University of Virginia Library

NO TITLE.
BY W--LK--E C--LL--NS.

PROLOGUE.

The following advertisement appeared in the
Times of the 17th of June, 1845:

WANTED.—A few young men for a light genteel employment.
Address J. W., P. O.

In the same paper, of same date, in another column:

TOLET.—That commodious and elegant family mansion, No. 27
Limehouse Road, Pultneyville, will be rented low to a respectable
tenant if applied for immediately, the family being
about to remove to the continent.

Under the local intelligence, in another column:

Missing.—An unknown elderly gentleman a week ago left his
lodgings in the Kent Road, since which nothing has been heard
of him. He left no trace of his identity except a portmanteau
containing a couple of shirts marked “209, Ward.”

To find the connection between the mysterious disappearance
of the elderly gentleman and the anonymous
communication, the relevancy of both these
incidents to the letting of a commodious family mansion,

and the dead secret involved in the three occurrences,
is the task of the writer of this history.

A slim young man with spectacles, a large hat,
drab gaiters, and a note-book, sat late that night with
a copy of the Times before him, and a pencil which
he rattled nervously between his teeth in the coffee-room
of the “Blue Dragon.”

1. CHAPTER I.
MARY JONES'S NARRATIVE.

I am upper housemaid to the family that live at
No. 27 Limehouse Road, Pultneyville. I have been
requested by Mr. Wilkey Collings, which I takes the
liberty of here stating is a gentleman born and bred,
and has some consideration for the feelings of servants,
and is not above rewarding them for their
trouble, which is more than you can say for some
who ask questions and gets short answers enough,
gracious knows, to tell what I know about them. I
have been requested to tell my story in my own langwidge,
though, being no schollard, mind cannot conceive.
I think my master is a brute. Do not know
that he has ever attempted to poison my missus—
which is too good for him, and how she ever came to
marry him, heart only can tell—but believe him to
be capable of any such hatrosity. Have heard him
swear dreadful because of not having his shaving

water at 9 o'clock precisely. Do not know whether
he ever forged a will or tried to get my missus' property
although, not having confidence in the man,
should not be surprised if he had done so. Believe
that there was always something mysterious in his
conduct. Remember distinctly how the family left
home to go abroad. Was putting up my back hair,
last Saturday morning, when I heard a ring. Says
cook, “That's missus' bell, and mind you hurry or
the master 'ill know why.” Says I, “Humbly thanking
you mem, but taking advice of them as is competent
to give it, I'll take my time.” Found missus
dressing herself and master growling as usual. Says
missus, quite calm and easy like, “Mary, we begin
to pack to-day.” “What for, mem,” says I, taken
aback. “What's that hussy asking?” says master
from the bedclothes quite savage like. “For the
Continent—Italy,” says missus—“Can you go Mary?”
Her voice was quite gentle and saintlike, but I
knew the struggle it cost, and says I, “With you
mem, to India's torrid clime, if required, but with
African Gorillas,” says I, looking toward the bed,
“never.” “Leave the room,” says master, starting up
and catching of his bootjack. “Why Charles!” says
missus, “how you talk!” affecting surprise. “Do go
Mary,” says she, slipping a half-crown into my hand.
I left the room scorning to take notice of the odious
wretch's conduct.

Cannot say whether my master and missus were
ever legally married. What with the dreadful state
of morals now-a-days and them stories in the circulating

libraries, innocent girls don't know into what
society they might be obliged to take situations.
Never saw missus' marriage certificate, though I
have quite accidental-like looked in her desk when
open, and would have seen it. Do not know of any
lovers missus might have had. Believe she had a
liking for John Thomas, footman, for she was always
spiteful-like—poor lady—when we were together—
though there was nothing between us, as Cook well
knows, and dare not deny, and missus needn't have
been jealous. Have never seen arsenic or Prussian
acid in any of the private drawers—but have seen
paregoric and camphor. One of my master's friends
was a Count Moscow, a Russian papist—which I
detested.

