Intriguer

“ Many of life's most sacred and permanent institutions are only fictions, long entertained. My fiction became so real to me that for periods I forgot to question it—then sometimes, at a moment when the illusion was strongest, some impulse of reason would strike in upon and chill me, like a sluicing from a cold bucket. It would come upon me to think of myself as I should have appeared to any unwarned stranger, who had found me talking, even lovemaking, with a sheet of lifeless paper. And from that impersonal view-point I would wonder if my brain had already crumbled to madness and imbecility. ”

“ That the puppets themselves did not speak, I had already decided; that of themselves they did not move, I also conjectured; but, then, how came it all to be so pretty, and to look just as if they both spoke and moved of themselves? and where were the lights, and the people that managed the deception? These enigmas perplexed me the more, as I wished to be at the same time among the enchanters and the enchanted, at the same time to have a secret hand in the play, and to enjoy, as a looker-on, the pleasure of illusion. ”

“ What more lurid than the depths of desire, what more mysterious than the hinterlands of conscience? And what event is so great a mystery as life itself? I believe that every tale should be a mystery tale. ”

“ But I have closed to myself forever that world where I might find my equals and my fellows. I can enter only through the secret doors of intrigue, and, if I wish to appear there in broad daylight, I can do it only on condition of being followed by the mystery of my past, that is to say, by a sentence of death always hanging over my head. ”

“ Romance is to be fed by mystery and the chase encouraged by the elusiveness of the quarry. 'But talk also how odd, how inconstant, how impetuous, how much accustomed to women of intrigue. Ask gravely, Pray don't you imagine there is something of madness in that family?' A tinge of insanity may be a pleasing dash of colour in the hero; or the suggestion may draw the attention of the fair one to extravagances which are to be noted as the fantasies of genius. ”

“ I used to wonder how my little charges could help guessing that I thought strange things about them; and the circumstance that these things only made them more interesting was not by itself a direct aid to keeping them in the dark. I trembled lest they should see that they were so immensely more interesting. Putting things at the worst, at all events, as in meditation I so often did, any clouding of their innocence could only be—blameless and foredoomed as they were—a reason the more for taking risks. ”

“ Adventures come to the adventurous, and mysterious things fall in the way of those who, with wonder and imagination, are on the watch for them; but the majority of people go past the doors that are half ajar, thinking them closed, and fail to notice the faint stirrings of the great curtain that hangs ever in the form of appearances between them and the world of causes behind. ”

“ Being endowed by nature with a romantic imagination, I had become attached more than all the others to the man whose life was an enigma, and who seemed to me the hero of some mysterious drama. He was fond of me ”

“ I am perfectly convinced that there is something especially exceptional in its inner construction, and that, if I took it to pieces, a secret would be revealed to me which I have long been seeking to discover, but—laugh at me if you like—this senseless thing which only gives signs of life and sound as I make it, often speaks to me in a strange way of itself. ”

“ Mystery revealed itself within mystery, and this was indeed a labyrinth, to the heart of which I sometimes despaired of penetrating. Who was this woman whose elusive figure appeared at every turn in the case? ”

“ Thou little veil for so great mystery,
When shall I penetrate all things and thee,
And then look back? For this I must abide,
Till thou shalt grow and fold and be unfurled
Literally between me and the world. ”

“ Those are just a few of the questions you will ask yourself, as you rush through this baffling tale of mystery piled upon mystery. It's a breathless book—a story in which action never ceases for a moment, and whose outcome you never suspect until the last big moment of struggle when mystery ceases to be mystery, and you breathe the contented sigh that comes at the end of a good story well told—and thoroughly enjoyed. ”

“ L. B.—Are the people again to receive a President from the hand of intriguers, from politicians, or from honest imbeciles? If the people will stand it, then they deserve to be kept in leading strings by all that medley. ”

“ A great secret—the character of which we knew not—was to be made known to us, and each time we cast our eyes about us, we glanced half in fear that some strange and extraordinary horror, of which we had not even dreamed, would be suddenly revealed. ”

“ As for the faithful adherents of the unknown, who had long understood that we must resign ourselves to understanding nothing and he prepared for every sort of surprise there was here, all the same, even for them, a mystery of another character, a bewildering mystery, the only really strange mystery, more torturing than all the others together, because it verges upon ancestral fears and touches the most sensitive point of our destiny. ”

“ Some day they are overcome by that all-absorbing, dreamy sensation which forms the contrast to their whole secret and public life: like unto delightful mystery and miracle, full of golden splendour and baffling description and illustration. ”

“ Thus it is whenever the mind begins, unconsciously, to admit the shadow of the Supernatural; the Obvious is lost to the eye that plunges its gaze into the Obscure. Almost immediately afterwards you become acquainted with a young stranger, whose traits of character interest and perplex, attract yet revolt you. All this time you are engaged in a physiological work which severely tasks the brain, and in which you examine the intricate question of soul distinct from mind. ”

“ And yet every moment you feel more and more wakeful, as though you were slowly almost with every breath, waking up into a new, wonderful, far more thrilling and exciting world than the daylight one. And what is this queer sensation that you’re a conspirator? ”

“ The literary instinct, of almost equal disorder with dramatic instinct, and which he had come to despise during the past year, returned with the easy conformity of an undesirable acquaintance—that reportorial sentence-making faculty, strong as death, and as uncentering to the soul of man. ”

“ Could one lift the impenetrable veil of mystery that hides the future from our curious eyes, what secrets would often be revealed, what shadows would fall upon hearts now light and thoughtless—shadows of grief, of horror, and despair! ”

