Today | News | Books | Recipes Adventure | Science Fiction | Ghost stories | Poetry | Children | History Masterpieces of Mystery in Four Volumes: Mystic-Humorous StoriesThe Project Gutenberg eBook of Masterpieces of Mystery in Four Volumes: Mystic-Humorous Stories This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title: Masterpieces of Mystery in Four Volumes: Mystic-Humorous Stories Editor: Joseph Lewis French Release date: November 10, 2007 [eBook #23432] Language: English Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23432 Credits: 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.) *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MASTERPIECES OF MYSTERY IN FOUR VOLUMES: MYSTIC-HUMOROUS STORIES *** 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 _Theopile 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 lay diagonally across the turfy hills. It slanted a mile or so to the summit, wandered vaguely another two miles among gorse-bushes along the crest, passed Tom Bassett's cottage by the pines, and then dropped sharply down on the other side through rather thin woods to the ancient house where the old folk-lorist lived and dreamed himself into his impossible world of theory and fantasy. I fell to thinking busily about him during the first part of the ascent, and convinced myself, as usual, that, but for his generosity to the poor, and his benign aspect, the peasantry must undoubtedly have regarded him as a wizard who speculated in souls and had dark dealings with the world of faery. The path I knew tolerably well. I had already walked it once before--a winter's day some years ago--and from the cottage onward felt sure of my way; but for the first mile or so there were so many cross cattle-tracks, and the light had become so dim that I felt it wise to inquire more particularly. And this I was fortunately able to do of a man who with astonishing suddenness rose from the grass where he had been lying behind a clump of bushes, and passed a few yards in front of me at a high pace downhill toward the darkening valley. He was in such a state of hurry that I called out loudly to him, fearing to be too late, but on hearing |