1
NO MAN'S LAND
A Romance
BY LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 1910
COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE
Entered at Stationers Hall, London, England
All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages, including Scandinavian.
To WINCHELL SMITH
There is a world outside the one you know
To which for curiousness 'Ell can't compare;
It is the place where wilful missings go...
THE WILFUL MISSING: Kipling
There was neither moon nor stars naething but a flaught o' fire now and then, to keep the road by.
An old tale in BLACKWOOD'S
I
A GENTLEMAN who, leaving his offices on lower Broadway a trifle after four, presently ensconced himself in a corner seat of a Subway express and opened before him a damp afternoon paper (with an eye for the market reports) was surprised, when the train crashed heavily into the Fourteenth Street station, to find himself afoot and making for the door: this although his intention had been to alight at Grand Central. Thus it may be, that trickster in us all, which we are accustomed vaguely to denominate the subconscious mind, directs our actions to an end predestined.
Surprised, he hesitated; and for that was rewarded by having his heels trodden by the passenger behind. This decided him, absurdly enough, and he went on and out, solacing himself with a muttered something, hardly definite, about a stroll benefiting him. So, transferring to a local train, he alighted at Twentythird Street, climbed the stairs and proceeded briskly west, buffeted by a rowdy wind.
Striking diagonally across Madison Square Park, past the drear