The Baroness Emma Magdolna Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála “Emmuska” Orczy de Orci, who wrote as the Baroness Orczy (1865–1947), was a prolific Hungarian-born British writer of adventures and crime. She is best remembered as the creator of Sir Percy Blakeney, the English fop who was secretly the Scarlet Pimpernel, the scourge of the French revolutionaries. In 1903, Orczy wrote a hugely successful stage play about Blakeney, based on one of her short stories, and subsequently produced thirteen books featuring the Scarlet Pimpernel. She also wrote two separate series of compelling, clever stories of detection. Lady Molly of Scotland Yard (1910) collected a dozen tales about a Molly Robertson-Kirk, who joined Scotland Yard to save her fiancé from a false accusation, building a fine career, only to quit when she has saved her man. Orczy also wrote thirty-eight stories featuring a near-anonymous armchair detective, the “Old Man in the Corner,” whose deductions are recorded by Miss Polly Burton, a journalist. Six stories appeared in 1901 as “Mysteries of London,” followed a year later by seven “Mysteries of Great Cities” and collected in 1908 as The Old Man in the Corner. Two other volumes, The Case of Miss Elliott (1905) and Unravelled Knots (1925) round out the complete tales of the Old Man in the Corner. The series spawned twelve silent films in 1924, and some of the stories have been adapted for radio and television. The following first appeared in The Royal Magazine for September 1901.