Before I describe the amazing adventures which befell me I suppose I ought to tell you the exact circumstances. I had an excellent business appointment, with a salary which was quite adequate for my modest needs as a bachelor. Further, my Aunt Emily had died and left me quite a comfortable little fortune in addition. I shared a small flat in Rivermead Mansions, just over Hammersmith Bridge, with another bachelor, a young solicitor--a dark-haired, clean-shaven, alert fellow named Henry Hambledon, who had created quite a good practice, with only small fees of course, at the Hammersmith Police Court and its vicinity. I first met Hambledon at the front--years ago it seems in these days when events march on so rapidly. For nearly a year we were brother-officers, until I was sent to Italy. We met again after the Armistice and set up housekeeping together, our female "Kaiserin" being a sharp-featured, grey-haired young lady of about fifty-five, who "looked after us" very well, and though she possessed many idiosyncrasies, did not rob us quite so openly as do most housekeepers of the London bachelor's home. Harry was one of the best of good fellows. He had seen a lot of service ever since he had responded to his country's call and joined up as a private. We always got on excellently together, so we had furnished our pleasant little six-roomed, second-floor flat quite comfortably, and as Harry had looked after the artistic side of its furnishings--aided by a pal of his, an impecunious artist who lived in Chelsea--it certainly was a very passable bachelor's snuggery. The small front room commanded a view over the river with works, wharves, and high factory chimneys on the Middlesex shore. To the left, across the long suspension bridge, was Chiswick and Kew, while to the right lay Putney and Chelsea. Before the house flowed the great broad muddy river where once each year the University eights flashed past, while ever and anon, year in, year out, noisy tugs towed strings of black barges up and down the stream. Away across the high-road to the left were the great reservoirs of London's water works, a huge open space always fresh and breezy even within a stone's throw of stifled Hammersmith, with its "tubes" and its dancing-halls. Used as we both had been to years of roughing it, the spot had taken our fancy, and we got on famously together. On most evenings we were out, but sometimes, before we turned in, we would sit and smoke and laugh over our stirring adventures and humorous incidents in the war, and the "scraps" we had been safely through.