Reader and writer
sit down to a game, as it were, with the odds, of course,
altogether on the latter's side,--apart from the fact that a writer
sometimes permits himself a little cheating. It more often happens
that the detective appears to be in the writer's pay, and aids the
deception by leading the reader off on false scents. Be that as it
may, the professional sleuth is in nine cases out of ten a dummy by
malice prepense; and it might be plausibly argued that, in the
interests of pure art, that is what he ought to be. But genius
always finds a way that is better than the rules, and I think it
will be found that the very best riddle stories contrive to drive
character and riddle side by side, and to make each somehow enhance
the effect of the other.--The intention of the above paragraph will
be more precisely conveyed if I include under the name of detective
not only the man from the central office, but also anybody whom the
writer may, for ends of his own, consider better qualified for that
function. The latter is a professional detective so far as the
exigencies of the tale are concerned, and what becomes of him after
that nobody need care,--there is no longer anything to prevent his
becoming, in his own right, the most fascinating of mankind.
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