The Cheyne Mystery

by

Freeman Wills Crofts

Contents

1[The Episode in the Plymouth Hotel]
2[Burglary!]
3[The Launch “Enid”]
4[Concerning a Peerage]
5[An Amateur Sleuth]
6[The House in Hopefield Avenue]
7[Miss Joan Merrill]
8[A Council of War]
9[Mr. Speedwell Plays His Hand]
10[The New Firm Gets Busy]
11[Otto Schulz’s Secret]
12[In the Enemy’s Lair]
13[Inspector French Takes Charge]
14[The Clue of the Clay-marked Shoe]
15[The Torn Hotel Bill]
16[A Tale of Two Cities]
17[On the Flood Tide]
18[A Visitor from India]
19[The Message of the Tracing]
20[The Goal of the “L’Escaut”]

Chapter I.
The Episode in the Plymouth Hotel

When the White Rabbit in Alice asked where he should begin to read the verses at the Knave’s trial the King replied: “Begin at the beginning; go on till you come to the end; then stop.”

This would seem to be the last word on the subject of narration in general. For the novelist no dictum more entirely complete and satisfactory can be imagined—in theory. But in practice it is hard to live up to.

Where is the beginning of a story? Where is the beginning of anything? No one knows.

When I set myself to consider the actual beginning of Maxwell Cheyne’s adventure, I saw at once I should have to go back to Noah. Indeed I was not at all sure whether the thing could be adequately explained unless I carried back the narrative to Adam, or even further. For Cheyne’s adventure hinged not only on his own character and environment, brought about by goodness knows how many thousands of generations of ancestors, but also upon the contemporaneous history of the world, crystallized in the happening of the Great War and all that appertained thereto.