STORIES/OF ' /DETECTION AN D MYSTE RY Introduction This collection includes offerings from some of the most famous I3ritish writers of detective and mystery stories of the first half of he twentieth century. Although the stories are quite different t from each other, each has an everyday setting in which unexpected and often strange events begin to take place. By the end of the story, the mystery is solved. Sometimes there is a common-sense explanation; sometimes there is a suggestion of dark forces at work. A number of the central characters in the stories are detectives who have become very well known over the years. Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) was an English writer who produced thousands of poems and stories on a wide variety of subjects. Chesterton's best-known works are his mystery and detective stories. Some of" his characters are unforgettable, particularly the priest Father Brown. Although he appears to be rather ordinary and even a little stupid, Father Brown solves the most difficult mysteries in his slow, careful and extremely polite way. Forty-eight Father Brown stories appeared between 1911 and 1935; two are included in this collection. Agatha Christie (1890-1976) is one of the most famous detective writers ever. She wrote over eighty books and is the most widely translated writer in the English language. Many of her books feature detectives. Of these, perhaps the best known are Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. 'Philomel Cottage' is unusual in that it does not feature a detective or a group of suspects, but tells the story from the point of view of the person who, we come to discover, is under threat of death. v Cyril Hare (1900-58) is the pen name of Alfred Alexander Gordon Clark. He was a lawyer and judge as well as a mystery writer, and his writing comes directly from his knowledge of criminals and the law Cyril Hare wrote nine books and some fine short stories. In 'An Unpleasant Man' it is the policeman who notices something that seems unimportant, but is found to be central to the solution of the mystery. Elliott O'Donnell (1872-1965) had a lifelong interest in ghosts and mysterious or unexplained events, and produced several serious books on the subject, such as Some Haunted Houses of England and Wales (1908) and Strange Sea Mysteries (1926). He also carried this interest into his stories, a good example of which is 'The Unlucky Theatre', included in this collection. His best- known book is The Sorcery Club (1912), about three men who put the dark secrets of Atlantis to their own evil use. The setting for 'The Mezzotint' is very ordinary. But into this Montague Rhodes James (1862-1936) suddenly introduces unexplained and frightening events. James wrote four collections of ghost stories. In his working life he was a highly respected historian who produced many books on his subject. Margery Allingham (1904—66) was a social historian as well as a writer of mystery stories. Her most famous character is the detective Albert Campion, who appears in many of her books as well as in this short story,'Family Affair'. Like Chesterton's Father Brown, Campion is a character who surprises those who do not take him seriously. Dennis Wheatley (1897-1977) wrote many types of books, including mystery and crime stories, and has been widely vi translated. His best-known characters are the secret agents Roger Brook and Gregory Sallust. 'The Case of the Thing That Whimpered' appears at first to be a ghost story, but the mysterious noises belong to a more familiar world. Vll The Blue Cross G. K. Chesterton Early one morning the boat arrived at Harwich and from it poured a crowd of travellers. Among them the man that we must follow did not look out of place in any way — nor did he wish to. There was nothing out of the ordinary about him, except a slight difference between the relaxed look of his holiday clothes and the rather serious expression on his face. He was wearing a pale grey coat, a white shirt, and a silver hat. His thin face was dark in comparison and ended in a short black beard that looked rather Spanish. He was smoking. No one would have thought that the grey coat hid a loaded gun, that the pocket of his white shirt held a police card, or that the hat covered one of the most powerful brains in Europe. For this was Valentin himself, the head of the Paris police and the most famous detective in the world; and he was coming from Brussels to London to make the greatest arrest of the century. Flambeau was in England. The police of three countries had tracked the great criminal at last from Ghent to Brussels, from Brussels to the Hook of Holland; and it was thought that he would make use of the unfamiliarity and confusion of the international meeting of priests which was then taking place in London. Probably he would travel as some unimportant clerk or secretary connected with it; but, of course, Valentin could not be certain. Nobody could be certain about Flambeau. It is many years now since this great criminal, Flambeau, suddenly