Master tales of mystery, Volume 1 (of 3), MASTER TALES of MYSTERY — Read Online

BY THE WORLD'S MOST FAMOUS AUTHORS OF TO-DAY

COLLECTED AND ARRANGED BY FRANCIS J. REYNOLDS

VOLUME I

P. F. COLLIER & SON PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

Copyright 1896 BY DODD, MEAD & COMPANY

Copyright 1889 BY DODD, MEAD & COMPANY

Introduction

The keynote of the reader's interest in present-day fiction is interest. No longer does the reader look for encyclopedic information mixed thoroughly through the pages of his novel. If information is wanted, the vast number of reference works found at every hand supply it.

The first object of all fiction is not to instruct but to entertain—to hold the reader's thoughts so enthralled by the plot of the story that all else is for the time being forgotten.

Granted then that fiction unadorned by actual facts is the most popular form of entertaining reading, what particular class of fiction meets the greatest demand? Why does one author have a hundred thousand readers and another a bare score? What makes the circulation of one great magazine go bounding upward while its rival struggles desperately to retain its few subscribers?

If one writer succeeds where another fails, if one publication grows while another declines, it is because the successful novelist and the popular magazine interest and entertain—have gained and hold their audiences by the bonds of pure delight.

To-day by far the most popular form of fiction is that known as Problem or Mystery Tales because it gives that added zest to entertaining fiction by injecting into it the oft puzzling plots and situations whose unravelings bring surprises at every turn. It has been aptly said that the popularity of the problem tales is due to the fact that the human mind in its daily toil is confronted by naught else but problems—that problem succeeds problem with such lightning rapidity that the mind's functions actually consist of nothing but problem solutions. Vast mysteries surround us—vaster still stretch just before our puny limits of conception. We are constantly striving to solve something, whether it be the merest trifle of the moment or some baffling problem that threatens to overwhelm our powers.

Fiction that feeds this craving is fiction that we understand and appreciate—it's our kind of story, it fits in with our moods. Public taste is correct because it shows unmistakably the natural cravings of the general reader for mystery and problem tales as proven by their universal demand.

Mystery tales from Edgar Allan Poe through the decades that bring us to the present-day writers have ever been the most thoroughly interesting of all our fiction. Nor is this class of fiction confined to our own language, as shown by the French Gaboriau and by the Germans Hoffman, Richter, Tieck, and Chamisso, and their followers.

In the past the masters of this type of story could be named on the fingers of one hand—a small band of geniuses who, to a more or less extent, contented themselves with following in the footsteps of the first great master, Poe. He, while master of the many cruder sciences of his day, drew only upon a scant few to furnish the solutions to his mystery and problem tales, whereas to-day every science has been linked to this vogue of stories—astronomy, chemistry, physics, biology, medicine, geology, electricity—their principles all called upon to serve in the solving of problems in the realm of mystery tales.

In these volumes are gathered the preeminent mystery tales of to-day—each a master tale of an era that has produced the greatest ever penned.

F. J. REYNOLDS.

Contents

ANNA KATHARINE GREEN Room No. 3 The Gray Lady The Thief Midnight in Beauchamp Row The Little Steel Coils The Staircase at Heart's Delight

HAROLD FREDERIC The Path of Murtogh

SIR GILBERT PARKER There is Sorrow on the Sea

S. R. CROCKETT The Smugglers of the Clone

W. CLARK RUSSELL That There Mason

MARY CHOLMONDELEY The Hand on the Latch

FRANK R. STOCKTON The Stories of the Three Burglars

WILLIAM HAMILTON OSBORNE A Suspicious Character

JOHN A. MOROSO Angelo