There is a quiet little turning out of the Camden Road, where the whim of an architect has planted some hybrid arrangements in brick and woodwork which it would puzzle the unskilled in architectural nomenclature properly to describe.

They might be chalets if they were less like cottages ornÉs; they might be cottages ornÉs if they were less like bungalows; and they might be bungalows if there were not so much of the suburban villa about them. It is possible that the architect in preparing the plans saw, like a distinguished statesman, that there were three courses open to him, and, being a man who had some slight difficulty in making up his mind, determined to effect a compromise, and erect buildings which should embrace chalet, bungalow, and cottage ornÉ, and also betray a suggestion of the suburban villa.

The houses are pretty enough in their way, are nicely set back in picturesque little gardens, and just the kind of places which a house agent can describe as ‘charming bijou residences.’

It is not often that one of them displays an agent’s board, for they are quickly snapped up by persons who wish to live in a pretty house and still have the benefit of a good shopping neighbourhood, and whatever advantages may accrue from a ‘close proximity to rail, ’bus, and tram.’

Eden Villa, however, had been to let for at least three weeks, when one fine day the milkman noticed the board was down and white curtains were up. The milkman, also observing straw in front of the gate and in the roadway, concluded at once that a new tenant had been found and had moved in.

Whereupon the milkman left his card, which set forth that he kept separate cows for children and invalids, and that families were waited on daily. The baker and the butcher and the grocer followed on the heels of the milkman, and very soon the young lady with cherry-coloured ribbons in her cap, who answered the successive peals at the bell, got out of temper, and informed all whom it might concern that ‘there wasn’t no family there, and that what they wanted they’d come and fetch.’

What else could cherry-ribbons say? How was she to decide, alone and unaided, between the rival claims of seven milkmen, six butchers, eight grocers, and ten bakers, whose cards made a nice little pack upon the kitchen dresser?

Six hours had not elapsed after those white curtains went up before the rates called with a rate already made, and the water applied for two quarters unpaid by last tenant, and the representative of the local directory requested the full christian and surname of the new tenant.

‘Master’s name’s Mr. Edward Marston, and he’s a hactor,’ said cherry-ribbons, flurried and excited with her continuous journeyings to the door. ‘That’s all I know, and he ain’t at home now, so you can’t see him.’

With which exhaustive information cherry-ribbons banged the door to, and bounced angrily into her easy chair, to enjoy her cup of tea and once more to take up the thread of that marvellous serial, ‘A Servant To-day and a Duchess To-morrow,’ which was running with brilliant success from week to week through the pages of the Housemaids of Merry England, a journal of fiction and fashion.

It was, however, from this scant information that the nobility, gentry, and tradespeople of Camden Road and its vicinity gradually became aware that Eden Villa was now the residence of Mr. Edward Marston, an actor—probably a provincial actor, for his name was unknown to Camden Town in connexion with the London boards.

Not being a baker or a milkman intent upon securing a new customer, but simply a veracious chronicler, intent upon making the story of certain people’s lives as clear as possible to the reader, I am quite independent of cherry-ribbons; so, without disturbing her, I will open the front door with my latch-key and usher you straight into the presence of the new tenant.

The white curtains have been up three days when we pay our visit in the early morning.

This is the breakfast-room on the ground floor. You will observe that the French windows open on to the lawn. The gentleman toying with his toast and sipping his tea leisurely you met one rainy night in the early part of this story.

He is a very different looking person now. His clothes are faultlessly cut, his hair is neatly arranged, his moustache is nicely trimmed, and his beard and whiskers have been shaved off. The strange, wild look is gone, and you see only a good-looking, well-built geutleman of five-and-thirty, who has nothing much to trouble him, unless a nice house be a trouble (it is, sometimes, I’m afraid), and who should certainly, if appearances go for anything, mix in good society and have a balance at his banker’s.

That he is an actor we know from cherry-ribbons, and that accounts for there being in a little room upstairs a complete actor’s wardrobe—dresses, wigs, beards, and moustaches, and all the materials for ‘making up.’

But before he blossomed into a member of that profession which to-day takes high rank among the arts, and passes followers into the saloons of the wealthy and the great, and gives them an income for which all but the most favoured in other professions may sigh in vain, but which once only entitled its disciple to take rank as a rogue and a vagabond, what was he?

An author must necessarily play the part of chorus while the action of his drama requires that he and not his characters should speak. It is not a pretty tune to which the chorus of Edward Marston’s life can be delivered.

Edward Marston’s father gave his son a good education, and he gave him little else. He was a gentleman at the outset of his career, was Marston pÈre, and an adventurer at the close. He dissipated a fortune in reckless extravagance, broke his wife’s heart by careless cruelty and systematic neglect, and, having brought up his son in an atmosphere of plenty, ran away from his creditors just as that son was twenty-one, and left him to shift for himself and make what he could by his brains and out of the acquaintances which he had made in his butterfly days.

Given a fair start, compelled from the outset to work for his living, young Marston might have settled down into a respectable citizen. But the whole surroundings of his life had unfitted him for the steady and laborious pursuit of wealth. He had expensive habits and tastes, a love of luxury which he was accustomed to gratify without thought of the cost, and he had never been brought within the range of those high moral influences which force the inclinations under some kind of control.

His home life had been unhappy. With an ailing and broken-spirited mother—a woman too weak-minded to do anything but what she did, pine away and die—with a father who openly violated the first principles of social morality, young Marston early learned to be what the world calls ‘a smart fellow.’

