The Man in Lower Ten · Chapters

Chapters explained

Chapter companions for The Man in Lower Ten by Mary Roberts Rinehart.

Read with companions Book page

Each chapter has a companion in the reader — open a free preview to see notes beside the text.

Chapter 1
I Go to Pittsburg
The narrator, Lawrence Blakeley, reluctantly travels to Pittsburg on business for his law firm, carrying forged notes in the Bronson case. He reflects on his aversion to circumstantial evidence after a previous case, and his friendship with McKnight. During the journey, he plays bridge, sleeps fitfully, and arrives in Pittsburg. He visits the elderly millionaire John Gilmore, the chief witness in the Bronson case, and notices a photograph of Gilmore's granddaughter, Alison West, which foreshadows her later importance.
Chapter 2
A Torn Telegram
The narrator spends a restless Saturday in the city, haunted by thoughts of McKnight and John Gilmore's granddaughter. At dinner he observes a tense couple—a drunken, sullen man and a desperate young woman—who later reappear at the Pennsylvania station. He helps a tall woman secure a lower berth, then boards the train. Finding his assigned lower ten occupied by the drunken man, he takes lower nine instead. Unable to sleep, he is startled when a heavy body is thrown into his berth and then vanishes. He retreats to the vestibule in his bathrobe, where he glimpses a woman with bronze braids.
Chapter 3
Across the Aisle
The narrator wakes to find his belongings swapped with a stranger's, including a red tie and tan shoes he despises. After realizing he is in berth seven instead of nine, he discovers the occupant of lower berth ten has been murdered, setting off a chain of confusion and suspicion.
Chapter 4
Numbers Seven and Nine
The body in lower berth ten is discovered, and the narrator recounts the chaotic morning—the porter's shock, the doctor's examination confirming murder, and the discovery that the victim's suitcase bears the name Simon Harrington. The narrator explains his own predicament: he went to sleep in lower nine but woke in lower seven, his belongings stolen, and realizes the thief may also be the murderer.
Chapter 5
V: The Woman in the Next Car
After the discovery of the murder, the narrator is questioned by an inquisitive fellow passenger who fancies himself an amateur detective using inductive reasoning. They examine the belongings of the dead man, revealing his identity as Henry Pinckney Sullivan. The narrator is then approached by a young woman who mistakes him for someone else, and he later assists when a woman faints in the next car. The chapter ends with the train stopped in the heat of the countryside.

Free preview

27 more chapter companions sit beside the text in BetterReads — open a free preview to unlock the rest.

27 more companions → free preview

I Go to Pittsburg

A Torn Telegram

Across the Aisle

Numbers Seven and Nine

V: The Woman in the Next Car