Again I hesitate to pen these lines.
Yet, be patient, and I will endeavour, as far as I am able in these cold printed pages, to reveal exactly what occurred, without any exaggeration or hysterical meanderings. My only object being to present to you a plain, straightforward, and unvarnished narrative of those amazing occurrences, and in what astounding circumstances I found myself.
Surely it was not any of my own seeking—as you will readily understand. Because I performed what I believed to be a good action—as most readers of these pages would have done in similar circumstances—I was rewarded by unspeakable trouble, tribulation and tragedy.
CHAPTER THE FIRST
INTRODUCES OSWALD DE GEX
I had promised to call upon Charles Latimer, my bachelor uncle, a retired naval captain, a somewhat crusty old fellow who lived in Orchard Street, which runs between Oxford Street and Portman Square. I usually went there twice a week. With that intent I took a motor ’bus from Hammersmith Broadway as far as Hyde Park Corner.
As I stepped off the ’bus rain began to fall, so turning up the collar of my coat I hurried up Park Lane, at that hour half deserted.
When half-way up to Oxford Street I turned into one of the small, highly aristocratic streets leading into Park Street as a short cut to Orchard Street. The houses were all of them fine town mansions of the aristocracy, most of them with deep porticos and deeper areas.