30 JUNE 1923, Page 21

SHORT NOTICES.

M. Leroux is an untiring plotter, an inimitable creator of criminals. Of these Chen-Bibi, the protagonist of this and many another tale, is certainly the most enduringly gruesome. Here, he flexes iron bars ; there, he prostrates a far-away enemy by sheer psychic competence. He is an undoubted master-mind, yet intermittently human—barbaric at base, but saturninely civilized in manner. M. Leroux's staccato style flogs the action to a fever-pitch ; even in translation it hints easily at the uncanny.