_Author of "Four Just Men," "The Council of Justice," etc_
LONDON
WARD LOCK & CO LIMITED
1909
Dedication
TO
MARION CALDECOTT
WITH THE AUTHOR'S
HOMAGE
*Author's Apology*
The author, who is merely an inventor of stories, may at little cost
impress his readers with the scope of his general knowledge. For he may
place the scene of his story in Milan at the Court of the Visconti and
throw back the action half a thousand years, drawing across his stage
splendid figures slimly silked or sombrely satined, and fill their
mouths with such awsome oaths as "By Bacchus!" or "Sapristi!" and the
like. He may also, does the fine fancy seize him, take for his villain
no less a personage than Monseigneur, for hero a Florentine Count, as
bright lady of the piece, a swooning flower of the Renaissance, all pink
and white, with a bodice of plum velvet cut square at the breast, and
showing the milk-white purity of her strong young throat.
It is indeed a more difficult matter when one is less of an inventor,
than a painstaking recorder of facts.
When our characters are conventionally attired in trousers of the latest
fashion, and ransacking mythology the oath-makers can accept no god
worthier of witness than High Jove.
Greatest of all disabilities consider this fact: that the scene must be
laid in Brockley, S.E., a respectable suburb of London, and you realize
the apparent hopelessness of the self-imposed task of the writer who
would weave romance from such unpromising material.
It would indeed seem well-nigh hopeless to extract the exact proportions
of tragedy and farce from Kymott Crescent that go to make your true
comedy, were it not for the intervention of the Duke, of Hank, his
friend, of Mr. Roderick Nape, of Big Bill Slewer of Four Ways, Texas,
and last, but by no means least, Miss Alicia Terrill of "The Ferns," 66,
Kymott Crescent.
*Contents*
_PART I_