“ That it is a branch of that mystery of mysteries, la névrose, I have no manner of doubt, for I have seen it in all its forms—a malignant growth which makes night of the lives it plays upon; and flourishes to exceeding profit down in the very heart of tragedies. ”

“ A story of romance, mystery, and adventure, in which, as in many mystery stories, there is the adventuress, with whom, for some reason, the peer, notwithstanding his breeding and social position, becomes entangled, until he is mysteriously put out of the way. From this point on complication and adventure succeed each other in rapid succession, holding the reader in rapt fascination until the end of the story is reached, where the plots of love and mysterious disappearances are surprisingly unfolded. ”

“ Yet what marvel—the strangest my senses have witnessed or feigned in the fraud they have palmed on me—is greater than that by which a simple affection, that all men profess to have known, has changed the courses of life prearranged by my hopes and confirmed by my judgment? ”

“ A delightful moment, followed, as the hunt swished past, by the sudden sense that these men and women, thus whirled off into what may well be the sole poetry of their lives, are but noisy intruders into these fields and spinnies, whose solemn, secret speech they drown with clatter and yelp, whose mystery and charm stand aside on their passage, like an interrupted, a profaned rite. ”

“ Her shining eyes are fixed on something invisible that hovers in the room just over your head. Mystery, or the answer to all mystery? A new confidence, a new belief, are coming into her life. It is like being kissed in a dream ”

“ They hold it weakness that we should become excited by incident, or enthralled by mystery, and prophesy a future when intelligence shall reign supreme, to the extinction of the vulgar passion for sensation. ”

“ When, on the other hand, the thing, or the person, falls within the world of supernormal experience, when they strike the imagination as wonderful and wonder-working, then there is much more reason why he should seek to account to himself for the mystery in, or behind, the strange appearance. ”

“ There is a mystery about this which stimulates the imagination; where there is no imagination there is no horror. ”

“ And tell me, is this chap with the deep-purring car the villain or the hero in your novel—the dark one with the hair blown straight back?"
I almost stopped in my amazement. He was quoting from my life history.
"I don't understand," I began. I could feel the color in my cheeks. "I dislike mystery. Tell me. Please. How did you—I dislike mystery," I repeated.
"Are you angry? It's so dark I can't see. Don't be angry. It was written on theme paper, in pencil, and in a university town theme paper is public property. ”

“ That fugitive thought which enters your mind, fanned by curiosity's wing, may seem quite trivial; to dwell on and delight in it may be to you something indifferent. That sentiment which, scarcely formed, commences to germinate in your heart, and to produce therein emotions so imperceptible that you are but imperfectly conscious of its presence, seems insignificant at first sight ”

“ In the drama this expedient must be used with great delicacy, because a sudden and startling shock of surprise is likely to scatter the attention of the spectators and flurry them out of a true conception of the scene. The reader of a novel, when he discovers with surprise that he has been skilfully deceived through several pages, may pause to reconstruct his conception of the narrative, and may even re-read the entire passage through which the secret has been withheld from him. ”

“ He dropped into silence, puzzled and in a way awed by the mystery enveloping her—a mystery of aloofness and stoniness, of complete separation from the contact of the world—the mystery that incloses all whose real life is lived deep within themselves. ”

“ In the literature of the mysteries of iniquity, which talent and imagination have brought into fashion, we prefer the sweet and gentle characters, which can attempt and effect conversions, to the melodramatic villains, who inspire terror; for terror never cures selfishness, but increases it. ”

“ His inner knowledge, viewed by the light of this manner or mannerism, was sometimes uncanny, though perhaps the sources of his information were commonplace enough, after all. Certainly he always viewed with amusement his victim's wonder. ”

“ Why not personate an enemy, and pretend that celestial interference has frustrated my schemes? I must fly, but let me leave wonder and fear behind me. Elucidation of the mystery will always be practicable. ”

“ So that when once he begins to observe your doings, he will ask nothing better from you, nothing kinder from you, than that you would meet this imaginative temper of his half way;—that you would farther touch the sense of terror, or satisfy the expectation of things strange, which have been prompted by the mystery or the majesty of the surrounding scene. ”

“ But, Sir, does your old philosophy never suggest to you the idea that these new discoveries and emotions, with their consequent anticipations, may be referable to the mysterious action of a disturbed imagination, rather than the direct action of a supernatural power—what scepticism designates the flights of fancy? ”

“ If two minds are better than one, then surely three minds are superior to two."
We piled into the chief's roomy roadster and were soon speeding toward the house of mystery.
Two Mysterious Deaths
PRESENTLY the car stopped before a two-story brick house. Its upper windows, with shades half drawn, appeared to stare down at us with a look of sly cunning as if endeavoring to conceal some fearful secret. ”

“ I never have good fortunes of that kind. But I've got hold of a young woman,—or rather a young woman has got hold of me, who insists on having a mystery with me. In the mystery itself there is not the slightest interest. ”

“ No consistent narrative that we might have concocted would, it seems to us, have been half as interesting to them as to allow them to follow the devious paths opened up by those who entered on the search for the heart of the mystery. ”

“ Living in a domain of Mysteries, he has been himself King of them all; has held in his hand the clue to each. His men may have worked in the dark, or with only a fragment of light, a glimmer of the truth, to guide them. ”

“ And then you ask what it matters to me when some unknown man has held you in his arms, carried you into his house—kissed you, perhaps, while you were unconscious!”—his imagination running suddenly riot. ”