Tales of Terror and Mystery

By Arthur Conan Doyle

No Sherlock, Just Good Ol’ Short Stories

“This world of ours appears to be separated by a slight and precarious margin of safety from a most singular and unexpected danger.” - Arthur Conan Doyle, The Horror of the Heights

In his attempt to drift away from the character that defined his writings, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle tries to experiment in the Tales of Terror and Mystery. This time, he takes the reader into a parallel, fantastic world where flying near-transparent monsters and man-eating large cats are causing terror in the human society. But with Sherlock Holmes gone, can anybody solve the seven mysteries?

This Xist Classics edition has been professionally formatted for e-readers with a linked table of contents. This eBook also contains a bonus book club leadership guide and discussion questions. We hope you’ll share this book with your friends, neighbors and colleagues and can’t wait to hear what you have to say about it.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Xist Publishing
• Release date: Mar 3, 2016
• ISBN: 9781681956114

Arthur Conan Doyle

Arthur Conan Doyle was a British writer and physician. He is the creator of the Sherlock Holmes character, writing his debut appearance in A Study in Scarlet. Doyle wrote notable books in the fantasy and science fiction genres, as well as plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction, and historical novels.

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The Leather Funnel

My friend, Lionel Dacre, lived in the Avenue de Wagram, Paris. His house was that small one, with the iron railings and grass plot in front of it, on the left-hand side as you pass down from the Arc de Triomphe. I fancy that it had been there long before the avenue was constructed, for the grey tiles were stained with lichens, and the walls were mildewed and discoloured with age. It looked a small house from the street, five windows in front, if I remember right, but it deepened into a single long chamber at the back. It was here that Dacre had that singular library of occult literature, and the fantastic curiosities which served as a hobby for himself, and an amusement for his friends. A wealthy man of refined and eccentric tastes, he had spent much of his life and fortune in gathering together what was said to be a unique private collection of Talmudic, cabalistic, and magical works, many of them of great rarity and value. His tastes leaned toward the marvellous and the monstrous, and I have heard that his experiments in the direction of the unknown have passed all the bounds of civilization and of decorum. To his English friends he never alluded to such matters, and took the tone of the student and virtuoso; but a Frenchman whose tastes were of the same nature has assured me that the worst excesses of the black mass have been perpetrated in that large and lofty hall, which is lined with the shelves of his books, and the cases of his museum.

Dacre's appearance was enough to show that his deep interest in these psychic matters was intellectual rather than spiritual. There was no trace of asceticism upon his heavy face, but there was much mental force in his huge, dome-like skull, which curved upward from amongst his thinning locks, like a snowpeak above its fringe of fir trees. His knowledge was greater than his wisdom, and his powers were far superior to his character. The small bright eyes, buried deeply in his fleshy face, twinkled with intelligence and an unabated curiosity of life, but they were the eyes of a sensualist and an egotist. Enough of the man, for he is dead now, poor devil, dead at the very time that he had made sure that he had at last discovered the elixir of life. It is not with his complex character that I have to deal, but with the very strange and inexplicable incident which had its rise in my visit to him in the early spring of the year '82.

I had known Dacre in England, for my researches in the Assyrian Room of the British Museum had been conducted at the time when he was endeavouring to establish a mystic and esoteric meaning in the Babylonian tablets, and this community of interests had brought us together. Chance remarks had led to daily conversation, and that to something verging upon friendship. I had promised him that on my next visit to Paris I would call upon him. At the time when I was able to fulfil my compact I was living in a cottage at Fontainebleau, and as the evening trains were inconvenient, he asked me to spend the night in his house.

I have only that one spare couch, said he, pointing to a broad sofa in his large salon; I hope that you will manage to be comfortable there.

It was a singular bedroom, with its high walls of brown volumes, but there could be no more agreeable furniture to a bookworm like myself, and there is no scent so pleasant to my nostrils as that faint, subtle reek which comes from an ancient book. I assured him that I could desire no more charming chamber, and no more congenial surroundings.

If the fittings are neither convenient nor conventional, they are at least costly, said he, looking round at his shelves. I have expended nearly a quarter of a million of money upon these objects which surround you. Books, weapons, gems, carvings, tapestries, images—there is hardly a thing here which has not its history, and it is generally one worth telling.

He was seated as he spoke at one side of the open fire-place, and I at the other. His reading-table was on his right, and the strong lamp above it ringed it with a very vivid circle of golden light. A half-rolled palimpsest lay in the centre, and around it were many quaint articles of bric-a-brac. One of these was a large funnel, such as is used for filling wine casks. It appeared to be made of black wood, and to be rimmed with discoloured brass.

