whom I have to deal, still less that you should contemn them.
Something between the two will serve. I write the book because I
am interested in crime myself, and in the hope that you'll like
the reading as much as I like the writing of it.




II. A FAIR NECK FOR THE MAIDEN

In her long history there can have been few mornings upon which
Edinburgh had more to offer her burghers in the way of gossip and
rumour than on that of the 1st of July, 1600. In this `gate' and
that `gate,' as one may imagine, the douce citizens must have
clustered and broke and clustered, like eddied foam on a spated
burn. By conjecture, as they have always been a people apt to
take to the streets upon small occasion as on large, it is not
unlikely that the news which was to drift into the city some
thirty-five days later--namely, that an attempt on the life of
his Sacred Majesty, the High and Mighty (and Rachitic) Prince,
James the Sixth of Scotland, had been made by the brothers
Ruthven in their castle of Gowrie--it is not unlikely that the
first buzz of the Gowrie affair caused no more stir, for the time
being at any rate, than the word which had come to those
Edinburgh folk that fine morning of the first day in July. The
busier of the bodies would trot from knot to knot, anxious to
learn and retail the latest item of fact and fancy regarding the
tidings which had set tongues going since the early hours.
Murder, no less.