But in addition to the dummyship of the detective, or to the cases
in which the mere slip of circumstance takes his place, there is
another reason against narrowing our conception of the riddle story
to the degree which the alternative appellation would imply. And
that is, that it would exclude not a few of the most captivating
riddle stories in existence; for in De Quincey's "Avenger," for
example, the interest is not in the unraveling of the web, but in
the weaving of it. The same remark applies to Bulwer's "Strange
Story"; it is the strangeness that is the thing. There is, in
short, an inalienable charm in the mere contemplation of mystery
and the hazard of fortunes; and it would be a pity to shut them out
from our consideration only because there is no second-sighted
conjurer on hand to turn them into plain matter of fact.
Yet we must not be too liberal; and a ghost story can be brought
into our charmed and charming circle only if we have made up our
minds to believe in the ghosts; otherwise their introduction would
not be a square deal. It would not be fair, in other words, to
propose a conundrum on a basis of ostensible materialism, and then,
when no other key would fit, to palm off a disembodied spirit on
us.
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