One day Cheiro received a badly written letter on cheap notepaper inquiring about his fee to go to Waltham Cross to read the hand of a child.

Cheiro set out more from curiosity than anything else. Here, an elderly woman, uneducated, but hard and wily, took him to an attic. Cheiro was shocked by what he saw. Chained to a stool was an unkempt ragged little girl of about fourteen, utterly untrained and with speech that was almost unhuman! It was her hands he was called upon to read, and all the woman wanted to know was how long she was likely to live. Cheiro demanded to know her history and frightened the old hag into telling him that she had once been a baby farmer and had been imprisoned for the suspicious deaths of infants in her care, and that she had been persuaded for an annual sum to take in this child as long as she did not’t reside in London. Payment for the child’s support ceased two years before. Cheiro felt Destiny had summoned him to rescue this child. Cheiro persuaded the woman to keep the child safe for another week, promising them not only to pay the arrears but reward her for resisting the man’s murderous plan.

Cheiro resolved not to concentrate exclusively on hand reading and looked about for other suitable enterprises to invest in. Some of his capital had come in the form of gold dust or nuggets when he happened to be in the United States during the Klondike Gold Rush days that swept like a fever through the country. Infected by the prevailing craze, he even joined the general exodus but stopped enroute to observe the maelstrom of would-be diggers gathering their equipment. He found it far more profitable to linger in Seattle in awe of this phenomenon, where most of the gold seekers gathered before heading north to Alaska and Canada, and forecast for them their likelihood of striking it rich.

After leaving Seattle, Cheiro went to Chicago, a city always engaged in bustle and big business that he found intensely stimulating. He met a man, who claimed, with a reasonable degree of tangible evidence to prove it, that he could make gold! He was having dinner in the Auditorium Hotel one evening when he looked up to see a very strange individual observing him. He had a marvelous plan to change all this and build a worldwide Utopia on earth, “Through the possession of unlimited wealth.” “But where is this wealth to come from?” Cheiro inquired. The answer was that a friend of his, a young American chemist had discovered how nature formed metals and jewels and he claimed he could repeat the process. His laboratory and plant lay on the outskirts of Chicago and he asked Cheiro to accompany him there to meet this scientist. Skeptical but receptive, Cheiro agreed to go.

In London it was his honesty and urbane style plus youthful ingenuousness and modesty that won over High Society’s heart and made him it’s darling. He enjoyed royal favor, hob-knobbed with Kings and Princes, kept their secrets, revealed their Fate and was never once proved wrong. He reached Paris in time for the Great Exhibition of 1900 and was invited to a luncheon given in honor of Senator Thomas Walsh, one of the American Commissioners to Paris. Unexpectedly, the chairman called upon Cheiro for a few words. As he rose, Leopold II, King of Belgium, a personal friend of Mr. Walsh, entered and stood at the door with his aide-de-camp. Cheiro was taken by surprise but conducted himself so well that he was loudly applauded.

The King demanded to be introduced to him, adding his congratulations on a feat he always envied the power to meet an occasion with apt and ready speech. When they met later in the week at a reception given by Mr. Walsh, the King again singled him out, asking for his address - “perhaps in one of my leisure moments I may want to avail myself of you talents.” Chapter Nine Czars, Bandits and Chinese Mystics It was through King Edward that Cheiro met the Czar Nicholas II. Some years before, the then Prince of Wales asked him to do the horoscopes of unnamed people, giving him their dates of birth. Afterwards Cheiro realized that most of these people were crowned heads of Europe. About a year later, a gentleman called at his rooms in London and showed him the sheet of paper covered with astrological notations that Cheiro had left with the Prince. Cheiro read again his own words: ‘This person will be hounded all his life by the horrors or war and bloodshed. He will do his utmost to prevent them, but his name will be bound up with some of the most far-reaching and bloodiest wars in history, and about 1917, he will lose all he loves most, by sword and strife and he will meet a violent death.’ A few weeks later, a Russian lady called and told Cheiro that the Czar had recently visited him and was deeply upset by his predictions. In 1904, when he was in Russia, Cheiro was taken to the Czar’s summer palace at Peterhof to dine at the invitation of the Czar and was warned, should the Czarina be present, to avoid all mention of the occult. He was welcomed by his host, who acknowledged that he visited Cheiro in London, but when the Czarina joined them for dinner, she seemed distraught and spoke little.

Mata Hari was the most notorious seductress and female spy of World War I and of the twentieth century. Her charms were devastating, and when she set her sights on a particular man, he was doomed. “I can have any man I want,” she was often heard to say - and she could! As a young woman in Paris, the paths of Mata Hari and Cheiro crossed. The notorious womanizer met her at the famous Moulin Rouge where the Seer was wining, dining and wenching the night away. At that time she was known as Madame McLeod, and over the years would come to be known by many pseudonyms: -Madame Zelle, Mata Hari, Baroness von Mingen and, during the war, Madame von Hontin. They struck up a friendship—a very, very close friendship—and for many years and in whatever city they happened to simultaneously find themselves, a burning, hot affair ensued. Cheiro often said, as did many men, “That even though she possessed a captivating beauty, her heart was as dark as her eyes, and I knew I would be lost forever should I ever submit to them.

Anthony who is a world renowned expert in palmistry has interpreted the palms of thousands of people, from movie stars and politicians to convicted criminals. This book shows how he does it!