The Yellow Claw

The Yellow Claw is a 1915 crime novel by Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward, known better under his pseudonym, Sax Rohmer. The story features Gaston Max, a Parisian criminal investigator and master of disguise, and his battle with Mr. King, a master criminal similar to Rohmer's earlier Fu Manchu character.

Excerpts:

An odd figure of a man was this popular novelist, with patchy and untidy hair which lessened the otherwise striking contour of his brow. A neglected and unpicturesque figure, in a baggy, neutral-colored dressing-gown; a figure more fitted to a garret than to this spacious, luxurious workroom, with the soft light playing upon rank after rank of rare and costly editions, deepening the tones in the Persian carpet, making red morocco more red, purifying the vellum and regilding the gold of the choice bindings, caressing lovingly the busts and statuettes surmounting the book-shelves, and twinkling upon the scantily-covered crown of Henry Leroux. The door bell rang.