Yes; it was utterly inexplicable.
So strange, indeed, were all the circumstances, and so startling the
adventures that befell me in my search after truth, that until to-day I
have hesitated to relate the narrative, which is as extraordinary as it
is unique in the history of any living man.
If it were not for the fact that a certain person actively associated
with this curious drama of our latter day civilisation, has recently
passed to the land that lies beyond the human ken, my lips would have
perforce still remained sealed.
Hitherto, my literary efforts have been confined to the writing of
half-illegible prescriptions or an occasioned contribution to one or
other of the medical journals; but at the suggestion of the one who is
dearest to me on earth, I have now resolved to narrate the whole of the
astonishing facts in their due sequence, without seeking to disguise
anything, but to lay bare my secret, and to place the whole matter
unreservedly before the reader.
Every doctor has a skeleton in his cupboard. I am no exception.
Any dark or mysterious incident, however trivial, in the life of a
medical man, is regarded as detrimental by his patients. It is solely
because of that I am compelled to conceal one single fact--my true name.
For the rest, reader, I shall be quite straightforward and open in my
confession, without the affectation of academic phrases, even though I
may be a physician whose consulting-room in Harley Street is invariably
full, whose fees are heavy, and whose name figures in the public prints
as the medical adviser of certain leaders of society. As Richard
Colkirk, M.D., M.R.C.S., M.R.C.P., F.R.S., specialist on nervous
disorders, I am compelled to keep up appearances and impress, with a
sense of superior attainments, the fashionable world who seek my advice;
but as Dick Colkirk, the narrator of this remarkable romance, I can at
all times be frank and sometimes confidential.
In the wild whirl of social London there occur daily incidents which,
when written down in black and white, appear absolutely incredible.
Amid the fevered rush of daily life in this, our giant city of violent
contrasts, the city where one is oftentimes so lonely among millions,
and where people starve and die in the very midst of reckless
extravagance and waste, one sometimes meets with adventures quite as
astounding as those related by the pioneers of civilisation--adventures
which, if recounted by the professional novelist, must of necessity be
accepted with considerable reserve.
Reader, I am about to take you into my confidence. Think for a moment.
Have you not read, in your daily paper, true statements of fact far
stranger than any ever conceived by the writer of fiction? Have you not
sat in a dull, dispiriting London police-court and witnessed that
phantasmagoria of comedy, tragedy, and mystery as presented to that
long-suffering public servant, the Metropolitan Stipendiary?
If you have, then you will agree that romance is equally distributed
over Greater London. Love is as honest and hearts beat as true in
Peckham, Paddington, or Plaistow as in that fashionable half-mile area
around Hyde-park Corner; life is as full of bitterness and broken idols
in Kensington as it is in Kentish Town, Kennington, or the Old Kent
Road. The two worlds rub shoulders. All that is most high and noble
mingles with all that is basest and most criminal; therefore it is not
surprising that the unwary frequently fall into the cunningly-devised
traps prepared for them, and even then most prosaic persons meet with
queer and exciting adventures.