In a little street near the museum I came upon a bookshop and spent half an hour browsing amongst the old books. In a dusty pile of books in one corner I came upon the personal notebook of Gertrude Gault, alias Carmencita de las Lunas. It was an old notebook with stiff covers which in one way or another had been subjected to damp; the writing was faded and in places the ink had run. I would not have given it a second glance had it not been for the fact that it was written in English.

On the flyleaf was a quotation in Spanish, which I subsequently traced to St. John of the Cross. It read:

"He taught me a science most delectable, I gave to him, reserving nothing; there I promised him to be his bride…"

There followed in a small neat hand perhaps the most amazing story I have ever read, a story which began in a Glasgow slum and ended in a crucifixion on an arid hillside in Spain, or rather, just before the crucifixion, for it was only upon making discreet enquiries towards the end of 1925 that I found that this woman's personal Calvary had actually taken place, and found moreover that certain influential people in Spain still made annual pilgrimages to the unconsecrated grave.

It is my considered opinion that she not only consented to but demanded this terrible act; that according to their own lights her executioners acted with all sense of propriety. It was her own deep sense of destiny that drove Gertrude to become Carmencita.

To give some sense of order to the narrative, it is necessary for the present editor to return to a street battle which took place in the notorious Gorbals district in Glasgow in 1916 during the First World War. Few of the Gorbals men fought for their country. They were involved in their own bloody battles. In recreating the battle scene with which this tale begins, I have had recourse not only to the notes of Gertude Gault herself but also to eyewitness accounts collected by me between 1926 and 1930 during which years the razor still ruled the Gorbals.