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Masterpieces of Mystery in Four Volumes: Mystic-Humorous Stories

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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
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*** 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 

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