Edited by Julian Hawthorne
“Riddle Stories”
F. MARION CRAWFORD (1854–)
By the Waters of Paradise
MARY E. WILKINS FREEMAN (1862–)
The Shadows on the Wall
MELVILLE D. POST (1871–)
The Corpus Delicti
AMBROSE BIERCE (1842–)
An Heiress from Redhorse
The Man and the Snake
EDGAR ALLAN POE (1809–49)
The Oblong Box
The Gold-Bug
WASHINGTON IRVING (1783–1859)
Wolfert Webber, or Golden Dreams
Adventure of the Black Fisherman
CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN (1771–1810)
Wieland’s Madness
FITZJAMES O’BRIEN (1828–1862)
The Golden Ingot
My Wife’s Tempter
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE (1804–1864)
The Minister’s Black Veil
ANONYMOUS
Horror: A True Tale
“Riddle Stories”
Introduction by Julian Hawthorne
When Poe wrote his immortal Dupin tales, the name “Detective”stories had not been invented; the detective of fiction not havingbeen as yet discovered. And the title is still something of amisnomer, for many narratives involving a puzzle of some sort,though belonging to the category which I wish to discuss, arehandled by the writer without expert detective aid. Sometimes thepuzzle solves itself through operation of circumstance; sometimessomebody who professes no special detective skill happens upon thesecret of its mystery; once in a while some venturesome genius hasthe courage to leave his enigma unexplained. But ever sinceGaboriau created his Lecoq, the transcendent detective has been infavor; and Conan Doyle’s famous gentleman analyst has given him afresh lease of life, and reanimated the stage by reverting to themethod of Poe. Sherlock Holmes is Dupin redivivus, and mutatusmutandis; personally he is a more stirring and engaging companion,but so far as kinship to probabilities or even possibilities isconcerned, perhaps the older version of him is the morepresentable. But in this age of marvels we seem less difficult tosuit in this respect than our forefathers were.
The fact is, meanwhile, that, in the riddle story, the detectivewas an afterthought, or, more accurately, a deus ex machina to makethe story go. The riddle had to be unriddled; and who could do itso naturally and readily as a detective? The detective, as Poe sawhim, was a means to this end; and it was only afterwards thatwriters perceived his availability as a character. Lecoqaccordingly becomes a figure in fiction, and Sherlock, while he wasas yet a novelty, was nearly as attractive as the complications inwhich he involved himself. Riddle-story writers in general,however, encounter the obvious embarrassment that their detectiveis obliged to lavish so much attention on the professional serviceswhich the exigencies of the tale demand of him, that he has verylittle leisure to expound his own personal equation—the rathersince the attitude of peering into a millstone is not, of i