The Editor desires especially to acknowledge assistance in granting theuse of original material, and for helpful advice and suggestion, toProfessor Brander Matthews of Columbia University, to Mrs. AnnaKatherine Green Rohlfs, to Cleveland Moffett, to Arthur Reeve, creatorof "Craig Kennedy," to Wilbur Daniel Steele, to Ralph Adams Cram, toChester Bailey Fernald, to Brian Brown, to Mrs. Lillian M. Robins of thepublisher's office, and to Charles E. Farrington of the Brooklyn PublicLibrary.
A distinguished American writer of fiction said to me lately: "Did youever think of the vital American way we live? We are always going aftermental gymnastics." Now the mystery story is mental gymnastics. By thetime the reader has followed a chain of facts through he has exercisedhis mind,—given himself a mental breather. But the claims of the truemystery story do not end with the general reader. It is entitled to theconsideration of the discriminating because it indubitably takes its ownplace as a gauge of mastery in the field of the short story.
The demand was never quite so keen as it is now. The currents ofliterature as of all things change swiftly these times. This world ofours has become very sophisticated. It has suffered itself to beexploited till there is no external wonder left. Retroactively thedemand for mystery, which is the very soul of interest, must find newexpression. Thus we turn inward for fresh thrills to the human comedy,and outward to the realm of the supernatural.
The riddle story is the most naïve form of the mystery story. It maycontain a certain element of the supernatural—be tinged withmysticism—but its motive and the revelation thereof must be franklymaterialistic—of the earth, earthy. In this respect it is very closelyallied to the detective story. The model riddle story should be utterlymundane in motive—told in direct terms. Here again the genius of thatgreat modern master asserts itself, and in "The Oblong Box" we have anearly model of its kind. The stories of this collection cover a widerange and are the choice of reading in several literatures.
Joseph Lewis French.
NOTE
FOREWORD
The Mysterious Card Cleveland Moffett
I
II
The Great Valdez Sapphire Anonymous
The Oblong Box Edgar Allan Poe
The Birth Mark Nathaniel Hawthorne
A Terribly Strange Bed Wilkie Collins
The Torture by Hope Villiers de l'Isle Adam
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