Philip MacDonald - The Rynox Mystery

‘THE DETECTIVE STORY CLUB is a clearing house for the best detective and mystery stories chosen for you by a select committee of experts. Only the most ingenious crime stories will be published under the THE DETECTIVE STORY CLUB imprint. A special distinguishing stamp appears on the wrapper and title page of every THE DETECTIVE STORY CLUB book—the Man with the Gun. Always look for the Man with the Gun when buying a Crime book.’

Wm. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd., 1929

Now the Man with the Gun is back in this series of COLLINS CRIME CLUB reprints, and with him the chance to experience the classic books that influenced the Golden Age of crime fiction.

E. C. BENTLEY • TRENT’S LAST CASE

E. C. BENTLEY • TRENT INTERVENES

E. C. BENTLEY & H. WARNER ALLEN • TRENT’S OWN CASE

ANTHONY BERKELEY • THE WYCHFORD POISONING CASE

ANTHONY BERKELEY • THE SILK STOCKING MURDERS

LYNN BROCK • NIGHTMARE

BERNARD CAPES • THE MYSTERY OF THE SKELETON KEY

AGATHA CHRISTIE • THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD

AGATHA CHRISTIE • THE BIG FOUR

WILKIE COLLINS • THE MOONSTONE

HUGH CONWAY • CALLED BACK

HUGH CONWAY • DARK DAYS

EDMUND CRISPIN • THE CASE OF THE GILDED FLY

FREEMAN WILLS CROFTS • THE CASK

FREEMAN WILLS CROFTS • THE PONSON CASE

FREEMAN WILLS CROFTS • THE PIT-PROP SYNDICATE

FREEMAN WILLS CROFTS • THE GROOTE PARK MURDER

MAURICE DRAKE • THE MYSTERY OF THE MUD FLATS

FRANCIS DURBRIDGE • BEWARE OF JOHNNY WASHINGTON

J. JEFFERSON FARJEON • THE HOUSE OPPOSITE

RUDOLPH FISHER • THE CONJURE-MAN DIES

FRANK FROËST • THE GRELL MYSTERY

FRANK FROËST & GEORGE DILNOT • THE CRIME CLUB

ÉMILE GABORIAU • THE BLACKMAILERS

ANNA K. GREEN • THE LEAVENWORTH CASE

DONALD HENDERSON • MR BOWLING BUYS A NEWSPAPER

VERNON LODER • THE MYSTERY AT STOWE

PHILIP MACDONALD • THE RASP

PHILIP MACDONALD • THE NOOSE

PHILIP MACDONALD • MURDER GONE MAD

PHILIP MACDONALD • THE MAZE

NGAIO MARSH • THE NURSING HOME MURDER

G. ROY McRAE • THE PASSING OF MR QUINN

R. A. V. MORRIS • THE LYTTLETON CASE

ARTHUR B. REEVE • THE ADVENTURESS

FRANK RICHARDSON • THE MAYFAIR MYSTERY

R. L. STEVENSON • DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE

J. V. TURNER • BELOW THE CLOCK

EDGAR WALLACE • THE TERROR

ISRAEL ZANGWILL • THE PERFECT CRIME

FURTHER TITLES IN PREPARATION

COLLINS CRIME CLUB

an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by W. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1930

Published by The Detective Story Club Ltd 1931

Copyright © Estate of Philip MacDonald 1930, 1963

Cover layout design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2017

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008248994

Ebook Edition © November 2017 ISBN: 9780008249007

Version: 2017-10-30

Contents

Cover

The Detective Story Club

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

Epilogue

Reel One

Sequence the First

Sequence the Second

Sequence the Third

Sequence the Fourth

Sequence the Fifth

Sequence the Sixth

Reel Two

Reel Three

Sequence the First

Sequence the Second

Sequence the Third

Sequence the Fourth

Prologue

The Wood-for-the-Trees

Footnotes

About the Publisher

I WONDER how many professional storytellers can look back on their own early work with true objectivity. If there are any, I envy them. Because I know I can’t. I always fall into the egocentric trap of disliking mine far too much; of feeling (as was once said of a friend of mine who was forever working on the great American novel and never finishing the first chapter) that ‘it isn’t good enough for me to have written.’

The only time I’m ever halfway satisfied with any work I’ve done is for a short while after I’ve finished it; a depressingly short and evanescent while. A week later any satisfaction with my labours is beginning to fade. In a month I am more than dubious. After a year, I’m convinced the whole thing smells to high heaven, and I can’t imagine why anyone would ever trouble to read it.

But I realize that these are conditioned reflexes, and auto-conditioned at that, so I made up my mind to ignore them as I approached the task of going over the three books in this collection. But I still started on the job with trepidation; because (to be euphemistic) the tales were written some time ago fn1and I was terrified that, in spite of their original success, they might prove hopelessly out of date.

But somehow they didn’t; and I was able to confine such editing as I did to matters of cutting, wording and style, of writing qua writing. Surprisingly, the stories themselves, as examples of three completely different types of what is now (unfortunately, I think) generically labelled ‘Mystery Story’, seemed to me to hold up pretty well: The Rasp as a pure, dyed-in-the-wool Whodunit; Murder Gone Mad as a tale of mass-murder, half Whodunit and half (to use a label of my own coining) Howcatchem; and Rynox , called a ‘light-hearted thriller’ at the time of its birth, as one of those razzle-dazzle, now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t affairs which many of us case-hardened toilers in the field of the roman policier fn2like to throw off once in a while.