



Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England




The Mystery of a Turkish Bath, by Rita.

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Under the pseudonym "Rita" E M Gollan wrote some seventy novels of
which this is one.  It is a rather penetrating book about the
supernatural.  It starts off with a somewhat unusual situation, at least
in literature, with a group of ladies in the turkish bath of a large and
luxurious hotel by the sea, in England, the sort of hotel to which
people go to be cured of illnesses, on the recommendation of their
doctors.  It is some time in the late nineteenth century.

An extraordinarily beautiful woman appears one day in the turkish bath,
and the women already in there are quite fascinated by her.  But there
is another guest in the hotel, a Colonel Estcourt, who, it turns out had
known this woman since childhood.  Indeed it had been expected that they
would one day wed, but instead she had gone off and married an elderly,
but fabulously wealthy, Russian prince.

Various demonstrations of her occult powers make the guests, both men
and women, realise that the beautiful Princess is someone with very
special gifts, which one or two of them would like to learn more about.
But in the very process of the ensuing teach-in, more things happen
than had been bargained for, and both the Colonel and the Princess end
up lifeless.  The Mystery deepens.

If you like this sort of thing it is a very good novel, but if you are
not happy to read about the occult, you should leave it severely alone.

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THE MYSTERY OF A TURKISH BATH, BY RITA.



CHAPTER ONE.

THE FIRST ROOM.

"I take them for rheumatic gout," said a slight, dark-haired woman to
her neighbour, as she leant back in a low lounging-chair, and sipped
some water an attendant had just brought her.  "You would not suppose I
suffered from such a complaint, would you?"--and she held up a small
arched foot, with a scarcely perceptible swelling in the larger joint.
She laughed somewhat affectedly, and the neighbour, who was fat and
coarse, and had decided gouty symptoms herself, looked at her with
something of the contempt an invalid elephant might be supposed to
bestow on a buzzing fly.

"You made that remark the last time you were here," she said; "and I
told you, if you suffered from a suppressed form of the disease, it
would be all the worse for you.  Much better for it to come out--my
doctor says."

There was no doubt about the disease having "come out" in the person of
the speaker.  It had "come out" in her face, which was brilliantly
rubicund; in her hands, and ankles and feet, which were a distressful
spectacle of "knobs" and "bumps" of an exaggerated phrenological type--
perhaps also in her temper, which was fierce and fiery as her
complexion, as most of the frequenters of the Baths knew, and the
attendants also, to their cost.

The small, dark lady, with the arched feet, lapsed into sulky silence,
and let her eyes wander over the room to see if anyone she knew was
there.

The Baths were of an extensive and sumptuous description--fitted up with
almost oriental luxury and comfort, and attached to a monster hotel,
built by an enterprising Company of speculators, at an English winter
resort, in Hampshire.

The Company had proudly hoped that lavish expenditure, a beautiful
situation, and the disinterested recommendation of fashionable
physicians, would induce English people to discover that there were
spots and places in their own land as healthy and convenient as
Auvergne, or Wiesbaden, or the Riviera.  But though the coast views were
fine, and the scenery picturesque, and the monster hotel itself stood on
a commanding eminence, surrounded by darkly-beautiful pine woods, and
was fitted up with every luxury of modern civilisation, including every
specimen of Bath that human ingenuity had devised, the Company looked
blankly at the returns on their balance-sheet, and one or two Directors
murmured audible complaints at special Board meetings, against the
fashionable physicians who had not acted up to their promises, or proved
deserving of the substantial bonus which had been more than hinted at,
as a reward for recommended patients.

On this December morning, some half-dozen ladies, of various ages and
stability of person, and all suffering, in a greater or less degree,
from various fashionable complaints--such as neuralgia, indigestion,
rheumatism, or its aristocratic cousin, rheumatic-gout--were in Room
Number One of the Turkish Bath.

The female form is generally supposed to be "divine," and poets and
painters have, from time immemorial, rhapsodised over "beauty
unadorned."  It is probable that such poets and painters have never been
gratified by such a vision of feminine charms as Room Number One
presented.

Light and airy garments were, certainly, to be seen, but not--forms.  It
was, of course, a question of