First US paperback: Pocket Book 101 (1941)
- pictured below

Synopsis:

Staring at the police, from the center of the card-room rug, was the severed head of the Duc de Saligny - swordsman, sportsman, athlete, handsome and wealthy - slain on his wedding night!

Before the murder there had been the rumor of the escape from an asylum of the bride's insane first husband. A ghastly figure had looked in on the bride as she was dressing for the ceremony, and had dropped on the window sill, with an ominous clang - of all things, a garden trowel! A copy of Alice in Wonderland had been found in a booth in the gambling-house where the murder was committed - and a mysterious "inmate" was found in a secret room upstairs.

Here is a melodramatic, nerve-racking mystery as weird and terrifying as any ever contrived by Poe! The New York Times says of it: "It is beautifully told... and offers one surprise after another before it reaches its dramatic denouement!"