Ellery Queen's Poetic Justice Or Expected to Find in This Book but Which Is Absent (A Tale, for Example, by Robert Frost Or T

Ellery Queen's Poetic Justice Or Expected to Find in This Book but Which Is Absent (A Tale, for Example, by Robert Frost Or T

I Queen’s Poetic Justice NOVELS BY ELLERY QUEEN The Roman Hat Mystery The Murderer Is a Fox The French Powder Mystery Ten Days’ Wonder The Dutch Shoe Mystery Cat of Many Tails The Greek Coffin Mystery Doable, Double The Egyptian Cross Mystery The Origin of Evil The American Gun Mystery The King Is Dead The Siamese Twin Mystery The Scarlet Letters The Chinese Orange Mystery The Glass Village The Spanish Cape Mystery Inspector Queen’s Own Case Halfway House (November Song) The Door Between The Finishing Stroke The Devil To Pay The Player on the Other Side The Four of Hearts And On the Eighth Day The Dragon’s Teeth The Fourth Side of the Triangle Calamity Town A Study in Terror There Was an Old Woman Face to Face BOOKS OF SHORT STORIES BY ELLERY Q1QUEEN The Adventures of Ellery Queen Calendar of Crime The New Adventures of Ellery Queen Q.B.I.: Queen’s Bureau of Investigation The Casebook of Ellery Queen Queens Full EDITED BY ELLERY QUEEN Challenge to the Reader The Literature of Crime 101 Years’ Entertainment Ellery Queen’s Mystery Annuals: Sporting Blood I3th-i6th Ellery Queen’s Anthologies: 1960-1967 The Female of the Species The Quintessence of Queen The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes (Edited by Anthony Boucher) Rogues’ Gallery To Be Read Before Midnight Best Stories from EQMM Ellery Queen’s Mystery Mix #18 To the Queen’s Taste Ellery Queen’s Double Dozen The Queen’s Awards, 1946-1953 Ellery Queen’s 20th Anniversary Annual Murder by Experts Ellery Queen’s Crime Carousel 20th Century Detective Stories Ellery Queen’s All-Star Lineup Ellery Queen’s Awards, 1954-1957 Poetic Justice Ellery Queen’s Mysteryry Magazine (27th Year) TRUE CRIME BY ELLERY QUEEN Ellery Queen’s International Case Book The Woman in the Case CRITICAL WORKS BY ELLERY QUEEN The Detective Short Story Queen’s Quorum In the Queens’ Parlor UNDER THE PSEUDONYM OF BARNABY ROSS The Tragedy of X The Tragedy of Z The Tragedy of Y Drury Lane’s Last Case 23 STORIES OF CRIME, MYSTERY, AND DETECTION BY WORLD-FAMOUS POETS from Geoffrey Chaucer to Dylan Thomas The New American Library Copyright © 1967 by Ellery Queen. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission from the publishers. A CKNO WLEDGMENTS the crucifixion of the outcast by William Butler Yeats: Copyright 1905, The Macmillan Company, renewed 1934 by William B. Yeats, reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company from The Secret Rose (Early Poems ir Stories) by William B. Yeats, the blast of the book by G. K. Chesterton: Copyright 1935 by G. K. Chesterton, renewed 1963 by Oliver Chesterton; reprinted by permission of Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc. from The Scandal of Father Brown. testimony after death by Mark Van Doren: Copyright © 1965 by Mark Van Doren; reprinted by permission of Hill and Wang, Inc. from Collected Stories, Volume II by Mark Van Doren. whitemail by Joyce Kilmer: Copyright 1914 by Smart Set, assigned to Aline Kilmer. By permission of Kenton Kilmer, the steinpilz method (original title, earth to earth) by Robert Graves: Copyright © 1955 by International Authors N.V.; reprinted by permission of Collins-Knowlton-Wing, Inc. from Collected Short Stories by Robert Graves, smith and jones by Conrad Aiken, from The Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken: Copyright © 1922, 1923, 1924, 1925, 1927, 1928, 1929, 1930, 1931- ^32. 1933. t934> 1935. 1941» i95°> >952, 1953- >955- 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1960 by Conrad Aiken; reprinted by permission of The World Publishing Company, Cleveland and New York, the old woman upstairs (original title, the true story) by Dylan Thomas: Copyright 1955, © 1964 by New Directions; reprinted by permission of the publisher. New Directions Publishing Corporation, from Adventures in the Skin Trade and Other Stories by Dylan Thomas. the three d’s by Ogden Nash: Copyright 1948 by Hearst Magazines, Inc.; reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown Ltd. (New York), the club by Muriel Rukeyser: Copyright 195° by Garrett Publications, Inc.; reprinted by permission of Monica McCall, Inc. the murder in the fishing cat by Edna St. Vincent Millay: Copyright 1923, 1950 by Edna St. Vincent Millay; reprinted by permission of Norma Millay Ellis, Literary Executor, a gentleman of fortune by Stephen Vincent Benet: Copyright 1941 by Rosemary Carr Benet; reprinted by permission of Brandt & Brandt, from The Last Circle (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc.). markheim by Robert Louis Stevenson: reprinted courtesy of Charles Scribner’s Sons, the three strangers by Thomas Hardy: reprinted courtesy of St. Martin’s Press, Inc., Macmillan and Company, Ltd., and the Trustees of the Hardy Estate, the return of imray by Rudyard Kipling: reprinted courtesy of Doubleday & Company, Inc. First Printing Published by The New American Library, Inc. 1301 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10019 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 67-26239 Printed in the United States of America Contents Introduction by Ellery Queen vii Geoffrey Chaucer THE PARDONER’S TALE I Oliver Goldsmith THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD SELLS A HORSE ^ Sir Walter Scott THE TWO DROVERS 22 George Gordon, Lord Byron DARVELL 50 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow THE NOTARY OF PERIGUEUX 59 Edgar Allan Poe THE MAN OF THE CROWD 6j Walt Whitman ONE WICKED impulse! 