stopped causing trouble; and when he stopped there was relief around the world. In his best days (I mean, of course, his worst) Flambeau was an internationally known figure. Almost every morning the daily papers announced that he had escaped punishment for one unbelievable crime by breaking the law a second time. He was a Frenchman of great strength, size and daring, and the wildest stories were told of the amusing uses that he made of his physical abilities: how he turned a judge upside down and stood him on his head, 'to clear his mind'; how he ran down the street with a policeman under each arm. But it must be said of him that his unusual physical strength was generally employed in bloodless ways; his crimes were chiefly those of clever robberies. It was he who ran the great Tyrolean Milk Company in London, with no cows, no delivery vehicles, and no milk, but with more than a thousand customers. He did this by the simple operation of moving the little milk cans outside people's doors to the doors of his own customers. Many of his crimes were extremely simple. It is said that he once repainted all the house numbers in a street in the middle of the night just to lead one traveller into a trap. It is quite certain that he invented a public letterbox which could be moved from place to place. This he put up in quiet corners of the town in the hope that a stranger might drop a cheque or bank note into it. Lastly, he was known to be very quick and active; in spite of his large size, he could jump as well as any insect and hide in the treetops like a monkey. For this reason the great Valentin, when he set out to find Flambeau, knew very well that his adventures would not end when he had found him. But how would he find him? The great Valentin still did not have a plan. There was one thing about himself which Flambeau could not change, whatever he did to his appearance, and that was his unusual height. If Valentin's quick eye had seen a tall apple seller, a tall soldier, or even a fairly tall woman, he might have arrested them immediately. But just as a lion cannot pretend to be a mouse, so there was nobody now on his train who could be Flambeau dressed as someone else. Valentin had already made certain that he was not among the people on the boat; and only six other people had got on the train at Harwich or during the journey. There was a short railway official travelling up to London, three fairly short farmers picked up two stations later, one very short old lady going up from a small town in Essex, and a very short Catholic priest going up from an Essex village. When it came to this last passenger,Valentin gave up looking and almost laughed. The little priest had a round, dull face; he had eyes as empty as the North Sea; he had several packages wrapped in brown paper, which he was quite unable to hold without dropping one. The meeting of priests in London must have brought out of their quiet villages many similar creatures who seemed blind and helpless, like underground animals dug out of the earth. Even Valentin, who had no love of priests, felt sorry for this one. He had a large, worn suitcase, which kept falling on the floor. He explained to everybody with a kind of foolish simplicity that he had to be careful, because he had something made of real silver 'with blue stones' in one of his brown-paper packages. Watching the priest's confusion continued to amuse the Frenchman until this simple man got out (somehow) at Stratford with all his packages, and came back for his suitcase. When he returned for this,Valentin even had the good nature to warn him not to take care of his silver by telling everybody about it. But whoever he talked to, Valentin watched for someone else: he looked out for anyone, rich or poor, male or female, who was at least six feet tall; for Flambeau was four inches above this height. He got off the train in central London, though, quite sure that he had not missed the criminal so far. When he had been to Scotland Yard* to arrange for help if it was needed, he went for a long walk in the streets of London. As he was walking in the streets and squares beyond Victoria, he stopped suddenly. He was * Scotland Yard: the headquarters of the Criminal Investigation Department of London's police force. in a quiet, attractive square, very typical of London. The tall, flat houses looked both expensive and empty; the gardens in the centre looked as deserted as a green Pacific island. One of the four sides of the square was much higher than the rest, like a stage; and the line of this side was broken by a restaurant. The restaurant stood specially high above the street, and some steps ran up from the street to the front door. Valentin stood and smoked in front of the yellow-white curtains and studied them for a long time. Aristide Valentin was a thinking man. All his wonderful successes had been gained by slow, patient reasoning, by clear and ordinary French thought. But because Valentin understood reason, he understood its limits. Only a man who knows nothing about cars