Chapter I.

 

The Man Who Died

 

I returned from the City about three o’clock on that May afternoon pretty well

disgusted with life. I had been three months in the Old Country, and was fed up

with it. If anyone had told me a year ago that I would have been feeling like

that I should have laughed at him; but there was the fact. The weather made me

liverish, the talk of the ordinary Englishman made me sick. I couldn’t get

enough exercise, and the amusements of London seemed as flat as soda-water that

has been standing in the sun. “Richard Hannay,” I kept telling myself, “you have

got into the wrong ditch, my friend, and you had better climb out.”

 

It made me bite my lips to think of the plans I had been building up those last

years in Buluwayo. I had got my pile—not one of the big ones, but good enough

for me; and I had figured out all kinds of ways of enjoying myself. My father

had brought me out from Scotland at the age of six, and I had never been home

since; so England was a sort of Arabian Nights to me, and I counted on stopping

there for the rest of my days.

 

But from the first I was disappointed with it. In about a week I was tired of

seeing sights, and in less than a month I had had enough of restaurants and

theatres and race-meetings. I had no real pal to go about with, which probably

explains things. Plenty of people invited me to their houses, but they didn’t

seem much interested in me. They would fling me a question or two about South