NEW YORK HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC. PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY RAHWAY. N. J....

My Dear Boynton , We have had some strange adventures together, though not as strange and exciting as the ones treated of in this story. At any rate, accept it as a souvenir of those gay days before the War, which now seem an age away. Recall a Christmas dinner in the Villa Sanglier by the Belgian Sea, a certain moonlit midnight in the Grand' Place of an ancient, famous city, and above all, the stir and ardors of the Masked Ball at Vieux Bruges.—Haec olim meminisse juvabit!...

The details of this prologue to the astounding occurrences which it is my privilege to chronicle, were supplied to me when my work was just completed. It forms the starting point of the story, which travels straight onwards. PROLOGUE CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN CHAPTER ELEVEN CHAPTER TWELVE CHAPTER THIRTEEN CHAPTER FOURTEEN CHAPTER FIFTEEN ENVOI...

Under a gay awning of red and white which covered a portion of the famous roof-garden of the Palacete Mendoza at Rio, reclined Gideon Mendoza Morse, the richest man in Brazil, and—it was said—the third richest man in the world. He lay in a silken hammock, smoking those little Brazilian cigarettes which are made of fragrant black tobacco and wrapped in maize leaf. It was afternoon, the hour of the siesta. From where he lay the millionaire could look down upon his marvelous gardens, which surround

When my father died and left me his large fortune I also inherited that very successful London newspaper, the Evening Special . I decided to edit it myself. To be six-and-twenty, to live at high pressure, to go everywhere, see everything, know everybody, and above all to have Power, this is success in life. I would not have changed my position in London for the Premiership. On the evening of Lady Brentford's dance, I dined alone in my Piccadilly flat. There was nothing much doing in the way of p

About a fortnight after the memorable scene in my flat when the league came into being, I was sitting in my editorial room at the offices of the Evening Special . I had met Juanita once at a large dinner party and exchanged half a dozen words with her—that was all. My head was full of plans, I was trying to map out a social campaign that would give me the opportunity I longed for, but as yet everything was tentative and incomplete. The exciting business of journalism, the keeping of one's thumb

Rolston's revelation, utterly unexpected, came to me with the suddenness of a blow over the heart. For a few seconds I was incapable of consecutive thought, though I don't think my face showed anything of it. The lad was watching me anxiously and I had to do something with him at once. Fortunately, I thought of the obvious thing. "Leave me now, Mr. Rolston," I said. "Go to the room down the passage marked 'Mr. Williams' on the door, and ask him to put you into a room by yourself. Then please, as

Gideon Morse still had the little steel-blue automatic pistol in his hand. He was actually smiling and humming a little tune when he turned and saw Juanita and myself coming out of the alcove. In a flash his hand dropped the pistol into the pocket of his dinner jacket and his face changed. "Santa Maria!" he said in Spanish, and then, "Juanita, Sir Thomas Kirby!" "You remember you gave me an appointment to-night, Mr. Morse," I stammered. "Of course, of course, then—" He said no more, for with a l

On the morning of the fourteenth of September I met Captain Pat Moore and Lord Arthur Winstanley at Liverpool Street station. We were all three of us asked to Cerne as guests of that fine old sportsman, Sir Walter Stileman. A special carriage was reserved for us and our servants filled it with luncheon baskets and gun cases. It was almost exactly three months since my eventful night at the Ritz with Gideon Morse, and the disappearance of little William Rolston. What had passed since that time I

I must now, in the progress of the story, give a brief account of what I may call "The week of rumor," which immediately preceded my disappearance and plunge into the unknown. I spent a miserable and agitated evening at Cerne Hall, and went early to my room. Arthur and Pat joined me there an hour later and for some time we talked over what the telegram from Morse might mean, until they retired to their own rooms and I was left alone. I did not sleep a wink—indeed, I made no effort to go to bed,

I have to tell of a brief interlude before I got to work in earnest. The very day after the rediscovery of Rolston I fell ill. The strain had been too much, a severe nervous attack was the result, and my vet. ordered me to the quietest watering-place in Brittany that I could find. I protested, but in vain. The big man told me what would happen if I didn't go, so I went, faute-de-mieux , and took Rolston with me. I acquainted Arthur Winstanley and Pat Moore of my movements by letter, and I engage

On the afternoon of the next day the potman summoned me from my private room with the information that there was a young fellow from the Mile End Road to see me. "Chinese?" I asked. "Yes, sir." "Then it must be the lad come in answer to the telegram I sent to my friend this morning. Show him in." In a few moments the applicant for the situation entered. He wore his oily black hair fairly short, like most of the Chinamen employed at the towers, and had no pigtail; he was dressed in European cloth

It was four o'clock in the morning. A bitter wind had risen and was wailing around the "Golden Swan," interspersed with heavy storms of hail which rattled on roof and windows. Outside the tempest shrieked and was accompanied by a vast, humming, harp-like noise as it flung itself against the lattice-work of the towers and vibrated over Richmond like a chorus of giant Æolian harps. Arthur and I sat in the shabby sitting-room, which had been the theater of so much emotion that night, and stared at

The wind was getting up on Richmond Hill and masses of cloud were scudding from the South and obscuring the light of the moon, when at about half-past nine a small, well-appointed motor coupé drew up in front of the great gate at the tower inclosure. The small closed-in car was painted dead black, the man who drove it was in livery, and a professional-looking person in a fur coat stepped out and pressed the electric button of a small door in the wall by the side of the huge main gates. In his ha

Morse and I sat at supper in a room which differed in no way from the ordinary study of a country gentleman. Except for the very slightest suggestion rather than sensation of vibration, which my host explained was the drag of the City on the three great towers which perpetually oscillated out of the perpendicular, and so insured the safety of the vast elastic structure, there was nothing to indicate that we were two thousand two hundred feet up in the air. Our meal was of the simplest, and durin

I had ordered my Chinese boy to wake me at eight. In one corner of the Grand Square was a beautifully fitted gymnasium with a swimming-bath adjoining. I proposed three-quarters of an hour's vigorous exercise before dressing. At it happens I generally wake more or less at the time I want to. This morning, however, it was half-past eight. There was no sound of Chang whatever. I got out of bed, put on a sweater, Norfolk jacket, flannel trousers, and tennis shoes—I had sent for a portmanteau of clot

Falling! Falling through deep waters, with a horrible sickening sense of utter helplessness and desolation; nerves, heart, mind—very being itself—awaited the crash of extinction. A slight jolt, a roaring of great waters in the air, and a voice, dim, thin and far away! ... In some mysterious way, the sense of sight was joined to that of sound and hearing. I was surrounded by blackness shot with gleams of baleful fire, shifting and changing until the black grew gray in furious eddies, the gray cha

I slept that night like a log, untroubled by dreams, and woke late the next morning. It was then that, as the saying is, I got it in the neck. "Wow!" I half-shouted, half-groaned, as I turned to meet the Chinese valet with the morning cup of tea. My whole body seemed one bruise, my joints turned to pith, and, what was worse than all, my brain—a pretty active organ, take it all in all—seemed stuffed with wool. It was the reaction, only to be expected, as the Richmond doctor said to me some three

It was just three weeks after the murder of Pu-Yi, and once more I sat in my chambers in Piccadilly. The day had been cloudy, and now, late in the afternoon, a heavy fog had descended upon the town through which fell a cold and intermittent rain. Up there, in the City in the Clouds, perhaps the sun was pouring down upon its spires and cupolas, but London, Piccadilly, was lowering and sad. Lord Arthur Winstanley and Captain Pat Moore had just left me, both of them glum and silent. It went to my h