Publisher's Synopsis
An excerpt from the beginning of CHAPTER I.
MOST people, it is said, have the material for one novel in them. If they are wise they keep it to themselves. The other sort write the novel. But there are stories which the wisest and most secretive of mankind, even solicitors, find themselves unable to retain, stories that bubble forth, stories that write themselves, stories therefore that are obviously meant by Providence to be given to mankind. This story, I have an instinct, is one. And as it is not about myself entirely I feel my instinct may be relied on.
Of course I figure in the story. This doubtless is why it is so interesting to me. But there will be readers - and I shall forgive them for it - who find that among the characters it is not me, Harry Lavington, who attracts their notice. There are others. But for Pierre Mesner, friend of friends, the story I should have to tell would be very different. But for Princess Adanya I might even now be living the humdrum life which - from a defect of nature, I suppose - I had been quietly content to look forward to. I might have been improperly married off to a person most appallingly suitable. I might even have a seat on the Singapore Municipal Council and (dreadful thought !) be serving on the Sanitary Board.
There is a vast difference between going home from Singapore at schoolboy age in charge of the steward of a cargo boat, as I did, and coming out as I did also a bachelor by first-class mail. In the one case nobody loves you - not even the cook. In the other My memories of that trip out are still delightful. I learnt the fox-trot and how to jazz in spite of the monsoon; I saw the sights of Port Said, the tanks at Aden, and the beauties of Colombo. All the American tourists left us at the latter port, which was just as well for my spare cash (at twenty-two all one's cash is spare) had come to an end. At Penang I did not go ashore.
