Chapter 1 Summary

Faced with an apparent weapon of mass destruction, British intelligence recruits a quintet of individuals with extraordinary ability to seek out and neutralize the menace. The assembled league of extraordinary gentlemen, ironically led by a young woman, recovers the essential component of the weapon only to discover they have been double-crossed by British intelligence, which plans to use the component in a weapon of their own. The league intervenes once again and saves the day.

Chapter One opens at Dover, England, May 1898. Campion Bond, a heavyset but well-dressed man, is met by Wilhelmina "Mina" Murray, a recently-divorced school teacher with an infamous history involving seduction and attack by one Count Dracula. Murray is young, diminutive, beautiful, and tightly corseted. The couple meets atop the Albion Reach, an incomplete bridge that will eventually span the English Channel; it is due for completion in February...