Born in Bath, England, in 1911, Eleanor was the only child of Alexander and Lara Bailey. She grew up at Southgate Providence, a sprawling estate in the countryside. As a child she had all the best tutors, traveled with her parents around the world, and was a competitive equestrian rider. She met her uncle, Thomas, many times, and found him especially endearing when he told her stories of his adventures.

In 1924, Alexander and Lara were both killed in an accident at sea. The ship they were on struck a reef, and all aboard were lost. Young Eleanor was suddenly orphaned. In accordance with her parents’ will, she was sent to live with her uncle in Oyster Bay, New York.

The sudden transition in her life was difficult for the young woman. While she loved her uncle, the loss of her parents weighed heavily upon her. For the first few months at Bailey Manor she was very quiet and reserved. She spent most of her time in the library, astonished at all of the strange and esoteric books her uncle had collected during his travels. Thomas gave the girl her space, but made it a point to have tea with her every afternoon. He would tell her tales, some true, others a bit more exaggerated, and check on her well-being. Eleanor began to cherish these afternoon conversations and slowly came out of the protective shell she’d woven around her.

As time went on and Eleanor grew up, she became more and more enamored at becoming an adventurer like her uncle. She would read journals of great explorers, devour texts on far away lands, and she became an expert and coding and cataloging Thomas’s extensive library. She dreamed of exploring the pyramids or hiking through the Alps looking for signs of ancient civilization.

Not long after her sixteenth birthday, Eleanor had her first “episode”. She was in the library, as she so often was, high up on a ladder re-shelving a three volume text on Ancient Greece, when her hand brushed against a small, black bound book and she felt like she’d grabbed a live wire. She fell from the ladder, convulsing on the library floor. The manor’s butler, George, found her there and immediately summoned medical aid. The seizure ended after a few moments, and Eleanor claimed she was fine, but Uncle Thomas had a doctor examine her nonetheless. The doctor suspected anemia, and nothing much else was done about it.

These episodes would continue, sporadically, throughout the rest of her life. Sometimes she would touch something, usually an object of particular interest, and her mind would rush with images of the previous owners or places where the object had been. She slowly became able to withstand the sudden surge of images, and only rarely fell unconscious from these events. Uncle Thomas told her that he suspected she had untapped psychic power, which Eleanor at first found ridiculous, but over time has come to accept.

Eleanor eventually matriculated at Barnard College, the all-women’s adjutant to Columbia University, where she met Iris Herbert. Eleanor and Iris were initially boarded together, and became fast friends. Eleanor enjoyed Iris’s blunt, progressive view points, and Iris found Eleanor’s sheltered naivety endearing. The two became practically inseparable, and after both graduated from the college, Iris moved into Bailey Manor at Eleanor’s invitation. It was mostly because of Iris that Eleanor slowly became open to the idea of a life of adventure like her uncle instead of living as a lowly librarian.

The two women traveled to Europe in the spring of 1935, visiting Eleanor’s childhood home in England. The estate was closed down, and felt empty and lonely. Eleanor had an “episode” when she touched one of her mother’s hair brushes and passed out. She did not wake for several hours, with Iris waiting beside the bed, fretting for her friend’s well-being. When Eleanor did finally open her eyes, she spent the next few hours pouring out her heart to Iris, deepening the bond between the two. They spent the night together in the master bedroom, and in the morning they were closer than ever.

Eleanor became interested in her uncle’s journals and read through the ones he still had. When she noticed that one was missing, she asked Thomas about it. He informed her that he had donated the journal to the University of Buenos Aires. He explained that the journal had all of the clues he had gathered regarding the search by the conquistador Cortes for the lost city of El Dorado. Eleanor was fascinated and sent a telegram to the university requesting it be sent for loan, only to receive a reply that the journal had recently been stolen. The thieves were suspected to be Germans, and Uncle Thomas feared they were searching for El Dorado to fund the Nazi war machine growing in Europe.

After speaking with Iris, Eleanor convinced Uncle Thomas to put together a team to go find the journal and stop the Nazis. He reluctantly agreed, and after asking his contacts for recommendations, put forth invitations to Archibald Locke and Malcolm Reed.