




Transcribed from the 1893 Leadenhall Press Ltd. edition by David Price,
email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk





NOVEL NOTES


To Big-Hearted, Big-Souled, Big-Bodied friend Conan Doyle




PROLOGUE


Years ago, when I was very small, we lived in a great house in a long,
straight, brown- street, in the east end of London.  It was a
noisy, crowded street in the daytime; but a silent, lonesome street at
night, when the gas-lights, few and far between, partook of the character
of lighthouses rather than of illuminants, and the tramp, tramp of the
policeman on his long beat seemed to be ever drawing nearer, or fading
away, except for brief moments when the footsteps ceased, as he paused to
rattle a door or window, or to flash his lantern into some dark passage
leading down towards the river.

The house had many advantages, so my father would explain to friends who
expressed surprise at his choosing such a residence, and among these was
included in my own small morbid mind the circumstance that