of experience must be ascribed whatever was wanting in the book. I
repeat that the story was written only to attract local attention, and
no one was more astonished than I when it passed beyond the narrow
circle for which it had originally been intended.

My mind made up on this point, I enquired of a leading Melbourne
bookseller what style of book he sold most of He replied that the
detective stories of Gaboriau had a large sale; and as, at this time, I
had never even heard of this author, I bought all his works--eleven or
thereabouts--and read them carefully. The style of these stories
attracted me, and I determined to write a book of the same class;
containing a mystery, a murder, and a description of low life in
Melbourne. This was the origin of the "Cab." The central idea i.e. the
murder in a cab--came to me while driving at a late hour to St. Kilda,
a suburb of Melbourne; but it took some time and much thought to work
it out to a logical conclusion. I was two months sketching out
the skeleton of the novel, but even so, when I had written it, the
result proved unsatisfactory, for I found I had not sufficiently well
concealed the mystery upon which the whole interest of the book
depended. In the first draft I made Frettlby the criminal, but on
reading over the M.S. I found that his guilt was so obvious that I wrote
out the story for a second time, introducing the character of Moreland
as a scape-goat. Mother Guttersnipe I unearthed in the slums off Little
Bourke Street; and I gave what I am afraid was perhaps too vivid a
picture of her language and personality. These I have toned down in the
present edition. Calton and the two lodging-house keepers were actual
personages whom I knew very well, and I do not think I have exaggerated
their idiosyncracies, although many have, I believe, doubted the
existence of such oddities. All the scenes in the book, especially the
slums, are described from personal observation; and I passed a great