82 W. S. Gilbert MY MAIDEN BRIEF 95 Thomas Hardy THE THREE STRANGERS J07 Robert Louis Stevenson MARKHEIM 13 2 William Butler Yeats THE CRUCIFIXION OF THE OUTCAST 152 Rudyard Kipling THE RETURN OF IMRAY 162 G. K. Chesterton THE BLAST OF THE BOOK ij6 John Masefield A RAINES LAW ARREST 193 Joyce Kilmer WHITEMAIL 199 Conrad Aiken SMITH AND JONES 209 Edna St. Vincent Millay THE MURDER IN THE FISHING CAT 222 Mark Van Doren TESTIMONY AFTER DEATH 242 Robert Graves THE STEINPILZ METHOD 252 Stephen Vincent Benet A GENTLEMAN OF FORTUNE 258 Ogden Nash THE THREE d’s 275 Muriel Rukeyser THE CLUB 280 Dylan Thomas THE OLD WOMAN UPSTAIRS 293 L’Envoi by Ellery Queen 299 Introduction Dear Reader: Say the word softly . books. See them as images — the tree of life, the fourfold rivers of Paradise, the treasurehouse of jeweled words. See them as our hope for the future — for a finer world within the world. See them in your mind’s eye — your friends, your counselors, your comforters . All these things have been said, with gratitude and hu¬ mility. So say the word softly. And behold how good and how pleasant it is for books to dwell together — for who touches a book touches man, and who touches a great book touches himself. Books . imagine a row of them, all of different sizes and shapes, tall, small, thick, thin, bound in pastel wrappers or patterned boards or bright cloth — a rainbow row of books of poetry by xi xii / Ellery Queen’s Poetic Justice Geoffrey Chaucer Oliver Goldsmith Sir Walter Scott Lord Byron Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Edgar Allan Poe Walt Whitman W. S. Gilbert Thomas Hardy Robert Louis Stevenson William Butler Yeats Rudyard Kipling G. K. Chesterton John Masefield Joyce Kilmer Conrad Aiken Edna St. Vincent Millay Mark Van Doren Robert Graves Stephen Vincent Benet Ogden Nash Muriel Rukeyser Dylan Thomas Now, why have we chosen these particular poets? Is there something “special” about them? Do they have some¬ thing in common besides being famous poets? Yes, they do — these 23 poets all wrote short stories of crime or detec¬ tion or suspense. That is the theme of this anthology — mystery short stories by 23 world-famous poets, from Chaucer to Dylan Thomas, presented in chronological order of the poets’ dates of birth.1 1 The chronological arrangement tends to show the changes and varia¬ tions in style between 1766 and 1955, between Oliver Goldsmith and Dylan Thomas (omitting Chaucer because his story is “translated” into modern INTRODUCTION / xiU Surprising? Yes — even startling. And yet we hold with Pliny the Younger that “fiction is the privilege of poets” (admitting that Pliny the Younger had a different meaning in mind). And to paraphrase Thomas Babington, Lord Ma¬ caulay, we certainly hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great mystery story produced in a civilized age. And when Shakespeare saw “the poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,” and saw the poet’s pen, “as imagination bodies forth / The forms of things unknown,” turn “them to shapes,” and give “to airy nothing / A local habitation and a name,” surely he saw not only the poet creating po¬ etry, but with equal integrity, the poet creating prose. Star¬ tling? No — not at all. Horace has told us that “poets have always had license to dare anything.” So why not mystery stories? Why not stories of crime and suspense? Why not tales of ratiocination? We chose the title Poetic Justice for this anthology be¬ cause it seemed to combine, in one phrase, the two different yet related themes which this unique collection of stories offers — tales of justice written by poets. And in these tales you will find, to quote Alexander Pope, “Poetic Justice, with her lifted scale, / Where in nice balance truth with gold she weighs.” For, as Benjamin Disraeli once said, “Jus¬ tice is truth in action” — and surely there is no better defi¬ nition of the true nature of the detective story. The editor of any anthology can be guilty of two crimes — the crime of commission and the crime of omission. If we are guilty of the first crime, the evidence confronts you in the pages of this book; if we are guilty of the second crime — if there is a tale of detection or mystery which you hoped English).

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