, Hatton's wife, the cook
Hester Hatton, parlormaid
Olga, chambermaid
Streamline, the cobra
Martin Saunders, family attorney (drew the 'Anna will')
Samuel Sutton, attorney (drew the 'Emory will')
Harvey Pennock, attorney (drew the 'Doris' will)
John Hale, attorney (drew the 'Barbara' will)
Fleming Stone, detective
Locale: unspecified
Synopsis: Millionaire Bruce Dunbar has no immediate family, just a nephew (Emory Dunbar) and three nieces (Anna Forrest, Doris Ralston, and Barbara Corbin). None of them care for him particularly, but attend dinner at his mansion every Saturday night to stay in his good graces, and hopefully gain a nice inheritance.
Dunbar keeps a pet Cobra named Streamline, whose venomous bite can kill. He is usually kept in his cage but is let out occasionally for carefully supervised exercise.
One morning, valet Philip Crowe goes in to wake Dunbar, but finds him dead. Streamline is coiled up in his cage, but the door is open. Crowe has bite marks on his neck, and it is assumed Streamline did the deed. Niece Anna calls in detective Fleming Stone. The doctors arrive. Stone and the doctors determine that if it is a snake bite that killed him, it was not Streamline. The family immediately suggests a stranger (the visiting villain of the title) came in with a different snake which killed him.
The family is only minimally concerned about Dunbar's death, being more interested in getting their grasping hands on his money. A search for Dunbar's will reveals no less than four of them ... each one naming one of the relatives as the legatee ... and each one drawn by a different attorney.
Review: Oh, what fun! The body is still warm and the relatives are turning the house upside down looking for wills. Four competing wills, by four competing attorneys, are found! If nothing else, this book will certainly familiarize you with will and probate law, or at least as it stood in 1934.
Not only is their enmity between Bruce Dunbar and his relations, all the relations are shooting eye-daggers at each other!
The fun consists of all the running around trying to figure out which will was signed last.
This book is unusual in the Fleming Stone series, in that Stone makes his appearance early in the book; and spends a significant amount of time flirting with Barbara in the process.
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