Robert Louis Stevenson's The Suicide Club

This is a kind of novella in three linked stories. At first the club had something of the flavor of Chesterton's Club of Queer Trades, and I expected the stories to be of the club itself.  I wouldn't be surprised if Chesterton had been influenced by this little work, but it was rather different --- more the story of a revenge pursued, an obligation hedged about by the rules of honor and played out on the baroque field of late Victorian royalty. Fascinating, too, that nearly all the important actions take place offstage, as it were, and are rarely seen from the perspective of the main agents in the drama.  Seen from the periphery and through the eyes of unwitting participants, the stories focus on the ways the unwitting are drawn in, on anticipation, and above all on form --- form as understood by gentlemen.  Empty, then --- yet from another point of view that glittering form was once thought to hold all the meaning in the world.