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Masterpieces of Mystery in Four Volumes: Ghost Stories

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Title: Masterpieces of Mystery in Four Volumes: Ghost Stories

Editor: Joseph Lewis French

 
Release date: January 6, 2009 [eBook #27722]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/27722

Credits: Produced by David Clarke, S.D., and the Online Distributed
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MASTERPIECES OF MYSTERY IN FOUR VOLUMES: GHOST STORIES ***

Produced by David Clarke, S.D., 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.)

 MASTERPIECES OF MYSTERY

 Masterpieces of
 Mystery

 _In Four Volumes_

 GHOST 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 ghost story is as old as human speech,--and perhaps even antedates
it. A naïve acceptance of the supernatural was unquestionably one of the
primal attributes of human intelligence. The ghost story may thus quite
conceivably be the first form of tale ever invented. It makes its
appearance comparatively early in the annals of literature. Who that has
read it is likely to forget Pliny's account in a letter to an intimate
of an apparition shortly after death to a mutual acquaintance? Old books
of tales and legends are full of the ghost story. It has persisted
throughout the ages. It began to attain some real standing in
literature,--to take its definite place,--a little more than a century
ago. Like the apparition it embodies it had always been--and is still
to-day even--more or less discredited. Mrs. Radcliffe gave it a new
being and even a certain dignity in her "Castle of Otranto"; and after
her came Sir Walter Scott who frankly surrendered to the power and charm
of the theme. The line of succession has been continuous. The ghost has
held his own with his human fellow in fiction, and his tale has been
told with increasing skill as the art of the writer has developed.
To-day the case for the ghost as an element in fiction is an exceedingly
strong one. There has indeed sprung into being within a couple of
decades a new school of such writers. Nowadays almost every fictionist
of account produces one good thriller at least of this sort. The
temptation is irresistible for the simple reason that the theme imposes
absolutely no limit on the imagination.

The reader will find here a careful selection illustrating the growth in
art of this exotic in literature during the past fifty years, and for a
contrast, spanning the centuries, the naïve narration of Pliny the
Younger.

 JOSEPH LEWIS FRENCH.

CONTENTS

 PAGE

 I. THE LISTENER 3
 _Algernon Blackwood_

 II. NUMBER 13 45
 _Montague Rhodes James_

 III. JOSEPH: A STORY 70
 _Katherine Rickford_

 IV. THE HORLA 84
 _Guy de Maupassant_

 V. THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS 123
 _William F. Harvey_

 VI. SISTER MADDELENA 167
 _Ralph Adams Cram_

 VII. THRAWN JANET 191
 _Robert Louis Stevenson_

 VIII. THE YELLOW CAT 207
 _Wilbur Daniel Steele_

 IX. LETTER TO SURA 237
 _Pliny the Younger_

MASTERPIECES OF MYSTERY

Masterpieces of Mystery

_GHOST STORIES_

THE LISTENER[A]

ALGERNON BLACKWOOD

Sept. 4.--I have hunted all over London for rooms suited to my
income--£120 a year--and have at last found them. Two rooms, without
modern conveniences, it is true, and in an old, ramshackle building, but
within a stone's throw of P-- Place and in an eminently respectable
street. The rent is only £25 a year. I had begun to despair when at last
I found them by chance. The chance was a mere chance, and unworthy of
record. I had to sign a lease for a year, and I did so willingly. The
furniture from our old place in H--shire, which has been stored so long,
will just suit them.

 * * * * *

Oct. 1.--Here I am in my two rooms, in the centre of London, and not far
from the offices of the periodicals where occasionally I dispose of an
article or two. The building is at the end of a _cul-de-sac_. The alley
is well paved and clean, and lined chiefly with the backs of sedate and
institutional-looking buildings. There is a stable in it. My own house
is dignified with the title of "Chambers." I feel as if one day the
honour must prove too much for it, and it will swell with pride--and
fall asunder. It is very old. The floor of my sitting-room has valleys
and low hills on it, and the top of the door slants away from the
ceiling with a glorious disregard of what is usual. They must have
quarrelled--fifty years ago--and have been going apart ever since.

 * * * * *

Oct. 2.--My landlady is old and thin, with a faded, dusty face. She is
uncommunicative. The few words she utters seem to cost her pain.
Probably her lungs are half choked with dust. She keeps my rooms as free
from this commodity as possible, and has the assistance of a strong girl
who brings up the breakfast and lights the fire. As I have said already,
she is not communicative. In reply to pleasant efforts on my part she
informed me briefly that I was the only occupant of the house at
present. My rooms had not been occupied for some years. There had been
other gentlemen upstairs, but they had left.

She never looks straight at me when she speaks, but fixes her dim eyes
on my middle waistcoat button, till I get nervous and begin to think it
isn't on straight, or is the wrong sort of button altogether.

 * * * * *

Oct. 8.--My week's book is nicely kept, and so far is reasonable. Milk
and sugar 7d., bread 6d., butter 8d., marmalade 6d., eggs 1s. 8d.,
laundress 2s. 9d., oil 6d., attendance 5s.; total 12s. 2d.

The landlady has a son wh

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