FullReads

The writer of this letter had given his address, Christ Church Rectory, —-, N.J. (I suppress the name of the village for the sake of his parishioners as I suppress the name of the man for the sake of his family). Therefore I wrote to him at once, telling him that if he had read the third and final instalment of my story with the same attention he had given to the second part he would understand why I was expecting to receive from him an apology for the letter he had sent to the newspaper. In time there reached me this inadequate and disingenuous response, hardly worthy to be called even an apology for an apology:

“In reply to your courteous communication, let me say that
had I seen the close of your short story, I should have
grasped the situation more fully, and should doubtless
have refrained from giving it any special attention.

“When one considers, however, the manner in which your
copy was published by the paper, deferring the explanation
until the appearance of the third instalment, it must
be acknowledged that there was opportunity for surprise
and criticism. The fault should have been found with
the way in which the article was published, rather than
with the story itself, that appearing at its conclusion
a self-confessed mosaic of quotations. Needless to
add that its author’s aim to amuse, entertain, and
instruct has been manifestly subserved.

“Yours most sincerely,

“—- —-“

Of another tale (‘Sixteen Years without a Birthday’) I have nothing to say–except to record a friend’s remark after he had finished it, that he had “read something very like it not long before in a newspaper;” so perhaps I may be permitted to declare that I had not read something very like it anywhere, but had, to the best of my belief, “made it all up out of my own head.” Nor need I say anything about the ‘Rival Ghosts’–except to note that it is here reprinted from an earlier collection of stories which has now for years been out of print.

The last tale of all, the ‘Twinkling of an Eye,’ received the second prize for the best detective story, offered by a newspaper syndicate–the first prize being taken by a story written by Miss Mary E. Wilkins and Mr. J. E. Chamberlain. The use of the camera as a detective agency had been suggested to me by a brief newspaper paragraph glanced at casually several years before. And I confess that it was with not a little amusement that I employed this device, since I had then recently seen my ‘Vignettes of Manhattan’ criticized as being “photographic in method.” Here again I had no reason to doubt the originality of my plot; and here once more was my confidence shattered, and I was forced to confess that fiction can never hope to keep ahead of fact.

After the ‘Twinkling of an Eye’ was published in the newspapers which had joined in offering the prizes, it was printed again in one of the smaller magazines. There it was read by a gentleman connected with a hardware house in Grand Rapids, who wrote to me, informing me that the story I had laboriously pieced together had–in some of its details, at least–been anticipated by real life more than a year before I sat down to write out my narrative. This gentleman has now kindly given me permission to quote from his letter those passages which may be of interest to readers of the ‘Twinkling of an Eye’:

It appears that the cash-drawer of the hardware store, in which small change was habitually left over night for use in the morning before the banks open, was robbed three nights running, although only a few dollars were taken at a time. “The large vault, in which are kept the firm’s papers, had not been tampered with, and the work was evidently that of some petty thief. The night-watchman was a trusted employee, and my father did not wish to accuse him unjustly. And, besides, he did not wish to warn the thief. So nothing was said to the watchman. The nights on which the till had been tapped were Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Father goes down to the store every Sunday morning for about half an hour to open the mail, and it was then that he discovered the Saturday night theft. Directly after Sunday dinner, father went down to see an electrical friend of his, who executed a plan which my father had devised. The cash-drawer was situated in one corner of the office (quite a large one), in which both the wholesale and retail business is transacted. He placed a large detective camera in the corner opposite the till, and beside it, and a little behind, a quantity of flash-light powder in a receptacle. This powder was connected by electric wires with the till in such a manner, that when the drawer was opened the circuit would be completed and the powder ignited. Everything worked to perfection. The office is always left dark at night, so the shutter of the camera could be left open without spoiling the film. The camera was in place Sunday evening, but the thief stayed away. It was set again on Monday night, and that time we got him. A small wire was attached to a weight near the camera extending to the till. As the thief started to open the drawer the weight made a slight noise. He glanced in the direction of the noise, started, pulled the weight a little farther, and we had his picture. Detectives had already been working on the case, and the thief was identified and arrested on the strength of the portrait. When he was informed that we had his picture, he made a full confession. He said that when the flash-light went off he nearly fainted from fright.”

* * * * *

After this experience I am tempted to give up all hope that I can ever invent anything which is not a fact, even before I make it up. I am now prepared, therefore, to discover that I did really have an interview with Count Cagliostro, and also that I was actually an unwilling witness at the wedding of the rival ghosts.

(1896.)