Before Jenny and I were married she knew that my outraged honour had doomed her family to extinction.  But they would wait till the war was ended.  Germany, indeed, might account for Robert Redmayne; and even the elderly Bendigo, who was appointed to a mine sweeper, might give his life for his country.  Meantime we volunteered also and our record of service at Princetown Moss Depot is not to be assailed.

Already my future intention was colouring my life.  I grew a beard, wore glasses and pretended delicacy of constitution; for after the war was done I intended murdering three men, and I proposed to do so in such a manner that society would find it impossible to associate me with the crimes.  We devoted many hours to the project, for my wife was, of course, at one with me in my determination.  She hated her family, as only relations can hate; and she had her own ground of grievance, in that her legacy of twenty thousand pounds was withheld pending the deliberations of Albert Redmayne.  The money interested Jenny more than myself; but she pointed out that her grandfather’s fortune, representing considerably over a hundred thousand pounds, was left entirely to her uncles and herself, and that as they were all three bachelors, she might reasonably hope to inherit in fulness of time.

To that end we identified ourselves with war work and expected presently to secure the trust and good-will of the brothers before they were banished off the earth.  At Princetown we adopted that strenuous, simple-minded attitude to life most calculated to satisfy those among whom our toil now threw us.  We pretended an enthusiasm for the work and an affection for Dartmoor which were alike illusory.  As an example of our far-reaching methods I may relate how we returned to the wilderness after the war was done and actually began to build a bungalow upon it, which, needless to say, we never had the least intention of occupying.  But the seed was sown and we had created in many minds the impression of a devoted and simple pair—­conventional, narrow-minded, ingenuous and therefore attractive to the many.

I now come to my confession and must admit at the outset how circumstance served to modify detail and improve the original plan.  My own greatness gradually increases to any intelligent, unprejudiced critic when my adaptability is considered, for that play of blind chance, in which ninety and nine men out of a hundred find themselves entangled throughout their lives, was to me an added inspiration and opportunity.  I tamed Chance and put a bit in its jaws, a bridle on its fiery neck.  Chance immensely altered my original schemes; but it was powerless to modify my genius; it became the Slave of the Ring, to serve an adamant purpose superior to itself.

The war left the three brothers alive; and I had designed first to destroy Bendigo and Albert Redmayne, who had never seen me, and finally deal with my old friend, Robert; but it was he who came at the critical moment as a lamb to the slaughter and so inspired the superb conception now familiar to the civilized world.