The Master of Mysteries


 
 
 
 
 
 
 Copyright © 1912 by Gelett Burgess
 Introduction and notes © 2023 by Leslie S. Klinger
 Cover and internal design © 2023 by Sourcebooks and Library of Congress
 Cover design by Sourcebooks
 Cover image: Thurston the Great Magician, The Wonder Show of the Universe. Otis Lithographic Co., ca. 1914. McManus-Young Collection, Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ds-14976.
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 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.
 The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
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 This edition of The Master of Mysteries is based on the first edition in the Library of Congress’s collection, originally published in 1912 by the Bobbs-Merrill Company in Indianapolis, IN. Illustrations by Karl Anderson and George Brehm accompanied the original magazine publications of the stories, and some were included in the book. They are reproduced in this edition.
 Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the Library of Congress.
 
 
 Contents
 Front Cover
 Title Page
 Copyright
 Foreword
 Introduction
 Introduction From The Author
 Missing John Hudson
 The Stolen Shakespeare
 The Macdougal Street Affair
 The Fanshawe Ghost
 The Denton Boudoir Mystery
 The Lorsson Elopement
 The Calendon Kidnaping Case
 Miss Dalrymple’s Locket
 Number Thirteen
 The Trouble With Tulliver
 Why Mrs. Burbank Ran Away
 Mrs. Selwyn’s Emerald
 The Assassins’ Club
 The Luck Of The Merringtons
 The Count’s Comedy
 Priscilla’s Presents
 The Heir To Soothoid
 The Two Miss Mannings
 Van Asten’s Visitor
 The Middlebury Murder
 Vengeance Of The Pi Rho Nu
 The Lady In Taupe
 Mrs. Stellery’s Letters
 Black Light
 Reading Group Guide
 Further Reading
 About the Author
 Biography Of Astro The Seer
 Back Cover
 
 
 
 “I’d know then just what you were to me—alone in the dark.”
 
 
 Foreword
 Crime writing as we know it first appeared in 1841, with the publication of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” Written by American author Edgar Allan Poe, the short story introduced C. Auguste Dupin, the world’s first wholly fictional detective. Other American and British authors had begun working in the genre by the 1860s, and by the 1920s we had officially entered the golden age of detective fiction.
 Throughout this short history, many authors who paved the way have been lost or forgotten. Library of Congress Crime Classics bring back into print some of the finest American crime writing from the 1860s to the 1960s, showcasing rare and lesser-known titles that represent a range of genres, from cozies to police procedurals. With cover designs inspired by images from the Library’s collections, each book in this series includes the original text, reproduced faithfully from an early edition in the Library’s collections and complete with strange spellings and unorthodox punctuation. Also included are a contextual introduction, a brief biography of the author, notes, recommendations for further reading, and suggested discussion questions. Our hope is for these books to start conversations, inspire further research, and bring obscure works to a new generation of readers.
 Early American crime fiction is not only entertaining to read, but it also sheds light on the culture of its time. While many of the titles in this series include outmoded language and stereotypes now considered offensive, these books give readers the opportunity to reflect on how our society’s perceptions of race, gender, ethnicity, and social standing have evolved over more than a century.
 More dark secrets and bloody deeds lurk in the massive collections of the Library of Congress. I encourage you to explore these works for yourself, here in Washington, DC, or online at www.loc.gov.
 —Carla D. Hayden, Librarian of Congress
 
 
 Introduction
 By 1908, when the stories of Astro the Seer began to appear in the Associated Sunday Magazine1 under the byline of Alan Braghampton (a pseudonym of the humorist Gelett Burgess), Sherlock Holmes was again missing in action. The appearances of Arthur Conan Doyle’s genre-defining detective had been sporadic, with twenty-four stories appearing between 1891 and 1893, and thirteen more in 1903 and 1904.2 In the ten-year gap between 1893 and 1903, a tsunami of Holmes imitators appeared, and the tide was not stemmed by the second wave of genuine Holmes short stories in the Strand Magazine that began in 1903.
 Astro was a notable result of that tsunami. Like Holmes, he is often languid—until possessed by a case. Like Holmes with Dr. Watson, Astro often relies on his “sidekick,” the beautiful young woman Valeska Wynne.3 Also like Holmes, though Astro deprecates his companion’s abilities, he often relies on her. But as the prolific American writer Carolyn Wells noted, Astro “is perhaps the farthest possible remove from a conventional detective in appearance.… He has sufficiently unusual eccentricities to put him in the list of correctly made up fiction detectives, and though blasé, he is original and interesting.”4
 The tales of Astro explore many facets of detective fiction. Certainly, some involve serious crimes: robbery, kidnapping, espionage, and even murder. Others deal with lighter topics: social poseurs, damaged marriages, thwarted romances. Despite his veneer of esoteric knowledge, Astro is, by profession, skilled at what modern “fortune-tellers” and “psychics” call the “cold read,” making careful observations of their clients and drawing deductions about them from minute details of their appearance (much like Holmes does). For all his talk of the divine laws, his mystical studies in the Himalayas, and his consultation of “vibrations” and “auras,” Astro is also not above doing some background investigation—newspaper accounts, conversations with a friendly police officer—before he meets a client. Even routine detective work—following a