2. CHAPTER II.
THE SLIM YOUNG MAN'S STORY.

I am by profession a reporter, and writer for the
press. I live at Pultneyville. I have always had a
passion for the marvelous, and have been distinguished
for my facility in tracing out mysteries, and
solving enigmatical occurrences. On the night of
the 17th June, 1845, I left my office and walked
homeward. The night was bright and starlight. I was
revolving in my mind the words of a singular item I
had just read in the Times. I had reached the darkest
portion of the road, and found myself mechanically
repeating: “An elderly gentleman a week ago

left his lodgings on the Kent Road,” when suddenly
I heard a step behind me.

I turned quickly, with an expression of horror in
my face, and by the light of the newly risen moon
beheld an elderly gentleman, with green cotton umbrella,
approaching me. His hair, which was snow-white,
was parted over a broad, open forehead. The
expression of his face, which was slightly flushed,
was that of amiability verging almost upon imbecility.
There was a strange, inquiring look about the
widely-opened mild blue eye—a look that might
have been intensified to insanity, or modified to
idiocy. As he passed me, he paused and partly
turned his face, with a gesture of inquiry. I see him
still, his white locks blowing in the evening breeze,
his hat a little on the back of his head, and his
figure painted in relief against the dark blue sky.

Suddenly he turned his mild eye full upon me.
A weak smile played about his thin lips. In a voice
which had something of the tremulousness of age
and the self-satisfied chuckle of imbecility in it, he
asked, pointing to the rising moon, “Why?—Hush!”

He had dodged behind me, and appeared to be
looking anxiously down the road. I could feel his
aged frame shaking with terror as he laid his thin
hands upon my shoulders and faced me in the direction
of the supposed danger.

“Hush! did you not hear them coming?”

I listened; there was no sound but the soughing
of the roadside trees in the evening wind. I endeavored
to reassure him, with such success that in a

few moments the old weak smile appeared on his benevolent
face.

“Why?—” But the look of interrogation was succeeded
by a hopeless blankness.

“Why!” I repeated with assuring accents:

“Why,” he said, a gleam of intelligence flickering
over his face, “is yonder moon, as she sails in the
blue empyrean, casting a flood of light o'er hill and
dale, like— Why,” he repeated, with a feeble smile,
“is yonder moon, as she sails in the blue empyrean—”
He hesitated—stammered— and gazed at
me hopelessly, with the tears dripping from his moist
and widely-opened eyes.

I took his hand kindly in my own. “Casting a
shadow o'er hill and dale,” I repeated quietly, leading
him up the subject, “like— Come, now.”

“Ah!” he said, pressing my hand tremulously,
“you know it?”

“I do. Why is it like—the—eh—the commodious
mansion on the Limehouse Road?”

A blank stare only followed. He shook his head
sadly. “Like the young men wanted for a light,
genteel employment?”

He wagged his feeble old head cunningly.

“Or, Mr. Ward,” I said with bold confidence,
“like the mysterious disappearance from the Kent
Road.”

The moment was full of suspense. He did not
seem to hear me. Suddenly he turned.

“Ha!”

I darted forward. But he had vanished in the
darkness.

3. CHAPTER III.
NO. 27 LIMEHOUSE ROAD.

It was a hot midsummer evening. Limehouse
Road was deserted save by dust and a few rattling
butchers' carts, and the bell of the muffin and crumpet
man. A commodious mansion which stood on
the right of the road as you enter Pultneyville surrounded
by stately poplars and a high fence surmounted
by a chevaux de frise of broken glass, looked
to the passing and footsore pedestrian like the
genius of seclusion and solitude. A bill announcing
in the usual terms that the house was to let, hung
from the bell at the servants' entrance.

As the shades of evening closed, and the long
shadows of the poplars stretched across the road, a
man carrying a small kettle stopped and gazed, first
at the bill and then at the house. When he had
reached the corner of the fence, he again stopped and
looked cautiously up and down the road. Apparently
satisfied with the result of his scrutiny, he deliberately
sat himself down in the dark shadow of
the fence, and at once busied himself in some employment,
so well concealed as to be invisible to the gaze
of passers-by. At the end of an hour he retired cautiously.

