Front matter

CHALK FACE

BY WALDO FRANK

BONI AND LIVERIGHT Publishers New York

Copyright, 1924, by Boni & Liveright, Inc.

Printed in the United States of America

Dear Father:

A weakness we have long shared, and nurtured together: our hankering after good mystery stories. We have opened many a volume that promised luridly—and failed to keep its promise. And whenever we did find a passable tale, our best pleasure in it was to pass it on to the other. In these exchanges, I have learned that you are more critical than I: so that as ever, in bringing you this book, I do so timidly. If it please you, I shall not need to worry about its other readers.

I can foretell certain of your observations. “Chalk Face” may seem to you at least as much a Parable as a mystery story. But what indeed is the difference between them? What more lurid than the depths of desire, what more mysterious than the hinterlands of conscience? And what event is so great a mystery as life itself? I believe that every tale should be a mystery tale. I believe that the only stories that are not mystery stories are the shallow stories.... Howsoever, if you find in this book elements of moral and of wonder usually absent from tales of crime, these are ancestral traits which I have straight from you. So, in the impulse making me write my story as in the consequence, you have your share—and you must be indulgent.

W. F.

Seville, February, 1924.