That is a curious thing, I remarked. What is the history of that?

Ah! said he, it is the very question which I have had occasion to ask myself. I would give a good deal to know. Take it in your hands and examine it.

I did so, and found that what I had imagined to be wood was in reality leather, though age had dried it into an extreme hardness. It was a large funnel, and might hold a quart when full. The brass rim encircled the wide end, but the narrow was also tipped with metal.

What do you make of it? asked Dacre.

I should imagine that it belonged to some vintner or maltster in the Middle Ages, said I. I have seen in England leathern drinking flagons of the seventeenth century—'black jacks' as they were called—which were of the same colour and hardness as this filler.

I dare say the date would be about the same, said Dacre, and, no doubt, also, it was used for filling a vessel with liquid. If my suspicions are correct, however, it was a queer vintner who used it, and a very singular cask which was filled. Do you observe nothing strange at the spout end of the funnel.

As I held it to the light I observed that at a spot some five inches above the brass tip the narrow neck of the leather funnel was all haggled and scored, as if someone had notched it round with a blunt knife. Only at that point was there any roughening of the dead black surface.

Someone has tried to cut off the neck.

Would you call it a cut?

It is torn and lacerated. It must have taken some strength to leave these marks on such tough material, whatever the instrument may have been. But what do you think of it? I can tell that you know more than you say.

Dacre smiled, and his little eyes twinkled with knowledge.

Have you included the psychology of dreams among your learned studies? he asked.

I did not even know that there was such a psychology.

My dear sir, that shelf above the gem case is filled with volumes, from Albertus Magnus onward, which deal with no other subject. It is a science in itself.

A science of charlatans!

The charlatan is always the pioneer. From the astrologer came the astronomer, from the alchemist the chemist, from the mesmerist the experimental psychologist. The quack of yesterday is the professor of tomorrow. Even such subtle and elusive things as dreams will in time be reduced to system and order. When that time comes the researches of our friends on the bookshelf yonder will no longer be the amusement of the mystic, but the foundations of a science.

Supposing that is so, what has the science of dreams to do with a large, black, brass-rimmed funnel?

"I will tell you. You know that I have an agent who is always on the look-out for rarities and curiosities for my collection. Some days ago he heard of a dealer upon one of the Quais who had acquired some old rubbish found in a cupboard in an ancient house at the back of the Rue Mathurin, in the Quartier Latin. The dining-room of this old house is decorated with a coat of arms, chevrons, and bars rouge upon a field argent, which prove, upon inquiry, to be the shield of Nicholas de la Reynie, a high official of King Louis XIV. There can be no doubt that the other articles in the cupboard date back to the early days of that king. The inference is, therefore, that they were all the property of this Nicholas de la Reynie, who was, as I understand, the gentleman specially concerned with the maintenance and execution of the Draconic laws of that

Reviews for Tales of Terror and Mystery

[bettesbooks · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Reading Doyle's Tales of Terror today, is like reading a cozy mystery, all conjecture with only postulated ending; wrapped around Doyle's concept of scientific thinking. I feel I walked into a conversation, eavesdropping, a comfortable way to start and end a tale.I have been reading this collection for several weeks to fulfill a challenge. To be truthful there were too many stories grouped together, I wish the collection had been shorter.

[cainmark · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Hit and miss, but when the short stories hit, they hit hard and well. A lot of the "eh" stories have more to do with their reliance on old technology for explanations.

[devenish_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Another collection of Arthur Conan Doyle's short story collections published by John Murray.This one contains quite a few crackers and it is difficult to pick just one or two,but I will have a go. The Leather Funnel and The New Catacomb. Also The Lost Special and The Beetle-Hunter. All of these are well-told stories in this genre of which Sir Arthur is a Master.

[jen6e6moore · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Welp, the "tales of terror" are for the most part a little silly (although I did enjoy "The Horror of the Heights," kind of a precursor to "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet") and the "tales of mystery" are *really* silly, all of which is even more entertaining when you consider that this is what Doyle wanted to be writing instead of Sherlock Holmes.

[wktarin · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Decent stories all.

[jamespurcell · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Mostly good to excellent stories with very good narration and very poor audio quality. Discs continually repeat themselves detracting seriously from the literary experience.

[.monkey.-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A collection of non-Holmes mysteries (though a couple stories have a small nameless mention of him, which is always fun) that includes some fantastical stories, which feels a bit unexpected until one recalls that The lost world was also somewhat in that realm, though far less dark. Though the "tales of mystery" are non-Holmes they still retain Doyle's typical style, which I personally don't see as problematic since that's why Holmes has been so enjoyed for so long. A solid little collection.