He had no sisters. Had even this influence been brought to bear upon him he might have grown up differently. The men who have had sisters are generally the best. The constant presence of womanhood in a house acts as a charm. Boys who grow up among boys are always inferior to their fellows in manners, in tact, and, as far as the world knows, in their standard of morality. It is difficult to overrate the beneficial influence which sisters exercise over their brothers in an English household.

Edward Marston, deprived of everything which could appeal to his better self, drifted into a swift current of evil. His associates were youug men of wealth and position, and he imitated their tastes at any cost. When his father went away to America he found himself utterly stranded, with nothing but his vices. He lived on them. He got mixed up with a fast set of young men, and in pursuit of pleasure made doubtful friendships. It was easy to foretell the end.

He had no money; he had therefore to get it from those who had. Such men are met in the largest quantities on racecourses in billiard-rooms, and gambling-saloons. These places were the haunts of young Marston, and fate flung him into close companionship with well-dressed rogues and well-dressed fools.

Among his ‘set’ were Oliver Birnie, a good-natured devil-may-care medical student, clever enough, but fond of more dissipation than he could get out of the two hundred a year his father, a small country practitioner, allowed him, and Gurth Egerton, a young man much after his own heart, whose only living relative was a wealthy cousin, a man of five-and-thirty.

This latter was Ralph Egerton, a man who might have been anything he chose, but who, inheriting a large fortune, plunged into dissipation and drank to the verge of madness. In his sober moments he was a good fellow; drunk he was a quarrelsome rowdy, and an easy prey to the young sharks who swarmed about him. Gurth and he were pretty constant companions, but they quarrelled fearfully. Gurth resented Ralph’s wealth, yet he lived on him. Gurth brought him to the dens, and Marston helped to pluck him.

They let Ralph fancy himself a little king of Bohemia; they ate his dinners and drank his wine, and when he was drunk enough they took him to gambling hells and cheated him.

A favourite haunt with them all was Josh Heckett’s. Heckett did many queer things for a living. Among others he kept a betting office in Soho, and had a little room where a select few of his customers played roulette or any game they chose.

It was in this room that the event happened with which the reader is already well acquainted. It was just after that that young Marston disappeared from the scene and went to America—to his father, he said—but whatever was his real motive, it was known only to himself.

Leading the life he did, he had yet found time to fall in love with a beautiful girl who had returned his affection.

The Adrians had been neighbours in his father’s best days, and Edward and Ruth had been boy and girl sweethearts. No harm was known of the Marstons then. They lived in a good house, kept servants, and ostensibly were gentle people. Edward visited at the house, Mr. and Mrs. Adrian liked him, and it was tacitly understood that the young people were in love.

The one pure passion of Edward Marston’s life was his love for Ruth Adrian. If anything could have sobered and steadied him it would have been her influence. Unhappily, at the very time that influence was most needed, an event happened which severed their lives for ever.

The elder Marston ran away from his creditors, some very ‘peculiar financial transactions came to light, and when Mr. Adrian, awakened to the danger of the situation, made inquiries, he found that the son was leading an evil life, and was the constant companion of gentlemanly blacklegs.

The next time Edward called at the Adrians’ he was forbidden the house, Ruth wrote him a noble, womanly letter, returned his presents, and declared that it broke her heart to give him up, but that her duty to herself and to those dearest to her demanded it. She should never love anyone else and never forget him. She would pray God that he might yet lead a better life, and some day call a pure and honest woman wife. The girl’s tears fell fast and thick as she wrote. She thought she was doing her duty. Reared in a school of morality deeply tinged with religious fervour, Ruth saw no other way out of the difficulty. It seemed to her almost a sin to have loved a bad man. The love she could not crush, but the man she would look upon no more.

This breaking down of the last barrier between himself and utter recklessness happened immediately after Ralph Egerton’s murder—for murder all concerned firmly believed it to be. Ruth Adrian was the last link that bound him to respectability. That link snapped and he was free—free to float out into the ocean of wickedness, and sink or swim as luck determined.

He went to America and led a life of adventure. He utilized his talents in a big field, but an overrun one. The ‘smart man’ is a type of American society, and a redundant type. Marston may have prospered at one period, but he must have come to an evil time at last, for certain it is that he returned to England almost penniless, and on the night he met Birnie outside the Blue Pigeons he was actually without a copper.

That meeting was the turning point in his career. It placed a little capital at his disposal, and capital is the one thing needed to make a fair start in anything in this country.

Marston had learned much in America, and he saw a way to utilize his experience.

High-art crime has been developed rapidly in these latter days. Edward Marston was one of its pioneers. He brought to the ‘business’ in which he embarked education, skill, ingenuity, and a knowledge of the world.

As he sits this morning in his newly furnished villa in the Camden Road his plans are formed, his capital is invested, he is at the head of an obedient and well-organized staff, and he is about to embark on the perilous and daring enterprise. His capital is the £500 Birnie had repaid him. He is under an obligation to no one for that. To his staff we shall in due time be introduced, and through the varying stages of his brilliant enterprise we shall accompany him.

He has finished his breakfast. He rings the bell, and cherry-ribbons enters and clears away. He has so much to see to and so much to think of this morning, that he will not want to be interrupted, and it is perfectly certain that he will have a strong objection to being overlooked.

Under these circumstances, having satisfied our curiosity as to his antecedents and present position, it will perhaps be as well if we take our departure and creep out of Eden Villa as quietly as we entered it.