T THE HOTEL LUXEMBOURG 232

XXII GABRIELLE AT HOME 243

XXIII THE DEATH-DRUG 253

XXIV YET ANOTHER MYSTERY 263

XXV WHAT THE VALET KNEW 272

XXVI MORE ABOUT MATEO SANZ 284

XXVII A CURIOUS STORY 293

XXVIII LOVE THE CONQUEROR 299

XXIX ANOTHER PLOT 311

CONCLUSION 316

THE STRETTON STREET AFFAIR

PROLOGUE

IS ABOUT MYSELF

The whole circumstances of the Stretton Street Affair were so
complicated and so amazing from start to finish that, had the facts
been related to me, I confess I should never have for a moment given
them credence.

That they were hard, undeniable facts, presenting a problem both
startling and sensational, the reader will quickly learn from this
straightforward narrative--an open confession of what actually
occurred.

In all innocence, and certainly without any desire to achieve that
ephemeral notoriety which accrues from having one's portrait in the
pictorial press and being besieged by interviewers in search of a
"story," I found myself, without seeking adventure, one of the chief
actors in a drama which was perhaps one of the strangest and most
astounding of this our twentieth century.

I almost hesitate to set down the true facts, so utterly amazing are
they. Indeed, as I sit in the silence of this old brown room in a
low-built and timbered Surrey farmhouse, with pen and paper before me,
I feel that it is only by a miracle that I have been spared to narrate
one of the most complex and ingenious plots which the human mind,
with malice aforethought, ever conceived.

I ought, I suppose, in opening to tell you something concerning
myself. Hugh Garfield is my name; my age twenty-nine, and I am the son
of the late Reverend Francis Garfield, rector of Aldingbourne and
minor canon of Chichester. In the war I served with the Royal Air
Force and obtained my pilot's certificate. I went to France and
afterwards to Italy, and on being demobilized returned to my work as
an electrical engineer in the employ of Messrs. Francis and Goldsmith,
the well-known firm whose palatial offices are in Great George Street,
Westminster, quite close to the Institute of Electrical Engineers.

Though I had obtained my Degree in Science I was at the ti