tion id="u5f1f4423-6700-57da-9235-a4e6619651b8">
Published by COLLINS CRIME CLUB
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by Wm Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1926
Copyright © Estate of Freeman Wills Crofts 1926
Cover design by Mike Topping © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008190613
Ebook Edition © November 2016 ISBN: 9780008190620
Version: 2016-10-14
Contents
1. The Episode in the Plymouth Hotel
6. The House in Hopefield Avenue
9. Mr Speedwell Plays his Hand
13. Inspector French Takes Charge
14. The Clue of the Clay-Marked Shoe
19. The Message of the Tracing
20. The Goal of the ‘L’Escaut’
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, crystallised in the happening of, the Great War and all that appertained thereto.
So then, in default of the true beginning, let us commence with the character and environment of Maxwell Cheyne, following on with the strange episode which took place in the Edgecombe Hotel in Plymouth,
