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THE SPECULATIONS OF JOHN STEELE Written By Robert Barr Illustrated By F. R. Gruger Contents I-A Narrow Escape 1 II-Promotion 3 III--Waylaying a Magnate 9 IV-A Conspiracy 14 V-A Favourite of Fortune 18 VI-"there's Nothing Half So Sweet in Life" 24 VII-The First Cast of the Dice 29 VIII-An Impending Change 35 IX-Love's Spectre 40 X-Buying a Railway 48 XI-The Terror of Wheat 56 XII-The Embodiment of Mammon 64 XIII.-Personally Conducted by a Girl 73 XIV-An Important Champagne Lunch. 78 XV-An Attempt at an Armistice. 85 XVI-The Richest Woman in the World 93 XVII-To the Sound of the Silver Chime 100 The Speculations of John Steele

Barr (1849-1912) was a Scottish-Canadian short story writer and novelist who abandoned his early teaching career to write for the Detroit Free Press, later becoming its news editor. In 1881 he moved to London where he founded The Idler magazine in 1892 in collaboration with Jerome K Jerome. In 1895 he retired from its co-editorship to become a more prolific novelist, publishing a book a year. This novel was first published in 1905 and includes the illustrations which accompanied the original edition.

Excerpt from The Speculations of John Steele Number Sixteen had drawn up to the platform, and as her conductor came forward Steele ran to meet him, shouting. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.