Mystery In Four Volumes, by Various

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Title: Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes Detective Stories

Author: Various

Editor: Joseph Lewis French

Release Date: December 13, 2008 [EBook #27523]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

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Transcriber's note

Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved. Minor punctuation errors have been corrected without notice. Typographical errors have been corrected, and they are listed at the end of this book.

MASTERPIECES OF MYSTERY

Masterpieces of Mystery

In Four Volumes

DETECTIVE STORIES

Edited by Joseph Lewis French

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 Fernald, to Brian Brown, to Mrs. Lillian M. Robins of the publisher's office, and to Charles E. Farrington of the Brooklyn Public Library.

FOREWORD

The honour of founding the modern detective story belongs to an American writer. Such tales as "The Purloined Letter" and "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" still stand unrivalled.

We in America no more than the world of letters at large, did not readily realize what Poe had done when he created Auguste Dupin--the prototype of Sherlock Holmes et genus omnes, up to the present hour. On Poe's work is built the whole school of French detective story writers. Conan Doyle derived his inspiration from them in turn, and our American writers of to-day are helped from both French and English sources. It is rare enough to find the detective in fiction even to-day, however, who is not lacking in one supreme quality,--scientific imagination. Auguste Dupin had it. Dickens, had he lived a short time longer, might have turned his genius in this direction. The last thing he wrote was the "Mystery of Edwin Drood," the mystery of which is still unravelled. I have heard the opinion expressed by an eminent living writer that had Dickens' life been prolonged he would probably have become the greatest master of the detective story, except Poe.

The detective story heretofore has been based upon one of two methods: analysis or deduction. The former was Poe's, to take the typical example; the latter is Conan Doyle's. Of late the discoveries of science have been brought into play in this field of fiction with notable results. The most prominent of such innovators, indeed the first one, is Arthur Reeve, an American writer, whose "Black Hand" will be found in this collection; which has endeavoured within its limited space to cover the field from the start--the detective story--wholly the outgrowth of the more highly developed police methods which have sprung into being within little more than half a century, being only so old.

JOSEPH LEWIS FRENCH.

CONTENTS

PAGE

I. THE PURLOINED LETTER 3 Edgar Allan Poe

II. THE BLACK HAND 33 Arthur B. Reeve

III. THE BITER BIT 64 Wilkie Collins

IV. MISSING: PAGE THIRTEEN 108 Anna Katherine Green

V. A SCANDAL IN BOHEMIA 164 A. Conan Doyle

VI. THE ROPE OF FEAR 200 Mary E. and Thomas W. Hanshew

VII. THE SAFETY MATCH 229 Anton Chekhov

VIII. SOME SCOTLAND YARD STORIES 261 Sir Robert Anderson

MASTERPIECES OF MYSTERY

Masterpieces of Mystery

DETECTIVE STORIES