as _feuilletons_ in various
languages in the principal Continental journals. One could scarcely take
up an English newspaper without seeing mention of his name, for he was
one of the most popular authors of the day.

It is a generally accepted axiom that a public man cannot afford to be
modest in these go-ahead days of "boom." Yet Fetherston was one of the
most retiring of men. English society had tried in vain to allure him--he
courted no personal popularity. Beyond his quiet-spoken literary agent,
who arranged his affairs and took financial responsibility from his
shoulders, his publishers, and perhaps half a dozen intimate friends, he
was scarcely recognised in his true character. Indeed, his whereabouts
were seldom known save to his agent and his only brother, so elusive was
he and so careful to establish a second self.

He had never married. It was whispered that he had once had a serious
affair of the heart abroad. But that was a matter of long ago.

Shoals of invitations arrived at his London clubs each season, but they
usually reached him in some out-of-the-world corner of Europe, and he
would read them with a smile and cast them to the winds.

He took the keenest delight in evading the world that pressed him. His
curious hatred of his own popularity was to everyone a mystery. His
intimate friends, of whom Fred Tredennick was one, had whispered that,
in order to efface his identity, he was known in certain circles abroad
by the name of Maltwood. This was quite true. In London he was a member
of White's and the Devonshire as Fetherston. There was a reason why on
the Continent and elsewhere he should pass as Mr. Maltwood, but his
friends could never discover it, so carefully did he conceal it.

Walter Fetherston was a writer of breathless mystery--but he was the
essence of mystery himself. Once the reader took up a book of his he
never laid it down until he had read the final chapter. You, my reader,
have more than once found yourself beneath his strange spell. And what
was the secret of his success? He had been asked by numberless
interviewers, and to them all he had made the same stereotyped reply: "I
live the mysteries I write."

He seemed annoyed by his own success. Other writers suffered from that
complaint known as "swelled head," but Walter Fetherston never. He lived
mostly abroad in order to avoid the penalty which all the famous must
pay, travelling constantly and known mostly by his assumed name of