The Stretton Street Affair

AUTHOR OF “THE DOCTOR OF PIMLICO,” “THE INTRIGUERS,” “MADEMOISELLE OF MONTE CARLO”
Copyright, 1922
by WILLIAM LE QUEUX
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
THE DOCTOR OF PIMLICO THE INTRIGUERS MADEMOISELLE OF MONTE CARLO
“Gabrielle, my poor niece,” he cried. “She’s dead—dead!”

The whole circumstances of the Stretton Street Affair were so complicated and so amazing from start to finish that, had the facts been related to me, I confess I should never have for a moment given them credence.
That they were hard, undeniable facts, presenting a problem both startling and sensational, the reader will quickly learn from this straightforward narrative—an open confession of what actually occurred.
In all innocence, and certainly without any desire to achieve that ephemeral notoriety which accrues from having one’s portrait in the pictorial press and being besieged by interviewers in search of a “story,” I found myself, without seeking adventure, one of the chief actors in a drama which was perhaps one of the strangest and most astounding of this our twentieth century.
I almost hesitate to set down the true facts, so utterly amazing are they. Indeed, as I sit in the silence of this old brown room in a low-built and timbered Surrey farmhouse, with pen and paper before me, I feel that it is only by a miracle that I have been spared to narrate one of the most complex and ingenious plots which the human mind, with malice aforethought, ever conceived.