THE GREAT SKENE MYSTERY BY BERNARD CAPES METHUEN & CO. 36 ESSEX STREET W.C. LONDON [COPYRIGHT.] _First Published in 1907_ [DEDICATION.] TO A. J. RICE-OXLEY IN TOKEN OF SOME DEVOTED KINDNESS THIS STORY IS DEDICATED BY HIS FRIEND AND CONNEXION The Author “_Good is a good doctor_”--Emerson CONTENTS. PROLOGUE. MOTHER CAREY’S CHICKEN I. AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL II. I COME OF AGE AND TO A DETERMINATION III. THE LODGE IN THE CADDLE IV. A YOUNG LADY’S CHASTENING--PHASE ONE V. A YOUNG LADY’S CHASTENING--PHASE TWO VI. MY FIRST ENLIGHTENMENT VII. MORGIANA VIII. THE WRITING ON THE WALL IX. I VISIT CLAPHAM X. EDITORIAL XI. AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL. THE FACE AT THE WINDOW XII. AN ODD RECOGNITION XIII. JOHNNY DANDO XIV. TWO INTERVIEWS AND A DISCOVERY XV. THE LETTER IN THE BOOK XVI. A STRANGE ENCOUNTER XVII. NURSE ELLEN’S “YOUNG MAN” XVIII. TELEGRAMS XIX. LADY SKENE KNEELS TO ME XX. ANTONIO GEOLETTI XXI. SNOW AND FIRE XXII. A VISIT FROM MR DALSTON XXIII. GEOLETTI TELLS HIS STORY XXIV. I ACCEPT THE BURDEN OF PROOF XXV. JOHNNY AT HOME XXVI. I REVISIT MOTHER CAREY XXVII. CORRESPONDENCE XXVIII. ON THE SCENT XXIX. THE BODY IN THE CAVE XXX. HARD PRESSED XXXI. A NOTABLE INTERLUDE XXXII. RUN TO EARTH XXXIII. A REST BY THE WAY XXXIV. THE GREAT SKENE CASE ENVOI THE GREAT SKENE MYSTERY PROLOGUE. EDITORIAL. MOTHER CAREY’S CHICKEN I Forty-Five years ago, one February evening, the fog lay thick over Clapham suburb. Generated in the fat sink of Lambeth, it had come sweltering up by way of the Westminster Bridge and Kennington Roads; had poured, like smoke from a range, through the bars of the pike-gate by the church; had pressed on, rolling up the last levels of twilight in front of it, past the “Swan,” at Stockwell, and the “Bedford Arms” beyond--before each of which popular hostelries it had deployed, in order to post its pickets in a dozen of fuddled brains--and, thence shouldering its passage densely through the main channel of the High Street, had flowed out and camped itself sluggishly among the gorse bushes of the open common to the south. Incidentally, amongst other obscene “flushings” by the way, it had entered and packed to the throat a certain White Square, which already, in that stronghold of Evangelicalism, was of sufficiently bad odour to need no reinforcement of supplementary brimstone to prove itself. Like the fisherman’s bottle, this White Square was entered by a narrow neck or gullet, through which the genie of viciousness could compress itself into an inadequate house room, or thence issue to expand into proportions which were a menace to its neighbourhood. Thieves, harlots, and low Irish rapparees formed the bulk of its population: costers, and a drunken washerwoman or two, were its _élite_. How Mother Carey, with at least her better traditions, had drifted into its fastnesses, let the recording angel note. It was sacred from the police.