The Cheyne Mystery
By Freeman Wills Crofts.
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I
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, crystallized 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, and from which started that extraordinary series of events which I have called The Cheyne Mystery.
Maxwell Cheyne was born in , so that when his adventure began in the month of , he was just twenty-nine. His father was a navy man, commander of one of His Majesty’s smaller cruisers, and from him the boy presumably inherited his intense love of the sea and of adventure. Captain Cheyne had Irish blood in his veins and exhibited some of the characteristics of that irritating though lovable race. He was a man of brilliant attainments, resourceful, dashing, spirited and, moreover, a fine seaman, but a certain impetuosity, amounting at times to recklessness, just prevented his attaining the highest rank in his profession. In character he was as straight as a die, and kindly, generous, and openhanded to a fault, but he was improvident and inclined to live too much in the present. And these characteristics were destined to affect his son’s life, not only directly through heredity, but indirectly through environment also.
When Maxwell was nine his father died suddenly, and then it was found that the commander had been living up to his income and had made but scant provision for his widow and son and daughter. Dreams of Harrow and Cambridge had to be abandoned and, instead, the boy was educated at the local grammar school, and then entered the office of a Fenchurch Street shipping firm as junior clerk.
In his twentieth year the family fortunes were again reversed. His mother came in for a legacy from an uncle, a sheep farmer in Australia. It was not a fortune, but it meant a fairly substantial competence. Mrs. Cheyne bought back Warren Lodge, their old home, a small Georgian house standing in pleasant grounds on the estuary of the Dart. Maxwell thereupon threw up his job at the shipping office, followed his mother to Devonshire, and settled down to the leisurely life of a country gentleman. Among other hobbies he dabbled spasmodically in literature, producing a couple of novels, one of which was published and sold with fair success.
But the sea was in his blood. He bought a yacht, and with the help of the gardener’s son, Dan, sailed her in fair weather and foul, thereby gaining skill and judgment in things nautical, as well as a firsthand knowledge of the shores and tides and currents of the western portion of the English Channel.
Thus it came to pass that when, three years after the
