The second most famous literary puzzle is without doubt Cleveland Moffett’s THE MYSTERIOUS CARD. This short story, the theme of which has been rewritten by dozens of authors since, first appeared in the Boston magazine, “The Black Cat,” February 1896; it was published in book form by Small, Maynard of Boston some time between 1896 and 1912 — the exact year is unknown, even the Library of Congress having no date on record.
One version of “the mysterious card” theme has eluded our most persistent book researches. It tells how a sailor on shore leave finds a piece of paper with unfamiliar words on it in a foreign language. The sailor takes it to various people for translation, but in each instance the person consulted refuses to divulge the meaning of the words and instead beats up, kicks, and otherwise abuses the poor sailor. Finally the sailor returns to his ship, the riddle unsolved. On shipboard he meets an archeologist who, the sailor thinks, might be able to satisfy his now uncontrollable curiosity. The sailor approaches the man at the rail of the ship, relates the whole back history, emphasizing his complete innocence. The archeologist agrees to translate the words on the paper and, no matter what they may mean, not to hold the sailor responsible. The sailor takes the slip of paper from his pocket and is about to hand it to the archeologist when a sudden gust of wind lifts the scrap from his hand and tosses it on the sea, where it immediately disappears from sight. And thus the mystery remains unanswered forever.
(to be continued next month)
Out of his head
by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
I: The Danseuse
The ensuing summer I returned North depressed by the result of my sojourn in New Orleans. It was only by devoting myself, body and soul, to some intricate pursuit that I could dispel the gloom which threatened seriously to affect my health.
The Moon-Apparatus was insufficient to distract me. I turned my attention to mechanism, and was successful in producing several wonderful pieces of work, among which may be mentioned a brass butterfly, made to flit so naturally in the air as to deceive the most acute observers. The motion of the toy, the soft down and gorgeous damask-stains on the pinions, were declared quite perfect. The thing is rusty and won’t work now; I tried to set it going for Dr. Pendegrast, the other day.
A mannikin musician, playing a few exquisite airs on a miniature piano, likewise excited much admiration. This figure bore such an absurd, unintentional resemblance to a gentleman who has since distinguished himself as a pianist that I presented the trifle to a lady admirer of Gottschalk.
I also became a taxidermist, and stuffed a pet bird with springs and diminutive flutes, causing it to hop and carol in its cage with great glee. But my masterpiece was a nimble white mouse, with pink eyes, that could scamper up the walls, and masticate bits of cheese in an extraordinary style. My chambermaid shrieked and jumped up on a chair whenever I let the little fellow loose in her presence. One day, unhappily, the mouse, while nosing around after its favorite aliment, got snapped in a rat-trap that yawned in the closet, and I was never able to readjust the machinery.
Engaged in these useful inventions — useful, because no exercise of the human mind is ever in vain — my existence for two or three years was so placid and uneventful, I began to hope that the shadows which had followed on my path from childhood, making me unlike other men, had returned to that unknown world where they properly belong; but the Fates were only taking breath to work out more surely the problem of my destiny. I must keep nothing back. I must extenuate nothing.
I am about to lift the veil of mystery which, for nearly seven years, has shrouded the story of Mary Ware; and though I lay bare my own weakness, or folly, or what you will, I do not shrink from the unveiling.
No hand but mine can now perform the task. There was, indeed, a man who might have done this better than I. But he went his way in silence. I like a man who can hold his tongue.
On the corner of Clarke and Crandall Streets in New York stands a dingy brown frame-house. It is a very old house, as its obsolete style of structure would tell you. It has a morose, unhappy look, though once it must have been a blithe mansion. I think that houses, like human beings, ultimately become dejected or cheerful, according to their experience. The very air of some front-doors tells their history.
This house, I repeat, has a morose, unhappy look at present and is tenanted by an incalculable number of families, while a picturesque junk-shop is in full blast in the basement; but at the time of which I write it was a second-rate boarding-place, of the more respectable sort, and rather largely patronized by poor, but honest, literary men, tragic-actors, members of the chorus, and such-like gilt people.
My apartments on Crandall Street were opposite this building, to which my attention was directed soon after taking possession of the rooms, by the discovery of the following facts:
First, that a charming lady lodged on the second-floor front, and sang like a canary every morning.
Second, that her name was Mary Ware.
Third, that Mary Ware was a danseuse, and had two lovers — only two.
Mary Ware was the leading lady at The Olympic. Night after night found me in the parquette. I can think of nothing with which to compare the airiness and utter abandon of her dancing. She seemed a part of the music. She was one of beauty’s best thoughts, then. Her glossy gold hair reached down to her waist, shading one of those mobile faces which remind you of Guido’s picture of Beatrix Cenci — there was something so fresh and enchanting in the mouth. Her luminous, almond eyes, looking out winningly from under their drooping fringes, were at once the delight and misery of young men.
Ah! you were distracting in your nights of triumph, when the bouquets nestled about your elastic ankles, and the kissing of your castanets made the pulses leap; but I remember when you lay on your cheerless bed, in the blank daylight, with the glory faded from your brow, and “none so poor as to do you reverence.”
Then I stooped down and kissed you — but not till then.
Mary Ware was to me a finer study than her lovers. She had two, as I have said. One of them was commonplace enough — well-made, well-dressed, shallow, flaccid. Nature, when she gets out of patience with her best works, throws off such things by the gross, instead of swearing. He was a Lieutenant, in the navy I think. The gilt button has charms to soothe the savage breast.
The other was a man of different mould, and interested me in a manner for which I could not then account. The first time I saw him did not seem like the first time. But this, perhaps, is only an after-impression.
Every line of his countenance denoted character; a certain capability, I mean, but whether for good or evil was not so plain. I should have called him handsome, but for a noticeable scar which ran at right angles across his mouth, giving him a sardonic expression when he smiled.
His frame might have set an anatomist wild with delight — six feet two, deep-chested, knitted with tendons of steel. Not at all a fellow to amble on plush carpets.
“Some day,” thought I, as I saw him stride by the house, “he will throw the little Lieutenant out of that second-story window.”
I cannot tell, to this hour, which of those two men Mary Ware loved more — for I think she loved them both. A woman’s heart was the insolvable charade with which the Sphinx nipped the Egyptians. I was never good at puzzles.