"How these stories came into being may possibly be of interest to a reader. They were originally separate imaginative studies of various "psychic" themes, and it was on the suggestion of Mr. Nash, who had already published two books for me, that I grouped them under the common leadership of a single man, Dr. John Silence. The title was due to a chance question he put to his intelligent and gifted "reader", Maude ffoulkes, as we sat at dinner one night discussing the stories and searching for a good title: "Wasn't there somebody or other in your family," he asked, "with the name of Silence?"