But not altogether unseen. A slim young man,
with spectacles and note-book, stepped from behind
a tree as the retreating figure of the intruder was
lost in the twilight, and transferred from the fence

to his note-book the freshly stenciled inscription—
“S—T—1860—X.”

4. CHAPTER IV.
COUNT MOSCOW'S NARRATIVE.

I am a foreigner. Observe! To be a foreigner
in England is to be mysterious, suspicious, intriguing.
M. Collins has requested the history of my complicity
with certain occurrences. It is nothing—bah—
absolutely nothing.

I write with ease and fluency. Why should I not
write? Tra la la! I am what you English call
corpulent. Ha, ha! I am a pupil of Macchiavelli.
I find it much better to disbelieve everything, and
to approach my subject and wishes circuitously, than
in a direct manner. You have observed that playful
animal, the cat. Call it, and it does not come to
you directly, but rubs itself against all the furniture
in the room, and reaches you finally—and scratches.
Ah, ha, scratches! I am of the feline species. People
call me a villain—bah!

I know the family, living No. 27 Limehouse Road,
I respect the gentleman—a fine, burly specimen of
your Englishman—and Madame, charming, ravishing,
delightful. When it became known to me that
they designed to let their delightful residence, and
visit foreign shores, I at once called upon them. I
kissed the hand of madame. I embraced the great
Englishman. Madame blushed slightly. The great
Englishman shook my hand like a mastiff.

I began in that dexterous, insinuating manner, of
which I am truly proud. I thought madame was
ill. Ah—no. A change, then, was all that was required.
I sat down at the piano and sang. In a few
minutes madame retired. I was alone with my friend.

Seizing his hand, I began with every demonstration
of courteous sympathy. I do not repeat my
words, for my intention was conveyed more in accent,
emphasis, and manner, than speech. I hinted
to him that he had another wife living. I suggested
that this was balanced—ha!—by his wife's lover.
That, possibly, he wished to fly—hence the letting
of his delightful mansion. That he regularly and
systematically beat his wife in the English manner,
and that she repeatedly deceived me. I talked of
hope, of consolation, of remedy. I carelessly produced
a bottle of strychnine and a small vial of stramonium
from my pocket, and enlarged on the efficiency
of drugs. His face, which had gradually become
convulsed, suddenly became fixed with a frightful
expression. He started to his feet, and roared:
“You d—d Frenchman!”

I instantly changed my tactics, and endeavored to
embrace him. He kicked me twice, violently. I
begged permission to kiss madame's hand. He replied
by throwing me down stairs.

I am in bed with my head bound up, and beefsteaks
upon my eyes, but still confident and buoyant.
I have not lost faith in Macchiavelli. Tra la
la! as they sing in the opera. I kiss everybody's
hands.

5. CHAPTER V.
DR. DIGGS'S STATEMENT.

My name is David Diggs. I am a surgeon living
at No. 9 Tottenham Court. On the 15th of June,
1854, I was called to see an elderly gentleman lodging
on the Kent Road. Found him highly excited,
with strong febrile symptoms, pulse 120, increasing.
Repeated incoherently what I judged to be the popular
form of a conundrum. On closer examination
found acute hydrocephalus and both lobes of the
brain rapidly filling with water. In consultation
with an eminent phrenologist, it was further discovered
that all the organs were more or less obliterated
except that of Comparison. Hence the patient was
enabled to only distinguish the most common points
of resemblance between objects, without drawing
upon other faculties, such as Ideality or Language,
for assistance. Later in the day found him sinking
—being evidently unable to carry the most ordinary
conondrum to a successful issue. Exhibited Tinct.
Val., Ext. Opii, and Camphor, and prescribed quiet
and emollients. On the 17th the patient was missing.

CHAPTER LAST.
STATEMENT OF THE PUBLISHER.

On the 18th of June, Mr. Wilkie Collins left a roll
of manuscript with us for publication, without title

or direction, since which time he has not been heard
from. In spite of the care of the proof-readers, and
valuable literary assistance, it is feared that the continuity
of the story has been destroyed by some accidental
misplacing of chapters during its progress.
How and what chapters are so misplaced, the publisher
leaves to an indulgent public to discover.