Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes

Mystery In Four Volumes, by
Various

Project Gutenberg's Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes, by
Various This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and
with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
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
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK
MASTERPIECES OF MYSTERY ***

Produced by David Clarke and the Online Distributed Proofreading
Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
generously made available by The Internet Archive/American
Libraries.)

Transcriber's Note: Minor typographical errors have been corrected
without note. Dialect spellings, contractions and discrepancies have
been retained.

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