Excerpt: "The shabby stranger seated himself familiarly in a nook beside the wide-open chimney of the tap-room, and stretched out his long thin legs with a sigh. “I want something to eat; a bit of cold meat, or bread and cheese—anything you have handy—and a glass of beer. I’m very tired.” The village publican, scanning the stranger’s features keenly, moved slowly to execute the command and lingered over the cutting of the meat. The other seemed to read the signs like a flash, for he roughly drew out a handful of money, saying in his bluff outspoken way..."
William Tufnell Le Queux (2 July 1864 – 13 October 1927) was an Anglo-French journalist and writer. He was also a diplomat (honorary consul for San Marino), a traveller (in Europe, the Balkans and North Africa), a flying buff who officiated at the first British air meeting at Doncaster in 1909, and a wireless pioneer who broadcast music from his own station long before radio was generally available; his claims regarding his own abilities and exploits, however, were usually exaggerated. His best-known works are the anti-French and anti-Russian invasion fantasy The Great War in England in 1897 (1894) and the anti-German invasion fantasy The Invasion of 1910 (1906), the latter becoming a bestseller.