The story opens with a woman in white, a shroud, in a coffin on the water. A fairly odd sort of a both, that one. A bit of a gothic type of story, here.

This is one of those tales where the odd woman that might be a vampire turns up at your doorway trying out for a full length wet t-shirt contest. However, she only wants help, as she and others have been in an accident.

The protagonist does have a psychic aunt though, for some reason.

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/3095

http://freesf.blogspot.com/2006/11/la... ( )

http://nhw.livejournal.com/694644.htm...

The book is set in the present day (ie 1907). It is about a Rupert St Leger, an Irishman who has become a citizen of the world, who unexpectedly finds himself a major landowner in a fictional Adriatic territory, the Land of the Blue Mountains, which should not be confused with any country named after mountains of some other colour with which I might be familiar. He gets entangled with a mysterious and chilly lady who appears wearing only a shroud (the exciting cover - wonder who the artist was? - shows her standing up in a water-borne coffin, in what is in fact the book's very first scene). The plot is complex and exciting, but is resolved with his rescuing her father from captivity using an aeroplane (which is pretty bloody advanced for 1907) and it turns out that the only element of the supernatural not otherwise explained away is Celtic rather than Balkan, in that Rupert's aged Scottish aunt has the Second Sight.

At least, that's where I thought the book ended. However, as I was checking out the on-line text on Project Gutenberg, I discovered that there was a whole chunk of the book missing - the Arrow edition of 1962, whose 1974 version was the one I had bought, had hacked off the last quarter of the text, without explanation! Extraordinary. I don't mind buying an abridged version if it's marked as such, but it was a shock to discover I had been cheated of such a substantial amount of the content. (Though since I only paid £1.60 I can't complain too much.)

In the censored section from the 1962/1974 edition, the story continues directly into the political rather than the supernatural (perhaps the reader of the 1960s was deemed by the publishers to be more interested in the horror elements than the politics). Rupert uses his vast fortune, and the mineral wealth of the Land of the Blue Mountains, to unite the entire Balkan peninsula under his moderate and constitutional rule, defended by a fleet of - get this - radium-powered aeroplanes.

Yes, the author of Dracula wrote a book with nuclear fuelled aircraft. Set in the Balkans. In 1907.

I must say I had not expected this book to be quite so intriguing. I certainly got more than my money's worth anyway. ( )