Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes

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Mystery In Four Volumes, by Various

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Title: Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes Mystic-Humorous Stories
Author: Various
Editor: Joseph Lewis French
Release Date: November 10, 2007 [EBook #23432]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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Masterpieces of Mystery
In Four Volumes
MYSTIC-HUMOROUS STORIES

Edited by
Joseph Lewis French
[Illustration]
Garden City New York Doubleday, Page & Company 1922
COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N.Y.

NOTE
The Editor desires especially to acknowledge assistance in granting the use of original material, and for helpful advice and suggestion, to Professor Brander Matthews of Columbia University, to Mrs. Anna Katherine Green Rohlfs, to Cleveland Moffett, to Arthur Reeve, creator of "Craig Kennedy," to Wilbur Daniel Steele, to Ralph Adams Cram, to Chester Bailey Fernando, to Brian Brown, to Mrs. Lillian M. Robins of the publisher's office, and to Charles E. Farrington of the Brooklyn Public Library.

FOREWORD
There is an intermediate ground between our knowledge of life and the unknown which is readily conceived as covered by the term mysticism. Mystery stories of high rank often fall under this general classification. They are neither of earth, heaven nor Hades, but may partake of either. In the hands of a master they present at times a rare, if even upon occasion, unduly thrilling--aesthetic charm. The examples which it has been possible to gather within the space of this volume are offered as the best of their type.
The humorist, thank heaven, we have always with us. Spectres cannot afright him, nor mundane terrors deflect him from his path. He takes nothing either in earth or heaven seriously, as is his God-given right. Some of the best examples of what he has done in the general field of mystery are presented here for the first time in any collection.
JOSEPH LEWIS FRENCH.

CONTENTS
PAGE
I. MAY-DAY EVE 3 Algernon Blackwood
II. THE DIAMOND LENS 38 Fitz-James O'Brien
III. THE MUMMY'S FOOT 77 Théopile Gautier
IV. MR. BLOKE'S ITEM 96 Mark Twain
V. A GHOST 101 Lafcadio Hearn
VI. THE MAN WHO WENT TOO FAR 109 E. F. Benson
VII. CHAN TOW THE HIGHROB 143 Chester Bailey Fernando
VIII. THE INMOST LIGHT 158 Arthur Machen
IX. THE SECRET OF GORESTHORPE GRANGE 203 A. Conan Doyle
X. THE MAN WITH THE PALE EYES 230 Guy de Maupassant
XI. THE RIVAL GHOSTS 238 Brander Matthews

Masterpieces of Mystery
MYSTIC-HUMOROUS STORIES

MAY DAY EVE
Algernon Blackwood
I
It was in the spring when I at last found time from the hospital work to visit my friend, the old folk-lorist, in his country isolation, and I rather chuckled to myself, because in my bag I was taking down a book that utterly refuted all his tiresome pet theories of magic and the powers of the soul.
These theories were many and various, and had often troubled me. In the first place, I scorned them for professional reasons, and, in the second, because I had never been able to argue quite well enough to convince or to shake his faith, in even the smallest details, and any scientific knowledge I brought to bear only fed him with confirmatory data. To find such a book, therefore, and to know that it was safely in my bag, wrapped up in brown paper and addressed to him, was a deep and satisfactory joy, and I speculated a good deal during the journey how he would deal with the overwhelming arguments it contained against the existence of any important region outside the world of sensory perceptions.
Speculative, too, I was whether his visionary habits and absorbing experiments would permit him to remember my arrival at all, and I was accordingly relieved to hear from the solitary porter that the "professor" had sent a "veeckle" to meet me, and that I was thus free to send my bag and walk the four miles to the house across the hills.
It was a calm, windless evening, just after sunset, the air warm and scented, and delightfully still. The train, already sinking into distance, carried away with it the noise of crowds and cities and the last suggestions of the stressful life behind me, and from the little station on the moorland I stepped at once into the world of silent, growing things, tinkling sheep-bells, shepherds, and wild, desolate spaces.
My path