Part 1 (1/2)

The Drunkard.

by Cyril Arthur Edward Ranger Gull.

DEDICATION

TO LOUIS TRACY, ESQUIRE

_My Dear Louis_:

It is more than a year ago now that I asked you to accept the dedication of this story. It was on an evening when I was staying with you at your Yorks.h.i.+re house and we had just come in from shooting.

But I discussed the tale with you long before that. It was either--as well as I can remember--at my place in the Isle of Wight, or when we were all together in the Italian Alps. I like to think that it was at that time I first asked your opinion and advice about this book upon which I have laboured so long.

One night comes back to me very vividly--yes, that surely was the night. Dinner was over. We were sitting in front of the brilliantly lit hotel with coffee and cigarettes. You had met all my kind Italian friends. Our wives were sitting together at one little table with Signora Maerdi and Madame Riva Monico--to whom be greeting! My father was at ours, and happy as a boy for all his white beard and skull-cap of black velvet.

Your son, d.i.c.k, was dancing with the Italian girls in the bright salon behind us, and the piano music tinkled out into the hot night. The Alpine woods of ilex and pine rose up in the moonlight to where the snow-capped mountains of St. Gothard hung glistening silver-green.

I ask you to take this book as a memorial of a happy, uninterrupted and dignified friends.h.i.+p, not less valuable and gracious because your wife and mine are friends also.

_Nil ego contulerim jucundo sa.n.u.s amico!_

Yours ever sincerely,

GUY THORNE.

FOREWORD

The sixth chapter in the third book of this story can hardly be called fiction. The notes upon which it is founded were placed in my possession by a brilliant man of letters some short time before he died. Serious students of the psychology of the Inebriate may use the doc.u.ment certain that it is genuine.

I have to acknowledge my indebtedness to the illuminating study in heredity of Dr. Archdall Reed, M.B., C.M., F.R.S.E. His book ”Alcoholism” ought to be read by every temperance reformer in Europe and America.

”The Drink Problem,” a book published by Messrs. Methuen and written in concert by the greatest experts on the subject of Inebriety, has been most helpful. I have not needed technical help to make my story, but I have found that it gives ample corroboration of protracted investigation and study.

My thanks are due to Mr. John Theodore Tussaud for a.s.sistance in the writing of chapter four, book three.

Lastly, I should be ungrateful indeed, if I did not put down my sincere thanks to my secretary Miss Ethel Paczensky for all she has done for me during the making of this tale. The mere careful typewriting, revision and arrangement of a long story which is to be published in America and Europe, requires considerable skill. The fact that the loyal help and sympathy of a young and acute mind have been so devotedly at my service, merits more thanks and acknowledgment than can be easily conveyed in a foreword.

G. T.

PROLOGUE

PART I

A BOOK OF POEMS ARRIVES FOR DR. MORTON SIMS