CHAPTER I

I met Renniker the other day at the club.  He is a man who knows everything—­from the method of trimming a puppy’s tail for a dog-show, without being disqualified, to the innermost workings of the mind of every European potentate.  If I want information on any subject under heaven I ask Renniker.

“Can you tell me,” said I, “the most God-forsaken spot in England?”

Renniker, being in a flippant mood, mentioned a fashionable watering-place on the South Coast.  I pleaded the seriousness of my question.

“What I want,” said I, “is a place compared to which Golgotha, Aceldama, the Dead Sea, the Valley of Jehoshaphat, and the Bowery would be leafy bowers of uninterrupted delight.”

“Then Murglebed-on-Sea is what you’re looking for,” said Renniker.  “Are you going there at once?”

“At once,” said I.

“It’s November,” said he, “and a villainous November at that; so you’ll see Murglebed-on-Sea in the fine flower of its desolation.”

I thanked him, went home, and summoned my excellent man Rogers.

“Rogers,” said I, “I am going to the seaside.  I heard that Murglebed is a nice quiet little spot.  You will go down and inspect it for me and bring back a report.”

He went blithe and light-hearted, though he thought me insane; he returned with the air of a serving-man who, expecting to find a well-equipped pantry, had wandered into a charnel house.

“It’s an awful place, sir.  It’s sixteen miles from a railway station.  The shore is a mud flat.  There’s no hotel, and the inhabitants are like cannibals.”

“I start for Murglebed-on-Sea to-morrow,” said I.

Rogers started at me.  His loose mouth quivered like that of a child preparing to cry.

“We can’t possibly stay there, sir,” he remonstrated.

“We are not going to try,” I retorted.  “I’m going by myself.”

His face brightened.  Almost cheerfully he assured me that I should find nothing to eat in Murglebed.

“You can amuse yourself,” said I, “by sending me down a daily hamper of provisions.”

“There isn’t even a church,” he continued.

“Then you can send me down a tin one from Humphreys’.  I believe they can supply one with everything from a tin rabbit-hutch to a town hall.”

He sighed and departed, and the next day I found myself here, in Murglebed-on-Sea.

On a murky, sullen November day Murglebed exhibits unimagined horrors of scenic depravity.  It snarls at you malignantly.  It is like a bit of waste land in Gehenna.  There is a lowering, soap-suddy thing a mile away from the more or less dry land which local ignorance and superstition call the sea.  The interim is mud—­oozy, brown, malevolent mud.  Sometimes it seems to heave as if with the myriad bodies of slimy crawling eels and worms and snakes.  A few foul boats lie buried in it.