The Project Gutenberg EBook of Masterpieces of Mystery, by Various

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Title: Masterpieces of Mystery
Riddle Stories

Author: Various

Editor: Joseph Lewis French

Release Date: August 15, 2009 [EBook #29704]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Masterpieces of Mystery

_In Four Volumes_

RIDDLE 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

A distinguished American writer of fiction said to me lately: "Did you
ever think of the vital American way we live? We are always going after
mental gymnastics." Now the mystery story is mental gymnastics. By the
time the reader has followed a chain of facts through he has exercised
his mind,--given himself a mental breather. But the claims of the true
mystery story do not end with the general reader. It is entitled to the
consideration of the discriminating because it indubitably takes its own
place as a gauge of mastery in the field of the short story.

The demand was never quite so keen