Wilford Heaton is not my real name, for why should I publish it to the
world?
The reason I do not give it is, first, because I have no desire to be
made the object of idle curiosity or speculation, and secondly, although
the explanation herein given will clear the honour of one of the most
powerful of the Imperial Houses in Europe, I have no wish that my true
name should be associated with it.
I have, however, a reason for writing this narrative--a very strong
reason.
The story is an enthralling one; the adventures stranger, perhaps, than
ever happened to any other living person. I have resolved to relate the
plain unvarnished facts in their sequence, just as they occurred,
without seeking to suppress or embellish, but to recount the strange
adventures just as they are registered in the small leather portfolio,
or secret dossier, which still, at this moment, reposes in the archives
of a certain Ministry in one of the European capitals.
There have recently been stories afloat--strange stories. At first I
laughed at all the absurd rumours, but very quickly I saw how seriously
distorted the real facts had become, for ingenious paragraphs of certain
so-called Society papers, grasping the story eagerly, worked it up into
a narrative which reflected very seriously upon the honour of one who is
dearest in all the world to me.
Well, my tale--or exposure--is written here.
In order that those who read may clearly follow the curious chain of
circumstances, it is necessary for me to go back some eight years or
so--not a long period as far as time goes, but to me a veritable
century. I was young, just turned twenty five. I was decently
well-off, having come into an income of nearly a couple of thousand a
year left me by my father, a sum which put me beyond the necessity of
entering business, pursuing the daily grind, or troubling about the
morrow. My career at Oxford had, I fear, been marked by a good many
shortcomings and many youthful escapades, but I ended it by taking my
degree of Bachelor of Medicine, shortly afterwards pursuing the
fashionable habit of "going abroad." Within two years, however, I
returned to London world-weary--like so many other young men who, being
left comfortably off, commence to taste the enjoyment of life too
early--and settled down in a suite of smoke-begrimed rooms in Essex
Street, Strand.
The place was horribly dingy, situated in that _cul-de-sac_ which is
quiet and almost deserted, even though only a stone's throw from the
busiest, noisiest, and muddiest thoroughfare in the world. The ground
and first floors of the house were occupied by several firms of
solicitors, whose doors were covered with ragged and sadly faded green
baize, while the second floor I rented as my abode. The quaint, shabby,
bizarre old place had been built at the end of the last century for
family residence, in the days when Bloomsbury was an aristocratic
quarter and great men lived in Leicester Square; but now, alas!
smoke-stained and time-dimmed, it was given over to the dust which the
law accumulates. From its exterior, like those of its neighbours, there
protruded those great iron extinguishers used by the linkmen of days
bygone, while the broad, thin-worn stairs, easy of ascent, the solid
mahogany doors, the great carved handrail, and the fine Adams ceilings,
like those in the older houses of the Adelphi, told mutely of the
prosperity of its long-departed owners.
I had taken over the furniture, a frowsy lot of faded horsehair, which
had perhaps done duty there for half a century, together with the rooms,
and even though they were so dismal and out-of-date, I must confess that
they had one attraction for me, namely, that above, in the low-pitched
rooms on the top floor, there lived and worked my old college chum, Dick
Doyle, who had, after a good deal of wild-oat sowing, developed into a
rising journalist and _litterateur_.
Curious though it may appear, I had returned from the Sunny South and
taken up my abode in that dingy, dispiriting place with one sole idea,
namely, to be near the man who was practically my only friend in the
whole world. I was in sore need of him, for I was utterly heedless of
everything past, present, or future.
With the exception of old Mrs Parker, who had served my family for
twenty years, I was absolutely alone and helpless as a child. At the
age of twenty-five I had ceased to interest myself in anything, and
plunged in eternal gloom, all desire for life having left me, for
knowing that its joys could no longer be mine I was, even though in the
full possession of all my youthful vigour, mental faculties, and bodily
strength, actually looking forward to the grave.
The terrible truth must here be told. The reader will, I feel
confident, sympathise. While living abroad, travelling hither and
thither through the old Italian towns, where I delighted to roam in the
big white piazzas and through the crumbling palaces, every stone of
which spoke of a brilliant and historic past, I had been suddenly seized
by disease, and for three months lay tossing upon my bed in an English
pension in Florence, tended by two calm, sweet-faced sisters of charity,
with their grey-blue habits and great white linen head-dresses, which in
my hours of fever and delirium seemed always so clean and cool. The two
great Italian professors who were called to me shook their heads,
believing that, even if they managed to save my life, it would be at a
loss of one of my senses. In this, alas! they were not mistaken. My
eyes became affected by sclerotitis, a severe inflammation of the
sclerotic. Gradually my eyes, those most beautiful structures of the
human body which manifest in such small compass the great, the
unspeakable, the incomprehensible power of our Creator, grew dim. My
sight was slowly but surely failing me. I was recovering from my bodily
ailment to be attacked by the ophthalmic disease which the doctors had
all along feared.
I implored of them to do something to preserve my sight, but they only
dropped into my eye certain liquids from their little brown glass
phials, and regarded the effect gravely. A great oculist from Rome came
to give his opinion. I saw him but mistily, as though I were looking
through a dense fog; and he, too, told me that all that could be done
had already been done.