talks of driving without petrol; only a man who knows nothing of reason talks of reasoning without any hard facts to start with. Flambeau had been missed at Harwich; and if he was in London at all, he might be anything from a tall beggar sleeping in one of the parks to an employee of the Metropole Hotel. When he lacked any such certain knowledge,Valentin had a view and a method of his own. In such cases he trusted in the unexpected. In such cases, when reasoning was no use to him, he coldly and carefully looked for the unreasonable. Instead of going to the right places — banks, police stations, meeting places — he went to the wrong places; he knocked at every empty house, turned down every little side street, walked up every path. He defended this strange course of action quite reasonably. He said that if he had any facts about the criminals movements to guide him, this was the worst way; but if he had no facts at all, it was the best. There was just the chance that anything unusual which caught the eye of the hunter might be the same that had caught the eye of the hunted. A man must begin somewhere, and it might as well be just where another man might stop. 4 Something about the steps leading up to the shop, something about the quiet and rather unusual appearance of the restaurant, gave the detective an idea and made him decide to act without a plan. He went up the steps, sat down by the window and asked for a cup of black coffee. Until his coffee came, he sat thinking about Flambeau.The criminal always had the advantage; he could make his plans and act. The detective could only wait and hope that he would make a mistake. Valentin lifted his coffee cup to his lips slowly and put it down very quickly. He had put salt in it. He looked at the container from which the white powder had come. It was certainly a sugar bowl. Why had they put salt in it? He looked around for a salt container. Yes, there were two which were quite full. Perhaps there was something unusual about what was in them, too. He tasted it. It was sugar. Then he looked round at the restaurant with new interest, to see if there were any other signs of that strange artistic taste which puts sugar in the salt containers and salt in the sugar bowls. Except for a strange mark of some dark liquid on one of the white walls, the whole place appeared neat, cheerful and ordinary. He rang the bell for the waiter. When the waiter hurried up to him, his hair uncombed and his eyes rather tired at that early hour, the detective asked him to taste the sugar and see if it was equal to the high standards of the restaurant. The result was that the waiter suddenly woke up. 'Do you play this fine joke on people every morning?' inquired Valentin. 'Do you never grow tired of the joke of changing the salt and the sugar?' When it became clear to the waiter what Valentin meant, he explained that the restaurant certainly had no such intention; it must be a strange mistake. He picked up the sugar bowl and looked at it; he picked up the salt container and looked at that, his face growing more and more confused. At last he quickly excused himself, hurried away, and returned in a few seconds with the owner of the place. The owner also examined the sugar bowl and then the salt container; the owner also looked confused. Suddenly the waiter started to speak with a rush of words. 'I think,' he said eagerly,41 think it was those two priests.' 'What two priests?' 'The two priests,' said the waiter, 'that threw soup at the wall.' 'Threw soup at the wall?' repeated Valentin. 'Yes, yes,' said the waiter with excitement and pointed to the large brown mark on the white wall; 'threw it over there on the wall.' Valentin looked questioningly at the restaurant owner. 'Yes, sir,' he said, 'it's quite true, although I don't suppose it has anything to do with the sugar and salt. Two priests came in and drank soup here very early, as soon as we opened. They were both very quiet, respectable people. One of them paid the bill and went out; the other, who seemed much slower, was some minutes longer collecting his things together. He went at last. But the moment before he stepped into the street, he deliberately picked up his cup, which he had only half emptied, and threw the soup straight at the wall. I was in the back room myself, and so was the waiter; so I could only rush out in time to find the soup running down the wall and the shop empty. It didn't do any particular damage, but it was a very rude and surprising thing for a priest to do, and I tried to catch the men in the street. They were too far off though; I only noticed that they went round the corner into Carstairs Street.' The detective was on his feet, with his hat on his head and his stick in his hand. He paid his bill, closed the glass doors loudly behind him, and was soon hurrying round the corner into the next street. It was fortunate that even in such moments of excitement his eye was cool and quick. Something in a shop window went by him like a flash, but he went back to look at it. It was a fruit and 6