[darthdeverell · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Tales of Terror and Mystery collects six “Tales of Terror” and seven “Tales of Mystery” from the master of British detective fiction. In the first story, “The Horror of the Heights,” a monoplane pilot ascends past 20,000 feet where he encounters an unknown creature. Doyle uses the framing device of the story following the pilot’s recovered diary, giving the whole story an H.P. Lovecraft feel. One of the other stories, “The Case of Lady Sannox,” features a rather gruesome twist evocative of Edgar Allan Poe. While the “Tales of Terror” feature great ambiance, modern readers won’t find them particularly terrifying.“The Lost Special,” the first of the “Tales of Mystery,” features a lost train that disappears between two stations. Though not officially a Sherlock Holmes story, Doyle references “an amateur reasoner of some celebrity at that date” who writes, “It is one of the elementary principles of practical reasoning… that when the impossible has been eliminated the residuum, however improbable, must contain the truth” (pg. 102). This would therefore appear to have been Doyle’s way to publish a Holmes story in the five years after killing off the Great Detective in 1893. Similarly, “The Story of the Man with the Watches” (also from 1898) features a reference to “a well-known criminal investigator” who publishes his hypothesis in the Daily Gazette (pg. 135). While his hypothesis fails, the style of the investigator’s hypothesizing resembles that of Holmes. As it would be another five years before Doyle resurrected Holmes in “The Adventure of the Empty House,” this may have been Doyle’s way of testing the waters (though The Hound of the Baskervilles appeared in 1901, it takes place before Holmes’ “death”). The story is similarly appealing to me as a Rochesterian for its references to Rochester, NY, including the Rochester Watchmaking Company and a watchmaker named Mason from Elmira. The other mysteries are likely to entertain fans of Doyle as they surpass the “Tales of Terror” in their narratives.The book includes an introduction by Nina Conan Doyle Harwood, the daughter-in-law of Arthur Conan Doyle, setting up her father-in-law’s interests and how they influenced these stories. The title page credits Barbara Ninde Byfield with the book’s illustrations, but there are none that I can find within the book unless Byfield designed the cover decoration, which evokes the patterned vintage look common to the International Collectors Library’s publications.

[justabookreader · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I’ve been reading more short stories this year and have come to one conclusion --- I prefer one author over several. I enjoy the stories more if I become familiar with the author’s voice and I can then move along without feeling the need to stop and regain my footing at the end of each story. In Tales of Terror and Mystery, this is exactly what happened.There were 13 stories here; six tales of terror and seven tales of mystery. Tales of Terror:The Horror of the Heights follows a pilot who encounters giant jellyfish like aliens. The Leather Funnel reminds us what a true nightmare can be. The New Catacomb is a take on the value of friendship when a woman’s love is involved. The Case of Lady Sannox is an affair gone wrong. The Terror of Blue John Gap involves an imaginary monster made real. The Brazilian Cat is a tale of family woe and backstabbing relatives.Tales of Mystery:The Lost Special is a recounting of a train kidnapping. The Beetle-Hunter follows a young doctor and the horror he finds in answering an advertisement. The Man with the Watches is about a train with missing persons. The Japanned Box makes us wonder what a widower is doing alone in a room late at night. The Black Doctor involves the disappearance and supposed murder of a well-liked town doctor. The Jew’s Breastplate is a museum caper complete with a mummy. The Nightmare Room is an odd scene with a séance to boot.If you know anything about Sir Arthur Conon Doyle, these stories reflect many of his interests including his love of new technologies and preoccupation in the afterlife. It’s endearing and somewhat uncomfortable at the same time as his prejudices also come through. I’m not going into that here though.I enjoyed the tales of terror more and there are a few gems among the mysteries as well but I did see a few endings coming which didn’t cause any disappointment. With a short story, in some cases only pages, it’s going to happen.If you’re a fan of Doyle, this one is worth a look. It’s fast and the stories are entertaining.

[lauriebrown54 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a prolific writer, and his Sherlock Holmes stories, while the best known of his work, were only a fraction of what he wrote. This book gives us six tales of terror- mostly supernatural- and seven tales of mystery- all works of humankind. Some of the mysteries have the feel of a Holmes story- in fact, he is obliquely referred to in two of them- but most don’t. “Terror of the Heights” made me think of Lovecraft, while “The New Catacomb” and “The Brazilian Cat” are both downright Poe-ish in character. While none of these stories has the liveliness of the Holmes stories, they are well worth reading. Some people have put them down as being ‘pulp’ stories, but I don’t happen to think that’s an insult.